Dear Ex,

Two months out, wow. Crazy what has happened these past few months. I’m writing this because even two months later, you are still on my mind from the second I wake up until the second I go to sleep. I know that you’d probably find that hard to believe considering I’m the one that left you and I went no contact, but it’s true. Your existence haunts me. I feel that I have so many things left unsaid, so many unresolved emotions. This is my only real outlet. If I were to talk to you I would explode and hurt you even more, and while that could be satisfying, I like to consider myself more mature than that.

I’m glad that the way you handled the break up shows me that I was right after all. You tried to convince me you were changed, but I had my doubts. Now I know that you didn’t change at all, it was just another lie to get me to stay. Breaking up was a good decision, as I saved myself inevitable pain far greater than what I feel right now. Still, what I feel right now hurts pretty bad and if I don’t get this off of my chest it will eat me alive.

Two months without you is enough to realize that I wasn’t thinking straight, my judgement was clouded by love. I really did love you, too. You were my first real love, and I let you in more than I ever let anyone else in. You were so kind at first, you worked your way into my inner sanctum and made yourself a permanent fixture. You were perfection to me, even though you couldn’t see the perfection in yourself. You saw perfection in me, too, you made me feel like a king.

It’s a shame you couldn’t keep your facade up forever, maybe we could still be together. I would be blissfully ignorant of your true nature, but I would be happy. As time went on, you became careless. You let slip the truth here or there, and stories started conflicting. I was blinded by love, but I’m not stupid. I could only fight the truth for so long. When I went to you and asked you the truth, you lied straight to my face. This was after I confided in you that trust was the most important thing to me in a relationship. You knew this and so much more about me, but you still lied. That level of disrespect was the biggest slap in the face I had ever felt in my life.

Ahhh, but I loved you. You seemed generally remorseful of how you had made me feel, and that was good enough for me. I thought you wouldn’t hurt me again, so we made up and moved on. But then you did it again. And again. That was too much. I had to protect myself, no matter how badly it would hurt me to do so. I fought and fought, sought any possible option besides breaking up to end the pain. We spent weeks brainstorming, but nothing could fix the damage at that point. So I ended it.

I immediately went into a bit of a depression. I could barely get out of bed, I stopped eating. Sleep, food, and my career all came second to obsessively checking on you. This is when I learned the most about you, though. Overnight you went from telling me I was the man you were going to marry to seeking my replacement. You weren’t even phased by the break up. I had to withdraw and recover from the pain, and it didn’t appear that you felt any pain at all.

While I was struggling to function daily, you were showing off to everyone how well you were doing without me. It was like I didn’t even exist. Those guys I was worried about when we were dating, who you told me weren’t even your friends? Oh guess what, they popped right back into your life like you were best friends all along. More lies, I can’t say I was surprised but it sure as hell hurt.

Every day I would get bombarded by more information from your life. It seemed like the more I tried to get away from your face, the more it followed me. You displayed to the world how happy you were without me. Practically rubbed it in the world’s face. You had to let everyone know that you were a victim, show them how cruel I was for breaking up with you. You had to get as much attention from as many people as you could, and make sure they KNEW you were available again. And not only that, I could also see the growing list of replacements for me that you were creating. All this information was too painful for me, surely you would be understanding of that. I had to essentially break up with you for a second time in order to recover- remove you from everything. You wouldn’t remove me, of course, it appeared that you felt nothing when you saw my face. So I had to do it.

But oh man, you didn’t cause me enough pain apparently. You couldn’t just let me go. You turned our mutual friends against me and publicly talked shit, on multiple occasions. I know it wasn’t wise of me to check on you in one of the few ways I still could, but I couldn’t help myself. I was addicted, and you were my drug. Naturally, what I saw only hurt me more.

