My mate Ewan.
We were best mates all through school and did the same course at Uni.
Almost every happy memory of my childhood included him.
In second year at Uni he met a girl to whom I took an instant and mutual dislike. However, the choice was his to make and we tolerated each other for Ewan’s sake for the next four or five years.
Ewan got a job which took him away to the Falklands for three separate 6 month periods.
On the third of these he met another girl whilst he was there, who was from St Helena but was working in the Falklands.
When he returned to the UK, he binned his long term girlfriend and was going to import the one from St Helena.
We went out for a beer one night and he started telling me how he hadn’t been getting on with the original girfriend and how horrible she had been to him over an extended period of time.
That’s when I made the biggest mistake of my life to date.
Instead of just listening without comment, I told him how much I had always despised her. I held nothing back. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
Three weeks later the St Helenian one was forgotten and he was back together with the original one. They were married less than a year later and are still together with two kids after 17 years.
I haven’t seen or heard from Ewan since he got back with her. I stupidly put him in an impossible position of having to choose between his wife and his best friend. He made the same choice I would have made in his place. I don’t blame him one tiny bit.
My fault. My biggest regret of my life.