Not so open letter
I’m posting this letter to someone who isn’t meant to read it. Some of you on here know them, and it’ll be somewhat obvious who it is if you do. I’m posting this primarily for me, in reference to some things I’ve been working on. This is part of my attempt to separate feelings and move on.
I’ve held on to the hurt for far too long, and I’m trying to let go. That’s far more easily said than done, as it’s wrapped up with the pain I still feel from the death of my best friend. Those feelings are strong and conflicted, and the work I’ve done in therapy for the past year or so has concentrated on separating those feelings from each other. At the same time I wish I had been far more mindful and in the moment when I dealt with you.
Why? Because as I’ve processed what happened it is readily apparent there were many warning signs that I missed. Your behavior was inappropriate at best and approached outright emotional manipulation and abuse. Your need to subtly control my actions and behaviors as well as access to my friends and family was hurtful; because of this and my passive acceptance of it I missed out on spending time with my friend before he took his life.
I understand now that this was an event I couldn’t have possibly controlled; there would have been no magic combination of words or actions I could have done to prevent his death. At the same time I could have spent more time with him if I had been willing to push back against your disapproval. I have to live with the fact that I pushed him aside to spend time with you out of loyalty as well as fear that you would treat my friendship with him the same as you did my other close friend. After that particular incident I didn’t feel comfortable spending time with my friends as I feared your disapproval and criticism.
At the same time you felt completely free to push me aside whenever it was convenient to spend time with your friends, only to give me further disapproval and criticism if I wished to spend time with mine. I wouldn’t go so far as to say you didn’t have any loyalty to me; it is quite apparent as time progresses that you were only loyal to me when it was convenient for you. Your need to both control your partner’s behavior as well as your need to play the victim was very hurtful to me. The mistake to pursue you as a partner was mine and mine alone; I felt a kinship with you which I hadn’t felt in a very long time. And perhaps between that and a deep-seated feeling of loneliness I wasn’t using my best judgment in dealing with you. I ignored red flags until they got out of hand. I ignored advice from trusted friends(and, yes, I have trusted friends that I will ask relationship advice from; since you were pissed that I did so, deal with it) warning me about inappropriate behavior on your part. I’m relieved to say that behavior like yours isn’t tolerated by me anymore; if faced with our relationship all over again I would have ended things within a month or two.
Your need for control, the constant criticism you dished out to everyone and everything who disagreed with you, the irrational fears you worked yourself up to frustration over, and the self-centeredness which defined my relationship with you were all inappropriate behavior and hurt me as a result. I don’t expect you to care, especially at this point. However I am left to clean up the damage that still remains.
While you apparently ‘moved on’ to someone else a few short months after things between us fell apart, I have not been able to do so. This is not due to any lingering affection for you; that faded long ago. Part of this is my trying to heal. Another part of this is my fear that you will somehow harm any future relationship I try to get myself into because you wish to extend your control of me as far as you possibly can. This has happened in the past, and is incredibly inappropriate, immature behavior. The fact friends of yours(who in most cases didn’t even know me) contacted me after things were over made me suspicious you were trying to keep tabs on me. That is why I have blocked all contact from you on my side. I don’t want any contact from you for any reason whatsoever. You don’t need to know how I’m feeling or what I’m doing. In short, your actions caused me to not only lose trust in you; I actively distrust you for reasons I feel are completely valid. I fear you causing me harm in the future. I can’t trust you will not do this.
Another part is completely on my end. When something ends, I start to get incredibly distrustful and hateful of the concept of relationships. My attitude changes drastically; I view intimate relationships as being for the weak, codependent people out there who have no ability to live life on their own terms. The limerence, the statements that one’s partner makes life worth living, and all the lovey-dovey crap that gets vomited out makes me physically sick. I close myself to any and all possibilities. I generally never get approached by anyone in a romantic capacity anymore, but when I was younger I was quite vocal and likely hurtful to anyone who approached me with those intentions.
The problem is that I had been enslaved to those emotions quite quickly. I don’t really have much romantic interaction in general. The number of relationships you had in the year and a half I knew you equals the number of relationships I have been in the past decade. Unfortunately for me, that part of myself that still holds onto the codependency and limerence gets attached quickly, and I wind up paying the price for it. It’s a part that I’ve tried hard to squash over the years, and perhaps you’ve killed it. I hope that is the case. I grew too fond of you too quickly, and I was unwilling to let go. I deluded myself into saying you were worth fighting for, when in fact you most definitely weren’t.
