It happened when they least expected it. Get your tissues ready as five broken-hearted Same Samers bravely share their tales of relationship split hell.

Dumped courtesy of Telstra
by Nick Disco

In your teens every relationship feels like the one, that this person you met 5 minutes post vomiting in a strangers herb garden is the one, and for me this relationship was no exception. I was at the tender age of 18, with a mane of curly blonde peroxide locks and face full of piercings and I had what I believed to the deepest most romantic boyfriend I could have ever dreamed of.

He had a modern Edwardian look about him, waist coats and tattoos – who could ask for more? Certainly not I… and then he would read poetry. My hormones ran wild for the way he made the works of Edgar Allen Poe come alive.

We used to lie on his bed for hours as he would read to me all his favourite poems, whilst I played with his scorpions (yes in hindsight he was a strange Goth).

One wintery night I chose to ‘up my game’ in the romance department, buying these amazing midnight blue satin sheets, filling my room with candles and scoring the evenings events with Sigur Ros. I really felt like I was bringing my A game.

He was due to turn up at my house after work at eight. I laid on my bed listening for any hint that he had arrived, and did so with bated breath until nine thirty. At this point I was starting to get impatient, but trying to keep my cool, I made a cup of tea and moved to the lounge room… staring at the front door.

I knew I couldn’t call him as he despised mobile phones and enjoyed being out of contact with a frivolous consumer society, so I waited starting to think either something had happened to him or he had forgotten and gone home.

By eleven I impatiently rang his home phone and his flatmate told me he hadn’t seen him. I was in the midst of telling his flatty about what I had planned and how the jerk had clearly forgotten, when my phone buzzed.

I finished the call to read the text message from Telstra. Sent from a Telstra payphone: Babe met some 1 else they are the 1. Sorry.

And never heard from the douche bag again. Thanks Telstra.

“Valentine, where art thou?”
by Aly

So I started seeing this girl, her name was Ange. She was really into me, and I liked her. We dated for a couple of months, and after an awkward interrogation by her housemate it was decided, we were ‘bitches’!

After some time had passed, the cracks start to appear, opposite shifts, not returning text messages for a couple of days, and the odd argument. Ange was going on a cruise for a couple of weeks and was to return on Valentines Day. I dropped subtle hints that I’m making her Valentines Day present and that I’ll take her to breakfast when she returns.

I spent two weeks designing lesbian stick figure cartoons representing Ange & I to put on the custom-made hers & hers PJ set. My shirt would have a lesbian stick girl giving another lesbian stick girl a heart and asking Ange to be my valentine. Ange’s shirt had her lesbian stick girl accepting my heart and they hugged and kissed and it read “only if you be my Valentine”. On the knickers I had “my bitch” printed on the arse of it with an arrow, so if we wore them side by side the arrows would point to one another!

Sunday, Valentines day. I haven’t seen my girl for nearly a month, I try calling her phone – no answer. I text her and say I am on my way. I jump in my car to have it break down five minutes up the road. Frustrated, I call RACQ who tell me they have to tow my car. I feel as if there are forces trying to keep us apart. I try ringing her again, still no answer. I got the transport ordeal sorted, get another car and I am racing to get there, take her for breakfast, and get to work before 4pm.

I get to her place, nervous as she hasn’t responded to any of my texts. I walk in, she is asleep. I wake her with a kiss on the forehead, she gets up and we eventually go for breakfast. It feels strange, quiet, awkward. I ignore the signs. I sit there, eat, and pay as she had forgotten her wallet. I say: “let’s go home so I can give you my present!”

She opens the hers and hers PJ’s. Looking less then thrilled, she said “wow, you spent way to much time making that. I feel bad, I didn’t get you anything.”

Trying not to be disappointed, I lie down and cuddle her, hoping she is just tired. Then she asks “are you happy?”

I can feel my heart breaking in my chest. I said “yes, when I am with you, I’m Happy.” Holding back tears, I asked: “are you?”

She said: “I love lying here with you, but we hardly have any time together… and…” I can’t contain my tears anymore. I ask “are you breaking up with me on Valentines Day?” She says: “well, what I am proposing is we have a break, and we be friends?”

