Love is one of those things that feels general, e go touch everybody. But if you pay attention, you’ll see that it’s also a very fickle thing; coming and going, morphing through various forms, afflicting each sufferer differently.

This February, we will explore different experiences of romantic love in all of its iterations: the pining while seeking it, the joy of living with it, and the despair of losing it. Through honest, personal stories from real people, we’ll examine what love truly feels like. 

This is D’s Story

It started casually. I wasn’t looking for anything serious, but he was persistent, and eventually we became a thing.

We’d actually been friends for about a year or two before anything happened. Then we started dating and did that all through uni, about four years, with plenty of short little break-ups scattered in between. We were both grown, fully adults, just figuring things out.

It was sweet while it lasted. Nice, even. But money problems crept in, and honestly, that played its part. I never really asked him for money. I didn’t think it was my place. We weren’t married, I didn’t see myself as his responsibility, and besides, we were both serving at the time, living off 33k. The one time I did borrow from him was 5k. Just once.

When the end came, it was brutal but also funny. He just asked me to return his 5k and never contact him again. That was it. That was the goodbye. In his defence, he later said he did it that way so there’d be no going back. A very effective way to burn a bridge, I’ll give him that. Except he came back months later to apologise. But by then, it was done. I mean, it was really done.

Looking back, I held on longer than I should have, and I can’t even say it was that. And I eventually noticed he had a complicated relationship with money, though I don’t hold that against him. These things happen. People change. The break didn’t come from my side, so I can’t fully explain how it unravelled, but it did.

I wasn’t even pissed, hurt, or bitter. It was good while it lasted, and it’s probably good that it ended when it did.

Peace.