Disclaimer: In Real Life is a platform for everyday people to share their experiences and voices. All articles are personal stories and do not necessarily echo In Real Life’s sentiments.
This story was shared anonymously by a Malaysian man who discovered his girlfriend’s dark secret, after years of being in a relationship with her.
I met my ex-girlfriend when we were in university. She was studying psychology, while I was studying mass comm. Her name was Michelle*(name changed).
She was absolutely, stunningly drop-dead gorgeous: raven black hair, piercing obsidian eyes, a petite figure, and she always wore designer label clothes while toting a luxury handbag.
She was also in her late 20s, six years older than everyone else in the class. For some reason she picked me: the guy who had just turned 20 years old.
I wasn’t rich or popular or the most handsome guy on campus, but she had chosen me. I was the envy of many of the boys on campus who secretly wanted her.
I sometimes would wake up and see her lying next to me. I’d hold her just to reassure myself that all this was real, that I wasn’t in a fever dream.
But when I found out her secret, my entire world came crashing down.
We spent almost 4 years of bliss together
I had invested almost 4 years into our relationship. She was kind, supportive, and emotionally present. I excelled in my studies because she was there to give a little push.
She liked to talk about the future. After graduation, what things would be like. She never pushed for marriage or anything like that. She just wanted us to continue to be together as a couple.
After we both graduated, I started working, while she continued doing her Masters. I asked her how she could afford that, and she smiled mysteriously.
She said she’d gotten a partial scholarship, and the rest was funded by the money she’d saved working part-time. She said it was related to her studies in psychology, that she was working as an intern/assistant to a private psychotherapy practice.
I always thought her hours were a bit odd, for work. She had things during the weekdays, during “normal” office hours, but she also had “appointments” and “sessions” in the evenings. Maybe once or twice a week, sometimes on the weekends too.
Blinded by love, or lust or perhaps both, I never asked for details. Maybe I didn’t want to see it, maybe I was willfully blind to all of it.
A Saturday night phone call
One Saturday night, she said she was going to be working late. I didn’t mind: It had become a common thing for the past few years. I didn’t think anything of it at all.
I was at home, just playing DOTA 2 with a few friends, chatting on Discord and waiting for my Foodpanda delivery when, out of the blue, I got a phone call from Michelle.
This was strange, because we rarely called. Generally, we texted, because a phone ringing during a therapy session could be quite bad for the patient, she’d told me.
I felt a pang of anxiety in my chest as I picked up the phone.
There was silence on the other end, but I could hear what sounded like a party going on in the background. I checked the caller ID, and yes it was Michelle. My Michelle.
“Help.” I could barely hear her voice. It was just a hoarse whisper.
“Michelle? Are you ok?” I asked.
I could hear her slurring her words.
“Just… help, okay?” she answered.
The line dropped. A text came a moment later: A pinned location on Waze.
Within seconds, I had my phone in one hand, and was struggling to put on my socks in the other. I booked a Grab and told the driver I’d double his fare if he put the pedal to the metal.
I found her passed out drunk in Bangsar South
Bangsar South is a swanky, rich upper-class area of KL that’s close to Midvalley. It’s a tech hub, with hotels, serviced apartments, and fine dining.
Basically, it’s the kind of place a kampung boy like me from Negeri Sembilan who lives in a rented apartment in USJ doesn’t hang out in.
I searched frantically. She wasn’t at the restaurant-cum-bar-cum-bistro she’d sent. I searched and searched, circling the water fountain twice.
I finally found her, passed out near the water fountain, with a spilt bottle of water beside her.
I realised I’d passed by her twice because I didn’t recognise her. She was wearing a short silky black dress and three-inch strappy red heels I’d never seen before.
I shook her gently by the shoulder, and said, “Michelle! Wake up!”
She moaned in response and vomited noisily into the bushes.
As she looked at me, I saw her eyes widen. She mumbled something like a cross between, “Oh shit,” and “I can explain.” I told her to save it, and called another Grab to my small apartment.
I discovered that the weight of a limp human body is proportional to how far you must carry it.
When the Grab arrived, the driver got out and helped me move her into the back seat.
The driver wordlessly handed me a bottle of water, a packet of wet wipes, and a plastic bag. “Just in case,” he said.
I suddenly felt very grateful: I learned how kind strangers can be that night.
The Grab driver kept stealing glances at me in the mirror, almost judgingly, but said nothing. I knew what he was thinking. I sighed and let him take us home.
