It comes as no real surprise to me to realise how my perspective on relationships has been shaped to a considerable extent by the influence of my parents. While I won't enter into a full scale analysis of them as individuals or their relationship, suffice to say that my parents were not good role models and their relationship a fractious one entered into on rather tenuous grounds. Upon such shaky foundations, my father, a frugal and self-centred man, and my mother, a narcissistic depressive, inveterate liar and philanderer, conducted the kind of unhealthy coupling one might expect considering their respective personality traits. Amid the chaos, three children were born to them, with the first two, my elder sister Dee and I, witnessing on a regular basis the inevitable fallout of a relationship characterised by unrequited love and unmet needs. Regrettably, they both brought fractured characters into their relationship with exactly the same needs, with my father looking to my mother to fulfil his and my mother looking anywhere else but to him for her fulfilment.

Suffice to say that while not setting a positive example of a loving relationship characterised by kindness, mutual respect and understanding, my parents' tempestuous coupling provided an excellent example of what an inherently unhealthy relationship looks like and something to avoid at all costs. However, I've come to understand how unrealistic avoidance is, considering how many people with whom I've crossed paths remained adversely affected by unmet childhood needs. In my own experience of having grown up around two people looking outside for the fulfilment of their needs with little consideration for those of their children, I've come to realise how certain needs are self-fulfilling while there are those that can only be met in conjunction with others. Furthermore, I've come to appreciate how the most fraught and fractious relationships and experiences of my life have often provided the best learning opportunities.

Looking back on my childhood, I recall having an incessant urge to seek the affection and attention of my school friends' mums. In retrospect, I recognise my behaviour as an attempt to fulfil an unmet need. Considering their eager reciprocation, I suspect my friends' mums picked up on my need which in turn triggered their maternal instincts. Consequently, I quickly attached myself to them in order to meet the need for their care and attention. This inclination continued into adulthood where I found myself attaching quickly to someone in order to fulfil a need without due consideration of their character and respective needs. Realistically, I can't be too hard on myself as I don't think many people in the throes of youthful impulses tend to consider such things. Consequently, many find themselves in a succession of dalliances and short-lived experiences beset by strife born of the perception of unmet needs and expectations. It's only as I've grown older that I've considered more at length the type of person I am, the kind of needs I have, which of my needs are self-fulfilling and which can only be met by others. Likewise I'm now inclined to consider more carefully what kind of character my partner is, which of their needs are self-fulfilled and which do they look to me to fulfil.

Yet, even a reasonable understanding of my own character and needs in addition to those of my partners hasn't enabled me to avoid conflict in relationships, particularly romantic ones. I've come to reason that key to cultivating a healthy relationship from the outset is an openness as to my character and needs, recognising when someone is capable of meeting them and whether I am capable of meeting theirs. So, to my parents' turbulent example characterised by unmet needs and expectations, I add my own. In doing so I give credit to my parents, something I rarely do, for it is partly on account of their own unhappy example that I found myself able to navigate arguably the most challenging relationship of my life outside that with my mother. Unfortunately, I'd been duped before, most notably by Warren, and I would again during the summer of 2011 following a meeting with another American working in London. Unlike Warren, this man was immediately charming and confident with the kind of broad, luminescent smile that would've given The Bee Gees a run for their money, however, like Warren, a deeply troubled person lay behind it.

Come the summer of 2011, a period of almost five years had passed since my relationship with Gavin had broken down. Since then, fear of pushing away and hurting another innocent person left me far too wary to enter into another relationship and I didn't trust myself enough to do so. However, come August of that year, at the age of thirty-eight, I began chatting online to a forty-seven year-old man with whom the conversation seemed to flow effortlessly as a result of which I started to gain some of my confidence back. In order to protect this man's identity, I shall refer to him as “Chuck”. While “Chuck” was not his real name, the name Chuck used to introduce himself to me was not his real name, either, but an Americanesque play on his middle name. Meanwhile, his family and those who worked with Chuck referred to him by his real first name. Consequently, whenever in their company I found myself referring to him by his real first name. While I'm sure there was no attempt to deceive, even his ex-wife remarked to me a few years later that she couldn't understand why he did that.

In order to gain a better sense of the enigmatic Chuck, I shall describe his background as related to me by him during our first date and subsequently. The accuracy of his recollections were later confirmed to me by two of his sisters. Born in Arizona in late 1963 into a Mormon family, Chuck was the ninth of ten children. Serving as perhaps his most painful childhood memory, Chuck explained that his mother revealed to him at a young age how she didn't want him. Cruelly, she went on to disclose that upon learning she was pregnant with him, in order to induce a miscarriage she would roll around on her belly. As if this weren't shocking enough, she also revealed to him how she didn't love her husband, Chuck's father, and reserved her true affections for her husband's brother.

