Of course I didn't want to believe it could be happening again, but there was a huge difference between my reaction the first time NC was broken, and the second. The first, I was frozen. The second, I was steamed.

I took care not to fly off the handle. Before I did any more confronting, I started finding out what I could. I had been checking his phone and email quite often, but started branching out a little. First, I called the phone company and established that it was not possible to block the phone in that way. I knew he would try every which way to Sunday to wiggle out of this, and was still under the mistaken impression that I had to prove what he had done to him to be able to do something about it.

Yes, I needed to have a good idea what was going on, and not make wild accusations with no evidence, but I did not need to prove anything to him, as he already knew it was true.

I was very honored to have Lemonman take me briefly to task for hoping there might yet be some logical explanation that didn't involve AJ breaking his promises. He was perfectly right: I had to face that all those promises I had put so much faith in, though they were sincere at the time, were now worth squat.

Once I had fully accepted that, it was fairly easy to proceed with planning and figuring. My love was at such a low level that I achieved near Vulcan-like detatchment.