You're listening to another mere podcast.

Mumma Mer acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters.

This podcast is recorded on This episode contains discussions of pregnancy loss, which may be distressing for some listeners.

When friendship turns into love, it feels less like a leap and more like coming home.

There is risk in crossing that line, but when it works, love born from friendship carries a rare intimacy, and that was certainly the case for Simone and Anthony.

It was really an immediate chemistry.

We really took off, We spread our wings.

That was it.

We were in the air.

It was a really sort of fast, fast connection, fast feelings.

They developed so quickly.

But when lovers turn into strangers, it's the most painful and quiet heartbreak of all.

That person you knew so intimately, relied on so heavily is now someone you don't really know it all.

I went around to his house and I stood at his front door.

It was nighttime by then, it was freezing cold.

It was night at time, and I stood at his door and I said to him, I'm bleeding and I'm scared.

I don't know what to do.

He turned around to me and he said, I'm watching a movie with my two kids.

I can't deal with this right now, and he slammed the door in my face and ned me it.

I'm Georgia Love and this is everyone has an eggs.

Come with me as we dive into a collection of unconventional stories about relationships passed through the eyes and the hearts of the very people who lived them.

The year was twenty nineteen and Simone had just come out of a twelve year relationship with her ex husband.

She'd been on the dating scene for a bit and had some fun but never found anything serious.

But you know what they say, sometimes what you've been looking for has been right in front of you the whole time.

I'd been single for about four months when Anthony and I started to, I guess, form a relationship.

I had known him through our social circle.

He was actually sort of on the outer of mine and my husband's friendship group, so we would occasionally be at the same social situations.

I used to actually say to my husband at the time, he's such a genuinely nice guy.

He would always take that time to stop and have a conversation, and you feel like he was really listening to what you were saying.

It wasn't just you know, that brief chit chat.

It was quite deep, meaningful conversation.

And I always walked away from our talks feeling really light and just happy.

It was just that positive energy that he radiated, and I really felt that we had known each other of each other for about fifteen years before we started out.

Well, I guess we're in that situation where we were both single, and he had come out of a marriage a couple of years before and had our serious relationship after his marriage ended, and obviously at the time we started talking, he was single, and he just happened to slip into my DMS one night.

That's where it all started.

I'd actually taken my son, who was fourteen at the time, to see a band, and I'd popped a story on my Instagram and he'd responded, or he'd replied to the story and said, oh, how was the band?

And I loved them?

And this is about midnight the night that the concert was and I was back home in bed by then, and we just started back and forth banter and how's life going, and heard you've broken up with such and such, and it just started a really nice flow of conversation that went till about three o'clock in the morning.

That first night, I managed to give him my number and I told him I hated speaking on the phone.

I liked to text message, but I hated to chat on the phone.

And anyway, the next morning, after the concert, I had this person call me at about eight o'clock in the morning from an unknown number, and I answered the phone and it was him, and he just started laughing.

As soon as I picked up the phone.

I said, oh, you got me hate talking on the phone.

And we ended up chatting for three hours that first morning over the phone, and it was just lovely.

The communication was easy, it flowed.

We had so much to talk about, we had a lot in common.

We just started talking every day, either on the phone or sending voice notes or just on messenger.

And when they were talking every day already, it was a pretty good sign they should move these conversations to the face to face in person kind.

So I turned forty one that year, and it had just been my birthday and I was telling him that my fortieth was during COVID and I was meant to go to Bali and I had this beautiful dress to wear for my fortieth and I told him that I never got to go and experience the family holiday Bali and he said to me, well, I want to take you out and we're going to pretend that it's your fortieth birthday and you're going to wear that dress.

And I told him I'd never been to this was a very fancy restaurant in the city, Tepanyaki, place that I'd always wanted to go to, and he told me that he was going to take me there, and so we set up a date, this first catch up as an actual date.

We decided a couple of weeks leading up to that actual first date that we wanted to see each other before then, and so it ended up being that I went around to his house the week before and he said he'd cook me dinner.