Furthermore, Chuck stated feeling that nothing he did was ever good enough for his mother. Nonetheless, desperate for both her attention and approval, Chuck would spend the rest of her life trying to please his mother, despite her continual put-downs and openly favouring his younger sibling. Therefore, the confession to me of his elder sisters a few years later of how their mother “...fucked them all up…” came as no surprise. Considering my experience with my own parents, it wasn't difficult to understand how these early interactions with his mother and his unmet childhood needs shaped the man he'd become.

Furthermore, the rejection so deeply felt by Chuck as a child would not be confined to his mother. In addition to a brutal description of how severely his father would physically chastise him and his siblings, he would suffer the kind of rejection to rival that of his mother many years later at the hands of the Mormon church. As a devoted follower of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the early 1980s would see Chuck travelling to France to attend his mission. A Mormon right of passage, the mission involves the fledgling missionary, typically in their late teens or early twenties, leaving their families for a period of two-years and travelling to a designated location anywhere in the world to evangelise Mormonism. Prior to their posting, young missionaries attend their local training centre where those who are being posted to a non-English speaking location attend intensive language immersion classes. In order to maintain their focus and avoid any outside distractions, a Mormon mission is characterised by strict routine and limited contact with the missionary's family.

With Chuck and his family's culture and beliefs firmly rooted in their Mormonism, Chuck worked his way up the ranks to become a bishop at his local church. However, his relationship with the church would soon be torn apart following his disclosure of the kind of internal struggle so at odds with established doctrine that he was at once cast out by the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, shunned by the local Mormon community and suddenly at odds with his family.

In the meantime, the already burdened man of the cloth received the kind of life changing news that would affect his health, his character and his future relationships. The late 1990s would see Chuck diagnosed with the degenerative neurological condition Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Severely impairing vision, coordination and movement, the effects of MS on the central nervous system also have consequences for cognition and the afflicted individual's emotional state. Severe episodes can often leave the sufferer requiring hospital treatment and strong medications which in themselves can lead to severe physical and emotional side effects.

Despite the impact of being raised by an unloving mother and stern father against a backdrop of strict religious observance and debilitating health issues, Chuck worked his way up to one among a number of vice-presidents of a global hotel chain. His success would bring him to London in June, 2011, to live and work and it was there that we eventually met on the August Bank Holiday Monday. I say eventually owing to the fact that we began talking online at the beginning of August at which point he revealed being recently divorced and with five children, three of whom were staying with him for the month of August before returning to the family home in Las Vegas.

So, no sooner had Chuck's children departed than we arranged to meet late afternoon in front of the Eros statue at Piccadilly Circus in central London. Coming up to teatime that day, I headed into the city to meet the handsome bald-headed blue-eyed man in the photograph he'd sent me earlier that month. Aware of the fact that this was my first proper date since the breakdown of my relationship with Gavin, I reached the Eros statue where I waited with a sense of excitement tempered by trepidation.

With the agreed meeting time having passed I sat down on the steps of the statue's north side and watched the world go by. Just then, in the distance among a sea of feet, I caught a glimpse of a pair of pointed grey leather shoes headed in my direction. Having stood up again, I suddenly caught sight of a bright bald-head reddened by the summer sun moving hastily towards me, leaving scraggy pigeons scrambling left and right as if to clear his path. Wearing a casual grey blazer over a turquoise coloured plunge neck t-shirt and dark skinny jeans, he spotted me and immediately quickened his pace. Upon reaching the steps, Chuck extended his hand and smiled broadly with teeth so luminously white I could almost see my own reflection in them. From there we headed the short distance to Soho, walking and talking freely as we went.

Making the most of the balmy August evening, we ventured to Soho Square to a bar called The Edge, one of London's oldest gay bars. After having found a table for two outside and ordered our drinks, we sat down and continued our conversation. Just then, a familiar feeling stirred inside me, the need to feel truly relaxed, the need to feel safe, the need to know I wasn't sitting opposite another Warren or, worse still, my mother. In an attempt to relieve my fear and as a means to sketch Chuck's character, I found myself doing what I so often did when meeting new people, particularly in the context of a date, and began to scattergun questions at him. Despite Chuck's admiring glances and intermittent flashes of that winning smile, I assailed him in such a way that he could be forgiven for regarding the evening as akin to a job interview, rather than a date.

Amid my assault, and not for the first time that evening, someone passed our table before stopping to ask if we had any spare change. Explaining how he was street homeless and needed money to get to a refuge, the unkempt young chap turned his focus to me as I switched my scattergun questioning to him. At that time I had been working with a Westminster based community drug project and, summoning all my local knowledge, I launched into drug assessment mode while Chuck looked on approvingly. While I had not contrived my interaction with the man as an opportunity to woo Chuck, wooed he appeared to be, with the coup de grâce delivered the moment I handed over my oyster card to our new friend, advising him that the card had enough credit on it to see him safely to the nearest refuge.