I can only imagine what you said to our friends about me in private communication channels based on what I saw in public channels. You must have told them some pretty colorful things, because not a single one of them messaged me to see how I was doing after the break up. I’m sure they were constantly checking on you, making sure you were okay though. You had to paint me as a bad guy, of course, that gets more attention. While you were doing that, I didn’t have it in me to talk bad about you to anyone. I was still hurt and I had loved you. You were being showered in attention and support from everyone. Our mutual friends and the new guys you were meeting were all there to help you forget about me. As for me, I was alone with no support. No one to talk to about the pain I was dealing with, not a single person checked in on me to see how I was doing. What did you tell our friends about me?

After all this, you must have somehow sensed that I was finally starting to move on because you broke no contact. You had the audacity to suggest that we be friends again and catch up. You were doing great without me, and felt no pain or emotions about our relationship at all. You told me not to feel bad about my choices, despite the fact that you were talking shit about them just a few days prior.

Oh man was it hard to not essentially type this letter to you when you contacted me. That would have been satisfying as hell, but once again I restrained myself. I simply told you that I don’t think it would be a good idea to be friends right now, but maybe in the future.

I regret saying maybe, I really do. If I could have that conversation again, I would tell you no. I cannot be friends with you, in any manner. You destroyed my trust, broke my heart, and turned friends against me. Even if I could get over the pain you had caused me, the qualities I see in you now are not qualities I would want in a friend. Your default response to a hard question is to lie, without remorse. Your own comfort comes before honesty, and I see that now. You seek attention from anybody that is willing to give it to you, to an extreme level. No amount of attention I could provide would ever be enough to satisfy you, you would always need more. And if we were to be friends, what would our friendship be? Would you just use me as an emotional lifeboat and then get upset when I sank, once again?

With you, I’ve realized that it is all take. You give a little bit, at first, which is how you earned my trust. Once you knew you had my love and trust, you used all the emotional strength that I had for your own issues. My emotions didn’t matter anymore because yours were so intense. I dumped all my strength and love into you, and somehow it disappeared into the emotional black hole within you. Somehow all our hard work, all the love, all the support that I gave you did absolutely nothing. The next day would roll around, and the cycle would start again. You drained me, and there is nothing to show for it.

Now I had to write this letter because I feel like I will never get the chance to say any of this stuff to you. I don’t want to be your friend and I don’t want to get back together with you, so there’s a good chance I will literally never speak to you again. Getting this off my chest has been a lot more helpful than I could have expected at the onset, so it was worth it.

I am glad that you are no longer part of my life, because while I will recover, there is a good chance that the emotional black hole you possess within you will never fill. No amount of attention will ever be enough for you, no amount of support will ever fill that hole. You have to fill that hole yourself. I feel sorry for you, because I truly did love you and I know the pain that you deal with. I could have spent the rest of my life dumping my energy into that black hole.

When we broke up, I said it might be wise to take some time to work on yourself. I said this because I knew that what you needed was not relationships, but to find strength in yourself. It is a shame you did not heed this advice and instead began searching for attention immediately, because I know you don’t have malicious intentions and you truly only want to find love. I don’t want my negative thoughts to be proved correct by your actions again, but I don’t think you learned anything from our time together.

Despite trying to convince me otherwise, you have most certainly not changed from the person you used to be. The person you are is defined by your actions, not by what you tell other people. The actions you took during our time together and immediately after our break up show me the truth. The person that I dated was the person that you want to be, not the person that you truly are. Eventually, you simply couldn’t maintain it anymore and the walls came crashing down; it’s a shame you couldn’t make the transformation actually happen before they came down.

At the end of the day, I’m optimistic despite the pain. The pain and anger may linger for awhile, but I will move on. Fortunately for me, now that I’m no longer under your influence my emotional strength, ability to love, and ability to trust will all slowly be restored. My wounds will heal. It will be a process, but I think I will be stronger after this than I was before I met you. Part of me hopes that you one day get the opportunity to read this letter, but I am doubtful if that will ever happen. When I said maybe we could be friends, I really meant no, I cannot be friends with you after what has happened.