When my fiance broke up with me, he said my moods were to blame

Love may be blind, but getting dumped is a real eye-opener.

When my fiance broke up with me, he said my moods were to blame. “It’s like you’ve got constant PMT.” He didn’t seem to think my blues had anything to do with the fact that I’d recently found him face down, naked, on my flatmate. It was a stinking hot Sydney summer and the cockroaches were running riot. I’d gone out to buy roach spray and got back early. Clearly I should have fired the nozzle straight at them.

Desolation clung to me like a wet shower curtain. Well-meaning friends set me up on so many blind dates I should have been given a free dog. Desperation can force a girl to scrape the bottom of the biological barrel … which is how I ended up dating the lactose-intolerant, anally retentive oboe player who wouldn’t tongue kiss because he was vegetarian. (The trouble with ’80s relationships was not women faking orgasms, but men faking foreplay). Not to forget the guy I went out with because he was such an animal lover … until I found out he was on parole for it. I began to think the police would have to put out a chastity alert on me – “Not Wanted. Dead or Alive.”

An island affair only lasted as long as the holiday, but it recharged my self-esteem.

My sisters shouted me a holiday to New Caledonia. “Club Med patrons are so hot to trot, they join the Mile High Club just as soon as the air steward switches off the ‘you may now unfasten your pants’ sign!’” they assured me.

But the resort proved full of married couples and gay guys. Lying alone in a hammock designed for two at an exotic beach resort, you start to feel about as valued as a giveaway shampoo sachet in a fashion magazine. I was clearly as sexually attractive as a half-thawed rissole. There’s a lot to be said for celibacy, and most of it begins with “Why me?” But just when I was about to impale myself on my swizzle stick – I saw him.

Lette on her New Caledonian holiday.

The love god lying supine by the pool had serious pecs appeal. His shoulders were so broad I’d be able to shelve all my holiday reading right there, on him, from Jane Austen to Emile Zola. Every woman within a 10-kilometre radius watched as he caressed his chiselled abs with sunscreen, factor lust.

But how to catch his attention? Perhaps on the dance floor? Which is how I soon found myself scraping all the skin off my nose on a glitter ball, as only a girl who has necked four Cosmopolitans can. I was obviously thinker than I drrrunkkk I was. Some women play hard to get, well, I was playing hard to want. And probably would have remained that way, except for the timely arrival of a tempestuous tropical storm.

Rain sluiced sideways onto the poolside dance floor. Seeking shelter, we found ourselves thrown together in a cabana. When I realised I was marooned for the storm’s duration with the love god, I smiled so hard I pulled a muscle. And when he kissed me, I was so high above cloud nine that I was waving to the space station. It was a kiss like liquid caramel.

“Hey, I’m new here. Would you mind directing me to your hotel room?” I murmured.

Jason wasn’t my type – his tattoos were probably his only reading material – but it was a hard concept to explain to my libido, which was like a crazed animal hurling itself against the bars of its cage.

The affair only lasted as long as the holiday, but it recharged my self-esteem. When I got home my ex suggested we become “friends with benefits”. I replied that he was right about my mood swings; I did have PMT – Pre Monogamy Tension. The cure? To never go out with a gaslighting manipulator again. That summer changed everything, because I learnt how to get rid of cockroaches – just tell them you want a long-term relationship.

Kathy Lette’s latest bestseller, The Revenge Club is out now.

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