Incidentally, It wouldn't be lost on me that in our subsequent interactions when out and about in central London, Chuck would also practice random acts of kindness on people in apparent difficulty or need, for example, purchasing a ticket for an elderly lady struggling to operate a London Underground ticket machine and escorting someone seemingly lost to their destination personally rather than give directions and leave them to walk off in a state of confusion to find their own way.

It was during these initial moments that Chuck disclosed what he wanted me to know about his past. His revelations aside, the person he presented and the man I perceived in the beginning appeared stable, wise, confident and self-assured. In addition, the magnetism and energy he exuded created the impression of a powerful character, which only added to his appeal and allure. Furthermore, the Zen Master like calmness about him and the sense that nothing seemed to phase him led to me eventually letting down my guard and allowing him in. In the spirit of openness and transparency, I made a point during our first trip abroad together a few weeks later to reveal important aspects of my past and their influence on my character. Moreover, I went to explain how although past adversity had influenced my sense of self-reliance, I retained a sense of feeling fundamentally broken. However, over the seven years that followed I'd come to realise how much more open about my character I had been than Chuck. Likewise, I'd eventually learn, considering his family's dysfunction and rejection coupled with relationship breakdown and long-term debilitating illness, what it meant to be truly broken.

While Chuck had begun his relocation to the UK with a brief stay in Uxbridge, it wasn't long before the lure of city life proved irresistible and three months later he moved to Central London. No more than two months had passed following his move into a one-bedroom ground floor flat in Marylebone before I'd join him. By this time I had transferred to Surrey Drug Intervention Program (DIP) and commuted by car each day from Central London to their office in Leatherhead. Prior to his move, Chuck intended to enjoy city life to the full and eschewed cooking in favour of regular visits the short distance away to the nearby restaurants on St. Christopher's Place.

Considering Chuck's charm and charisma, I expected him to seek out more finer dining options, instead of which he tended to prefer cuisine akin to home cooked food. Consequently, we found ourselves making regular pilgrimages to the flagship branch of Spanish tapas chain La Tasca to enjoy their mouth-watering tapas, paella and red wine. While Chuck earned the kind of salary that enabled him to eat out night after night, I did not. However, as a dutiful son, husband and father, he saw himself as a perpetual provider. Whether just the two of us or with his friends, wherever we went, he always took it upon himself to settle the bill, often doing so on the pretext of going to the toilet. Yet, what appeared initially to be acts of selflessness I would come to interpret decidedly differently in the future.

For now, while enjoying the advantages of living so centrally right behind Oxford Street, Chuck and I often took the back streets wherever we went to avoid the constant hustle and bustle. Being from the American south-west, Chuck craved the kind of Mexican food he'd been used to at home. Therefore, we'd often find ourselves at weekends in the Mexican restaurants of Soho and Covent Garden gorging on fish tacos, enchiladas and chimichangas. With Chuck's days of Mormon teetotalism firmly behind him, we often washed down our Mexican fayre with a pitcher of frozen classic margarita.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it would be the public ridiculing of his former faith which brought Chuck the greatest pleasure of London. Consequently, we spent many a weekend falling out of a Mexican restaurant and into the matinee or evening performance of theatre production The Book of Mormon. A musical satire of the lives of Mormon missionaries in Uganda, The Book of Mormon provided the kind of irreverent mocking of his former faith that Chuck likely found cathartic, with his guffaws at gags we'd come to know so well among the most raucous in the auditorium. Chuck's taste in theatre shows was for the most part restricted to musicals, with the hit show 'Jersey Boys' another firm favourite.

Aside from a few incidents during that first year likely born of an unresolved insecurity, life with Chuck during this time felt both adventurous and exciting. Having become sufficiently attached to Chuck, I took the opportunity in summer of 2012 of popping the question, to which he turned me down. Despite declining my hand, the degree of Chuck's attachment to me was such that when not at work he wanted to spend every waking minute with me. Furthermore, he seemed to want or indeed need me to feel the same way about him. While I didn't need to spend every waking minute with Chuck, I certainly wanted to spend most of my time with him while making as much time for others in my life as I possibly could. Being as independent and self-reliant as I perceive myself to be, I have never been the type to clear the decks of my friends the moment I enter into a relationship. However, not until sometime after we were eventually married would the extent of the disparity between our individual needs and expectations become apparent, leading to the kind of conflict that would threaten to destroy our relationship. In the meantime, following my acceptance of Chuck's proposal to me during a trip to Paris two months prior, on a rainy Friday in October 2012, we were married in the presence of a few friends and relatives at The Old Marylebone Town Hall. Having begun to venture out of London more frequently at the weekend and with Chuck's head office based in Buckinghamshire, in March, 2013, we moved to nearby Gerrards Cross. There, we rented a flat in an art deco style development by the name of Bulstrode Court. The following month we enjoyed a delayed honeymoon in The Maldives before settling back into our respective roles, me working in domiciliary care and Chuck continuing to travelling all around Europe in a new amalgamated position within upper management.

