JRMM (Anon)

I Dated My Dad's Partner's Daughter, and It Went Wrong. When I was ten years old, my parents were divorced. At that stage of my life, love was a strange concept to me, something I saw in movies but had never experienced.   Everything changed when my dad started dating a woman, whom we’ll call “the lady.” She had two children: a seven-year-old boy and her older daughter, Karen, who was eleven.   I met Karen for the first time during a chance encounter at the zoo, before our parents became a couple. She was a short girl with curly hair and brown skin. At that moment, to me, she was just another kid in the crowd. I never imagined our lives would become so intertwined.   Over time, my dad and “the lady” formalized their relationship, and our visits to their city became frequent. That’s when Karen stopped being a stranger and became someone special. At first, we were friends by circumstance, spending afternoons playing Wii and going on family outings. But little by little, I realized I was looking forward to those weekends just to be near her.   Three years of this routine passed. Our friendship had grown so strong that one day, in an act of courage (or perhaps naivety), I decided to confess my feelings to her. It didn’t go as I hoped. Karen rejected me, and the embarrassment led me to avoid her for a while.   The story took another turn when Karen and her family moved to our city. We started seeing each other more, and even though she began dating someone else during that time, our daily interactions kept a connection between us that never truly broke.   My own relationship didn’t work out either, and eventually, we were both single. That’s when our lives unexpectedly crossed paths again. Seeing her cry over her boyfriend made me feel jealous and, at the same time, gave me the strength to try again. I started winning her over with small gestures: food, thoughtful actions, words that sought to rekindle her feelings. Gradually, I won her heart.   For a while, everything seemed fine. At first, our relationship felt like a dream. But over time, the distance and conflicts started to wear us down.   The final blow came when I discovered Karen had created a new social media profile where I wasn’t added. She told me she “didn’t want to be with me anymore,” and although I tried to understand what had happened, she simply ended things without much explanation.   A few days later, through a friend, I discovered the truth: Karen had cheated on me. That discovery felt like a punch to the stomach, something I never imagined could happen.