Even if you don’t read this, I’ll feel better having written it. 

I understand that you might feel like I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this entire situation but I get to pull the Best Friend Card here, and I get to just be pissed off that you are the catalyst for the heartbreak, pain, anxiety, and overwhelming stress that you are causing my best friend. I’ve been there for Maggie through huge ups and downs in her life and this is by far the lowest I’ve ever seen her. She is an incredibly strong person and she is fucking broken. She can’t focus on her work, she is isolated from all her friends and family and is stuck living in a shrine to your relationship and doing it all completely alone. Luckily, she has been talking to me and her family almost every day and she has one hell of a support system.

I know that I couldn’t possibly know all of the small things that led to your decision to end things but I do know that it wasn’t an overnight decision. She was blindsided by your choice to leave and is extremely hurt that there wasn’t much of any communication that you were feeling that strongly beforehand. I don’t understand how after 9 years of a relationship, you felt that you couldn’t have a real conversation about your feelings with her. Are you really so insecure in yourself that you couldn’t even bear to put it into words in front of her? Or was it just that you couldn’t even say it to yourself? You chose the cowards way out and ran as far away from your problems as you could. Be a fucking man and face what you’ve done. 

You couldn’t even handle telling her in person. You chose to do it over Skype. Is that really the level of respect that you felt she deserved after 9 years? She upended her entire fucking life. She left her home country, family and friends to be with you where you were most comfortable. She did the best she could for herself and got a great education doing something she loves and I am incredibly proud of her for that. She did all that she could to support you and all of your decisions and it seems like you’ve forgotten that. She has succeeded despite all the hardships you’ve thrown her way.

I am also appalled at the lack of respect for her family in all of this. While she has maintained good contact with your family and spent time with them, you’ve called her family twice? They have sacrificed an insane amount of things for Maggie to be there with you. Why do you think her dad is still working? He could have been long retired now but he put that on hold so that his daughter could make a drastic change in her life and that was all because of you. They deserved a real conversation from you with an explanation. With you now gone however, I’m sure that’s not something they’ll ever get. 

At the end of all of this, I am very seriously asking you, please stop trying to be “friends” with her. It is killing her a little bit every time you message her. With you wanting to be lifelong friends, it feels like you want all the support, encouragement and laughter of a relationship with her, but you don’t actually want to be with her or offer her the same. A good relationship is give and take and all you seem to do is take without ever giving a shit how she felt. Lead your life in Japan with your new girl and let her do the same. Let her laugh again, be with her family again, enjoy her work again and most importantly, move on and become the smart, talented, funny person we know she is. She’s lost a bit of her spark but I know she’ll come out of this stronger and become someone you could only hope to know and someone you could never deserve. 

I hope you grow as a person in Japan and that one day, you are able to confront your feelings. Not just your feelings about this, but your true feelings about everything that’s happened and will happen in your life. You have a lot of maturing to do and hopefully one day you are able to process this and realize what you’ve caused. 

All in all, grow up. Man up. Face your problems head on. Confront your feelings. Communicate with your partner. And go fuck yourself.