“This love story is what impacted me the most. There was this girl I liked a lot. At first I used to have affairs, but then after some time I stopped and apologized. I wanted to invest myself with her, I wanted us to get married and have children. And that’s when she told me: “I don’t have feelings for you anymore”. I felt powerless, disarmed. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t sleep, I was like sick. I stayed several months like that. It was the first time it happened to me, I was very young and it was really a shock.

It also kind of opened my eyes, because I was actually a ladies’ man (laughs)! After some time when I wasn’t interested anymore, I’d just leave them. I thought it was normal. One almost killed herself because of me, but I didn’t understand. But when it happened to me, I understood how much I had hurt them. So I started healing little by little. It took me a long time to feel confident again, and to gain back women’s trust also.

And it took all this time to question myself and to get to know myself. Why was I always looking for other women? Was it only for sex? But in the end it’s always the same, so why hurt one and the other? And it requires a lot of energy, your life is scattered, messy. It got me nowhere, so I said: I won’t do it anymore, it’s better to respect women. It was good for me, it helped me grow and better manage my family life now.

Later on I met the right woman for me. I’m happy, she’s a wonderful mum. She taught me how to take my life seriously and she helped me a lot with my own self-confidence. I ran into the woman who had left me, it was 10 years later and 2 week before our wedding. She told me: “Later on I realized that of all the men I knew, you were the one who loved me the most”. But what is done is done! I told her: “I gave my heart to someone else”. We laughed a little, she wished me well, and so did I. And it’s a story now!”

(Parc des Bastions | translated from French)