Dear Dr B,

How on earth did we get here? One moment it is all roses and love and so amazing and plans being made and then suddenly it’s gone. And just one week before you were due to fly 8000 miles to be with me for 3 weeks. Why now? I’ll never forget how you held me so tight till the very last second possible at the airport and then stood there watching for so very long after I’d gone through the gate 3 months ago. How can you say you still love me but the distance is just too much? How can anyone be in love but not want to therefore do anything to make things work? I tried to sort out the distance so hard by coming to work near you for 2 months, but the idea of a plan 6 months ahead seemed too scary for you and the death knell of our relationship. So what am I supposed to do now? You still love me, but not enough to give it your all. You still want me in your life, but only when I’m ready (which may well be never at this rate). I have no closure here. How could I have a relationship with someone who can’t plan 6 months ahead? But still my heart is bleeding on the floor. I never felt love in the way I did with you before (and that is at the grand old age of 38 and after a few serious long term relationships lasting several years). How could you throw away our future because there was a risk it might go wrong later on? There’s also an alternative for all your worries – things can also go right, but they never can if you just assume they will be wrong and run away from them. I so desperately wish things were different. I know that you need to work on your commitment issues, but do you? I was willing to be with you for that and support you through it. Do you think you can just have your fun for the next year with your single friends (who are all also running away from things like bad relationships) far away in that little bubble of alternate reality on that small remote island, and then swing by in 12 months and see if I’m waiting to give it a go without the long distance component? Or will you just keep running forever, to other countries and other people, a nomadic soul with no connections anywhere, but still spouting that you want desperately to be loved and settle down? That is unlikely to work even though I do love you with all my broken heart. I will have moved on by then. The hurt now is too great for that to work. I am devastated. Why could you not say “I don’t love you” when I asked. Why did that take you a full 8 minutes to reply and still you couldn’t say it? Will you find in a month’s time that you’re back on that island, but your friends have gone, I have gone and your life is better? This tale of wanting a girlfriend that is there……….there is no-one there (and I do believe you on that front having visited), so how is not having me either the better alternative?

Why have you thrown away this amazing chance at happiness through silly anxiety and fear about what negatives might happen rather than positives that might happen? It’s so damn illogical and stupid. How could you have pretended that you wanted a relationship, when as things inevitably get a bit tough you just decide it isn’t worth it rather than talk about it and sort it out? Are you really so selfish and self centred that you believe you can have your wish of a girlfriend without doing any personal work to avoid your previous mistakes?

I am just at a loss to explain any of your actions and am not sure you can either. Just please don’t come crying back to me about it later on when you realise what a dunce you’ve been.