A storm of emotions and questions raged in me
After we got home, I helped clean Michelle up, changed her clothes, and put her to bed.
Then I went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and sat down to try and process what the hell was going on.
A few hours later, she woke up with the mother of all hangovers.
She got up, stumbled to the bathroom and threw up. Her first words were, “I’m so sorry.”
Her eyes couldn’t meet mine.
My heart wanted me to forgive this sobbing goddess. My sobbing goddess. I wanted to forgive her for the turmoil and insanity; for whatever mistakes she had made.
I stroked her back, drawing small comforting circles, “it’s going to be …”
“No,” she said shakily, “It’s not going to be alright.” She burst into tears, “I’ve been… I don’t know… how to say it, but I’ve not been faithful to you.”
She finally confessed: she’d been leading a double life for almost a decade. Longer than I had known her, longer than we have been dating.
Long before she met me, Michelle was a sugar baby. It’s how she had paid for her luxury lifestyle of branded bags, designer brand clothing, spas days and all the rest.
For the entirety of our relationship, she was essentially cheating on me, going on dates with other men, and sleeping with them too.
Suddenly, my head felt three sizes too small for my brain.
She was in Bangsar that night to meet a sugar daddy, and she claimed it was to break off her long-term arrangement with him.
“I’ve been ending all of my sugar relationships…”
I only registered the words, “all of my” and I asked the question that I really didn’t want to know the answer to: How many?
“Three of them…”
And before that?
“Before that, there were more… ”
At this point, Michelle was sobbing uncontrollably. Big, fat tears were coming out of her eyes.
I’d been sledgehammered in the chest. My heart was broken. I couldn’t breathe right.
She collapsed against me, tears soaking her shoulder. The same shoulder I had propped her up with after finding her drunk and unconscious, after spending an evening doing… God knows what… with another man.
A man, possibly old enough to be her father…
She sobbed, and eventually fell asleep. I lay there next to her, staring up at the white-painted ceiling, wondering, what do I do now?
It was a night of trauma, and the beginning of the end.
Discovering that my girlfriend of almost four years was a sugar baby was traumatic for me. It was also the beginning of the end of our relationship. We both knew it, but neither of us wanted to admit it.
During those surreal few weeks, there were times when things were how they used to be. We could talk and laugh together, but one of us would suddenly remember, and the good mood would vanish.
We tried to talk it out. She proposed a therapist or couples counsellor. I was too embarrassed even to consider it.
Imagine if I told the therapist, “My girlfriend had been cheating on me since our first date.” Not something I wanted anyone to know about.
I felt… diminished. As a human, as a person, and as a man. I would be the cuckold amongst my friends. I couldn’t look her in the eye without a part of my brain saying that the world would laugh non-stop.
Eventually, things came to the predictable end. When a woman’s hair dryer and shoes start vanishing, you know she’s going to leave you.
I came home one evening, and she was gone. Her clothes, shoes, books, and laptop were missing. Decorative things, knick-knacks, and a few kitchenware were also gone.
She did leave me a short note, literally three sentences on a piece of paper. “We both know, we can’t fix “us.” I’m sorry for everything. Goodbye.”
At least it didn’t say I love you.
Honesty is the best policy.
I discovered how important honesty was for a relationship. My relationship with Michelle never had that, and no matter how good it was, it was doomed to fail when I found out the truth.
My repeated questions just to know where she was, if she was okay, would be met with a lot of double-talk. Politicians could learn a lot about saying-a-lot-without-saying-anything from her.
If she had told me she was a sugar baby, we probably wouldn’t have dated. But maybe, we could have been friends.
Everyone knows we broke up, but nobody knows why. At least, I hope they don’t.
Now that I’ve dated one for years, I guess you could say I’m an expert at spotting one from a distance: Young, beautiful, intelligent. Articulate, strong, confident. Dressed to blow your mind, all the time.
The female friends we had in common – her friends specifically – I realised were like her: Sweet, polite, and will absolutely drown you in kindness. Were they sugar babies too?
Moving forward, I don’t know what’s going on with Michelle. I did try to reach out to her when she left, but I was unfriended and blocked everywhere online.
The allure of quick cash intrigued her, and she chased it to a predictable end: End of self, end of relationship, and end of everything. She’s paid a heavy price. I hope she learns from it.
I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing now. I could say I hope she’s doing well, but I honestly don’t give a damn. Now shut up and pour me another drink.
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