And so I turned up at his house with a bottle of wine, and he had prepared this beautiful platter, a grazing platter, and he had a bottle of champagne waiting for me, and his house was spotless, and we just shed a beautiful evening together.

We talked and we laughed, and it was like we'd been a couple in a former life.

Almost.

It was like we just hit it off from day dot.

So our first date was just a date at home, and then the following week we went out for this amazing, very fancy tapernaki date.

I actually went and got ready at his house, and I just remember sitting on his bedroom floor in front of the wardrobe where there was a big mirror, and I was sitting on the floor doing my makeup and curling my hair, and he came into his room and he just looked at me, and he gave me this big grin, and I grinned back, and I just felt it was just this connection of how has this not happened?

How has it taken so long for us to fill this connection with each other?

It just felt so right.

We had a beautiful evening.

We shared wine, and we had a delicious tapernaki dinner, and we dressed up.

Then we drove home and I stayed at his house, and it was just there was no awkward moments.

From there.

It was all systems go.

Simon and Anthony were practically inseparable, and those three little words quickly lingered in the air.

It was really and immediate chemistry.

We really took off.

We spread our wings.

That was it we were in the air.

It was a really sort of fast connection, fast feelings.

They developed so quickly.

We would spend evenings at his house or my house, sharing a bottle of wine and listening to music.

We both are really passionate about music and seeing live music, so we shared a lot of each other's favorite bands that the other hadn't heard of, and we had that connection of talking and dissecting lyrics and singing to each other.

It was just such simple times.

We wouldn't necessarily go out and do a lot, but it was just sharing those moments together that for me felt super special and being able to be so open and vulnerable.

We would write each other poems and send them, and this was in the space of the first four weeks of not quite I guess officially dating.

We were just sharing these fee for each other that just developed so quickly.

It was very powerful.

After quite a hard separation from my ex husband.

It felt so nice to feel appreciated and to have someone put time and effort and thought into my needs and wants as well, and just to laugh like we would laugh all the time.

It was just such a special time and I was full of excitement and hope that I thought, Wow, this is what real true love feels like.

It was leading into We hadn't obviously, we hadn't said it, but I felt that we both had those feelings that wanted to come out.

He would tell me that he had never felt this way about someone before.

He felt safe with me.

He had never felt that he could be vulnerable and honest and so open with someone.

There was one night, very very early on in the peace, that he'd had a few drinks.

He was on the phone to me, and I could tell he was almost blurted out I love you, and he didn't quite say it.

But there was a lot of times.

I guess he didn't really have to do a lot as such to show me that the feelings were reciprocated.

I just felt them, just those simple little messages in the day, like I can't wait for our kids to meet, and I can't wait to build a future with you, I can't wait to see where we're out in twelve months, or I want to marry you one day, the typical things that a female wants to hear in a relationship.

I don't remember the first time we actually told each other.

It was just that feeling of wow, this is actually this is love, like we love each other, and we would sometimes just stare at each other across the room like how how is this?

How did this happen?

And it just felt so good.

We would say very early on, it feels like we've been together for five years.

Of feels like we're an old married couple that have grown so so much together, but we've only been seeing each other a month or two months at that stage.

I'm not a person that dives headfirst into things, but this just felt like I just wanted to dive straight in and just discover everything we could about our relationship and life together and building a future together.

And building a future included some other very important people in their lives.

We both had kids, and we discussed our future together.

It didn't feel that we were moving too fast at all.

We were both excited to meet each other's kids.

My son he was fourteen, and he had two sons as well, and we decided that we would hold off on meeting each other's kids until we really spent a lot of quality time together.

We thought maybe six months would be a good amount of time to have with each other to make sure that this was serious before.

We then introduced our kids and brought them into into the relationship.

Six weeks after we'd started dating, we actually planned a holiday with our kids, and we booked a holiday.

It's just it just felt so crazy that we'd been dating six weeks and we were already looking six months ahead to this family holiday with our kids who hadn't even met yet.

So we sort of we talked about when they would meet, and it happened to actually happen earlier then planned.