The demands of his role were such that Chuck could spend half his working week on a plane and during busier weeks had meetings scheduled in many different European countries. Unfortunately for him, Chuck was not a confident flyer and attributed a subsequent bursting of his eardrums, which led to him needing bi-lateral hearing aids, to the relentless air travel. Amid all this he still had to manage the debilitating effects of MS, with cramping episodes so severe he would be left vomiting and in intense pain. Indeed, the severity of his leg cramps were such that I could effectively knock on his calf muscles as if knocking on a solid wood door.

With the intensity and frequency of such episodes increasing, so did Chuck's dependency and reliance on me, which at that point seemed both understandable and manageable. His disclosure around this time of how he had sought to sabotage our relationship during our first year together led me to conclude that his growing dependence owed as much to his deeply rooted insecurity and a fear of rejection as it did to the progression of his MS. Nonetheless, I considered it my duty, my obligation and my pleasure, given the financial imbalance in our relationship, to care for him, keep house and drive his family members around England and Continental Europe whenever they came to visit, which they frequently did.

Furthermore, in an attempt to try to manage his MS symptoms, Chuck and I made regular forays to Amsterdam where he could partake of legal cannabis. While the consumption gave Chuck much needed respite from the advent of vicious cramps, the period of relief it provided grew less. Consequently, what started out as approximately six weeks between cramping episodes gradually reduced to two to three weeks between them. Prior to our move to Buckinghamshire, Chuck had also begun to experience an increase in macular degeneration, another MS symptom, which affected his peripheral vision and left him requiring glasses. As if this were not enough to contend with, he'd also have to endure a constant all-over sensation of pins and needles and the feeling that his feet were on fire. Following the severest exacerbation yet in the summer of 2015, Chuck would find himself in treatment under a neurological consultant at Charing Cross hospital in west London. The events leading up to his eventual crash were, with hindsight, eminently predictable while his career hung in the balance.

For a variety of reasons, I confess to having had long periods of estrangement from certain relatives. I use the term relatives and not family as, owing to this estrangement, I have sought and found a greater sense of family among my friends than among my relatives. However, not long after meeting Chuck, and after a long period of estrangement with my younger sister, I reconciled with her who following the birth of her first child. To a great extent our reconciliation had been prompted by the news that not long after giving birth, her partner had left her. Feeling a sense of obligation to support her and her newly born daughter, Chuck and I began to make regular trips between Gerrards Cross and Kent.

Coinciding with our forays to Kent, at the request of a former colleague from my days at Greenwich DIP, I accepted a role as team leader for a drug treatment program based in HMP Thameside in south-east London. Feeling sufficiently re-energised following some time away from drug treatment and with a desire to contribute more financially to my relationship, I accepted the role, despite the almost two-hour commute into and across Central London to Plumstead. Although I confessed to Chuck to feeling a little weary of the daily commute, being in my early forties and in reasonably good health at the time I saw no reason not to continue.

Therefore, I am unable to account for the reasoning behind Chuck's suggestion at this point that we relocate to Kent. Having ingratiated himself with my siblings and my friend, Michelle, and knowing the affection in which I held the county in which I'd spent some of my childhood, I can only conclude that Chuck wanted to recreate a sense of family for us there and enjoy the gratification of being the one responsible for bringing me back home to Kent. However, regardless of my affection for Kent, I had no overwhelming desire to live there again and instead suggested that if he wanted us to relocate, we choose somewhere equidistant to our respective places of work so neither of us would have to endure an arduous commute.

Crucially, both this next move and the one following would signal a dramatic change in our fortunes. Unbowed, Chuck continued to insist that we move to Kent, so move we did, in March, 2015, to a village called Meopham in the north-west corner of the county. Effectively transferring the burden from me to him, my journey into work was comparatively easy whereas Chuck spent a lot of time stuck in traffic on the M25. Consequently, this led to him having to get up earlier or stay at work later to avoid the rush. No longer than four months had passed before the strain of travel took its eventual toll on the already compromised Chuck and the inevitable crash came, literally, one afternoon while leaving Meopham train station where he blacked out while reversing his car and smashed into a station bollard.

Following his blackout, Chuck's consultant neurologist informed him that his latest brain scan revealed a new lesion on his brain stem and how if medical retirement from his job was an option, he should seriously consider taking it. With the writing seemingly on the wall, Chuck took a medical leave of absence and considered his long-term options. However, he wouldn't have to wait too long for inspiration. Whether by chance or fate, one afternoon while convalescing on the sofa at home, he and I were sitting watching television when on came a Channel 4 programme entitled 'A Place in the Sun'.

