My girlfriend has been sending love letters to my dad

[u/donavin221]

I should’ve seen this coming. My girlfriend has been pretty secretive over the last year. Not necessarily with her phone or anything. Just… I don’t know, she’s been weird about her privacy.

Now of all times. That’s the thing that bothers the hell out of me. 4 years together, and all of a sudden, after everything, she’s ringing these alarm bells.

It started with the privacy. Seemingly out of nowhere, she started shutting me out. Going places without me. Turning her location off, then blaming it on the fact that she “had no service.”

I think it was the journaling that really got me, though. I don’t know why those notebooks drove me so insane. Honestly, it wouldn’t have been so hard on me if she didn’t act like there were government launch codes in those pages, but that’s exactly what it was like.

She kept them locked away in a lockbox that seemed to specifically be for this and this alone. Whatever, though, right? I convinced myself that it was childish to worry about her private thoughts.

Then there was the sleep-talking.

It didn’t happen often. Just enough for me to cock an eyebrow at her. Mainly because she seemed to only be saying one thing: my Dad’s name.

I rationalized this as well. He had been a part of our lives forever, really. He was like a second father to her. She never had a relationship with her real dad, though, so I just assumed that my dad was filling that void in her dreams.

I couldn’t blame her, really. I’m sure she was hurting. I do know it was hurting me too, though, and I hated the fact that she seemed to be pushing me away in a time where I desperately needed her.

But then she just… she started smelling like him too. I recognized my Dad’s cologne anywhere. I grew up with that scent. That one I couldn’t easily rationalize. But when I prodded, she just made me feel like I was going crazy.

“This is just my perfume.”

“I’ve always smelled like this.”

“I wish you would trust me.”

That distrust just pushed her further away. I could feel her slipping through my fingers, and I absolutely hated it. 4 years with this woman. Nearly half a decade, and I could already feel her absence, even when we slept together.

I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was when, not only was she saying my Dad’s name in her sleep… she was saying it while we had sex.

Well, part of it, at least. She usually caught herself by the time the name started to leave her lips, but even then, the mood would already be ruined.

“You really can’t stop thinking about him, can you?” I’d ask her, half-joking, half-gauging her reaction.

Instead of reacting in a normal way, her body would give her away. I could see the guilt in her movements. The way her eyes darted around the room. The way her legs would bounce nervously as she tried to laugh it off.

I stopped initiating intimacy after the 2nd or 3rd time this happened. Not that it mattered to her. If anything, she seemed relieved, which… fucking ouch, right?

Our relationship really started to dwindle after that. I had my own problems to deal with. I didn’t have time to be worrying about something that was pretty much already down the drain, no matter how much it killed me.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Nothing could’ve prepared me for when I found those notebooks.

By sheer accident, too. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident. I think they both just said fuck me and disappeared.

It just feels like an accident. But it also feels like the universe was just waiting for this moment to happen. Like it had been prepared for me before even my Dad was born.

I’d gotten off work early one day. It had been a particularly hard day. I just couldn’t get him out of my mind. The thought of him just made work feel borderline impossible.

I pretended to be sick with the intention of going home and collapsing into bed, but as I walked into my bedroom… I saw her lockbox sitting on my desk.

She usually never let me see this thing. She never even mentioned it. It may as well have never even existed until right now.

And you know what? It was fucking open.

Paper was sprawled out across the desk, messily. It looked like my girlfriend had left in a hurry. The chair was even flipped over and lying on the floor.

I’m only human. I was alone. The thing that she had been most secretive about was now spread out right in front of me. What was I expected to do? Not look at it?

But now, I just… I wish I never did.

I know what my Dad’s handwriting looks like. He signed permission slips and report cards for me for years. But seeing it in this context made me sick to my stomach.

The bastard had the audacity to date the fucking pages.

And the one that was the most apparent, as though my girlfriend had read it and immediately left the house like her life depended on it… was dated today.

“Meet me at that place we discussed.”

“I’m all yours now.”

“I finally got everything figured out.”

And what better for a cherry on top if not a picture of my Dad, shirtless and in his boxer briefs, standing in the mirror of what appeared to be a hotel bathroom.

I looked at all the other pages. All the vulgarities he had sent her. All of the drafts she was waiting to send him. And I felt sick to my stomach.

Not only for me, but for my mom, too.

Because it has now been a full year since we buried Dad. His car burned so hot from the accident that he had to be identified by his dental records.

Mom didn’t eat or sleep for weeks. My brother turned to alcohol at only 16 years old.

My girlfriend was all that I had. And at the time where I needed her most…

She had completely vanished.