If you ask me what the most frustrating misunderstanding has been in my life, I’d have to say it’s connected to my first engagement and the dissolution of the relationship.

Once upon a time I was engaged to a warm, funny, creative man, who was a big kid at heart. Everything seemed perfect; I’d known him since we were children, we’d lost touch, we met one another again, and things just happened. It was like a storybook.

Well, you know what happens in storybooks. There has to be conflict.

In our case, it came about gradually. In every relationship there has to be a realist, and in this one, I (alas) had to take the role. We had a few talks about the discomfort I was feeling about being the one in charge all the time, and they always ended with a mutual promise to try to do better.

There were two friends I talked to about the increasingly bad feelings I was getting about the whole thing, one a man, one a woman. The woman ended up being so catty about it that I stopped hanging out with her. The man, on the other hand, was an excellent sounding board, who listened without making the “this is what you should do” mistake. He was a member of the wedding party, so as he heard my worries he’d check in with my fiance to get his side of things. My fiance assured him that everything was dreamy and perfect, and our mutual friend had to walk a fine line between supporting me and delicately encouraging my fiance to examine the relationship.

Eventually I realised that the imbalance couldn’t continue, and we had a final talk where I revealed that I couldn’t do it, and he (to my utter, utter surprise) agreed, having finally understood that we were missing a certain je ne sais quoi that he’d seen in another couple whose wedding he’d only recently attended.

If life were truly a storybook, this is were the end would be, and we all would have lived happily ever after.

However, being human, suspicion and petty jealousies began to develop. I hang out with guys; I always have. My best friends have always been male. Well, as soon as the decision to cancel the wedding had been made public, people started to talk. No one could possibly leave such a terrific man, such a perfect relationship; I must have been lured away. And of course, it must have been that guy I was spending time with – our mutual friend.

I was furious. It’s a terrific way to be absolved of any blame – don’t squash the rumours that your girl was stolen by a good friend. The horrible thing is that the more people would sympathise with him about it, the more I think my ex-fiance started to really believe it. Things went downhill from there.

It didn’t help the rumours that a year later, our mutual friend proposed to me, and we’ve now been happily married for four years. My ex is about to be united in blissful matrimony himself, to a girl who everyone says is an excellent match, and I’m thrilled for them both. She’s getting a fantastic guy, and she’d darned well better treat him right.

Our circles started to grow apart, and I don’t see him often now; mostly at parties once or twice a year. When we meet, we’re affectionate, and I’m always interested to hear from others how he’s doing. I regret the pain we both went through, pain which would have been a lot easier to bear and of a shorter duration if people hadn’t been just plain nasty and created those rumours. I don’t think either of us would alter the choices we made, though. I married the right guy. To my utter disgust, however, the girl-stealing story is still believed by people we meet who know my ex-fiance. We rise above it, though. We know the truth.

And the truth, quite simply, is that my husband is the most honourable man I’ve ever met, as well as being my best friend.