Piquing our interest from the outset, this particular episode featured the southern Spanish region of Andalucia and a small rural mountain village by the name of Galera. The uniqueness of Galera, and other surrounding villages in that area, lay in the fact that the majority of home owners lived in caves. To my expressed surprise to learn of these modern day cave dwellers, Chuck remarked how there were areas of his home state of Arizona where people still lived in caves. Eager to learn more about the mysterious village of Galera, I went on YouTube where I found a video of a man riding a motorbike around the village with a camera attached to his helmet.

With sustained intrigue, we watched as the man wound his way around narrow hillside streets populated by clusters of cave homes, with their whitewashed exteriors and mediaeval looking doors and windows. With our appetites sufficiently whetted by this first person perspective, we wanted to see this rural Spanish utopia, which resembled what you'd likely get if you crossed Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' with 'The Flintstones', for ourselves. So, with Chuck on indefinite sick leave, within two weeks we found ourselves standing inside a cave home and marvelling at the white plastered walls, Moorish detailing of the tiling and light fixtures in addition to their characteristic wood burning stoves. No more than another two weeks had passed following our return to the UK than we were the proud owners of a cave home at the top of Galera with panoramic views across the valleys and mountains beyond. While we'd initially intended to use our new cave home as a bolt-hole, a few days later a call came from Spain which would dramatically alter our plans.

Considering the number of emails we'd exchanged over the previous month with the British owner of the Galera estate agent and his Spanish speaking British assistant, we though nothing of it when the phone rang one particular day. With great excitement in her voice, the assistant, a gummy-smiled girl in her thirties named Ailis, proceeded to tell us that the business lease on the village hotel, imaginatively named Hotel Galera, was up for sale and asked if we were interested in purchasing it. For the sake of context, we had originally been booked into 'Hotel Galera' during our first trip to the village. However, upon our arrival Ailis informed us that the owner had cancelled our reservation which left her scrambling to find us last minute accommodation.

Furthermore, Ailis explained how in order to keep his costs down, the current owner only opened on sporadic days and how the hotel was closed more often than it was open. To Chuck's disclosure that he had extensive hotel management experience, Ailis responded that he should consider running it, unaware of how foretelling her off-hand comment would be. Following Ailis' declaration over the phone to us that day of how the hotel was “a goldmine”, and along with her offer to co-manage it alongside us, during the last week of November, 2015, Chuck and I boarded a ferry at Portsmouth bound for Santander. With little more than three weeks worth of Spanish self-tuition in my case and little more in Chuck's, nine hours later we arrived in Galera.

Although it was difficult to see how a ten-bedroom hotel set in a rural village surrounded by mountains and farmland could be considered a goldmine, we headed towards Galera with the expectation of a better quality of life and a renewed sense of purpose for Chuck who, by this time, had taken medical retirement. Little did we know then that rather than signalling the start of a new life for us, Galera would in fact turn out to be the beginning of the end.

The seeds of our demise were sown early on and were manifold. Chief among them were Chuck's insistence that the hotel be run in a relaxed manner. Having grown to dislike the rigidity of corporate structure, Chuck desired a working environment free of the constraints of the corporate world. While Chuck's wishes were understandable, this decision would lead in the future to chaos and confusion. For now, his running of the kitchen enabled him to display his culinary expertise in Mexican and Thai food, while alongside a petite and delightful flame-haired villager by the name of Rosario, I ran the hotel bar. As for Ailis, having hailed from a catering background, she flitted effortlessly between the two. Eager to provide some villagers with jobs, Chuck employed two additional cooks along with a part-time cleaner. While providing jobs to locals was all very well, the expenditure of additional wages and social security payments far exceeded our early revenue and we soon found ourselves drawing from our savings. Despite Chuck's prediction that, rather than a goldmine, at best the hotel might turn out to be little more than an expensive hobby, it enabled him to do what he did best, and that was to play mine host.

Regardless of its origins, I suspect that at the heart of Chuck's desire to want to make others feel good was a deeply rooted desire at the very least to be liked and the very most to be adored, with the hotel floor providing the ideal stage upon which to demonstrate his talents. Whether Spanish or English, each guest who walked through the door would be greeted with equal ebullience as he declared each one in turn to be his favourite customers. Whatever his motives, I've no doubt it must've felt good to him to make others feel valued. Likewise for the objects of his adulation, it must have felt good for them, too. However, Chuck's generosity would not be restricted to praise and therein lay a caveat which sowed further seeds of discontent.

