To the ex-boyfriend who was never really mine

Posted by Mimi in What I wish I'd told you

You will never read this and that’s a shame because this is the kindest letter I could ever send you.

You were emotionally abusive, manipulative and cruel to me. You hurt me deeply and you knew it even if you denied any wrongdoing. You sold me a dream, only you failed to mention I would never be a part of that dream. You used me so badly I almost can’t believe it happened. You gave me nothing.

You positioned yourself so carefully by making sure you never quite lied or told me and untruth. You had an answer for everything or never quite gave an answer. In this way you were able lie to yourself and walk away from this feeling as though you were a good person and good to me. But your behaviour and manipulation is reprehensible. Even when we parted ways last, you didn’t believe it and said “goodbye hun” expecting me to call next week and stroke your ego again and prove how much I liked you. All those times it was over you would deny me simple closure. You couldn’t even give me that and of course I came back to try to make it right. Well, this is my closure then. I won’t be contacting you again.

Despite all this, I stayed with you because I believed in you and saw great things in you. I believed your bad behaviour was coming from a place of hurt and pain. The things that happened to you in your past affected you so deeply I kept thinking if I showed you enough kindness, you would come around. I saw so much potential in you. But at the crux of it, you don’t think anyone can truly love you for who you are and so you value people by what you can get out of them and give as little as possible so that when things fall apart you never truly feel rejected. You throw yourself into your work because it will never dump you or make you feel like you aren’t good enough. Well, the way you are now you are living a self-fulfilling prophecy. No one will love you like this. I thought I was in love with you, but I was in love with the man you could be not the man you are. One day I truly hope you become that man, but I will not be waiting around for it.

This is the kindest letter I could send you because it’s a truth that you need to hear it. If you don’t change you will be alone and the biggest failure at life, perhaps the thing you fear the most. Too bad you are not getting anything else out of me. Not even this truth.

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6 Comments

Mimi 9 years ago
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My name is also Mimi JW,and this is so mind-boggling-as I fell for a guy that I loved and still love so much and i had this type of experience except-I forgive him,and sometimes the hurt kills us slowly but think of it this way in time you will hopefully remember the wonderful things and experience life in a whole new way after this lesson youve learned.
anony 9 years ago
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a very well-written letter from a broken heart. i am not going to make some pathetic attempt to console you with my own story, nor am i going to remind you that “you aren’t the only one” this has happened to. none of that will take away your pain. but what i will tell you, however, is that you are obviously intelligent enough to now recognize that some of the most damaging & destructive behavioral patterns – are also the most subtle. you learned something. and no, telling you this isn’t going to console you either – but it wasn’t meant to. if anything, i am patting you on the back… not in a “there there” type of way… but in a “ATTA GIRL!” way. because you deserve to be proud of yourself. you have suffered the wrath of a complete sociopath – meaning that you are a HUMAN BEING who likely used a considerable amount of LOGIC & REASONING before making what you naturally concluded to be the RIGHT CHOICE in a man… do you wonder how/why you didn’t see this coming? if so, then STOP IT. you cannot fault or blame yourself for something you had no way of knowing. dating a sociopath is no different than buying a brand new car (because you trust it will be reliable), only to find out a month later that there are major problems brewing under the hood. bottom line – you gave him a chance, he gave you bullshit, but most importantly, you didn’t put up with his bullshit… which is so god damned refreshing to read for a change! ATTA-GIRL.
Prince Doza 9 years ago
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This was a pretty good letter, but something struck me rather odd about it. I’m going to quote the letter.

“…you don’t think anyone can truly love you for who you are…”.
That eventually leads into this…
“I thought I was in love with you, but I was in love with the man you could be, not the man you are.”

Wouldn’t that make his fears, more or less, validated? Even worse, making it sound like the only reason you were staying around was waiting for the goose to lay the golden egg, so to speak. It sounds like the person was pretty introverted.
“I believed your bad behaviour was coming from a place of hurt and pain. The things that happened to you in your past affected you so deeply…”.
You’re probably right in that, as most bad behavior does come from places of hurt and pain, and the hardest damages to reverse or remedy come from traumas in the developmental years. The sad part here, though is that if you were treating them like a “fixer-upper” project, and walked out frustrated mid-project, you could have given them heaps more hurt and pain to sort through, and, in effect, keep them from this “greatness” you saw in them even longer.

I’m not saying anyone is right or wrong. Just the tone struck me as odd, and something seemed a little off.
- anony 9 years ago
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  prince doza, you made some very interesting points here… whether you are right or wrong however, i interpreted this very differently (though i cannot speak for the writer)… i think that words can often be misleading or taken out of context, and i highly suspect that many of the writer’s statements/opinions of her ex were not fully realized until AFTER the shoe dropped… which means a world of difference in how she should be judged/understood. if i am correct, then what we have here is not somebody with a savior complex who simply “gave up” and contributed to or validated her ex lover’s lack of self-esteem… but rather, what we have here is a girl who was in love with somebody who didn’t know how to love himself – and as we all know, you cannot properly love or respect somebody else until you are able to love yourself. i suspect that she wasn’t aware his demons when she fell in love with him, so the person she thought that she loved turned out to be, in the end, merely an image… i assume that she fully realized this after it was too late. however, instead of saying “i was not in love with you, i was in love with the idea of you”… she chose to say “i was in love with the man you could be”… suggesting that she doesn’t believe that all hope is lost for him, regardless of how badly he broke her heart… her letter was the ” kindest” letter she could write to him, because her words did not come from a place of hate… i think she was merely reflecting on her pain and coming to terms with the reality of what happened… and in an effort to find closure, she forgave him in her own way the best she could…
Aida 9 years ago
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Thank you for writing this letter. It made me realise I am not alone in this. I had almost the same situation and for a moment, I thought my world is going to end. So sad to see so many people have the same experience.

Hold on, this too shall pass.
Ron 9 years ago
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Yeah, I wouldn’t say there was love here, for the simple fact that she couldn’t accept him for who he was, I love this woman, I’ve loved her all my life I can look at her, hug her, kiss her and see past any flaws, problems, etc. That would interfere with me lloving her, so what does this lady do go trade him in for a newer version I hope she can find somebody that’s more moldable