Vuca,

When we met, I wan’t attracted to you. It wasn’t until our second encounter when your big sense of humor and wit pulled me in. I loved that my friends like you. I began to feel closer and closer. At one point, there was a knot in my stomach–my gut telling me that this is a bad idea. However, I was having so much fun getting to know you, I ignored my instincts.

Over the course of our dating, I saw what my stomach knots were about. How your sense of humor turned into biting “jokes” that were actually insults to me. How your explosive temper resulted in holes in the walls and broken items. That should have been enough for me to see.

However, what I didn’t see was me becoming full on sucked into an abusive relationship. In spite of this stuff I loved you. It was more good then bad. Your temper calmed. We matured together, over a period of five years.

Now that it’s over. And that it ended in such a flash of furry, anger and senseless rage I see things differently.

What I see now is someone who never really loved me. That the courting process was really about seeing how much you could manipulate and control me such that you could get what you wanted (companionship, support, love, positive energy, a road dog) while giving as little as you could possibly give to me. Each insult, each way in which I wasn’t good enough or needed to be shamed because I hadn’t something up to your standards, that was all about you creating enough distance between us such that you could control the cadence and depth of our union. There was very little care for me. There was just you and what you wanted.

You, as a personal trainer, told me that I needed to lose weight. I’d dropped 30 lbs when I met you and was continuing to lose for myself. I believed your telling me that was you talking as a professional. But what I realize now is that that is your shtick. That is how you get women to give you control over their body image, their bodies and how they feel about themselves as humans–by reducing them to only a body, by reducing your feelings for me to only a body was a way to control me and the relationship. However, because you were a trainer, I thought it was your professional opinion.

What I see now is that you are a loser. You are a loser who has to do this type of bullshit in order to get close to a woman. You’re to scared to just be honest about who you are and what you DON’T WANT. You are a loser and a user. You’ve turned down most of the good things that have come your way because you believe in the nobility of suffering. Unfortunately, I have news for you. You will continue to suffer. It used to make me sad as I realized that you really do have some mental health problems but now it makes me feel at ease — knowing that what goes around comes around and seeing that you are the most manipulative person I’ve ever known in my life. I can’t believe I spent 5 years with you. I can’t believe I spent that time with someone who knew he never loved me, never wanted to marry, just wanted to have me around like Linus’ blanky. I had so much respect for you. And now I see that that respect was definitely unearned and misplaced.

I am not ready to forgive yet, clearly. But I know I will have to for myself. Right now I think I need counseling because there’s something up with me that I would have spent so much time wih you. I am scared to date other men now because clearly I am open to dating sociopaths. I need to get myself right. And you can go f*ck off.