It’s What You Did Not Say That I Heard The Loudest.

What I’m about to share is one of the reasons I believe in karmic debt.

In 2021, my then-girlfriend once paid me a visit. I write this with renewed eyes. You see, when she visited, it was just after the COVID lockdown restrictions were lifted. In the height of the COVID paranoia, she took the risk to get on a bus from Estcourt in KZN to visit me in Bloemfontein in the Free State. Mind you, she was doing her final year and was unemployed. Yet, she found a way to gather the funds to come visit me.

With renewed eyes, I get to fully appreciate the sacrifices she had made to see me. I know it sounds pretty obvious that she wanted to see me, but I did not appreciate it fully at the time. And hopefully as you continue to read, you'll understand why I did not fully appreciate it at the time.

By the end of her visit, she obviously went back home. The first text she sent when she arrived was a very simple, short message:

“It’s what you did not say that I heard the loudest.”

I was confused by this message until this week.

In the previous essay, I discussed being on a break with my girlfriend. So yesterday was the first time we had seen each other in over 2 years, and since the recent break.

The cause of the break, from my side, I felt that for the past year or so I was competing with someone else for her attention. I could feel that I was not alone. You know that gut feeling that won’t go away? That is what led me to want to break from her. Cause to me, due to this feeling, the relationship was experiencing rough seas.

The plan was to meet her on Tuesday. Due to the gut feeling being so strong, on Monday I decided to take a long meditative walk. I probably walked for 2 hours in deep meditation. Halfway into the walk, I went to a local park, found a secluded corner and engaged in deep meditative prayer to prepare me for whatever I’ll find on Tuesday. And to be honest, I am glad that I had these meditative activities before seeing her. They put me in mind state to be ready for whatever that would unfold, true or otherwise.

We met on Tuesday evening. The text from my ex-girlfriend, 5 years later, finally made sense. What I was doing for a week with her, I experienced in a single evening.

When I went to the private house, my phone was with me. When I went to shower, my phone was with me. When I brushed my teeth, my phone was with me. Instead of putting my phone on vibrate, mute or Do Not Disturb, I’d go all the way and put it on aeroplane mode when it was time we went to bed.

And the reason for my actions at the time is not complex. It is very simple. I was cheating. I had 2 situationships, 3 talking stages with a 90% potential of them being more and 1 woman who I was in a relationship with in Bloemfontein who wasn’t my ex who came from KZN. These same behaviours I made in a week all happened, for me, in one night. It was an overdue payment on my karmic debt.

There was a moment I hugged her briefly, and she accidentally pressed a lock button. The first notification I saw was a missed call from a saved gent on her phone. It was so fast, I could not get the name, but I definitely saw a man as a profile picture with a name next to it. The irony, when the phone rang, she said it was her friend, who is a woman, and who, apparently, wanted to talk with me.

Later in the evening, I wanted to charge my phone. She was using my cable, and she was asleep. I grabbed her phone, and the lock screen appeared. Numerous notifications of unsaved individuals, some being men. The missed calls no longer appeared. I was so overwhelmed that I could not bring myself to sharing the bed with her for a moment. However, remember the walk and prayer of Monday. The overwhelming feeling quickly subsided, for my mind, spirit and body were ready.

I figured that this was the only time to confront the situation. So I went to the bed and lay next to her. To my surprise, she was not asleep. Now, if you have cheated or have been cheated on, you know that you will not get a straight answer. Unless the person is not afraid to take the bull by the horns and hold themselves accountable, they will never admit to any wrongdoing, regardless of the evidence. Remember, “It’s only cheating if you get caught”.

And so, as expected, I got no straight answers. When I asked about events that happened before the break, a sudden amnesia struck her. Suddenly, she does not remember these events. Events that I remember very vividly, which I have written about in other essays. She begins deflecting and trying to make the very serious conversation into something light and forgettable.

When asked about the notifications, I got an answer that made no sense. And it was said so quickly and dismissively, I could not even register what the reason was. When explaining how the answers to these questions were important to me, telling her I am vulnerable, she somewhat mocked me and made me feel guilty for feeling that way. The moment when the light at the end of the tunnel became a full-blown freight train hitting me is when she made a very slight, and very quick, mistake of forgetting who I was while being intimate with her. In this slip, she tried to mask it, but I had heard the mistaken identity. Yes, it could be the fact that I had discovered all these notifications and so forth before that moment, but that slight moment struck deep in my soul.

And again, a cheater will never admit they are cheating. Especially if they love you. According to attachment theory, people who cheat in relationships are usually avoidantly attached to you. Meaning, if the expectations they had for the relationship aren’t met, they will seek to fulfil these expectations outside the relationship. Hence, you sometimes find serial cheaters finding it difficult to break up with their main partners. There is something from their past experiences and childhood years, especially, usually, with their parents, that makes them avoidant, ergo, cheat in relationships.

In the few moments where I thought she was about to take accountability and own up to her actions, I could pick up that indeed whatever expectations that she had regarding us were not being met. Even meeting on Tuesday, her expectations, she felt, were not aligned with mine. Which I believe to be true because personally, besides having not seen her for two years, I wanted to talk about how she had been treating me. I wanted to find out the truth behind her recent behaviour.

After all, I am old. I have cheated. I have been cheated on. Like cooking chicken, you can adopt the French style of cooking, the Asian style of cooking or the Indian style of cooking to cook the chicken. No matter the approach, cooking style or recipe you follow, it is still chicken that you are cooking.

The same applies to cheating. It took me a very long time to learn that cheating has many forms. But the effects are all the same. The patterns of a cheater are all the same.

Suddenly, after seeing those notifications, I understood why I would text her in the morning and only get a response late at night. Naively, I believed that she was busy during the day. But you see, during the break, I realised that even when I was full-time employed, I would never ignore whoever I was dating the whole day. I’d always find time during the day to talk.

I clearly heard all that which was not said. A valuable reminder that not all communication is verbal. When paying attention to what is not being said, we can actually hear what is being said.

And so, after paying my karmic debt, thanks to the walk and prayer of Monday, a day after meeting her, my soul is calm. All the answers that I wanted, I got; even though they were not said. To seek to find closure will be a fruitless exercises cause the golden rule to cheating is to deny, deny, deny.

I feel very calm. And this calmness is without a shadow of a doubt due to the preparations of Monday. The conflict arises due to the fact that I still love her. And I do believe that she loves me. The same way I understood that I tend to be anxiously attached to partners, I realised that she is avoidantly attached to hers. But that’s a lesson that she would have to discover and understand for herself, the same way I discovered and understood my anxieties in dating.

The big question is whether I have the love to be patient? And does this love have the capacity to trust that she will do better? Like the married couples I admire so much who seem to always find a solution, do I have it in me to continue being played the fool in the name of love? In the name of finding a solution? Especially when that solution is something that is totally outside my control?

Finding answers to these questions is now my prayer.