I used to tell people we were “just passionate.” That was the word I gave it when he shouted at me outside a pub in Rathmines because I had laughed too much at another man’s joke. Passionate. That was the word I used when he went quiet for three days because I wore a dress he thought was “for attention.” Passionate. It is strange, the language you borrow to make a bad thing sound survivable.
We met on a wet Thursday evening near Camden Street, both of us sheltering under the same narrow shop awning while rain battered the pavement. He made me laugh straight away. He had that Dublin charm, quick and warm, and he looked at me as if I was the only person in the city. At the time, I had just moved into a tiny flat in Drumcondra after a breakup and a job change, and I was lonely in a way I didn’t want to admit. When he started calling every morning and walking me home after work, I mistook intensity for care.
For the first year, there were beautiful moments. We ate chips on the wall by the Grand Canal after nights out, went to Dublin gigs, and took long Sunday walks to Poolbeg when the wind was sharp enough to make our eyes water. He knew how I took my coffee. He remembered tiny details from stories I’d told him. But slowly, love began to feel like being watched. He wanted to know who I texted, why I was late, why I had changed my hair, why I needed to see my friends “so often.” If I objected, he’d say I was making him feel insecure. If I cried, he’d soften, hold me, and promise he only acted that way because he loved me too much.
I stayed because leaving felt like standing at the edge of something with no bridge across it. By then, we had a place together near Phibsborough, a shared bank account for bills, the same circle of friends, the same Friday night habits. I was thirty-two and tired of starting over. I told myself that everyone’s relationship had shadows. I told myself I could manage his moods if I learned the right shape to become. Quieter. Smaller. Less likely to set him off.
The thing that finally ended it was not dramatic in the way people expect. There was no smashed window, no huge public scene. It was a Tuesday morning in November. I was getting ready for work, standing in the bathroom with one earring in, when he came to the door holding my phone. He had guessed my passcode. He had read messages between me and my sister, where I’d written, “I don’t think I’m happy anymore.”
He didn’t shout at first. He just looked devastated, as if I had betrayed him. Then came the usual turning of the room: I was ungrateful, I was cruel, I had embarrassed him, I was “building a case” against him. I remember staring at my own face in the mirror while he spoke behind me. I looked older than I was. Not because of lines or tiredness, but because I had stopped living inside my own expression. I was waiting to see what face would be safest.
Something in me went very still. I didn’t argue. I didn’t defend the messages. I took my phone from his hand, put my coat on over the blouse I hadn’t finished buttoning, and walked out. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely tap my Leap Card on the bus. I went to my sister’s flat in Stoneybatter and sat on her kitchen floor in my work shoes while she made tea and said, very gently, “You don’t have to go back today.”
Today became tomorrow. Tomorrow became a week. I went back once, with my brother and two black bin bags, to collect my clothes. He cried then. He said all the things I had spent years hoping to hear: he would change, he would go to therapy, he couldn’t live without me. The hardest part was that I believed he meant it in that moment. But meaning it for a moment is not the same as changing a life. I had built too much of my own life around waiting for his better moments.
Starting again was humiliating at first. I
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