Simone was thrilled she had the man of her dreams, a holiday planned, and everything was just well easy.

That's until just a mere two weeks later, it wasn't.

At this stage, we'd been dating about two months, and I noticed a change in his behavior.

His attitude towards me, or his behaviors towards me changed a little bit.

He felt distant, and when I raised it with him, he told me that he was feeling really depressed, that he had had depression in the past, or he had experienced mental illness in the past, as I had to, and so I was really able to help him navigate through those feelings.

I felt like I wanted to help him, and I wanted him to know that I was there to support him, and I wasn't going anywhere.

This one particular night, he was having a very bad bout of depression and he called me.

He was drunk and he had a knife.

He was in his kitchen with some of his close friends, and he told me that he just didn't know how to deal with life.

He was experiencing.

I think a lot of heartaches steal from his previous partner.

I think that night in particular, a lot of his emotion came out and he was grieving her.

And his kids happened to be at home with him, and I rushed to his side to be there for him, and that's how I met his kids.

It wasn't the occasion that I thought it would be.

It was more I was there for him, and all my focus was on Antony and not his kids.

But I did really have a connection, especially with his youngest son.

The next morning, Anthony and I woke up and his youngest son had slept with us, and his son rolled over to me and said, Hi, I'm Campbell, and it's nice to meet you.

And my dad really likes you.

And Anthony just kind of wrapped him in a cuddle and he's like, yeah, yeah, we do like her, don't we.

And it was a sweet moment.

The first meeting with the kids didn't go as planned, and while the situation was confronting, it ultimately brought them closer together.

It also felt like the right time for Simone to introduce Anthony to her son Harrison.

From there, we talked through how he was feeling, and I felt that things improved after that.

He come over to my house one night.

Anthony had and my son, who stayed with me fifty percent at the time, he was there, and so Harrison met him just a casual environment, just in his own environment, and came out of his room and he met Anthony and they got along really well.

My son's into skateboarding and surfing and all your typical teenage boy traits, and Anthony was still into all of those types of things.

So they had a really good connection and loving music, and my son's just such a laid back dude, and Anthony would just look at him sometimes and he'd just say, Harrison, if you were anymore laid back, you would be dead, Like you're just so chilled.

When we used to laugh about that, because Harrison was and still is.

He's just so laid back.

So they got along great.

It felt like home.

It just felt so right, and it was just so nice to be able to give Harrison a sense of family again, because he did lose that after my husband and I had separated.

It wasn't just Harrison who gave Anthony the tick of approval.

Simone's family did too.

They thought he was great.

He just had this personality of just such charisma, and he would always put a smile on anyone's face, and they could see how happy he made me.

And there was one time at Christmas, we had a big family Christmas at my mum's house, and he came and he grabbed me in the lounge room and just started dancing with me around my mum's lounge room, and my mom was just watching from the kitchen, and she could just see how happy he'd made me.

But when it came to her friends, the feelings were mixed.

There was one particular friend of mine who I treasured dearly.

She was quite a close friend and she knew him through our social circle, but in her closer sense than I did, and she'd heard things about him from his past relationships, and she had warned me.

She had said, Oh, I think he's a nice guy, but I would never recommend to any of my girlfriends to date him, just because of the situations and experience she'd had with him and the things that she'd heard about him in the past.

And I did value her opinion.

I didn't see that side of him.

I saw the good things.

About six months into the relationship again, Anthony his behavior changed towards me.

He became distant again.

He told me that he'd gone out to one of his mates houses one night and they had got on the ice, which is not something that I've ever been around.

I know of people that have done it, but it's not something that I've ever been around in my social circle.

And he explains that from that night that he'd just again fallen into this deep pole of depression, and he called it the black Dog.

There was one day in particular that I'd gone to visit him on his work site.

He was a tradesman, and we were up in a on this scaffolding and were overlooking a train line, and I just said to him, what's wrong with you.

You've just become so distant, And there was no life in his eyes.

He was soulless, and he just said, like the black dogs got me.

