This story continues the adventures of Dave and Beth, and follows-on from "My Girlfriend's Placement Year".
This is the first of a two-part story,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So now I know why my girlfriend ended it with me. It's official. She's seeing someone else.
I was 21, she was 22. We'd been together for two happy years at University until we'd had to move to separate towns to complete our placement years. The distance wasn't prohibitive, 3-4 hours on a train, but seeing each other less and less took its toll.
As I had recently found out, Elizabeth had been cheating on me with one of her new work colleagues. They had kissed within a fortnight of meeting and progressed to fooling around and having regular sex within a month.
At the time, I knew none of this. She continued to sleep with him for a further month-and-a-half behind my back before ending it with me without revealing anything.
During that period we'd even been away on holiday together. I was oblivious to her cheating and continued to travel to see her every chance I got. All the time sensing that she was slowly slipping away from me but not realising the depth of trouble our relationship was in.
Prior to moving away, our once-ravenous sex life had dwindled to almost nothing. She just wasn't into me anymore. She hadn't initiated sex with me once in the last few months - it always had to be me. She could take-it-or-leave-it. And more often than not she chose to leave it. For a couple in our early twenties something was clearly wrong.
We hadn't been totally sexless since she'd moved away, we did it a couple of times on holiday - by which time she would have been cheating on me for over a month.
During these encounters, she'd been lifeless and vacant throughout. She'd stopped bothering to shave or trim up whilst we were away.
By the time I'd managed to get her drunk enough to loosen up and let me strip her off - on our second-to-last night - she had stubbly legs and armpits, and the landing strip had become more of a thin bush.
She'd clearly not given the prospect of sex with me any real thought, or worse still she'd considered it but decided it wasn't worth making the effort.
I had to pester her endlessly throughout the holiday. I took every chance to hug, kiss or otherwise initiate physical contact with her, up-to-and-including sneaky gropes here and there. In bed I snuggled close to her and tried all the moves she used to like to get her in the mood such as kissing her ear and neck, stroking her stomach and spooning. In the past she'd be playful, but now she either tried to ignore it or told me to stop.
I was convinced that if she opened up a little and stopped being so prudish we could re-make the connection we had, but she seemed unwilling to try. I decided to resort to alcohol by the end of the holiday and sure enough she started losing her inhibitions a bit, but she still wouldn't tell me what was bothering her.
Having ensured she'd drunk significantly more than me, she let her guard down and we had sex. It would be more accurate to say I had sex, whereas Beth laid there and allowed to me have sex with her. The whole experience left me feeling like I'd guilt-tripped her into sex. Like I'd raped her. I knew deep-down that she didn't really want to sleep with me, her reluctance was obvious.
She wasn't returning my kisses with any vigour and she put close to zero effort into enjoying it herself.
Nevertheless, I got her drunk and took advantage of her the next night too, such was my addiction to her.
Again, she just let me get on with it. It was a chore for her.
This had confirmed in my mind the terrifying thought that something in our relationship was fundamentally broken.
Unsurprisingly, we didn't last much longer and she broke up with me shortly after arriving back.
Although it crossed my mind she might have met someone else, she was so convincing when I asked her outright that I accepted her explanation of needing time to herself and wanting to concentrate on her placement. She lied to my face and insisted there was nobody else. She had said she still loved me but needed space. She was, as it turned out, a pretty good liar.
I later found out she'd been fucking loverboy for 6 weeks by then.
After the break-up we still met up 'as friends'. This part of our relationship had remained strong throughout where the physical intimacy had evaporated.
I only travelled to see her every couple of weeks instead of every chance I got.
I was outwardly trying to look like I was relaxed and ok with the friends arrangement, but I wasn't. I was making sure I stayed in her life front-and-centre, hoping for her to decide to give us another chance, still unaware there was anyone else involved.
We still had fun together and regained some of the good bits of our relationship now we had no pressure hanging over us.
I still slept next to her when I visited - in her tiny single bed in the smallest bedroom of her shared house - but only because there was nowhere else. Aside from a little flirting when I visited, she made a lot of effort not to give me any encouragement by wearing a full set of pyjamas in bed and not getting changed in front of me anymore. She slept with her back to me.
A couple of times shortly before I found out the truth, I'd got her drunk again which led to sex. This gave me extra belief that my plan was working. Although Beth was - again - very drunk on both these occasions, she was clear-headed enough to insist I wear a condom - this was new. She'd struggled with her periods and had been on the pill since the age of 16 to help control them - we'd never once used protection before in our two years together.
I accepted this without question or argument. In that moment, Beth actively wanted to have sex with me, and there's no way I was going to start asking awkward questions or rocking the boat.
The sex was good, but on each occasion she obviously regretted it the next morning and gave me 'the talk' about how it was a drunken one-off and didn't mean we were back together. We were "just having fun and went a bit too far".
Soon after this (around a month after our split), I'd found out she was seeing someone from work. During the interrogation I inflicted on Beth I felt a desperate need to reclaim her and we had ended up fooling around. To my total surprise, my initial anger had quickly dissipated and my questions drifted away from 'who' she'd cheated with and 'why' - and onto 'when', 'where' and 'how' she had done it.
Instead of being upset and hurt I found myself becoming really turned-on. It became like a game - as Beth revealed more and more of her deception and sexual history with this guy, the hotter we both got. She wouldn't kiss me, but we ended up mutually masturbating each other - and then ourselves - as she slowly relayed the intricate details of the first time they had slept together.
Afterwards we looked at each other in a totally new light. I'd learned that my nerdy, posh, slightly overweight and body-unconfident soulmate had a heartless, wanton and slutty side to her which she had kept totally hidden the whole time we'd been together.
I'd also learned that the previously unthinkable thought of my girlfriend being unfaithful - and then hearing exactly how in great detail - got me hotter than any other fantasy I'd ever had. And now she knew it too.
It was now the first week of November - 3 months since Beth first cheated, 6 weeks since our breakup, and 2 weeks since I'd found out about 'him' and we'd had our little encounter.
In the two weeks since then we'd not discussed what had ended up happening between us that night.
I'd wanted to, but it's the sort of thing you can only really do when you're face to face with someone, to gauge their reactions, not over the phone. That night had made three things obvious to me.
Firstly, she had moved on. She had made clear to me that this work guy was effectively her new boyfriend - despite it not being 'official' at work. I was the only person who knew.