An Anonymous Letter To My Most Significant Ex
By Natalie Gil
Everyone has their own way of dealing with their ex when a relationship ends — for some, it’s easy to slide back into the friendship that preceded the romance, while for others it’s healthier to cut off contact completely, extolling the virtues of the ‘no-contact rule’. There may come a point, however — maybe years later — when you feel like sitting back and reflecting on the relationship: what your former partner taught you, what you learned about love, and the nuggets of self-knowledge you gleaned along the way.
In a recent column for the Guardian, agony aunt Mariella Frostrup advised an anonymous man to write a letter of apology to his ex-girlfriend three years after he ended their seven-year relationship. “I’m ashamed of how I treated her and can’t forgive myself,” he wrote. “I want to write and apologise, but it sounds weird and inappropriate.” Frostrup replied that it would be no such thing.
“We should all be writing letters to our lovers, ex or otherwise; whether it’s just to say hello, to expand on our feelings, because our behaviour has been less than exemplary, or perhaps, as in your case, to say thanks for a union that may be long over but in hindsight appears so much more precious than you realised at the time,” she said, advising him to keep it brief, simple and from the heart. In the spirit of soul enhancement, Refinery29 UK asked five women to write to their most significant former flames.
I just loved you more than you ever loved me, and for a lot longer.
“Hey you. It’s been a while. It’s weird that for almost six years we lived in each other’s pockets and now it’s been almost as long since I’ve heard from you. I do still think about you, but it never feels like a sword going through my guts anymore. Even when I heard you were getting married; not even a pinch. That’s what time does. Smooths those sharp edges.
“After we broke up — the third time — I used to go over and over what I could have done differently to make you stay in love with me for longer. I tormented myself. For years.
“I remember being so weak from crying in the shower, I could barely wash the suds out of my hair. I listened to more Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Dionne Warwick than is healthy. I ate air. I drank like a fucking fish and was constantly snotting on a friend’s shoulder. They were brilliant. ‘He’s a fucking coward’ one told me as we drove my car to the beach with all the windows down and the radio blaring. Swimming in the sea was my thing, and it brought me back to life. No one cares if you cry or snot yourself in the sea.
“You were great. So sexy. So strong. I still miss having sex with someone I adored and knew so well. But I don’t miss you anymore. Sometimes, because I’m a maudlin madame, I miss missing you. I miss your family. God, they were lovely. I now know there’s sweet fuck all I could have done to make you stay even a day longer, but that doesn’t mean I did anything wrong. I just loved you more than you ever loved me, and for a lot longer.”
From my twice-yearly Instagram stalking sessions, you seem incredibly happy.
“First up, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I not only hurt you deeply, but that I caused you to cut ties with some of your closest friends. If anyone asked whether I regret what happened though, I’d have to say no, not completely. I was young and I felt trapped. I didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand that I had fallen out of love with you. I didn’t have the emotional maturity to know how to end our relationship with grace. So instead, I dropped a bomb between us.
“Even after that, neither of us knew how to walk away. We tried to make it work for five months, still living together in that damp basement flat. I lost a stone in weight within weeks after you found out. You became aggressive and withdrawn. You made me explain to your parents what I had done in excruciating detail over the phone. We agreed to still go on the holiday we had booked, seeing it as an opportunity to work through what had happened. We spent that week yo-yoing between passionate highs, and lows where you would disappear for 24 hours, not answering my calls.
“I was working two jobs, but I spent all my spare money on counselling. I started going as a way to make us work, to right my wrongs, and find a way for you to forgive me. Instead, it became the place I rebuilt the shaky foundations of my independence. The last day we saw each other was just as dramatic as every day in that last five months had been. Me, drunk and sobbing, throwing up on your shoes, on your birthday. I vaguely remember your friends asking you to be kind to me as they put me to bed, but you walked away.
“A couple of years later, you messaged me asking how I was. I didn’t reply. That life feels so far away now, I don’t remember the girl that I was then. It didn’t feel necessary to open that door again. When I say I don’t regret what happened completely, I mean that I don’t regret the result. What happened made me grow up.
“I actually read Mariella Frostrup’s advice about writing to your exes. I’ve thought about writing to apologise to you, but you’re engaged now. You live in a different country. (Okay, Wales.) From my twice-yearly Instagram stalking sessions, you seem incredibly happy. Some doors are best left shut; no one needs to see the mess left behind them.”
