TuesdayTakeaway

I was honest about not wanting more, just not honest enough

I’m 34 and I met him in February, about five months after my seven-year relationship ended. On our second date I said I wasn’t looking for another boyfriend and he said that suited him because his life was too full for anything serious anyway. For a while it was exactly what we’d agreed. A drink, back to one of our flats, sometimes breakfast. No standing weekend plans and no meeting friends. I liked him and I liked that nothing was being built around us. Except it slowly was. By May we were speaking every day. Tuesday takeaway at mine became a fixed thing. He kept a toothbrush here. I started buying the coffee he likes without thinking about it. When I had a horrible week at work he came round with food and stayed even though I was in a foul mood, and after that I suppose something shifted. He asked if I wanted to go to his sister’s wedding with him in October. I said yes, then made a joke about us becoming respectable. He didn’t laugh. A few days later he asked whether I still thought this was casual. I said I hadn’t been seeing anyone else and didn’t particularly want to. He said that wasn’t really what he’d asked. I told him I still wasn’t ready for a relationship after my ex. That was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth was that I really liked what we had, but whenever I pictured it becoming more joined-up — families, holidays booked together, being somebody’s partner again — I didn’t want it. Not just “not yet”. I didn’t want that relationship with him. I also didn’t want to lose Tuesday nights, the messages or the person who knew how bad work had got. So I kept saying I wasn’t ready, because that sounded temporary and less brutal. We carried on for another six weeks. He became quieter but didn’t raise it again. I told myself he knew the deal because I’d been honest from the beginning. Looking back, I was relying on an agreement we’d made in February while behaving completely differently by July. Three weeks ago I ended it. There wasn’t a dramatic row. He said he’d already guessed where it was going and wished I’d said it properly when he first asked. He’d booked a room for the wedding and had to change it. For some reason that detail made me feel worse than anything else. We swapped our things last weekend. One T-shirt, his toothbrush and a phone charger I had apparently stolen months ago. We agreed not to contact each other for a while rather than try to be mates immediately. I miss him. Tuesday was awful. I nearly sent him a photo of the terrible curry I’d made because he would have found it funny. But missing him doesn’t mean I should go back and offer a relationship I still don’t want. It also doesn’t mean what we had was fake. I think I was honest about the arrangement and dishonest about the direction. Maybe I genuinely didn’t know at first. By the end I did know, and I kept using “not ready” because it let me keep him without giving a clear no. I don’t think I’m a monster for that. I do think I let it go on longer than I should have.