Dear Terry,
After receiving your letter yesterday, I realized that the time has come, and the time is now. I can no longer be in an intimate relationship with you. While I love and care for you very much, it would be emotionally self-destructive for me to continue with you. A relationship is not just about mutual interests, spending time together, or having sex together. A relationship needs to be rooted in mutual trust. I feel that you have not trusted me from the very beginning. And over the last several months I have gradually lost my trust in you. I am very sad that this has happened, however now I accept it as reality.
Mary has absolutely nothing to do with this. The demise of our relationship has occurred in spite of, not because of, Mary. For you to blame her is unfair. “Because of Mary’s behavior, you and I are currently at odds with one another.” “Now we see each others as adversaries.” This is an example of how, even at this 11th hour, you focus on deflecting blame away from yourself. It is always someone, or something, else’s fault.
You can blame Mary all you want. After all, this is a free country and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. You can blame me, Mary, your family and how they’ve treated you, the Pope, or Mother Teresa. However, it will not change the reality, which is:
1. I have been repeatedly hurt by you.
2. If we reconcile I am guaranteed to be hurt by you again. I know this from painful experience.
3. I can no longer afford to put myself in a position to be hurt by you.
I have lost a great deal of who I am over the last two years. It is now up to me to take care of myself, and to stop putting myself in harm’s way. It is my responsibility to say, “I deserve to be in a happy, healthy relationship.” I know in my heart that I have done all I can here and it is time for me to move on. Continuing down the present course would only place us BOTH in emotional jeopardy. I truly believe that ending this relationship is the right thing for both of us! We now have to take the gifts of this relationship and the lessons we have learned, with us into the future.
Perhaps you will make me out to be a villainess, like Sandy, to your family and friends. Perhaps you will complain to your next lover what a rotten person I was. I guess they will never know about all the times you hurt me with angry words or seething silence. They will never understand what really went on in our relationship.
This is not to say that there were not positive things we shared. In fact, there were many. I never said you were a bad person, and I am not saying that now. You have many wonderful qualities, the ones that attracted me to you in the first place, the ones that I appreciate even now. You are honest, conscientious, have a terrific sense of humor, are very practical and can fix just about anything, know a great deal about a lot of things, and are a good lover. We certainly have had many wonderful times together, and I will always remember them.
Don’t ever wonder whether or not I loved you. I did love you, it was real, and there will always be part of me that loves you and cares for you. I wish you well, and hope that someday you will be truly happy. Right now we are both feeling a great deal of hurt, pain, anger, and sadness. However, I hope that someday these feelings will subside, and that we can be friends.
Love,
Chris
P.S. I would like to arrange a mutually agreeable time and place to exchange our stuff. I will call you in a few days to do this. After that, I think it would be best for us not to have any contact (except for organization XYZ) for at least 6 months.