'I broke up with the love of my life because he didn't want kids. Then I found out he was going to be a dad.'

I met *Ryan when I was 23. He was a 24-year-old surfer from Bondi, I was on the Sydney leg of a backpacking adventure with two fellow Brits.

Ours was a summer holiday fling that turned serious pretty quickly, and we fast became obsessed with each other. I'd never felt so sure that somebody loved me, he drank me in, and I him. The energy between us was palpable.

When it came time to move on to the next part of our travelling plans I was bereft. Leaving Ryan felt like a mistake. My friends gently dragged me, like a limp, wet rag up the east coast towards Byron Bay, trying their best to distract me from my misery.

But I was forlorn. After just three days I made the decision to head back to Bondi to see if this thing had the legs I thought it did.

"This is a once in a lifetime trip," my friends would urge. "We'll never get this chance again. If it's meant to be, you'll find each other later."

We headed out to Byron's pubs after a day in the sun, a kind of farewell and a last ditch attempt by them to get me to stay. I was distracted, unable to harness the energy of the party town. My mind was in Bondi when I heard a familiar voice in my ear, over my shoulder.

It was Ryan. He'd come to me.

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We were a unit from that day on. An invisible elastic secured around each of us that never let us stretch away from each other again. I became part of his family here in Australia, he travelled with me back to the UK to become a part of mine. We settled on the Northern Beaches and as the years ticked over we became more and more obsessed with each other.

Even the challenges and stresses that came with me securing citizenship here did not break us. We were strong. We had only one chink in our armour: having kids.

Towards the end of our first 10 years together, my biological clock was screaming at me. We were both now in our early thirties, and while we were on the same page about weddings being a waste of money, we could not align on a timeline for beginning a family.

Ryan didn't want to upset the status quo. He was worried that having kids would change our dynamic and he had no strong desire to be a father. I, on the other hand, would see babies everywhere and imagine that they were ours. A mini Ryan with my curly hair. It was all I could think about.

He was adamant that we not do it. We began to argue for the first real time in our relationship.

"I gave up my whole life for you!" I would cry in shameless displays of raw emotion. "I can't not ever be a mum."

"I love you," he would cry back. "But I can't do this. I don't ever want children."

We tried counselling, we sought advice from friends and family. We tried to see each other's sides of this argument, but neither of us could move on it.

By the time we celebrated our 12 year anniversary together, it had been a solid two years of us wrangling the baby talk. I needed a break.

I headed back to the UK to spend time with my family. It was the first time that Ryan and I had been apart for longer than a night since I left with my friends for Byron Bay. I was a mess. He was a mess.

At home I was being nurtured by my family. I spent the days sobbing in my childhood bedroom and the evenings cuddling my newborn niece and toddler nephew. All this did was solidify that this was what I wanted.

Ryan called, begging me to come home. I couldn't do it. I extended my stay, and he booked a flight to come to me. I thought seeing me with the babies might change his mind, but it didn't.

We flew home to Australia together, but something had shifted. I had made the heartbreaking decision that if Ryan couldn't give me a family, I had to let him go. It was the most traumatic time of my life so far. We were heartbroken. It was a shock to both of us to be apart.

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I moved into the spare room of a work friend. Ryan called me endlessly begging me to come back, but lacking the compromise needed to get me there. I was miserable. I knew that becoming a mum had to be something in my future, it was non-negotiable, even if I had to do it alone.

I had to cut Ryan off completely to get off the heartbreak hamster wheel. His daily calls were making it too difficult to move through the pain.

Just three months in, I heard that he was dating already. A colleague from his work that we both knew. She'd been helping him navigate the break-up and things crossed the line.

This was a pain that I thought could never be surmounted. I couldn't stop picturing them together, I was barely able to function. I'd take to my bed for days on end, calling off work and worrying my friends and family. I was a ghost of a person. The reality of my decision slapping me across the face every time I daydreamed of them in bed together.

I was circling. I needed him back, but if I took him back, I'd never be a mum. I couldn't be without him but I couldn't be without kids. What if he didn't want me anymore? What if he was in love with her? What had I done?

It was heartbreak on steroids. I was a shell.

I thought nothing could have hurt more than our breakup. Then I heard the news. Ryan's girlfriend got pregnant. He was going to be a dad.

My mum and sister booked flights upon hearing my howls down the phoneline. They came to me and held me through the body shaking sobs that had taken over my body, urging me to eat and shower.

Ryan was worried about me, but my friends and family formed a shield around me, not letting him through as I moved through the stages of grief. They nursed me through the denial stage, they ducked for cover as I raged through the angry period, and they prayed and longed for me to get through the depression to a kind of acceptance. We're all still waiting for that.

Just one year after our breakup, Ryan became a father. A mini Ryan with curly hair now lives in this world.

My life is still at a standstill. I'm not in any kind of fit state to date anyone. The baggage weighs me down. I'm still much too pissed off to be nice to anyone.I moved to the inner west, away from the beaches, in case I ran into Ryan with a pram. I have weekly visits with a counsellor, the same one Ryan and I saw to try and get through our issues. I've frozen my eggs.

I've also booked a backpacking holiday around Australia with a friend who is recently divorced. That trip that I started all of those years ago, is going to be finished at last. This time without any surfer boys derailing the plans. I hope.

Feature Image: Getty.