Devastated, the flood gates open. I think ‘why did she wait until Valentines Day to break up with me? Why didn’t she do it before she got on her cruise? Why did she accept my gift? And why the hell did you let me pay for breakfast, Bitch!’

My upset turning to anger I said “I don’t do friends with the ex, and you were a crappy girlfriend, pretty sure you would be a crappy friend.” My face stinging from my salty tears, I returned home and confided in a friend with beer and valium.

For a couple of months I left the PJ’s in the top of my cupboard before giving Ange’s set to my housemate as they were cute. We both wore them, and put them in the wash. After the wash we found that the iron on transfer didn’t handle the wash and the cartoons were faded, and the images were riddled with tears. I laughed as I thought the PJ’s were about as successful as my relationship!

Now being able to see the lighter side of the situation, I worked up the courage to go see that movie Valentines Day. It made me feel heaps better as although Ashton Kutcher’s fiancé leaves him and there is all these other jaded miserable people in there, it worked out for them in the end. So I am holding onto the belief that my Valentine dumped me so I can find my true Valentine, wherever she may be.

Behind the skate ramp
by Vlad

Falling in love is one of the greatest things in the world. And it happens to me at least four times a day, or when I am watching Brent Corrigan porn.

But with love come certain pitfalls. He may not like your friends for instance. His parents may be senile and nasty and serial bed-wetters. He may even insist you give up heroin and street prostitution. Regardless, they will all lead to the greatest pitfall of them all.

The ruin and despair of total heartbreak.

The first time I had my heart broken was when I was about 17. I had my first-ever serious boyfriend, and we would do all the stupid things that teenage boys did together.

I was a serious art fag skater and he a brutish wog boy. The perfect match!

Anyway, I liked him a lot and would wag school just to skate to his school and wait for him at the gate. We would run off and make out behind the skate ramp at Old’s Park, and smoke cigarette after cigarette. I’d try to impress him by doing stupid skater tricks and he would try to impress me by doing donuts in the car park in his customised Commodore SS.

Everything was going along OK, until people started questioning why we were always together.

I didn’t care – cos I was a fucked up druggy kid anyway, so everyone just expected that I’d be gay too.

He on the other hand started getting really nervous that people would find out and everyone would know and laugh at him at his karate do-jo. He had a reputation to uphold.

So you know how this story goes. He just stopped calling and coming around. If I saw him in public he would pretend he didn’t know me. When I tried talking to him, he would be hostile and mean.

If I was human and could cry, I would have cried for a week. But instead I just lay in a room for three months, dressed in pyjamas, staring up at my light fixture and counting things in my head.

Our love nest
by Tony

I felt like I had to pinch myself. I was now 37 and I’d been with my partner, Daniel, my first ever love, for almost 4 years (that’s apparently equivalent to 12 years in the straight world).

Not only did we share an interest in art, comedy and interiors, (yes I know that sounds like a weird combination), we’d just returned from a cruise abroad with the in-laws in tow. Special occasions were spent with his extended family, who offered me love in excess of my own bloodline. By now the honeymoon period was meant to have been well and truly over with respect to sex and intimacy. Well in our case, this couldn’t have been further from the truth, with each encounter reaching a higher crescendo each time.

Our love for each other was culminating in the purchase of a fashionable loft-style apartment on the border of Sydney’s Surry Hills. I felt like I was on the verge of a photographic spread with Vogue Living, much like Sex & the City’s Charlotte and her magazine shoot.

Despite the property being on the market for a year, negotiations to secure the property were protracted. As a result, my partner sought refuge in the mountains with his parents to regroup.

I’d elected to stay at our place closer to town, as I was starting up my new business and had much to do. The next day, I received a call from him. “You have to come to the mountains, I’ve found the perfect place for us!” Clearly the mother in law and sister had used this 24-hour window to get in his ear and convince him that he needed “to be closer to his family and nephews.”