And at that time I didn't know why.

And it wasn't until a few weeks later that he told me he got out to his mates and he got on the ice and that was why there was this change in his behavior.

My first question was why why did he feel the need to even experiment with such a dangerous drug when he was a big drinker, a big social drinker as I was too, but nothing more.

And I never ever wanted to be with someone that was around that.

I didn't want my child around it.

I didn't want to be in a relationship with someone that was experimenting with such a dangerous drug.

I wasn't prepared to lose someone over a drug.

I would rather walk away the experience from his behaviors after he'd done that that night, I just I wasn't prepared to put up with that behavior.

He would be very rude, he would be angry, he wouldn't talk.

It was the lifeless eyes that was one thing that really stood out for me.

That was just no There was no life behind his eyes and the eyes of the windows of the soul.

There was no joy.

It was scary.

He made light of the situation.

He said, it was just I was just It's one of those nights.

We'd had a few beers, his mate had just broken up with his missus.

He needed some company.

I never do it.

It was just this one time, and I won't ever do it again.

And I believed him, and we didn't really ever speak of it again after after he'd got through that week.

I think it scared him.

I think the change that he noticed in his mental health after that night, I think it really did scare him.

But I could only see the good in him, and I thought he was great because he was honest about it, and he'd opened up to his mistake and he'd owned it.

We did kind of have those peaks on troughs in his mental health.

There was another occasion, this is about six months into our relationship, that he had seen or run into his ex.

This is the partner that he'd had after separating from his wife, and again, I think opened up a piece of him that he hadn't dealt with, He hadn't healed from the breakup with her, and again he became distant and pushed me away, and I found out that he later came to me crying on the phone one day and he said to me, I got really drunk last night and I went to her house.

I just had to talk it out with her.

There were so many things that were left unsaid between us, and I needed closure, And he said, but then we ended up kissing each other, and I don't know if I slept with her.

I believed him.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and I said to him, this has to stop this up and down moods and the mental stay.

You need to get some help.

I said.

I'm here to help you, but I need you to tell me if you're all in, because if you're not all in with me, then I can't continue this.

If you tell me that you want this, I will be there and I will support you, and I will help you in any way I can.

And I told him I needed two weeks no contact with him for him to really figure out what he wanted out of me and to start working on how he was going to deal with his demons.

And he agreed to that, but he didn't didn't honor what I'd asked of him, so he kept contacting me and calling me and telling me he wanted to be with me, and he missed me, and I just said, look, you need to you need to leave me alone for two weeks.

You need to figure this out without that constant connection with me.

And after that two weeks, he told me he was all in.

He was one hundred percent all in.

And this was around Christmas time, and then we started talking about the future.

I was so her.

It was like I had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, and the devil was telling me to walk away, that I didn't need another tumultuous relationship.

I'd come too far in my own healing and my own personal journey to allow someone to break me down again.

Then there was that devil that said, this man gives me so much happiness when times are good.

You can fix him.

That's what this devil was telling me.

I can fix him.

It wasn't long after that two week break that we just jumped right into why I felt at that time, Okay, we've got through all the bad stuff.

Rough seas are over, smooth sailing, We've been honest, We've got everything on the table, and we can really start focusing now.

And there was one night we'd had the couple of wines at my house.

We were big drinkers, not to get blind drunk, but we would have a bottle of wine and say, three nights a week during the week, and we'd had a couple of drinks this night, and then he'd said to me, I'd love to have a little girl.

And it was just just a casual conversation, and I said to him, would you have more children?

He'd had a vasectomy, so it was really not something I guess he'd considered too seriously.

He'd had that vasectomy while he was married, after he'd had his two kids, and I'd never considered any more kids.

He said I would with you, And my heart just melted, and I said, I think I would never really thought about this before, but I love you that much that I would love to share that experience with you and have a child with you.

And imagine if we did have a little girl and she had three older brothers that would just adore her and dote on her.

And that's how the conversation started.

And the next morning he woke up early for work and he rolled over in bed and he said, do you remember what we discussed last night?

