“We fought, broke up, got back together”

I keep joking that my story with Mister D is “all life long.” It's even scary to imagine what might be waiting for us next.

We were in the same class from the age of 10. In 9th grade, having crossed the threshold of puberty, I started falling for boys for real. That's when we became close: we could chat for hours on Skype, text nonstop, hang out after school. We even started sitting at the same desk from time to time.

Our interests partly overlapped, we listened to the same music, discussed school and everything going on there in our own special way, trashed all the idiots and laughed like crazy at each other's jokes. And that's when I got hooked))

In 10th grade, during the Christmas holidays, we kissed for the first time. Neither of us was a virgin, but we didn't dare to go straight to sex. After a while we started making attempts, but he was so nervous because of feelings that were new to him (as I found out only much later) that it didn't work out.

Because of my youth and foolishness, I reacted badly, even making scenes, and took everything personally. Luckily, I later had the sense to apologize.

By spring I had started dating someone else, and my relationship with Mister D drifted back into friendship. But by autumn, what I'd been waiting for so long finally happened: our first sex. It was so wonderful that the world suddenly burst into bright colors, and all my teenage dissatisfaction with life dissolved in an instant.

We dated for a year. I loved him madly. Alas, Mister D was never known for an easygoing mind or for ease in communication, and I don't have an easy character either. Our relationship cracked, and after yet another fight I cheated on him and even gave him an STI.

Afterwards we didn't talk for almost six months, but life brought us together again. At that time I quit my studies, found a job and, right there, a boyfriend for the next 3 years. And even then, for almost all that time, Mister D and I stayed in close contact: we went for walks, ate, laughed, everything as always. He knew, because I didn't hide it, that deep in my soul I still had feelings for him.

Over those three years he managed to hurt me badly in revenge for the STI I'd “gifted” him. Surprisingly, I quickly forgave and forgot all these stunts, deciding that the pros outweighed the cons, and that taking offense and getting revenge is partly normal and understandable, especially at 20–22.

After COVID I broke up with that guy, and Mister D and I got back together. We were blinded by the passion and tenderness reborn between us. But I still wasn't getting the attention I needed from him; he had always been a distant person.

We fought, broke up, got back together. Three times he went abroad to study, and we spent 3–4 months apart, which traumatized me a lot. At a distance he was even less reachable than usual. Once he drove me to a terrible nervous breakdown and, out of fear and not knowing what to do, simply lay low for a while.

Then came February 2022. Up until that moment I had been ignoring him harshly, which isn't like me at all. He begged me to meet, which wasn't like him at all.

We were both so shaken that we quickly decided we were better off together than apart. Everything burst into bright colors again. I forgave him all his sins; we both tried to stay afloat and support each other.

This was already the third or fourth time we'd started over in 6 years.

During the mobilization we decided to leave quickly. He left right away, and I followed a month later. An unusual tour of half the world was waiting for us. After a month and two cities in Turkey, we decided to go to Asia and live there as long as possible.

But in Vietnam everything suddenly went to sh*t. Partly because of problems with housing and a micro-apartment where we put insane pressure on each other. He was exhausted, and I wanted to have fun. Slowly but surely, conflicts started to arise, plus that nightmarish space where we were literally eating each other alive.

Before New Year we moved to Kuala Lumpur. It was like a renaissance for our relationship. After all, we'd gotten out of that box into a great country and city where the quality of life was much higher.

Intoxicated by yet another change, we hardly fought. But just a month later we moved to Thailand, where the cruelest and hardest things in my life happened.

We lived in a small house on an island. The conditions weren't great, but there was delicious food, a bike and the sea. Mister D became even harder to get moving, because every morning he was woken up by the roosters living behind the fence. He turned down all my requests to go somewhere, do something and so on. I felt like I wasn't being heard, like he didn't want to spend time with me, like I was being ignored. More and more often we found ourselves in electric tension again.

As often happens, the last straw was such a trifle that it's embarrassing even to talk about. We had a bad fight, and I abruptly started looking for a place of my own. I tried to move out as quickly as possible, but I didn't want to stop talking to him. The fear of being alone after a painful breakup with the love of my life, with whom I had taken a desperate step, dropping everything and leaving, weighed on me terribly. I was afraid of being left completely alone in an unfamiliar country.

I managed to find a friend, and soon an apartment and even two lovers. But that didn't pull me out of my mini-depression. I cried a lot, and my photo gallery from that time is a pile of teary selfies.

Surprisingly, knowing that I was sleeping with other people, he started reaching out to me again, having sex with me, showing me tenderness. In any case, he was the only person I could rely on so far from home. And he did get me out of a couple of scrapes.

In May 2023 I had almost run out of money. He offered to pay for tickets home. It was hard for me to agree; I really loved the island, but at the same time it had broken me, and I was ready to leave it, hoping to come back rebooted after the summer.

He asked to stay at my place all summer as payment for the tickets. I didn't mind, guided by having sex at hand and funny jokes.

At first it was hard, then easy, and in the end hard again. I asked him to move out of my apartment, and we took a short break.

In autumn he flew away, we barely talked, and when he came back in December, naturally, we slept together again.

All spring we pretended to be friends with benefits, although I said a hundred times that I wouldn't last long like that. He kept saying he didn't want a relationship with me, that he wasn't ready for commitment. But he spent a huge amount of time with me, we had amazing sex, and we were truly close. I talked to him a lot, trying to understand what was wrong, but Mister D is very hard to communicate with; you really have to drag everything out of him with pliers.

Both he and I tried dating other people, but nothing came of it. Me more often, him less often. In the end I gave up on the idea.

In the summer I confessed to him that I want to spend my whole life with him, that I want to work on our relationship. I didn't hold him to anything, I just said what I think.

Of course, boundaries were still set, and I said that one way or another he would soon have to make a choice.

Recently, in a conversation, we got to discussing what he's afraid of: responsibility, that something will be missing again, that we'll split up again or fight over nothing and come to hate each other. He also said that, in general, he doesn't know what he wants.

And the day before yesterday he admitted that we are dating after all, because “whatever you call it, that's what it looks like.”

But I don't understand whether he's really ready to take on the very responsibility he was so afraid of, because he still hasn't told me so.