My young sons loved my new partner. Then I had to tell them she’d left

I told my two boys at the breakfast table – their last morning with me for a week – that we’d decided to end our relationship. I said it was her choice and it was the right one. Helping the youngest dress, getting teeth brushed, lunch boxes in bags, I said their dad was feeling sad, but I was okay, and everything would be alright.

Here was their lesson about love and rejection, about dignity and respect, all delivered, with a hug and a kiss, before a Friday school drop-off.

A few months earlier, it’d started in a whirlwind. She’d come into my life unbidden: with an email, an introduction, an invitation, of sorts.

I was flattered. I googled her name. Everything about her was remarkable, her achievements, what she did, who she was. In the shop-front window of a digital existence, here was the woman of my dreams.

Within a few weeks, we’d mapped out how two lives might entwine. We’d travel through the south of Spain together – I’d find the money – and why not get married (a novel enterprise for us both), and she told of a silk dress she had waiting for the occasion.

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There was a garrulous election night party at her place, and I invited my two oldest friends, their partners (if she was to know me, best start at the beginning). There was a lost weekend down the coast – dear friends lent us keys to their house – and we ate hot chips by the sea, and walked, cooked, read, made love, and it was wonderful. For the briefest time, our lives were simpatico. She was five years older, but in the differing life expectancies between the sexes, that gap brought us only closer together. We toyed with the idea of building a house together – our bedrooms would be at either ends, a shared space between.

My two boys met hers and were smitten. They asked often after them, after her, asked when we were next visiting. She was the first new partner I’d introduced them to, and they liked her, her generosity, liked the idea of us being together, of their dad happy.

Then, bit by bit, it waned. Reasons why and how don’t really matter. We live only once, and need to be true to ourselves, with who we are, what we want. She withdrew her love – slowly, respectfully – decided I was not for her, and all I could do was accept her choices, with grace, with humility.