I said, yeah, yeah, I remember he said, let's talk about it more tonight.

Let's see what our options are.

That's how we started planning a family together, or extending a family.

We did a bit of research online.

We went and saw my doctor to see what options I had because at the time I was now approaching forty two.

How I'm highly fertile.

We knew that, and I knew that from past history, and she then referred us to see a doctor that could do the reversal for Anthony.

The other option that we had would be to try IVF.

We decided to go with the reversal, although it did cost quite a bit of money, we thought that we probably had a higher chance of a successful pregnancy rather than risk rounds of IVF and it coming all it turning into, I guess, quite a costly situation for us.

Four months after that initial conversation, Anthony was booked in for his vasectomy reversal, which also led to another serious milestone for the couple.

We had at this stage decided I was going to move in with him if we were going to start this family, and so I'd moved in with him.

Not long after the procedure.

We decided that we would rent my house out and that we'd move in to his house.

He had more room.

He had a room off the back of his house for Harrison, who was the oldest of the three boys, my son, he'd have that room.

So he was really excited about the chance of having his own space without having to deal with the younger two and having to deal with parents making as much noise as he wanted, staying up till all hours if he wanted to.

So one weekend, Harrison and I went down to Bunnings and we got paint to paint the room, and we got the floorboards down, and me and my son spent this amazing afternoon listening to all his favorite music and painting this room.

And there's not a lot of happy memories of that time, but that was one of those that I really looked back fondly, and I just felt this real great connection with Harrison and this excitement of this next chapter for us.

And we were going to be a family, and I was going to be living with three boys and a partner and being surrounded by boys, and I loved that I was the only female and they were going to look after me.

And so yeah, we moved in six weeks after we moved in, Anthony again started acting distant, pulling away, and he told me he'd made a big mistake.

He told me that he wasn't in love with me, that I shouldn't have moved in, he shouldn't have had the vasectomy reversal.

He doesn't know why he did what he did, but he just felt that things weren't right.

I was so broken.

I didn't cope.

I could barely get out of bed.

I started to drink a lot to cope so much that I didn't care about anything.

I didn't care about my job, I didn't care about being a mum.

I didn't care about myself.

I didn't care about my family.

I pushed everyone away.

I pushed my friends away.

I couldn't deal with this heartbreak.

I felt that after my marriage breakdown, I felt I'd got my happily ever after and it had just come crumbling down on me.

And I was so angry.

I was so hurt, and I just didn't know how to deal with the hurt.

One day, I got in my car and i'd been drinking.

I was very over the limit and I got pulled over and I lost my license.

So long with everything else there, I felt that I was losing I then lost my license, and I just felt like I felt like I completely lost any hope in my life.

Anthony was like a stranger to me.

He was so cold.

He wouldn't look me in the eye.

He would look past me.

He would walk past me in the hallway and just almost shouldered me out the way to get past.

He looked at me in disgust.

And amongst all of this that I was dealing with at the time, I then had to try and find out how I was going to get the strength to pack all my belongings in the house and try and find somewhere to live because my house was being rented out.

I didn't have the energy for any of them.

It was just so painful.

I ended up moving out and my parents hired a truck and they moved everything out of the house so I didn't have to deal with it, and they put it in storage for me, and I moved in with a girlfriend who took me in and just just looked after me.

I had such amazing friends during that time.

They gave me everything that I needed, but at the time I just couldn't see it because all I wanted was him.

Even after all of this hurt, all I wanted was him to tell me that he'd made a mistake and he wanted me back, and he loved me, and he wanted him to tell me to come home.

I got in to see a psychologist and she recommended that I have no contact, which I knew was for the best, but at the same time, it was so hard because I was hurting so much, but the only person that could made me feel better was the one person I couldn't reach out to.

He ended up contacting me through WhatsApp.

We never used WhatsApp to talk.

It was always messenger or just phone, and I had him blocked on all of my socials and emails.

He couldn't contact me, and I'd never considered to even bother about what's up.

