The email I wish I'd never sent.We've all hit the 'send' button in anger then regretted it...but it cost one man the love of his life

By Pete Cashmore


Heartbroken: Pete Cashmore sent an emailing calling his ex girlfriend 'cheap' when he showed up at her place drunk and found she was with another man


Even now I can still remember the words of the email as clearly as if I’d only just written them. That night, I had typed in a frenzy of anger without thinking or pausing for breath.

‘Nicola,’ I began. ‘Well, I guess that shows me what kind of person you really are. I hope I never see you again, and had no idea that I had been going out with someone so cheap in the first place. Clearly I made the right decision when I kicked you into touch.


‘Well, you have fun with the poor new bloke, whoever he is. I’m off to find myself someone less plain than you — and maybe not so fat, as well. I need someone like you like a hole in the head.’

Then I clicked the ‘send’ button — and changed the path of my life for ever.

Most of us have done it; composed a hot-headed email or text in a fit of pique. Whether sent to an irritating friend, a work rival or a former lover, the fall-out can be painfully embarrassing and far-reaching.

Think of all those inappropriate comments, hidden away at the bottom of an email exchange, that have been picked up and circulated in the Press and around the world, and led to the shaming, even the dismissal, of the original sender.

Once an email or text is sent, there’s no calling it back, and for anyone who has experienced the lethal combination of emotional upheaval and excess alcohol, modern technology can be a malevolent foe — goading you into saying something that you shouldn’t.

Normally, you can smooth things over with an apology, but that email I sent didn’t so much burn the bridges of my relationship, as rig them with dynamite and obliterate them for good. And, tragically, the recipient was the first woman I loved.

Regret: Pete was ravaged by guilt and lost the love of his life (Posed by model)

For me, this deeply regrettable missive meant I would never win back the one person with whom I wished to spend the rest of my life. I’m not sure I can think of a more dire consequence.

I first met Nicola back in January 2003. She was everything I looked for — smart, funny, down to earth, elegant, and blessed with knock-out womanly curves. She was beautiful.

I was smitten from our first date, and got the very strong impression Nicola was, too.

We were together for six months of the spring and summer and most of them were idyllic moments — driving around London, laughing and lounging in her apartment’s garden eating late breakfasts or drinking wine in the sun.

She was perfect. Her friends seemed to like me, mine loved her — from her quirky humour to her competitiveness at our local pub quiz.

I could see our future panning out in front of me. I even started behaving like a regular grown-up, something to which I had hitherto been unused.

We babysat her neighbour’s infant many times, which even gave me a smidgeon of an idea what family life might be like. Heck, one day I even assembled a shed for her.

Eleven weeks after I met Nicola — and I know that everyone says not to do this inside of three months, but I did it anyway — I told her that I loved her and she reciprocated.

She wasn’t the first person I’d said the big three words to, but she was the one who really showed me what loving someone meant. Yes, she was The One. And then I messed it all up.

Relationships have rough patches and ours started five months in — petty rows, sniping, poor communication.

We went on a short break to Barcelona and it hadn’t lived up to expectations — she had wanted to visit art galleries whereas I’d have been happy sitting out in the squares drinking Rioja and eating tapas.

Now, the sensible thing to do is to weather these rough patches, talk it out, compromise. But I am not a sensible man.

My life outside of the romance was in a state of minor flux, with my 30th birthday and a new job in mainstream journalism imminent. Perhaps slightly overwhelmed by the possibility of ‘settling down’ to a lifelong commitment, I made the decision that still haunts me, several years later.

I ended my relationship with Nicola just short of the six-months mark. We both wept as I did so — which even then suggested I was making a terrible mistake.

Over the ensuing weeks, there were the occasional nights of intimacy into which many recently split partners lapse: a speculative text and soon we were in each other’s arms.

But we were never formally a couple again — so far as I understood it, there was a tacit agreement that we weren’t yet back in an exclusive relationship. I thought this suited me fine — I got to live the life of a bachelor again, but Nicola was still there or thereabouts.

Basically, I wanted to have my cake and still be able to sample other cakes whenever I liked. I guess I believed that however selfish I was, Nicola and I could and would pick up where we’d left off. . .

And then it happened. One night after a boozy session with colleagues, I was taking a cab back home when I thought it would be nice to visit Nicola. Drunk, uninvited, how could she resist me?

I knew that something was wrong as soon as she opened the door. For one thing, she didn’t let me in. ‘I’ve got someone here with me,’ she said.

And in that instant, I knew who that someone was, and what they were doing there.
I stormed away without another word, hopped into another cab.

How dare she? How dare she be the one to move on, to find someone new, to have the temerity to be with anybody other than me?

And how dare she betray the unspoken arrangement that we had of our together-but-not-togetherness?

By the time I got home, I had a head full of insults and spite and I intended to let her have it all.

I headed straight for my computer, and tapped it all out — three or four sentences of pure hateful poison in one email. I’d show her I didn’t need her.

Now, I’ve had some toxic email exchanges in my time — usually sparring with colleagues — but Nicola was different.

For one thing, I loved her with all of my heart but was just too stupid to realise it, and for another, she was completely blameless.

As early as the next morning, I knew I had done something terrible, but I had no idea the impact it would have on my life. I would become a living cautionary tale about the perils of the drunken email or text.

The sensible thing would have been to send her another email, apologising profusely for the awful things I had said, blaming it on the booze and the rejection; assuring her I meant none of it and wishing her the best with her new partner.

Of course, I didn’t do that. I just left it, and myself, to stew.

By the time she replied, four days later, I was so overcome with self-loathing that I couldn’t even bring myself to read it in case its contents made me feel worse — I just pressed delete.

I couldn’t, however, delete Nicola from my head.

Over the next few years, I came to realise the full extent to which I had messed up with her. Girlfriends came and went, every relationship coloured by the fact that they just couldn’t hold a candle to Nicola.

I was ravaged by guilt that I had been so horrible, angry at messing things up — I turned all that anger back on myself, and as a result, spent most of my early 30s hating myself. That wonderful life that I had envisaged with Nicola, one of love and family and contentment, was nowhere to be seen.

And when I joined Facebook, hers was one of the first names I searched for. Lo and behold, there she was, still beautiful.

Four and a half years too late, and as much to salve my own guilt as anything, I composed a heartfelt apology to Nicola, telling her that there hadn’t been a day since I’d last seen her when I hadn’t regretted what I had said and done, and that I would be thankful beyond words if she could find it within herself to forgive me.

Her response was brief, cold and heartbreaking — entirely appropriate, given the circumstances. It said: ‘You’re forgiven. Get over it. Have a nice life.’

Then she adjusted her Facebook settings to prevent me from ever contacting her again.

Well, I have tried to get over it; to have a nice life. But the guilt, self-hate, and the corrosive knowledge that I let someone special slip through my fingers is sometimes too much to bear.

And it all stemmed from that one drunken, wounded, idiotic email.

I don’t know if my life would have been different, happier, if I hadn’t sent that email — but I still wish I hadn’t, all the same.

So think about me, the next time your finger’s poised over the keyboard to send an intemperate email to a loved one. Think of me and remember: an email sent in an instant, can cause a lifetime of regret.



source:dailymail