A young student had an affair with her professor. It didn’t end well.

Broken hearts make people weak. I know it made me weak. After a terrible relationship that didn’t work out, all I wanted to feel was love, importance, attention – anything. Yeah, it’s pretty cringy, but when you’re in that depressed state, the smallest gestures can mean the world.

It felt like everything in my life was constantly going wrong. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety earlier in the year, after the breakup. Insomnia was a close friend of mine. And pain? It was something I was used to.

You see, my last relationship was very rocky.

When I left the guy, he left me alone… or so I thought. He ended up sending my pictures to tons of close friends and classmates, and from then on, I was looked at differently. The stares I got in public and the flood of messages I would get from sleazy guys from uni were starting to get to me. Some would even try to be my friends over text but eventually would step out of line and I’d have to leave the so-called “friendship”.

It should’ve made sense by then, my bad decisions seemed to get me in bad situations.

But as naive as some people said I was, I proved them right when I started a relationship with the only person who wanted to talk to me in public, who wanted to spend time with me – my professor.

But he wasn’t like others. Or so I thought.We would meet up in his tiny office, and he’d ask the chacha’s to bring us tea. We’d have conversations about movies, songs, and the like, it was platonic in the beginning.

It all started with me taking his number. To ask about the upcoming exam stuff, of course.

But it ended up with us texting for hours. The texting soon led to calls and the calls soon led to me sneaking out of the hostel to see him. We would drive around for hours until 11 pm, he apparently had a strict curfew. He would never take me to his house, he told me he lived with his parents because he was an only child. I mean, that’s not that uncommon in Pakistan, right?

But 30-something and unmarried is pretty uncommon but I decided not to dwell on it. Ignorance is bliss after all.

I got caught by the warden a couple of times. My reputation was worsening by the day. But I finally felt happy again.

No one talked to me in uni anyways, my family was disappointed in me, but I was going to marry this guy, even if he was my professor, I mean, we were in love. It was quick, I’ll admit, but I’ve always worn my heart on my sleeve.

We talked hours on end about when, the perfect venue, if we’d even invite anyone other than immediate family. He had talked to my parents a couple of times, insisting he liked me and didn’t want to start anything until I graduated. His parents weren’t involved, he said it was because they were old. But he promised they’d be at the small engagement party we were having at my house to “seal the deal”, rings and all that glam.

The day of our dua khair everything seemed to fall apart. I got a call from a woman.

I shouldn’t be surprised, they always show this happening in the dramas, right? She claimed to be his wife and told me they had two young children and she begged me not to take him away from them.

My world fell apart. My parents, already so disappointed that my last relationship ended how it did, couldn’t bear to even think of someone else using me. And so, in the string of bad decisions, I didn’t tell them.

When he arrived, only his mom was with him.

His father wasn’t. When we asked where he was, we got a short reply – “bemaar”. My parents told him we could always reschedule, but both son and mother waved it off.

Let me give you a quick recap about how it’s done in my family. The guy’s family comes over, they mingle with the girl’s family, when it’s time to put rings on, the girl comes out of her room, sits next to the guy and takes a few pictures and then, the girl goes back to her room. The guy’s family continues mingling, eats, and then leaves. Whew.

When it was time for him to put the ring on me and vice versa, I asked him quietly.

His face went pale and then whispered urgently that he was leaving her.  But that’s not what I wanted. To break a family apart, two young children? I asked him multiple times if he was married or even engaged when we were in a relationship but he only told me about past love and nothing more. A part of me didn’t fully believe the woman when she called, a part of me thought it might be a jealous ex. But when he said what he did, it confirmed my doubts.

It was a surreal experience, watching myself go through the motions but not actually knowing what I was doing.

But as soon as I got into my room, I cried. I turned the fan on so it would block the sound of my cries into the pillow, but it wasn’t enough because my mom came in and asked me what was wrong. I spilled everything. Finally a good decision in all the bad ones. My mom started crying but quickly got herself together. She took the ring off my finger and left the room.

I don’t know what happened, but by the time I left my room, they were cleaning up.

He texted me a couple of times but I blocked from everywhere. He tried to talk to me in the corridor at uni, but I couldn’t bear to look at him. A man who can leave his children could leave me, easily. And I wasn’t in a position to have my heart broken further.

I’m at a point in life where I don’t trust my own judgment anymore.

Call me desperate, or naive, but my judgment isn’t the best. And although I still believe in love, it’s something I’ve sworn off. It’s not meant for the weak-hearted. And I am weak-hearted.

I Am Not My Husband’s First Love And Finding Out Who Is Hurts Like Hell

Cover image via vulcanpost.com