I remember the moment I realised I didn’t love you, and everything in my life has been better since then.
“From your perspective I bet what we had must seem so simple — we dated, we had fun and then I walked away. It was a friendly break-up, we had a laugh together after and you even tried to stay friends.
“From my perspective I wish a lot of things had been different, I mostly wish I had shown you how much you made me cry. I cried in secret, I cried to my friends, I cried in the bathroom while you slept. I always smiled in front of you until I finally couldn’t hold it in anymore and cried in front of my sister, who was the one who told me to walk away.
“Now I know I wasn’t in love with you, but then I thought I was. I remember so clearly how caught up I was in you; those moments were so intense I let them outshine all the people who really loved me and let you take so much from me while you gave so little.
“I don’t really wish you had been different though, I wish I had. I wish I had been strong enough to stand for myself and walk away when we clearly wanted different things. I wish I hadn’t pretended that I was fine with how you treated me, I wish I had told you when you acted like a knob and not bent myself backward to be with you. I wish I had told you how much you hurt me and not been ashamed of having emotions that weren’t convenient for you.
“I remember the moment I realised I didn’t love you, and everything in my life has been better since then. But I also still remember how your hands felt when I held them and I feel ashamed of how much of my heart I tried to give you. Maybe you don’t even remember me. Now I’m truly in love with someone who never makes me cry, and the memory of you makes me even more grateful for that every day.”
Your new girlfriend bans you from having any contact with me — even making you buy new bedsheets out of jealousy.
“It’s been almost exactly three years since you turned up at my parents’ house at midnight, took me for a walk and blindsided me by ending our four-and-a-half-year relationship. You confessed that for the last 18 months you hadn’t been happy and that you didn’t love me. I was distraught, but now I realise it was the best thing that has ever happened to me. You made me waste 18 months thinking I had a future with you.
“Having started our relationship when I was 19 and you were 26, I do feel like you took away my ‘best years’. Instead of hanging with my friends and enjoying my youth, I was in a long-term relationship with someone who I thought loved and cared about me. So instead I stayed in, saw you when you wanted to, waited by the phone for you to call when you never did.
“The first time you cheated on me was six months into our relationship, not long after you told me you loved me for the first time. I only learned this years later, when I found you had cheated on me a second time, on Christmas Eve with a random woman in a bar. I should’ve ended it there and then but I was naïve and too forgiving. I regret this the most.
“I was also too forgiving of your negativity which ultimately rubbed off on me. We both blamed it on your work, but even after you left your job that personality was still there and you still treated me like shit. I never realised how miserable you were and how unhappy you made me until you left me.
“Three years on, I’m renting an amazing property by myself with an amazing job I love, where the pay is great and getting better. You hated the fact I was paid over £10,000 less than you, whereas now I’m easily matching your wage when you left me. And where are you? In a relationship you jumped straight into less than a month after leaving me. Your new girlfriend bans you from having any contact with me — even making you buy new bedsheets out of jealousy that I’d slept in the same bed as you. Yet, unbeknown to her, you still message from time to time on your work phone as she checks your mobile. I don’t know why you feel it’s necessary to text me out of the blue, ask me how I am and if I’m seeing anyone. You’ve even tried to ask relationship advice from me but I quickly shut that down. I hate to think what she’d do to you if she found out you came round to my flat after you started dating her and didn’t leave until after 2am.
“I’ve grown as an adult since we broke up. I learned not to trust men so easily and to have my head screwed on at all times. I can now, truthfully, say thank you for breaking up with me. I didn’t have the balls back then to beat you to it. Without you doing that I wouldn’t be as happy as I am right now, writing this to you. I’d like to end with something your mother once said to mine: ‘My son is not the marrying kind’. Tell her she was right. Take care.”
You were the first man to love me, and I clung to that for longer than I should have.
“I know you didn’t understand why I left; I didn’t fully understand it, either. You were good and kind; you bought us a house and supported me when I went back to university; my family adored you (there’s still a photo of us on the kitchen wall). You were the first man to love me, and keep loving me, and I clung to that for longer than I should have. Because in the end, it wasn’t right.
“I wish I had been honest with myself sooner about our relationship. I have a tendency to leave things to the last minute — you know that — but with us, the last minute came and went. The last minute would have been before we got married. I’m sorry I didn’t see it and I’m sorry I hurt you. You didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve you. I hope you’ve found someone who does.”
Originally published at https://refinery29.com.