And he called me and he just started the conversation by saying, how are you?

And I really miss you and I don't know what's going through my mind, but I just I wish things were different with us.

And I just said to him, what do we do now?

How do we come back from this?

And one of our favorite bands were playing a few days later and we had tickets, and he asked me if I still wanted to go, and I was so torn.

Of course I wanted to go.

I wanted to go and forget every situation that he'd put me in that hurt me.

But the other part of me was saying that it's like prolonging hurt, it's just gonna keep coming back and rubbing soul in that wounds.

Like you need to move forward without him, and I could, And so I went out with him and we had just the best night.

It was like old times again, and it felt like a first date.

It felt like our first date again.

It felt like the past few months it had not really happened.

It felt like again that we got through another rough part and that maybe we just needed to step back to go forward.

It felt like he really realized that he was in love with me and that maybe we could make this work.

One of my girlfriends who has been like a lifelong friend of mine, she's such a beautiful person.

She finds it hard to really be assertive with someone, and let's still do this day.

I will never forget that conversation that she pulled me up and she just set simone, what are you doing?

Can you not see that you nearly lost everything because of the choices she made from the situations that he'd put you in.

And again I stuck up for Anthony, and I said, yeah, but he realizes now he lost me, and now he realizes that he needs me and he wants me, and things will be different and we will move slowly.

And the look in her eyes, I could just see that she just she couldn't support, she couldn't support my decision.

Simone was conflicted, but she couldn't find the feeling she had for Antony.

So they gave it another go, taking it slow with the hope this time would be different.

I kept a lot of our a lot of time together secret from my friends and family because I didn't want to face the truth or the judgments that people would give me.

I wanted to protect him.

We did move very slowly.

We didn't focus on what was going to happen in six months time or twelve months time.

It was just really in the now, how it probably should have been.

From the start of the relationship.

We started to go out a little bit more openly, and I would get surprised looks from friends and in our social circle.

I thought, you know, I thought, you guys broke up, what's happening, And it was really hard to explain to them how we were I guess dating again after everything that happened without feeling judged and the sh shame of you know, losing my license and not everyone knew about that, but the town we live in is a small town, so it was hard to hide.

And as for the prospect of expanding their family.

We didn't start actively trying.

We weren't safe.

The chances of me being able to conceive with a vasectomy reversal and my age were I think zero point zero five percent, and so it was not something that really even crossed our minds that would happen.

And we'd actually gone away on a weekend trip to a rural Victorian town to see a band and when we were there, he said to me, your boobs are really big.

I said, yeah, they are, aren't they?

And I had gained weight, I guess, not being active through that period of grief and loss of everything that come you know with that, you know, drinking too much.

I had gained weight and I just said it's probably just wait again, and I felt fine.

And it wasn't until about three or four weeks later he again rang me and said to me, I can't do this.

I've made a mistake again.

I just I can't be in the relationship with you.

I felt so physically sick that I thought I've got to do a pregnancy test.

Either I'm just so physically sick from another bombshell, or I'm pregnant.

And I did a test and it was like a Christmas tree light up.

That test was positive within seconds of me testing.

So the day that I had done the test was the day that he told me that he wasn't in love with me and he didn't want to be with me, and he'd made a mistake calling me and contacting me on WhatsApp that day, and he just ripped everything away from me again, but this time I was pregnant.

I held off for a couple of days.

I needed to process in my own mind what this meant for me and my future.

And when I did tell him he didn't believe me.

I said I would take a test in front of him if he didn't believe me, and he said, well, yeah, I think I want to see you do a test.

We never actually did that test together, but it wasn't a moment of celebration at all.

It was a feeling of complete dread.

It felt really unfair that there was so much hope and excitement and planning together for this future, and then it happens he took it away.

He took that happiness away from the occasion.

From that moment, I was scared of decisions I might have to make.

I was scared of what my future looked like without him in it.

Still, my thoughts kept reverting back to him and just wanting him to tell me that it would be okay and that he'd be with me.

And it just didn't come.

