Dear Fletcher,

First and foremost, I want you to know that I wish you all the best in China, and for the future. It’s an amazing opportunity that I’m sincerely glad you took. I remember when we first started talking about your uni course and you weren’t sure if you should apply. I remember helping to convince you that it was a great idea. I remember helping you to get through the practical and emotional burdens of applying, and sharing the joy in how you came out on top. This experience is important and will shape you and your future life.

I am sorry that I won’t get to share this with you and support you. I’m sorry that our relationship has come to this. There was so much good, but with the good came a lot of pain, as it ended, for me. I wish I could have given you what you wanted and received what I wanted. I know you tried, and I did too. We have both made choices that have pulled us apart and while I wish it wasn’t so, I will come to accept in time that it is what is best, at least for now. I don’t know what will happen when you return. A vast part of me hopes with every fibre of my being that you will come back to me, but I also know that what I want may be very different to what you want.

When I initiated this discussion of a breakup, it was out of sheer desperation to initiate a change for the better. I’m so disappointed that it caused you to reconsider what we are, and I regret my misguided attempt at trying to work through our issues. I do believe that if we had both identified what was going wrong, we could have found a healthy, loving compromise, both now and in the future.

I want you to know that I love you so, so very much. I want nothing more than to have you in my life as my partner, to visit you in China, to work on being the best partner I can be, to support you, to show you that you are so very loved. I want to be able to give you everything I have, but I also want to be able to let you go if I can’t. I said that I deserve more, but so do you. If that can’t happen now or possibly even in the future, then that will have to be ok. It’s a two way street and as painful as it is, you are entitled to have your own needs and wants, even if I don’t meet them.

Time will heal all wounds. But for now, unless we can find some resolution, these wounds are so very deep and fresh for me. I love being with you but the heartache and complete, intense loneliness and longing I experience when you’re not with me is debilitating. I really want to see you one last time before you leave, to hug you and feel close to you, to tell you that I love you, to tell you I miss every perfection and imperfection, to tell you I care for you so deeply, but I can’t. It hurts so much to see you because it gives me hope that you’ll come back to me, and my entire existence is suffering for it.

Despite that, I do encourage you to reach out if there is in fact hope for us. If not, I welcome any kind of final reply or a reconnection in a few months, at which point I hope to have found a way to deal with my emotions and this great loss.

I will always love you.