It goes without saying that while in business one must speculate to accumulate. How this maxim related our business concerned those among our patrons, typically British ex-pats, who had retired to Spain on the kind of pensions which were insufficient to sustain their new lifestyle and who expected the kind of freebies which Chuck appeared only too happy to supply. His desire to ingratiate himself with the locals meant the kind of compromise of his business nous that Chuck appeared only too happy to make. Furthermore, lacking any real business nous myself, it came as something of a surprise to me to have to point out to him how we were supposed to be running a business, not a charity, and that if he continued to give the goods away for free, people would come to expect it.

As for me, I had no such difficulty advising customers that of course they could have another tapas, as long as they bought another glass of wine or a beer. Likewise when it came to asking a drunk and abusive customer to leave before going hands-on when they refused to do so. Both occurrences had the consequence of pitting me against Chuck, thereby exposing the fundamental differences in our respective approaches to running the hotel. While I was all for dishing out additional free tapas, I remained alert early on to any potential “piss-takers” from Galera and the surrounding villages who came to make one or two drinks last the whole night while enjoying copious amounts of tapas. Regrettably, the rift beginning to open up between Chuck and I would not be restricted to the hotel.

Prior to our departure from the UK in November, 2015, the neurologist at Charing Cross Hospital prescribed Chuck a new course of medication called Tecfidera. A powerful medication designed to mitigate some of the more unpleasant effects of MS, Tecfidera was not without unpleasant side-effects of its own. Serving as a kind of double-whammy to MS related fatigue and nausea, Tecfidera caused fatigue and nausea of its own in addition to severe flushing. Indeed, there were a number of occasions while driving along in our car when I'd feel a sudden warmth on my arm. Glancing in Chuck's direction, I could see how his face and arms were beetroot red, giving him the appearance of someone about to combust.

Aside from the physical effects of Chuck's medication, coming to grips with his psychological presentation at that time would present the greatest challenge of our relationship. Harking back to those early days together, Chuck betrayed his insecurity and lack of trust with each occasion that he remarked on the amount of time while in his company I spent on my phone. In doing so he neglected to take account of the comparable amount of time he spent on his phone, without any criticism from me. It was not long after that before he began to look through my phone and iPad, both of which were not password protected, before questioning me on my search history. To this, I challenged him on why he felt the need to check my search history when I had given him absolutely no reason for suspicion.

Consequently, these occurrences, coupled with the disdain Chuck would often show whenever I did something that moved the focus of my attention away from him, led me to conclude that he expected to be the focus of my attention twenty-four seven and that I must also feel the same way about him. To deny him my constant attention would be interpreted to suggest that I didn't love him, and, if that were true, there must be someone else. It is apropos at this juncture to mention exactly what I pointed out to Chuck very early on, that having witnessed the impact on my father of my mother's philandering, I have never, nor would I ever, cheat on my partner.

Insofar as how all of this relates to his psychological presentation at the time, it is also worth noting that during my time with Chuck, both in the UK and Spain, other than when we were both working, very little of my time was spent outside his company. Furthermore, we were currently living and working in a rural area of Spain not known to be overly populated by other homosexuals, either male or female. Nonetheless, during this time Chuck began to double down on comments about how much time I spent on my phone, which more often than not consisted of updating the hotel's social media pages and seeking out ideas for theme nights, which involved purchasing costumes for the staff to wear. Moreover, on those occasions when in the throes of an MS episode Chuck was too poorly to make it out of bed, he would often criticise me for not coming straight home to him. Only on the odd occasion did I chose to stay behind for an hour to relieve some of the stress building within me in the hotel gym. Likewise stopping for a gin & tonic with an English couple we'd both befriended whose cave home was situated on the way to the Spanish farmhouse on the outskirts of Galera where Chuck and I now lived.

Confoundedly, for me a conundrum lay in trying to figure out to exactly what I could attribute the abrupt changes in Chuck's mood. To what extent were pre-existing insecurities a factor? To was extend was he merely displaying symptoms of his cruelly degenerative MS? Furthermore, what was also a side-effect of his powerful MS medication. Whatever the cause(s), the effects manifested themselves in mood swings and such volatility that I could make the most innocuous statement one day, only for it to pass without incident, yet make the same statement on a different day and all hell would break loose. Inevitably, this would lead to the kind of clashes during which I would state something only to have my words twisted and misinterpreted while Chuck would make a statement of his own which he would subsequently deny making. This powder-keg exploded into daily arguments which, instead of being restricted to home, would eventually spill over into our work. With the friction between us becoming apparent to those around us, while he may no longer have had many smiles for me, much like theatre, he certainly had them in abundance for the expectant public. As for me, I found myself becoming ever more stressed, irritable, and wary of falling into yet another depressive episode.

