Dear emotionally unavailable man,
I really didn’t know how else to start this letter. I would love to say that you deserve to be named, but I’d be lying.
This is the most that I’m prepared to give you at this point in life. Maybe years from now, I’ll give you the pleasure of letting your name cross my lips once more, but for now, you’re staying “the one who shall not be named.”
You used to get mad at me for being dramatic or overly emotional. That’s why I will delight in writing this letter so I can remind you that I was never the problem. Emotions simply made you feel uncomfortable.
You were always so weirded out by emotions. Whenever I’d cry, I could see the confusion on your face. You were the one who caused those tears, yet you looked at me as if I should be ashamed for it.
Your forehead would crease out of confusion and I could see the anger in your eyes. You only knew rage, because sadness and worry weren’t in your vocabulary. So I guess I should understand that your only emotional response to things was utter silence or blind fury.
Thinking of that always made me so sad. Not because I knew that my life would be hell with a man like you, but rather because I wanted you to experience emotions.
I wanted you to feel loved and to love. I really wanted to see you genuinely happy without that hint of sadness in the back of your eyes that only I could see.
You gaslighted yourself whenever you’d experience emotions. You’d say you were just fine and that nothing was wrong.
So the very moment I’d express any emotions, you were confused why I thought of them as valid. You’d gaslight me for even trying to show you how I feel.
The first time you told me that you didn’t know if you could love me, I should’ve believed you.
I shouldn’t have stuck around to try to convince you otherwise. It wasn’t my place to teach you how to love or show emotions. You’re a grown man who needs to be able to know these things!
The issue is that society has failed you. You’re filled with trauma and underlying messages that taught you how to be a rock.
You know perfectly well how to hide all your feelings and pretend as if you’ve never felt anything in your entire life.
It’s scary to see the switch in your eyes. When you realize that you’re feeling things and then just shut yourself down.
I tried so hard to help you. I wanted to be there for you, to remind you that you can be vulnerable with me. You told me that I was just boring you with my stupid thoughts, so I stopped.
I stopped because I was so afraid of losing you. I saw that there was so much more in you than the man you portrayed to the public.
That’s probably why I know you better than anyone else. I know you inside and out because I spent so much time trying to analyze and read you.
But you never cared. You never saw how I’d have to read your facial expression and body language before coming up to you to talk.
You never noticed how slowly I would approach you, just to see if you’re in the mood to even have me around you.
Maybe people won’t see it as something brutal, but that was emotional abuse. You made sure that I was in a constant state of fear.
The only way you knew how to express your love was through physical affection. At times, when you were in the mood, you’d hug me and kiss me for hours. That was your way of apologizing.
Whenever you’d do something to upset me, you didn’t know how to communicate the guilt you felt. You didn’t know how to name the feelings you were experiencing. You just knew that you needed to hold me tight next to you so that I wouldn’t slip away.
I was aware that you were scared of losing me, but you never knew how to express that through anything more than a hug.
Can you imagine how hard that was for me?
I needed the reassurance. I needed you to tell me that you would work on better expressing yourself and loving me.
But the only thing that would come out of those conversations was your eye-rolls and annoyance. You didn’t want to change, not even for me. You didn’t even want to try.
That’s why you’d ignore the way I’d break apart right there in front of you. I was disappearing right in front of your eyes. I was depressed and lonely while lying in bed with the man I loved so much.
Everyone saw the shift in my demeanor when I realized that you’d never change. I didn’t want to believe it for so long, so I told everyone that you were getting better.
I said that you were working on yourself because of me. My friends were happy for me because they knew how much I adored you.
But the moment I realized that the rest of my life would be a hell-hole, I had to walk away.
Months went by with me thinking of reasons to stay. I held on to the tiniest things just so I could keep you around.
That’s absolutely awful. No one should fight this hard to find a reason to stay in a relationship while they were breaking apart inside.
You were tearing me into pieces. You didn’t care that I was this utterly miserable. I just wanted you to notice this because I was done trying to talk to you. I was done trying to explain things to you.
And that’s why I left in the end.
You didn’t even let me tell you the reasons behind it. That’s why I’m writing you this letter.
You didn’t even want to listen to what I had to tell you. You just threw a tantrum, telling me I wasn’t better than everyone else because everyone kept leaving you. So I must’ve never loved you because I decided to leave.
That’s what you genuinely thought when I fought for you for such a long time that I didn’t have enough strength to fight for myself.
But I still had enough strength in me to walk away from you. Even when you were undermining everything I did for you, I still kept my head high because I knew that you were so extremely wounded by life.
I realized, though, that I couldn’t be the one to teach you these things because you didn’t want to listen and learn. You refused to work on yourself. You didn’t care to do anything of the sort.
So I had to give up or I would become just like you. I couldn’t afford that because I knew just how much I’d hurt and no one would know.
I hope you’ll find it in yourself to forgive me one day. You should really think about this and work on yourself, or you will break too many women out of sheer spite.
Just because you’re broken doesn’t mean that you have the right to break others as well.
You should really figure yourself out. I’m telling you this as someone who still cares for you, believe it or not. Even if you probably never cared for me the same.
Sincerely,
Your overly emotional ex
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