Hi there.

I'm calling because I'm struggling to make sense of an asteroid of a heartbreak that just left me really at sea

and holding two opposing truths that I just don't know how to fit them into my head at the same time.

I was in a two-year relationship with a man where the connection was like unlike anything I'd ever felt before.

I'd never been loved like that.

It was just magic. He made me feel alive in a way I hadn't known before, just so special and cherished.

And we were Polly and both had primary partners. I've been with my husband for 11 years

and Polly for almost five. And my relationship with this boyfriend was amazing, but it wasn't

perfect. So he told me he and his partner weren't out to their friends and had a don't-ask,

don't-tell arrangement, both of which were things that previously had been hard-nosed for me and made me

super uneasy, and I raised concerns about them all the time.

And he always reassured me and convinced me it was okay.

And I loved him, so I believed him.

But almost two years in, he got backed into a corner by his friends,

and they forced him to admit that he'd been lying to me.

I'm cheating on his other partner the entire time.

She had no idea who I was to him, and he was never Polly.

It was a mind-bending, world-shattering rupture.

It completely upended my sense of reality,

and there had been just so much lying and emotional manipulation, and I was just in shock.

But I couldn't walk away.

I couldn't bear the thought of losing that love,

...