Notwithstanding the ever increasing friction between us, there were many days when, with Chuck too poorly to make it out of bed, I managed the hotel alongside Ailis, who also maintained her role in the estate agents. On those days when Ailis couldn't make it in, and with no prior experience in hotel management, I found myself running the hotel alone. As if the freeloaders were not enough, we were constantly beset by suppliers who supplied goods to the hotel and then expected immediate payment, despite their invoices stating that we had twenty-eight days in which to settle our account. Compounding matters, we had recently changed over to a different energy supplier following promises of cheaper bills, yet, when the new bills went through the roof so did my stress levels and after almost eighteen months I felt as though I'd reached breaking point. However, someone else beat me to it.

The saying goes that all things come in threes. Well, this would've been true if the impending upheavals were limited to just three. However, the first occurred in the Spring of 2017 during which Chuck suffered an MS related stroke which saw him hospitalised in nearby Granada followed by a period of convalescence. The advent of his stroke saw two of his sisters fly over from America to support with looking after him. Coincidently, it was during his period of convalescence that Chuck's sisters would witness for themselves the kind of emotional outbursts to which I'd been subjected and to which there would be no way to reason with him. Consequently, they put me in mind of the kind of mood swings to which I'd subjected poor Scott almost twenty years before. Serving to increase the intensity of these outbursts, his stroke also appeared to intensify his dependence.

The next blow, following Chuck's recovery from his stroke, came with the announcement from Ailis that owing to the amount of time spent working in the hotel, her family life had begun to suffer. Therefore, Ailis resolved to give up her role in the hotel and return to her estate agent job. This was perfectly understandable as Ailis, with a husband and two young daughters, had been burning the candle at both ends for a while. The third source of frustration was the time I spent engaging the services of an immigration lawyer to help process Chuck's application for leave to remain in Spain.

Alas, engaging a lawyer's services turned out to be the easy part. Indeed, I hadn't banked on the overly bureaucratic nature of the Spanish authorities and the time we'd spend travelling to and from Granada to attend interviews at the regional immigration office. The greatest frustration came following one particular interview during which we were turned away for bringing insufficient copies of our documents to then be told to come back another day. The onerous task of having the relevant documentation translated from English into Spanish and then officially certified presented its own challenges before we could even state Chuck's case, first to the local police in the nearby town of Baza, and then to the regional immigration authorities in Granada. Predictably, it took just one final argument one afternoon in July, 2017, during which I told Chuck how I'd reached breaking point, to which he replied that I was being a martyr, for me to finally snap.

Following our showdown, I informed Chuck that while I'd continue to support his application to remain in Spain, I could no longer live nor work with him. The following day, I moved my personal effects into the cave home of a British lady who offered beauty treatments at the hotel. Following this, I resolved with Chuck that whichever shift at the hotel he chose to work, I would work the opposite. Yet, when it became clear to me that these measures were not sustainable and how the tension between us was clearly too great to conceal from both staff and customers alike, I knew one of us had to go.

It would take one final confrontation at our home during which, as I went to leave, Chuck motioned towards the house in an attempt to remind me what I was about to leave behind, for me to realise that going was the right thing to do. I knew right there and then that no material object could induce me to remain in a relationship that had become so toxic, and in which I was always to blame by someone who never took any responsibility for any wrong doing himself. Furthermore, I had no more energy left to go on trying to satisfy the ever growing needs of my physically sick and emotionally dependent partner who, like my own psychologically damaged mother, had virtually brought me by now to my knees.

As I attempted to close the car door to leave, a tug-of-war ensued. After managing to shut the door, I drove off and turned the car around. With only one exit out onto the main street, this meant having to drive back past our house. Upon my approach, Chuck stood firm in the middle of the pathway. With little room to drive around him I mounted a bank in order to avoid him but in doing so I clipped him with the driver's wing mirror before hearing him cry out in pain. To my surprise, within minutes of arriving at my temporary address, a mutual friend of ours arrived following a report that I had deliberately run Chuck down. When I explained what had actually transpired, he proceeded to check over my car and remarked how he couldn't see any blood or signs of a collision!

While lying in bed at my elder sister Dee's Lincolnshire home in the days that followed, I stared at the ceiling while attempting to make sense of it all. Dissecting every moment with Chuck, I contemplated what I had or hadn't done to cause any of this and whether there was anything I could've done to change the outcome. Regardless of any wrongdoing on Chuck's part, I'd taken my marriage vows seriously and felt a sudden surge of disappointment in myself for having let him down. In addition, I found myself harking back to the time sixteen years prior when I laid in bed at the home of my younger sister and stared up at the ceiling in a similar state of numbness and confusion. However, for now I needed to heal and did so with the support of my sister Dee and her wife once I felt ready to leave the sanctuary of her spare room.

