Rebecca has her illusions shattered by the break-up of a friend’s whirlwind courtship

A few weeks ago, I excitedly recounted the story of my best male friend falling head over heels in love and proposing to his lady within 10 weeks.

The whole episode left me very optimistic about this whole love fiasco.

I was buoyed by the simple romance of it. I was overwhelmed by the gorgeousness of it.

I was swept up in the old-fashioned innocence of it all.

One of my oldest friends was walking on cloud nine and I was enjoying the blue sky all around him. In short, everything was brilliantly bright in the Land of Cupid.

Fast forward four weeks.

It’s Friday evening and I’m enjoying a perfectly peaceful night with friends when I receive a text from my best friend.

“I’ve been dumped.”

“By whom? Or what?” I texted back, naively hoping one of his clients had decided against using him for a project.

“By my brand new fiancée,” came his response.”

It turns out that he hasn’t found his one true love after all.

He hadn’t even found his love of the year, given that their whole sorry affair lasted only four months.

While he was ill in another town it seems that she decided he wasn’t the one for her after all.

To her credit, I suppose, she did – in the same phone call – immediately offer to send him the three-diamond (and however-many-zeros) engagement ring back.

She has to post it to him, because they are unlikely to ever see one another again: she is now ignoring his ever-decreasing phone calls.

Over the past weekend, following several calls and messages between him and I – since friends are certainly not allowed to ignore calls at a time like this – I now understand the complete ins and outs of their entire story.

It goes like this: boy meets girl, they fall in love. He proposes, due to the overwhelming outpouring of romantic love he’d never felt before.

She accepts and they celebrate in style. Then she changes her mind. That’s it.

That’s the whole deal.

There’s no one else (that we know of).

There’s no good reason (she made some half-baked excuse about them being from different worlds, but Cinderella didn’t have this problem, and the poor girl couldn’t even buy her own shoes).

There was no good reason other than the change in her feelings. And this terrifies me.

So now he’s in pieces and worrying that his trust in love has been shattered for good, while I’m concerned that my enthusiastic optimism about innocent and true love has been similarly destroyed.

And all due to one lady I met twice. Damn.

Love is a funny thing. And sometimes, it’s a fickle little hussy.

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