I used to think people only stayed in bad relationships because they were afraid of being alone, or because money was tangled up, or children, or mortgages. I didn’t have any of those excuses. I had a small room in a shared house in Stoneybatter, a job in a café near Smithfield, and enough friends who would have carried my bags if I had asked. Still, I stayed with him for nearly two years because when we were good, we were electric. That is the embarrassing truth of it.
We met outside a pub after a friend’s birthday in Temple Bar. I was waiting for a taxi I couldn’t afford, wearing heels that had betrayed me by midnight. He offered me a cigarette even though I didn’t smoke. I said no, then stayed talking to him for twenty minutes anyway. He had that kind of attention that felt like warmth. When he looked at me, I felt edited into a better version of myself.
On our third date, we walked along the Grand Canal in the cold, pretending we were people who enjoyed fresh air. He kissed me under one of the lamps near Portobello, and I remember thinking, quite seriously, that the city had been holding its breath for us. After that, I fell fast. Too fast, probably. But there are ages when fast feels like proof.
The trouble arrived quietly. He would be charming with strangers and cruel in private, not in the obvious shouting way at first, but with small corrections. My laugh was too loud. My friends were too dramatic. My clothes were either too plain or too attention-seeking. If I told him something hurt me, he would tilt his head and say, “You’re making this bigger than it is.” By the end of the first year, I apologised for things I hadn’t done just to get the evening back on track.
But then there were the nights that kept me there. I’m not going to dress it up as romance. The physical part of us was incredible, and for a long time I mistook that intensity for intimacy. After a fight, he could hold me like he understood every bruise he had caused. I would wake beside him the next morning in his flat near Rathmines, watching buses pass in the rain, and tell myself that people are complicated, that love is work, that nobody knows what happens between two people except the two people inside it.
My friends tried gently at first. Then less gently. One evening in The Long Hall, my friend Niamh asked me, “If it was only bad, would you leave?” I said yes immediately. She looked sad when she replied, “That’s the problem. You’re waiting for it to be only bad.” I laughed it off, but the sentence followed me home. It sat at the end of my bed for months.
The end came on an ordinary Tuesday, which feels unfair because I had expected heartbreak to announce itself properly. We were meant to meet for dinner near George’s Street. I had booked the table. I had worn the green dress he liked. He arrived forty minutes late, already irritated, and spent the first ten minutes on his phone. When I asked if everything was okay, he sighed as if I had trapped him. Then he said, “You always need so much.”
Something in me went very still. Not dramatic. Not angry. Just still. I looked across the table at him, at the man I had cried over, craved, defended, forgiven, and suddenly the desire that had kept the whole thing burning felt like smoke in my eyes. I realised I had been calling it passion because the alternative was admitting I was addicted to being chosen after being hurt.
I didn’t make a speech. I didn’t throw wine. I said, “
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