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A Super Strange True Love Story My Disappearing Fiancé
A Super Strange True Love Story My Disappearing Fiancé
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“So let me get this right. You’re Italian but you’re a resident of India.”
“Yes.”
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“Yes.”
“In Italy.”
“That doesn’t matter to us. It’s a parish matter, they take care of the
paperwork. Did you discuss it with your Italian priest?”
“So all we need is a certificate that says your fiancé has never been
married before. A nulla osta. And then we can process the documents.”
“See, that’s why I called. Canada doesn’t really have that certificate.”
The lady at the Italian embassy in Delhi wasn’t able to help. She’d never
seen this before. Our wedding was just like us: Unique, unconventional,
and a little all over the place. It looked impossible. Four months from
the day and nothing was confirmed.
“It’s not going to work. Nothing’s ready.” I called him in a panic as soon
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“Amore mio, that’s not true,” he replied. “Everything’s set. We’ll get the
paperwork done.”
We had even received our certificate from the church a�ter a two-day
intensive course instructing us on how to start a good Catholic family.
Not that we were going to be a Catholic family, but the course was
compulsory to get married in a church —which I wanted, not for
religious reasons but because I liked the tradition — and he had
accepted to do, to please me. The course was on the outskirts of Delhi,
and for two days we stayed in a nunnery with other couples, sleeping on
different floors (the men upstairs, the women below) and attending
classes on family values and conjugal duties. A foreign couple wasn’t the
norm, and we were the center of attention — particularly when
questions about sex came up and everyone assumed, despite our
amused protesting, that we knew more about it than the teachers.
“So, where does sperm come from? Maybe you know?” I was asked.
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We were warned that the Holy Spirit was not going to attend the
ceremony since we weren’t both Catholic, but then his being Jewish —
as opposed to Muslim or Hindu, which was the case for other mixed-
religion couples there — gained the sta�’s sympathies. He was labeled
“almost Christian.” We joked that we didn’t have money to feed the Holy
Spirit anyway.
But we did need the papers. And we didn’t know how to get them.
“Maybe it’s a sign? Maybe this wedding thing is a bad idea?” I whined. I
was tired, and insufferable.
***
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Before I’d met him I kept joking that “love is overrated.” But it wasn’t; It
was perfect. When he had to go back to India, where he’d been living for
years before moving to Italy, I worried it’d be the end.
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Everything in India frightened me. The smell. The noises. The light, so
different from anything I had seen before. Even the peacocks, flying on
the roo�top terrace from the park nearby, were wonderful but so
foreign. I followed him to Calcutta on assignment. In the teeming
backstreets, electrifying and overwhelming, I looked upon poverty and
dirt, equally horrified. Once I cried a whole night about not being able to
afford anything better than a filthy guesthouse. I returned to Paris
relieved.
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All I wanted was for him to be around for me, because when he was,
things were pretty wonderful. We had so much hunger for time together
that nothing seemed trivial: We’d explore the city on his motorcycle, go
on holidays to remote places, turn any and every bit of daily life into an
adventure.
But a couple of weeks here and there were not enough. I felt like all I did
was wait for him. Finally, shortly a�ter he came back from a long trip to
visit a dear, sick uncle, I broke down. I felt horrible — this trip was not
for fun, how could I get mad about it? — but I just couldn’t help it. I told
him we’d better split up, that he had no space for me in his life. I
screamed, he screamed more, the neighbors came to check if I was O.K.
In a country where women are common victims of domestic abuse, it
was hard to believe that it was me who always raised her voice first. We
resolved that we should part.
***
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“Yes. Forever,” I said, and I meant it. Yet I was shocked when I saw in his
eyes the resolution of a question I didn’t know he had in him, and I
wasn’t ever expecting him to ask.
“What… You don’t… You don’t have to — I’m not going anywhere. You
need to think this through.”
“But I have! I have. Look—” he reached for his backpack, me still sitting
on his lap, and took out a small box. “I even have a ring! I’ve been
waiting for the right moment.”
“Well this is pretty right,” I joked. “So how did he propose? Well, we had
a massive fight and nearly broke up, but got engaged instead.”
He was ready.
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***
I loved him, and the unexpected certainty that he, too, truly loved me
gave me a happiness so enormous it frightened me. My father had died
too early for me to believe happy endings were possible, let alone feeling
that I was destined for one.
We looked for a new place, and I cried like a spoiled child when faced
with the reality that his priorities were different from mine — he wanted
to save money on rent, and on everything really, to be able to invest in
his work. I saw myself as shallow and materialistic for wanting a place
that was nice and comfortable. Again told him, “See? This is why we
should not do it.”
I would cast doubts over us and our future, which I so wanted and so
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feared.
But for all my questions, he had answers. “It’s us, amore,” he’d tell me,
his voice always so calm and kind. “I’m not letting you get out of this.”
His certainty seemed to grow as mine withered, and the way he dealt
with my actions, minimizing my fears, showed me time and again the
depth of his love.
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But my faith in his talent was blind — it was destiny I didn’t trust.
***
We were over the rough patches, though, when the issue with the
papers came up. It appeared we were in a bureaucratic loophole and
none of the puzzled officials I contacted were able to figure our situation
out.
