Dear my ex
You know what I’m the angriest about?
It’s not even the breakup anymore.
It’s the fact that I spent so much of our relationship trying to understand you while you were making it impossible for me to understand what was actually happening.
You looked me in the eyes and promised me you would never cheat on me.
You promised me you would never hurt me.
I believed you.
Not because I was naive, but because I loved you enough to trust the person standing in front of me.
Now I look back and wonder how much of our relationship I was the only one living in.
I spent months questioning myself.
Maybe it was your testosterone.
Maybe it was your depression.
Maybe it was stress.
Maybe I wasn’t attractive enough.
Maybe I was asking for too much.
Do you know what never crossed my mind?
That I was trying to solve problems while you were hiding the biggest ones from me.
I defended you.
To everyone.
Over and over again.
I gave you every benefit of the doubt I could possibly give another human being.
Meanwhile, I was being lied to.
Whether it was drugs, cheating, or anything else you chose not to tell me, you left me trying to build a relationship with someone who wasn’t giving me the full truth.
That is what I’m angry about.
I wasn’t given the chance to make informed decisions about my own life.
You made those decisions for me every time you chose secrecy over honesty.
And then…
After everything.
After I loved you.
After I moved my life because you said you needed me.
After I supported you emotionally, financially, physically.
After I dreamed with you.
After I gave you chances.
You accused me of stealing from you.
You called me manipulative.
Vindictive.
Pathetic.
You took one of the hardest things I’ve ever admitted to another person—that I’ve struggled with and have spent years in therapy trying to change—and you used it as a weapon to make sure nothing I said could ever be believed.
Do you have any idea how cruel that is?
I told you because I trusted you.
Not because I was handing you ammunition for the day you decided to hate me.
You know what hurts the most?
I wasn’t trying to destroy you.
Even after everything.
I was trying to separate peacefully.
I wanted to give you time to find a roommate.
I offered to let you keep the business.
I kept your phone active so you could transfer your number.
I answered your questions.
I kept everything in writing because that’s what you wanted.
And still…
I became the villain in your story.
Maybe that’s easier than admitting your own choices.
Maybe it’s easier to believe I manipulated everything than to sit with what you actually did.
I don’t know.
What I do know is this:
I deserved honesty.
I deserved fidelity.
I deserved a partner who didn’t make me question reality.
I deserved someone who didn’t make me wonder every day whether I was wanted.
I deserved someone who didn’t accuse me of crimes after I spent months trying to help them.
I deserved someone who protected my heart the way I tried to protect theirs.
And despite all of this…
I still don’t hate you.
I hate what happened.
I hate what drugs may have taken from you.
I hate what lies took from us.
I hate that I had to bury the future I thought we were building.
But I don’t hate you.
I pity the version of you that chose secrecy over honesty.
Because one day, if you ever become truly sober, truly honest, and truly willing to look at yourself without excuses…
You’re going to have to live with the fact that someone loved you enough to build an entire future beside you.
And you traded that future for choices that destroyed the very thing you claimed mattered most.
That’s the tragedy.
Not that I left.
That I finally had to.
— The woman who loved you enough to stay far longer than she should have.