I grew up with a strict mother who only believed in dating after marriage (well okay, at least halfway through a college degree). Yet once I was in college, I never really met anyone I deemed worthy of my time or attention. I had my share of awkward texting, a few month-long flings, but nothing with an official title or anyone worth spending the holidays with.

By the time I moved to India, I had somehow managed to escape 5 years in the largest city in America with no relationship. So you can imagine my surprise upon meeting my first serious boyfriend mere months after arriving in Bangalore. Apparently, all I needed was a city three times the population of New York to find someone compatible.

It was a whirlwind, passionate—ahem, disgusting—romance; we were joined at the hip, spoke in our own gross code, and everyone rightfully hated us for it.  Within three months, we told each other we loved one another; within four, we were visiting each other’s families (even the extended ones in Indian villages!); six brought us on multiple vacations; and eight solidified that we were going to get married at some point and even get matching tattoos (gag, I know).

While nothing is wrong with an intense romance, I realize in hindsight (funny how that always works) that we were completely incompatible for each other. We were each other’s crutch, not complements; there were many inherent traits—passivity, indecisiveness, laziness—that would not have worked long-term. Okay, fine, I’m sure there were many traits of mine that were flawed as well, but since it’s my shitty breakup, let’s just bypass that.

Yes, you read right: breakup. Since it has been over nine months and I’ve moved on to greener pastures, I can look back on that brutal breakup with a sense of a relief, instead of the initial heartbreak that it caused.

So let’s rewind back in time to March of this year. Fresh off a weekend with my family, my boyfriend, the anonymized “AS,” left for a beach town in northern India for a week-long work retreat. Since his coworkers were scattered all over India and Africa, the retreat was an opportunity to get face-to-face interaction. The week would consist of team-building exercises during the day, before enjoying the beach and parties in the evening.  All friends and family were welcome to join on the weekend, which is exactly what I had planned.

During the week, AS regaled me with tales of group dynamics, fun beach parties, and the mushy stuff that made me excited to join him over the weekend. He also mentioned the Uganda-based employee and new hire, Renee. Renee was a very cute girl, I would totally love her, she was perfect for his coworker John. And, ha, John was trying so hard to hook up with Renee!

Thursday night, I boarded a 12-hour overnight bus to the beach town. AS was planning on picking me up at the bus stop. After a bumpy ride where I stayed awake most of the time, I called AS around 6:30am to let him know I was close.  No answer. I waited a bit before calling a few more times and texting; each time, he never answered.  So I got off at the random bus stop in an unknown town at 7 am where I didn’t speak the language or even know the hotel name so I could call and figure out why my boyfriend failed to show.

Around 7:15am, AS called back, groggy and confused. He claimed he slept through his entire alarm after partying the night before. He gave me the hotel address and I played charades with a taxi driver before navigating to the hotel. Though annoyed, I was happy to see AS and enjoy the early morning beach with him. Immediately, I also met all of his bosses and coworkers, including Renee, and spent the morning with them.

After a long morning, we retired to our respective beach huts for a nap. “Want to grab something to eat?” I asked AS, as I hung our swimsuits to dry. AS stayed silent for a minute before he whispered, “Shilp, I need to tell you something. I hooked up Renee last night.” I pinched my forefinger with one of the clothespins, “Fuck these clothespins!” I exclaimed.

AS began to stammer. “I mean all week we were getting along really well. Last night we had been drinking and I decided to leave the group to get my phone from the hut. She followed me and one thing lead to another…” His voice trailed off.

I stared intently at my clothespin attacker wondering what sort of dickhead would use such an archaic way of dealing with clothes. A clothespin was just a glorified paper clip.

“She has a hickey on her neck, and I didn’t want you to get suspicious,” AS rambled.

A hickey? Have they made a resurgence post high school?

“Actually, she has a boyfriend she lives with in Uganda… so…”

Initially, I couldn’t process what had happened. Then the shock began to fade, and anger started to sink in. AS left me stranded at a bus station because he spent all night having sex with a coworker he’d been gushing about over the phone all week. Though I was on my way to see him, though his entire company knew of my existence, he completely disrespected and humiliated me by screwing a coworker who was also cohabitating with her boyfriend hours before my arrival. And since I couldn’t get another bus or flight out earlier than Sunday (it was now Friday evening) I was legitimately trapped for the next 36 hours with AS, her, his company, and what was supposed to be a beach holiday.

Her beach shack was directly across from ours. In the mornings when I went to retrieve my swimsuit, I saw her doing the same.  She and her hickey that my boyfriend left her sat at the end of the dinner table I shared, rejoicing in moments with the rest of the team.  While my boyfriend played a pathetic dog, stuck to my side, I was completely aware of her glances, her frowns, her desperate brown eyes staring AS up and down when he was with me.

AS and I didn’t talk much during those 36 hours. I put on a happy façade though I just wanted to constantly vomit; no one suspected anything. The night before we were scheduled to leave, we separated ourselves from Renee and went to a party on the beach. Yet just like an annoying zit on your chin, Renee and the rest of the team showed up. I watched her like a hawk, hoping she’d keep her distance from me. AS never told her once to stay away. Shameless people, however, have no boundaries—within minutes she’d bring drinks from the bar to peddle off to AS or try to engage him in conversation.

Maturity and taking the higher road sure is a bitch: the last 24 hours of playing the Stepford wife had been killing me. I felt suffocated in my own body, wanting to tear my skin off and run. So that is exactly what I did—well, the running part. Like a bad Jennifer Aniston movie, I found myself at 1am sprinting down the beach towards my shack in tears as AS’s ass lagged behind, yelling for me to stop. Stop? I wanted to drown.

Hell froze over and Sunday finally rolled around and it was time to catch our flight. As we joined the rest of the team to say our goodbyes, I stared directly at Renee and her hickey. The entire weekend of suppressing my urge to smack her across the face had manifested in my throat; I looked at her intently, smiled and declared loudly (in front of her bosses, coworkers, and naturally, AS), “Renee, I want to thank you for such an amazing weekend. Please tell your live-in boyfriend in Africa that I would love to meet him: it sounds like we’d have so much in common.”

Then I lit a cigarette and threw the match behind me as the entire shack burst into flames. Well, okay, I just stormed off. But later I found out that Renee burst into tears in front of her entire company, so that’s really just a legal way of doing the same thing.

Ultimately, reader, you guessed it (seriously, you guys are way smarter than me), AS and I broke up. He never once stood up for me during the entire experience and continued to fluctuate between ambivalence for his actions and pathetic groveling. His passivity was astounding, even during the breakup. It was a clean cut—no follow-up emails, no phone calls, no run-ins. It was so clean that it made me question if our entire relationship had actually occurred—overnight, all proof of its existence was wiped. To this day, I struggle, wondering if he ever loved me. I also wish I had said something sharper to Renee. Don’t you hate it when all of your great comebacks come to you hours later?

Maybe it’s the universe giving me an epically shitty breakup because I was deprived of partially shitty breakups throughout college. Maybe it’s fate intervening to keep me from wasting more time with such an immature child. Regardless, at the end of the day, it’s science telling me that I at least deserve a better travel partner.

What did I learn from this breakup and relationship? Always keep his hard drive of movies.

Recently, a mutual friend drunkenly told me that he saw Facebook photos of AS gorilla-trekking in Uganda… presumably gifting Renee more hickeys.  My thoughts on that? Well, some species haven’t evolved like the rest of us.