An Open Letter to my Ex – Part 2.

I’m not one for superstitions, believing in fate, or that the universe “moves in mysterious ways”.

That being said, I’ve had in mind to write this follow-up piece for several years now, and tonight in preparation I went back and read the original that I wrote on a sunny beach in Hoi An, Vietnam, which spurred at least a few scornful and bitter messages my way. Whilst reading it I found out two things

1. I fucking hate it and my writing used to be shit, I wasn’t funny, and I can’t believe I was so damn sour and dramatic at the time, and…
2. I wrote that piece exactly nine years ago, to the day (July 10th, 2017).

Whilst that last piece was written in sunny paradise, this one is written in a quaint countryside icebox in Daylesford (a place where we, somewhat ironically, spent a weekend together many, many years ago). I still don’t believe in destiny, but this seems as fortuitous a day as any to get this done (and I don’t feel like waiting for a nice, round decade).

It may seem like pulverising a dead horse to be writing this after so many years and I can just hear someone (perhaps my therapist) telling me that it’s time to move on. Give me some rope though, because I’m about to do something that those close to me can appreciate is a rarity… take some accountability.

To be clear, the relationship ending was entirely your fault; that tends to come with the territory of fucking my best friends of half my life. What I will say, however, is that my prior claims of how horrible the relationship was due to your behaviour may have been overstated. Hindsight is still a treacherous bitch (like some others) but it does lend us the ability to reflect, grow, and even own up to our shortcomings from time to time. Truth is, my expectations of love, relationships, and companionship were entirely misguided when we were together.

Whether from books, movies, or childhood trauma, I had this over-idealistic picture of what a relationship should be like in my head; full of grand gestures, Hollywood moments, and literal perfection at every corner, with perfect compatibility and compromise.. in truth, maybe somewhat of a fairytale. I hated when some of those expectations were not met, and I’m big enough now to admit that maybe I sometimes expected things a little too perfectly, and got sad when they weren’t. We were young, neither of us over 24, and to think that we were equipped and ready to foster the perfect relationship is a laughable concept.

It was so easy to claim that I was the only one trying in the relationship and that you were not. The reality is though that I was trying way too hard to force a set narrative I had in my head, and you were just.. existing (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Ask any normal 22 year to sit down and have frank conversations about their relationship dynamic and you’ll probably get the same results that I did, so I can’t even be bitter about it. The age of 22 is not ripe for such talks; it’s the age for jägermeister and regrets.

However… the issue lies in the.. well, the lies. Let me again reference the same book by Gordon Livingston where he says:

”If the map doesn’t agree with the ground, the map is wrong”

You kept verbally giving me promises of change, of love, of all the things I was asking for, and never delivering. I was staring at the map you gave me, and it didn’t match the ground. Was then it on me to realise and adjust? To have the self-awareness to realise that maybe, just maybe, we actually weren’t compatible in a long-term relationship? Potentially; but I was 24, so I’m cutting myself some slack.

In a roundabout way I’m saying this; no breakup is entirely one-sided and there’s fault on both sides. Mine, for being overly unrealistically romanticised and for failing to appreciate that my expectations were not yours and yours alone to fulfil; and yours, for kissing me goodbye at the Windsor Castle Hotel then taking my best mate home in an Uber for a drunken night of revelry and agreeing to “take it to your grave”. Are both of these equal? Not for me to say.

As chance would have it I saw an old friend of ours at a birthday a few weeks ago and she told me you had just gotten married. A quick social media snoop later and there it was, you in a white dress. The very next day, I proposed to my (now) fiancé (I swear it was pre-planned and not done out of spite). She’s incredible, and I’m taking all the lessons you taught me into this new adventure, with far better understanding’s of love in all its forms.

I guess all’s well that ends well and, as I said last time, I truly do wish you the best and hope you are happy, and can say with confidence that it would never have worked out between us, infidelity or otherwise.

Now let’s all patiently wait till 2035 for Part 3.