Love: “I left out of pride”

Breakup testimony: “I left out of pride”

Louise Enriquez

24 Jun 2014

You fall in love with a married man but you stay because he is THE love of your life…until the day everything changes. Find out about Chloe’s story.

Chloe, 42 years

“If someone had told me that I would live one of my most beautiful love stories with a married man, I would not have believed them. It is not as if I have a set of hyper-principles to live by or anything, but I thought this kind of situation only happened to other people, and that in any case we could avoid them. But no, we do not choose who we love. I met Christopher at a business seminar and at first I struggled against it. Until I could take it no longer! We thought about each other all day, we only had one desire – to see each other…

And so we did. There was a very, very strong connection between us. The question was not whether we loved each other, but if we could allow this love to live. The first times, those little hotel rendezvous in the daytime or at night till 10:30pm made us happy and then, very quickly, it went bad. The first time was after four months when I said: "It is over." He called me the next week, and we cracked. In total, there were three splits before the final break-up. I had the strength to stop answering his calls and texts. I never said to myself, "This guy is a jerk; he made me believe that he would leave his wife, he brought me on a ride...” No. I saw a destroyed man.

He tried, he left once after having explained everything to his wife, but he could not live without his children. And I know this is also why I liked him. But the situation was humiliating for me. It is monstrous to love someone who is not available. I left before I lost my footing, before I lost myself. It was like a survival instinct. I left out of pride, so that I would not hit rock bottom and end up hating him."