Because of that and the concern that you will show back up to throw another monkeywrench into the mix, I’m failing to see the point in pursuing it any further. I hate to say that you ‘won’, because there shouldn’t be any ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ in this. Either way, I feel like I’m the one sitting around struggling with the emotional fallout while people like you move on to the next chump that will put up with you. And maybe that’s the problem in the first place, that I was attracted to emotional vampires like you.
I’m smart enough to understand that my attitude is a defense mechanism. However, that defense mechanism has allowed me to pursue and attain many of my goals without the fear of someone coming in with promises of love and emotional support that I’m blind enough to accept, only to make a complete mess out of everything before they leave and lay the blame at my feet. I’m sick of people like you, and it’s the reason why I generally stay single. Part of me wonders if this defense mechanism is hurting me with as little contact as I get from others in that fashion, but whenever I run into someone like you and get burned I feel this defense mechanism is quite justified.
There’s a part of me that’s tired of keeping the defenses up and wishes that I could find someone that I could actually mesh with. However, even the act of finding someone like you is difficult enough and you were far from being an ideal partner. I feel that it is a fool’s errand. People say not to look or pursue, but people these days tend to keep insulated in their own little bubbles and as such it's impossible to catch anyone's attention without looking or pursuing. I took a risk pursuing you, and it failed miserably.
I can only close with this: I regret ever having met you. I would have been far better off not having been emotionally attached to you. I would have been farther along in my goals had I not been distracted by you. I don’t want to just ‘move on’ from you; I want to erase your memory. You don’t deserve to take up space in my thoughts anymore, and once I figure out how to get rid of you I gladly will. I'm tired of looking over my shoulder, fearful of when you're going to suddenly show up and stick the knife in. I know you like to 'keep tabs' on exes for whatever reasons, but it needs to end. I don't need your fucking permission or approval to live my life; those privileges have long since been revoked. I don't want you involved in my life one bit. I'm not even going to play with being civil with you; if I even see you once more as long as I live, it will be far too soon.
All that said, I'm going to attempt to actually post more often. Since this is quite far from Facebook or other social media sites, I feel safe posting here. I'll shoot for weekend updates and see how it goes.
I’ve held on to the hurt for far too long, and I’m trying to let go. That’s far more easily said than done, as it’s wrapped up with the pain I still feel from the death of my best friend. Those feelings are strong and conflicted, and the work I’ve done in therapy for the past year or so has concentrated on separating those feelings from each other. At the same time I wish I had been far more mindful and in the moment when I dealt with you.
Why? Because as I’ve processed what happened it is readily apparent there were many warning signs that I missed. Your behavior was inappropriate at best and approached outright emotional manipulation and abuse. Your need to subtly control my actions and behaviors as well as access to my friends and family was hurtful; because of this and my passive acceptance of it I missed out on spending time with my friend before he took his life.
I understand now that this was an event I couldn’t have possibly controlled; there would have been no magic combination of words or actions I could have done to prevent his death. At the same time I could have spent more time with him if I had been willing to push back against your disapproval. I have to live with the fact that I pushed him aside to spend time with you out of loyalty as well as fear that you would treat my friendship with him the same as you did my other close friend. After that particular incident I didn’t feel comfortable spending time with my friends as I feared your disapproval and criticism.
At the same time you felt completely free to push me aside whenever it was convenient to spend time with your friends, only to give me further disapproval and criticism if I wished to spend time with mine. I wouldn’t go so far as to say you didn’t have any loyalty to me; it is quite apparent as time progresses that you were only loyal to me when it was convenient for you. Your need to both control your partner’s behavior as well as your need to play the victim was very hurtful to me. The mistake to pursue you as a partner was mine and mine alone; I felt a kinship with you which I hadn’t felt in a very long time. And perhaps between that and a deep-seated feeling of loneliness I wasn’t using my best judgment in dealing with you. I ignored red flags until they got out of hand. I ignored advice from trusted friends(and, yes, I have trusted friends that I will ask relationship advice from; since you were pissed that I did so, deal with it) warning me about inappropriate behavior on your part. I’m relieved to say that behavior like yours isn’t tolerated by me anymore; if faced with our relationship all over again I would have ended things within a month or two.