He had gone to Canada to renew his visa — his trip home drained my
account, but some work had finally come through for him and he was
going to be paid soon. We were back on our early-days routine of long-
distance phone calls. For the first time in our many goodbyes, I hadn’t
cried when he le�t. As he told me that he’d be right back, his happiness
was so visible it gave me goose bumps, and a newfound feeling of safety.
But then, when I tried to reach him the day he was meant to go see
about our documents, I couldn’t get through to him. He would not pick
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Whether it was some sort of sixth sense or just my constant fear of the
worst, I started to worry. I called the friend he usually stayed with,
trying not to sound paranoid; a�ter all, it had only been a few hours since
I had heard from him. He was not home. As the night became morning
in India, a day was passing in Canada. I called, and called, and laid awake
waiting. Sleeping was out of the question.
Finally, I got a two-line email. He said he loved me. And that he needed
space.
I was paralyzed.
As the date of his return trip approached, I tried to be calm and focus on
the fact that I was about to see him again. We had never been out of
contact this long, and I missed him terribly. I tried to be patient, but
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“Amore mio,” I typed. “I am so happy you are coming back next week.
We’ll make things right, I promise.”
“Yes,” he replied. “We have a lot of work to do but we can make things
right. Things will be right.”
But he was not coming back. Not yet anyway. His birthday was coming
up, and he didn’t want to spend it with me.
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But we had worked through it all. He had begged me to stay with him
when I found out, told me I was the love of his life and the last chance he
had of having a happy life, of changing. He had blamed distance and so
had I, and it had worked for years — so well, too well. I had worked so
hard to get past his infidelities that I had actually forgotten about them
— the truth, of the past and the present, felt heavy on my burning
sternum.
He told me he’d just met her. A few days had been enough to know. He
had given up thinking he could find the one. But there she was. They
were going to travel together, see the world and be nomads, as he
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“I bet she dresses terribly,” I said, heart yolk leaking from my smashed
chest, making an ugly mess already.
I became a monster; I could barely speak, filled with anger as I told him,
shocking myself with the violence of my own words, hissing at him,
shaking, that it was not true that he felt sorry — that he felt good and
not sorry, that while fucking this woman he didn’t know, in and out and
in and out of her, he did not think of me.
“We’re not planning to get married at the moment.” He was crazy, too.
“No.”
“Is it because I was not enough?” Isn’t that what every rejected lover
dreads?
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Outside, it was dawn. The sounds of India waking up were a loud sign
the conversation had to end. We — “us” — had to end.
“I will miss you so much,” I muttered before I hung up. I wanted him
desperately. But he was unrecognizable, someone else. Happiness and
love were a dark force in his gaze. They were pulling him away from me,
taking him some place frightening and far, a place my arms couldn’t
stretch to.
I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t feel anything other than terror.
Who was he?
***
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” It was all I could say, whisper really. I was sorry I
had trusted him, that I had followed him, that I had brought him home. I
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I walked straight into my mother’s bed and laid there crying for days,
getting up only to check my emails for signs of him, and sit at the table
for lunch and dinner, unable to touch my food.
“That guy had always been a bit strange,” she offered. “Remember how
he stopped eating meat?” She had always treated his vegetarianism as an
exotic disease.
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When I finally had the strength to leave my bed, I started trying to put
together the pieces. I was obsessed with understanding, and the more I
obsessed, the more it all seemed terrifying.
I went back to Delhi, leaving behind a family worried sick about me,
determined to save the salvageable: A job I loved in a country that was
going to save my life.
I had to cancel the wedding, let all the guests know on my own, as he
was far too busy with his new life to even tell his own family — who
called me seeking explanations, unable to track him down.
***
In all of this, and despite my rational self, I still madly loved him. I
hoped he would come back. Once I woke up convinced I heard him ring
the bell in the middle of the night. It was a dream.
A recovering patient, I put one day in front of the other, waiting for my
love to go away. Like a famous Italian poem says, it was like quitting a
vice. Come smettere un vizio. It was a daily exercise in abstinence — from
calling him, wanting him, loving him.
Before I knew it, it had been a month since I had last seen his face, on a
computer screen. Then two, then a whole summer.
On August 26, when our wedding was meant to be, the sun was shining
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over the Amalfi Coast, but I spent the day in rainy Kathmandu, Nepal,
on my own, hanging out with the monkeys at Pashupatinath Temple —
the Temple of Shiva.
For a long time a�terward, I was obsessed with this story. Obsessed with
his lies. I uncovered countless more: about his family, his past, our
relationship. The more I found out, the more the hurt gave way to relief.
I wrote to the woman he had le�t for me way back when — to let her
know it didn’t work out with us. Somehow, I felt it was right for her to
know, that I would have wanted to know, if I were her. She was
understanding, forgiving, and helpful — knowing far too well what I was
going through, she repeated to me countless times I had not lost
someone worth keeping.
Years later, that’s what I told his wife, when it was she who wrote to me.
This post originally appeared on Narratively and was published June 4, 2015. This
article is republished here with permission.
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