During the months that followed, I took a job in domiciliary care before progressing to live-in care, in which I worked a three weeks on three weeks off shift pattern. This arrangement lent itself to my reconciliation with Chuck during October, 2017. Despite Dee's reservations and the inherent challenges of being in a relationship with someone so physically unwell and emotionally dependent as Chuck, I reasoned, rightly or wrongly, that with us no longer working together in the hotel, which Chuck now managed alone with some help from Ailis, and with me away in the UK for three weeks at a time, both may well provide our relationship with the opportunity to mend. Alas, the ten months that followed revealed the damage to have already been done and our relationship beyond repair with each argument during which Chuck seized any and every opportunity to chastise me for having left him. Consequently, I would do so for the second and last time in August, 2018, which coincided with a visit to Galera from my friend Daniel and his young family.

Despite his attempts to re-engage with me, during the two years that followed, I'd have very little contact with Chuck except through our respective solicitors. With yet more rejection from me, I'd learn that following posts on social media by Chuck detailing my mistreatment of him, one person referred to me a “scum” while another reminded him of how much of a “wrong-un” they'd told him I was while another declared a willingness to punch me in the face if ever they saw me in the street. Of course, I could not have expected any different from those who'd only heard his side of the story, which he chose to make so public while I would never have dreamt of laying bear our relationship in such sordid detail at that time. Indeed, I have elected not to do so now and resolved to only go into the level of detail necessary in order to explain what led to my decision to leave; an explanation only I can give. The details of the most humiliating incidents I have elected not to share on the basis that I do not need to do so in order to illustrate precisely what led to our relationship breaking down and informing my belief that we were, fundamentally, incompatible.

Following a stressful and prolonged divorce drawn out over the best part of two-years, I gained a £23,000 settlement from Chuck, half of which went to my solicitor in legal fees. Owing to the associated stress of divorce I immediately became insulin resistant which resulted in almost overnight and seemingly unstoppable weight gain followed by sudden hair loss. However, as is the case with every challenging situation I've encountered, the knowledge I've gained from the experience more than makes up for anything I've endured or lost.

As a result, my relationship with Chuck has reinforced my belief in continuing to be open at the beginning of any new relationship about the kind of person I am and the needs I have, or lack thereof, while encouraging others to be open and honest about theirs. Only then can I be as sure as is possible to be of enjoying the kind of compatibility that will enable the relationship to truly thrive. Indeed, an over-reliance on one person to meet the unrealistic needs of the other is likely to lead to resentment followed by the kind of suffocating pressure which increases the likelihood of relationship breakdown, even in those cases where the person meeting those needs has their own innate need to be needed.

That said, I have to remain realistic and take into account variations in people's understanding of their own self-awareness, their insights into their needs and their willingness to be open about those needs of which they are aware. Undoubtedly, there will always be those who pretend to be something they're not or conceal something they are in order to secure a partner who then let the mask slip once their feet are firmly under the table. That's how I was duped and realistically I cannot rule this out from happening again depending on the type of person with whom I cross paths in the future.

Furthermore, among other lessons I've learned involve the importance of remaining boundaried, particularly with someone inclined to continually test them, in addition to how a person, or more to the point their brains, respond when they perceive their needs are not being met. In Chuck's case, as in my own, he had a right as a child to expect his parents to meet his needs. As an adult, the responsibility of recognising and addressing the long-term impact of his unmet childhood needs remains solely his. However, rather than fundamentally addressing his unmet needs and face up to his faults, it was easier to focus on what he perceived to be faults in me.

Indeed, Chuck spent a great deal of time during the more fraught periods in our relationship projecting the more unpleasant aspects of his character on to me and without any attempt at introspection. Consequently, I had judgements made about my character by him that I had never heard before or since from people who have known me for most of my life, who in turn heard things about me from him that they simply could not believe. At the root of the largesse and the rapid attachment was the need to have his needs met while at the root of the lashing out, the name calling and the undue blame was resentment born of the perception of my failure to meet those needs.

Regardless of any lasting impressions Chuck may have of me, I continue to respect myself as someone possessing a strong protective streak along with a tendency to provide for and support others in any way I can. Therefore, I considered it well within my capabilities when the time came to provide Chuck with palliative care. However, that task will now fall to someone else. Having, like Chuck, also had my childhood needs go unmet, I had some insight into how he came to be the person I eventually saw. However, no amount of insight would provide me with the fortitude sufficient to be able to contend with the pressure and expectation to meet his needs indefinitely. Stating to me on a number of occasions how his greatest fear was rejection, Chuck takes his place among those I have known in my life whose behaviour brings about the very situation they claim to fear. In a similar manner was his disregard of his previous disclosure to me of how the divorce rate in marriages to someone with MS stood at approximately seventy percent.

So, having avoided entering into another serious relationship since my divorce from Chuck, I remain content to continue to meet my own needs, in addition to those around me as best I can. Wherever Chuck is now and whatever he's doing I wish him well and trust he's happy, as he deserves to be. As for me, I am happy, as I deserve to be; happy with me and happy to take my place among every man for whom Chuck reserved the same high praise in order to secure their affections, that they were without exception the best man he'd ever met!