I was stunned. At no time did we ever agree that a property over an hour from civilisation was to be our ‘love nest’. Before we were together, he had a brief stint in the mountains. Describing it as one of the most depressing times of his life, he’d had no intention of ever moving back.

I took the train up and met him and his parents at the property the next day, for what was my first viewing, and their second. On entering, I was notified where ‘our’ bedroom was to be built in this run down old church, and the space was being furiously measured up around me. After an hour of this, I was asked, “So what do you think?!” I replied, “nice property, pity it’s just so far from anywhere.”

Daniel and his parents took it surprisingly well. But back in town the next day, he and I agreed to catch up at our favourite cafe in Darlinghurst. I advanced to kiss him as normal, but my lips skimmed his ear as he turned to deflect my advance. After a pause, he announced, “I’m not happy.”

I was stunned, and the moment’s silence that ensued seemed like an hour. “What… it’s over?! I asked. Time seemed to stand still. I was advised that I was the selfish one for not wanting to move away to the mountains, despite that it would have meant me discontinuing my business I had spent 2 years – and my life savings – setting up.

My life as I knew it was now over. I wished I had the ability to erase the last four years of my life. I expected to be overcome by anger, but strangely this was not the case. If anything, I could feel grief set in. ‘We’ were now history. I could see no chance of reconciliation.

Pre-empting my need for closure, I asked, “So I’m now no different from all your ex’s, am I?” He replied without pausing, “That’s right, you’re no different from any of them.”

For the ensuing months of separation, the feeling of grief continued. My only way of dealing with it was to avoid places we used to hang out, mutual friends, his Facebook page, anything that reminded me of him. I even resorted to listing items he’d gifted to me on eBay.

Newfound attempts at finding a new ‘Mr. Right’ on Manhunt, Grindr, and the like were even fraught with danger, as I managed to ‘bump into’ him at each. Reading his profile was akin to knowing the sexual proclivities of your younger brother.

Weekly, he invited me to ‘catch up for coffee’ at our old stomping ground… the café in which he dumped me. I serially declined. Eventually I caved in and caught up, and he queried why I was ‘avoiding him’. I knew he didn’t catch up with any of his ex’s, so wondered why I would be any different.

I was glad we caught up, however. He’d since bought the aforementioned loft – with mummy and daddy’s help of course – and admitted going down the path of drug abuse. I felt sorrow and pity for him, and wanted to help but had to cut him loose. The place in my heart I had held onto for him had now atrophied to near non-existence.

I bumped into him a couple of weeks ago at a function, as we work in the same industry. We chatted briefly, but this chance meeting confirmed that we had now drifted apart. His parting words were: “Don’t be a stranger.”

It was almost a year ago
by Ceri

I’ve always been the heartbreaker, the one whose affections wandered. I always had someone else to focus on soon enough, when a relationship ended.

But this time last year my long-term and intended life partner left one day while I was out, with only an angry text message to give me an indication of what I’d discover when I returned. She had gone through my email and misinterpreted interactions with a friend who was overseas at the time. I tried to make it work for another few months but didn’t get much back in return apart from more pain.

I felt all the clichés, cried myself to sleep, had panic attacks, got drunk a lot, slept with people I shouldn’t, behaved terribly and embarrassed myself, destroying not only the relationships with people around me but also any left over chances I had at getting the love of my life back. Probably for the best, looking back on things. Now I can only pray that one day we will be able to be not just amicable, but friends.

I thought I’d be the first one to find someone new, but I wasn’t. I still struggle with the concept that there is someone else out there that I will love as much as I loved this one. The fact I’m still single almost a year later is testament to how big a love, and loss, it was.

They say that everyone should have one big heartbreak before they find the One. I’m happy being single… but I think I’m ready to start looking now.

Have you had your heart broken? You’re not alone. More Same Samers have told their tales here on our Forum, and you’re very welcome to add your own story.

And if you’ve recently been through a difficult break-up, talking it over with an experienced LGBT phone counselor can help.

Sydneysiders can call GLCS on 8594 9596, or in Melbourne dial 9663 2939. Elsewhere, the toll-free number to call is 1800 18 4527 evenings between 7:30pm and 10pm.