Your need for control, the constant criticism you dished out to everyone and everything who disagreed with you, the irrational fears you worked yourself up to frustration over, and the self-centeredness which defined my relationship with you were all inappropriate behavior and hurt me as a result. I don’t expect you to care, especially at this point. However I am left to clean up the damage that still remains.
While you apparently ‘moved on’ to someone else a few short months after things between us fell apart, I have not been able to do so. This is not due to any lingering affection for you; that faded long ago. Part of this is my trying to heal. Another part of this is my fear that you will somehow harm any future relationship I try to get myself into because you wish to extend your control of me as far as you possibly can. This has happened in the past, and is incredibly inappropriate, immature behavior. The fact friends of yours(who in most cases didn’t even know me) contacted me after things were over made me suspicious you were trying to keep tabs on me. That is why I have blocked all contact from you on my side. I don’t want any contact from you for any reason whatsoever. You don’t need to know how I’m feeling or what I’m doing. In short, your actions caused me to not only lose trust in you; I actively distrust you for reasons I feel are completely valid. I fear you causing me harm in the future. I can’t trust you will not do this.
Another part is completely on my end. When something ends, I start to get incredibly distrustful and hateful of the concept of relationships. My attitude changes drastically; I view intimate relationships as being for the weak, codependent people out there who have no ability to live life on their own terms. The limerence, the statements that one’s partner makes life worth living, and all the lovey-dovey crap that gets vomited out makes me physically sick. I close myself to any and all possibilities. I generally never get approached by anyone in a romantic capacity anymore, but when I was younger I was quite vocal and likely hurtful to anyone who approached me with those intentions.
The problem is that I had been enslaved to those emotions quite quickly. I don’t really have much romantic interaction in general. The number of relationships you had in the year and a half I knew you equals the number of relationships I have been in the past decade. Unfortunately for me, that part of myself that still holds onto the codependency and limerence gets attached quickly, and I wind up paying the price for it. It’s a part that I’ve tried hard to squash over the years, and perhaps you’ve killed it. I hope that is the case. I grew too fond of you too quickly, and I was unwilling to let go. I deluded myself into saying you were worth fighting for, when in fact you most definitely weren’t.
Because of that and the concern that you will show back up to throw another monkeywrench into the mix, I’m failing to see the point in pursuing it any further. I hate to say that you ‘won’, because there shouldn’t be any ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ in this. Either way, I feel like I’m the one sitting around struggling with the emotional fallout while people like you move on to the next chump that will put up with you. And maybe that’s the problem in the first place, that I was attracted to emotional vampires like you.
I’m smart enough to understand that my attitude is a defense mechanism. However, that defense mechanism has allowed me to pursue and attain many of my goals without the fear of someone coming in with promises of love and emotional support that I’m blind enough to accept, only to make a complete mess out of everything before they leave and lay the blame at my feet. I’m sick of people like you, and it’s the reason why I generally stay single. Part of me wonders if this defense mechanism is hurting me with as little contact as I get from others in that fashion, but whenever I run into someone like you and get burned I feel this defense mechanism is quite justified.
There’s a part of me that’s tired of keeping the defenses up and wishes that I could find someone that I could actually mesh with. However, even the act of finding someone like you is difficult enough and you were far from being an ideal partner. I feel that it is a fool’s errand. People say not to look or pursue, but people these days tend to keep insulated in their own little bubbles and as such it's impossible to catch anyone's attention without looking or pursuing. I took a risk pursuing you, and it failed miserably.
I can only close with this: I regret ever having met you. I would have been far better off not having been emotionally attached to you. I would have been farther along in my goals had I not been distracted by you. I don’t want to just ‘move on’ from you; I want to erase your memory. You don’t deserve to take up space in my thoughts anymore, and once I figure out how to get rid of you I gladly will. I'm tired of looking over my shoulder, fearful of when you're going to suddenly show up and stick the knife in. I know you like to 'keep tabs' on exes for whatever reasons, but it needs to end. I don't need your fucking permission or approval to live my life; those privileges have long since been revoked. I don't want you involved in my life one bit. I'm not even going to play with being civil with you; if I even see you once more as long as I live, it will be far too soon.
All that said, I'm going to attempt to actually post more often. Since this is quite far from Facebook or other social media sites, I feel safe posting here. I'll shoot for weekend updates and see how it goes.