It never happened.

He had told me that I should have an abortion.

He had messaged me one day and said to me, I've called an abortion clinic, but I can't make the appointment for you.

You need to do that yourself.

You'll ruin your life if you carry on with this pregnancy.

You will ruin my life, and you will ruin all of our kids.

Lis He put all of this on me to make this decision that would affect everyone.

When he was fifty percent of the bland posies.

I told my best friend, who was the one I spoke of earlier, who was very doubtful about our second try of her relationship, and she was so supportive of me and said that she would be there no matter what I decided to do.

She was going to be there.

And my mum, she was so supportive, and I had a close circle of friends that were all all there for me no matter what.

Her friends and family rallied around her, desperate to keep her and the baby safe.

And Anthony, well, the same patterns continued.

They had a scale and done which dated to be about seven weeks pregnant, and Anthony came to the scan and after that scan he got excited about it.

He did the old Oh it'll be fine, we'll work this out, and I'm excited and we're going to be happy and we're going to have a family.

And it was about three or four weeks of it being a happy occasion where he would message me and tell me that he loved me and he loved our little blueberry or whatever the size of it was at the time, week to week, and he'd send me names that he liked.

We started looking again to a future, but I think by then, well I knew by then that this was it was not going to happen, and I knew.

I knew he would turn around in future and say no, this is a mistake, and he did again, and by this stage I was about sixteen weeks pregnant.

And then it really just all came crashing down.

He again treated me like a stranger, and he told me he was on the dating scene, but he wasn't in love with me because he wasn't ready to settle down with a new partner.

He told me that he would not be a part of this child's life.

He told me that I'd be doing it all alone, and mentally I was not stable enough to have a baby.

There was one night, well, one day, that I had been spotting bleeding, and I tried calling him and he never picked up the phone, and so I went around to his house and I stood at his front door.

It was nighttime by then, it was freezing cold, it was not and I stood at his door and I said to him, I'm bleeding and I'm scared.

I don't know what to do.

And he turned around to me and he said, I'm watching a movie with my two kids.

I can't deal with this right now, and he slammed the door in my face and he left me there and it was then that I knew this was not the man that I thought.

He was not the man that I fell in love with.

I ended up staying with my mom for the next month or so.

I'm barely able to get out of bed.

No.

I lost my job because I couldn't work.

I then started bleeding quite happily, and I lost my baby at twenty three weeks.

There was a complications that they're not too sure what happened.

They said it can be quite common in my age.

My had a work colleague it actually happened to her as well at the same age.

And when I was at the hospital losing my baby, I called Anthony and I asked him to pick me up and take me home.

After on the way home, I said to him, could you please take me to the chemist.

I need to get some pain killers.

I'm in a lot of pain.

And he snapped at me and he said, you know, I've got two other kids at home.

I can't deal with your shit right now.

And that was I think the last time I ever spoke to him, that I ever saw him.

Simone was absolutely heartbroken.

She'd lost her baby boy Tom in twenty three weeks, and now I was faced with an unfathomable sense of loss and loneliness.

I didn't take care of myself.

I didn't know how to.

All I felt was pain and sadness and darkness.

I just didn't want to be alive.

I never attempted anything, but I just couldn't find a way out of this torture that I felt that I was living every day.

I just experienced so much loss, and if I hadn't had my friends and my family and my son, He's the only thing that kept me going was that I had to be around.

The first six months, I just drank myself stupid every day.

I didn't know how to cope any other way other than to medicate myself and numb everything.

And I knew it wasn't the right thing to do, but I just didn't know how else to get any kind of relief from this pain that I was feeling.

And I had friends that were there for me, Like twenty four seven somehow managed to start getting me out of this helhold that I was allowing myself to live in.

And I eventually just started focusing on being grateful for small things every day.

You know, he was just the most smallest of things.

And I got myself a dog, and she ultimately saved me.

And I know that sounds cliche, so many people say that, but she really did because I had a purpose.

I had to get up and walk her every morning.

And I lived across the road from the beach, and so we would go to the beach at six o'clock in the morning.

