After two days of unanswered calls and resounding silence, I got a text. ‘I need space.’
I was a day into a working holiday abroad and my boyfriend of 18 months – who, up until then, had given no indication anything was wrong – was refusing to answer any subsequent texts.
My panic grew by the minute. I was thousands of miles away from our home in Scotland, and the frustration of being unable to do anything, or even contact him, was unbearable.
For another four days, I waited, assuming – perhaps naively – that we were still in a relationship. Just on a break, right? Perhaps he was just having a wobble.
After all, he’d been looking for a job for a year now and relying on me completely. Maybe he did need a little time out to understand a man could do that without being totally emasculated.
That illusion was quickly shattered when I got a notification on my phone from my Ring video doorbell, just after I’d landed back at Glasgow airport from Tunisia. I’d scheduled an earlier flight back home in the futile hope of working things out.
Idly, I clicked on it – to be faced with footage of my boyfriend carrying everything he owned out of our home.
Knowing I’d be watching, he brushed the camera like it was my face, in some sick imitation of a black-and-white film. Our relationship was over, without a doubt . . . but was this really how he planned on telling me?
That illusion was quickly shattered when I got a notification on my phone from my Ring video doorbell, just after I’d landed back at Glasgow airport from Tunisia
Everyone remembers that classic scene in Sex And The City when Carrie is dumped by boyfriend Jack Berger via a Post-it note. Had it just got even colder in 2025? Had I just been dumped via a doorbell?
Then the fury set in. How dare he! He’d been living with me for free after he’d been made redundant from his job in the civil service. I’d fed him for more than a year, bought his cigarettes, stood his round at the bar. Taken us on countless holidays. I loved him and didn’t mind.
Was this really the kind of respect all that had won?
When I first met Clay on a dating app, he seemed so different to anyone else I’d dated. He was calm and steady – or seemed so. When we had small arguments, he never stormed off like other more fiery men I’d been with. After the first night he spent at my flat, his stay turned into weeks, until one day he never left.
He was the kind of man who’d wash my hair when I was sick. The first to pour me a glass of wine after a long day or drive me to the cinema, cook me dinner, do the washing up. He swore he’d never leave me.
We’d both had relationships before, but he let me believe this one was for real. We’d even done the whole ‘meet the family’ thing. His lived nearby and I got on with them better than he did in some ways.
We spent last Christmas with my parents in the West Country, and this year I’d assumed we’d be at his, taking turns now our lives were so entwined. We spent all day, every day together. Until now.
After seeing the footage of his exit, I walked out into the arrivals lounge and saw a man standing with flowers, waiting, no doubt, for his wife or girlfriend to run into his arms after her flight. It took everything in me not to burst into tears. That used to be us.
There was no note waiting for me at home. All his things were gone – even the magnets on the fridge from places we’d been together. Every bottle of alcohol was empty.
I began a mental post-mortem on our relationship. What had gone wrong to make him leave so cruelly? No, he wasn’t perfect, and yes, I’d had to forgive quite a bit, but the good had outweighed the bad. Was I too loyal? Too optimistic? Too willing to forgive?
He wouldn’t talk about his feelings but having last dated a shouter with far too much aggression in between our good times, Clay felt quiet, considered, sensible, polite.
I’d had to forgive quite a bit, but the good had outweighed the bad. Was I too loyal? Too optimistic? Too willing to forgive?
OK, he drank too much, which could make him turn nasty – but only twice in 18 months and then only verbal. He’d been fired from the civil service for being drunk on the job but kept it secret from me for months. He’d said he needed therapy, but he never got it.
Of all the men I’ve met, he is the last I’d have expected to ghost me. But isn’t that the story of so many break-ups? Of how so many ‘good’ men, with sisters they love, worm out of the end of a relationship?
So am I a total idiot, or just too hopeful it will be different each time? It’s simple: he took the lazy way out. That’s all ghosting is – a cowardly way of avoiding having to tell the truth about a lack of feeling or interest.
I told him I was going insane in the absence of any communication from him, and still he did nothing to stop it.
When I first watched the video of him saying goodbye to my doorbell, I thought this is worse than being dumped by Post-it – or by text. Watching someone leave you over and over again was a visual representation of rejection. Sometimes the pain still keeps me awake at night.
Ultimately, I know he did it because he’s a coward – someone who had never been worth my time. If he allows himself to feel anything about what he did – which I doubt, given the lengths he’s gone to avoid the repercussions of his actions – I hope he’ll feel deep shame.
But maybe that’s another wish too far.
Names have been changed
