I moved to Australia to be with my boyfriend, then he dumped me

Sarah*, 29, moved from London to Sydney to start a new life with a man she'd met on holiday there three months earlier, but as soon as she arrived, she realised it was a terrible mistake.

The date almost didn't happen. My friend Clare* and I were nearing the end of our two-week holiday in Sydney and had spent the day at a festival when we nearly missed the shuttle bus home.

Slightly out of breath, I found one of the last two seats left, looked up and I locked eyes with him. He was six foot, with sandy blond hair and a wide, open smile, and soon after dropping us all off in Circular Quay, under the pale light of the moon, Craig* and I swapped numbers.

When the text came the next day, asking if he could take me on a date before I left Sydney, I almost said no. I was due to fly home in a couple of days, but I was swayed by how easy it was. Unlike the myriad of men I had dated in London, his intentions were clear. He said he wanted to take me to watch the sunset over the city, so we agreed he’d pick me up the following afternoon after work, and that was that.

The night had an epic, almost cinematic gleam to it. We went to a park with views of the harbour, and I sat between his legs, his arms around my waist. We spoke about everything and nothing – what life was like living in Sydney and everything I’d done during my two-week holiday.

A whirlwind romance

We lamented that we hadn’t met sooner and when the next morning he suggested I cancel my trip to Queensland (where I was supposed to be staying with friends for a couple of nights) I immediately agreed to. I booked a new flight home for a week later and we spent the whole of the next week together.

I felt like I had found my soulmate, a man who brought out a side in me I didn’t know in London. The days were sticky with heat, the nights never long enough. When it was time to fly home, I was completely inconsolable. We’d gone for a final dinner overlooking the water in a restaurant in Manly, near where he’d taken me for our first date.

I reassured him that as soon as I was back in London, I would speak to my boss about doing my job remotely. Something – anything really – that meant I could come back to Sydney to be with him. He held my hand in his lap the whole way to the airport, and there was an Ellie Goulding song playing on the radio that for years to come I wouldn’t be able to listen to.

A life-changing decision

Back in London, life was miserable. Despite the endless discussions we'd had about me moving back to Sydney to be with him, the distance felt like a wedge in our relationship.

I booked a one-way flight to Sydney for three months later, and put his lessening contact down to work commitments and the time difference. But when he picked me up on the day I landed, there was an awkwardness in the air that hadn’t been there before, and I instantly knew I had made a mistake.

I tried to keep things going, desperate to prove that moving to the other side of the world for a man I barely knew wasn’t a mistake. He hadn’t completely checked out of the relationship, but he wasn’t entirely there either.

He was often unavailable, but when we were together, he was infatuated and affectionate, just as he had been all those months ago. He offered fleeting glimpses of what things could be like, and then would disappear for days at a time.

It was two months later when things ended for good. The news came via text – he was going travelling and would be flying to Berlin in a week. I cried all afternoon, leaving my bed only to dry-retch into the toilet. The shame was overwhelming, but there was also an odd sort of relief. My biggest fear had been realised, but at least there was no waiting for it anymore.

Break-up sex

I said I needed to see him before he left, and so we arranged to spend the night before he left together. In hindsight, it was perhaps an odd decision – to spend his final night in Sydney with him, knowing things were over between us. But I wanted some clarity over what had happened, and knew that in order to get any kind of closure on the situation I would need to have a frank conversation with him.

I asked how we found ourselves with me having moved to Sydney for him, only for two months later, him to be leaving me. He apologised, and explained that he felt a huge amount of pressure when I arrived in Australia. But there wasn’t much left to say, so instead we had fervent, frantic sex.

And the next day when he left, when he drove away from me in the cold quiet of the morning, I was at the airport all over again, watching him drive away from me down another street that would be added to the vault of Places That Reminded Me Of Him, except this time I knew he was really gone for good.

I look back on my time with Craig and the decision to move for a man I barely knew as both the most idiotic thing I’ve done – but also the bravest. Ten years on, I’m still here in Sydney, and happier than ever, living with my boyfriend, who makes me thank my lucky stars every day that I took a chance on a stranger, because, in a roundabout way, it led me to him.

*Names have been changed to protect identities.

Read more: All of Yahoo UK's How I was dumped stories.