And I started swimming in the middle of winter, and it was almost like a a cathartic experience feeling the freezing cold water and feeling alive after I'd stepped out and doing that every day, and then starting to go for walks and starting to focus on my new job that I got in between all of this.

Somehow, I was lucky that I was able to work from home, so I could work in my woody and ug boots and I didn't have to have hair and makeup done and my work they were so supportive.

They was just so supportive of me.

And I just feel like if I hadn't had those small things, things could be really really different or just still the same as they were.

As for Antony, I have heard from social circle that a lot of people have cut him off or disconnected themselves from him.

I don't know to what extents, and to be honest, I really don't.

I don't need to know.

I'm just glad that I've not had to run into him or you know that I don't hear his name all the time.

I think my friends are careful what to mention around me as well, and I've told them if you see him around, I don't need to know about it.

And I sometimes think how I would feel or how I would react if I did see him.

I think now I'm strong enough just to look the other way and pretend that he doesn't exist.

I felt looking back that he glossed over a lot of the truths, and again he said what I wanted to hear.

There was a lot of lies and a seat around his ex wife and as well as his more recent ex who I'd found out he had only separated three weeks before we started dating.

She'd lived in his house, and I thought they'd been separated for a good few months, but found out it had been weeks, and that's when I realized it was love bombing.

He didn't want to be alone.

He treated me like I was disposable, that I was like a playtoy that could be used in the meantime, while he was looking for his next true love.

I feel that I was being used to mend his heart.

I was completely love bomb and no one deserves to be treated like that.

And I hope that anyone who listens to this and might be going through a similar situation, I just want them to know that it really does get better, and you just need to lean into all of those people that love unconditionally.

I'm so proud of myself well how far that I've come.

They do say that you become a stronger person when you've been through trauma, and I would roll my eyes at people that told me You'll get stronger, You'll be fine.

How do you get through?

How do you how do you become stronger from these these experiences?

And I have.

I've moved back into my own home.

I own my own home.

I have a great relationship with Harrison.

My job is just so enjoyable.

My colleagues are amazing.

I have lost twenty kilos.

I've become a gym junkie again, which I used to be before Anthony.

I look forward to my future.

I look ahead, I make plans.

I want to go skydiving.

I've done so much in a work.

I've sat in solitude with myself.

I don't drink fairly at all anymore.

I haven't tried to mask the pain anymore, and I really feel, especially the last six months, that I'm on the other side.

If you had told me that nearly three years ago, I would never have believed where I'd be standing right now.

And I'm just so proud that I can.

I can tell my story and I've come out on the other side of it.

I do grief occasionally, but it's not that grief that I need to pick a bottle of wine up and mask it.

And I haven't allowed a new man to come into my life to create happiness for me.

I've been single since Antony, and I'm only now starting to ponder maybe dipping my feet in the dating pool, so to speak.

But I can do it knowing that I am truly happy within myself and I don't need another person to create that for me.

I definitely have regrets about the choices that I made in the circumstances that were out of my control, but I have owned up to those mistakes and I'm just so lucky that with my drink driving offense that I never hurt anyone, and I'm so grateful for that.

It's hard to say I'm grateful for the experience, but I feel like if I hadn't had this experience, that I wouldn't be the strong person that I am today.

If I could change change things, possibly I would.

But knowing how strong I am and knowing that I love my life without needing someone else to do make me happy.

It's so empowering.

I just want people out there to know that no man or no woman is worth your mental health.

If you're seeing red flags or if you're being warned by friends, and listen to that, listen to that gut feeling, and just know that you're worse loving yourself and no one needs to be that person to complete you.

Everyone Has an Ex's a Minti Media production and proudly part of the mum of Me network.

This episode is written and produced by Linda Scott.

Interview conducted by Eilish Delaney and narrated by me Georgia Love.

If you have a story you'd like to share, email podcast at momamea dot com dot EU.

You can support us by following the show in your favorite podcast app and leaving a five star review We'll see you for the next episode.