I need some experienced people to review my letter to my ex h uBPD. Last contact to get my piano was yesterday. I left a voicemail requesting NC and sent a text... .not sure he is getting them or if this is a game. He calls... .tearful... .why did you leave me? Called my brother too. UGH! I want it to STOP.
I wrote the following letter that I will send certified receipt requested on Monday. Please review, edit, comment, share your experience. What needs to change? Too much explaining? Help me do this right. I intend to be done when I get the receipt back.
Thank you!
?
April 3, 2016
Name
Address
Dear ex,
I got your venomous message about the piano wheel. I do not need it. I will be replacing them. I left you a message stating that I do not wish to be in contact with you anymore. It seems that you are ignoring that.
I also texted you a very clear message stating the same thing. Again, you seem to be ignoring the boundary.
Both messages said I am done. I wish you all the best.
I am sending this letter with a return receipt requested as my final very clear boundary. Even this interchange is too much drama. Please note:
I am done.
We are not a couple anymore.
We will not be in the future.
It is time to move on.
"
There will always be love. Love is eternal. I can not - Will NOT - be with you. It is too painful. It robs me of my joy for life and I am not willing to sacrifice myself for our marriage any longer.
This is my CLEAR response to your tearful message. You asked "why did you leave me, you said you wouldn't leave me if I didn't go back to dope":
I also said I would not tolerate abuse. you were abusive. You were not physically abusive. You were emotionally manipulative and abusive. I don’t think you meant to be that way but that was my experience and I am not willing to tolerate that.
It is very sad that you had a painful life. Childhood abuse is a tragic thing. However you are a 58 year old man. That means you have had 37 years from the time you became an adult to choose to deal with it in a good way. Instead, it appears you have claimed it as your "self". it has gotten worse over the course of our marriage. You seem to think that your history gives you permission to be angry and hostile and passive-aggressive. You can be whatever you want to be.
I am not willing to give up my life’s joy because you are stuck in your victimhood. Live there if you wish.
I realized that day in February when I accepted that our marriage was dead, that there really was so much abuse. I can imagine your outraged denial as you read this. That is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Abuse is not always physical. In this case, your actions stole my joy from me. That is abuse. That is control. That is a power grab.
That mid February day, I discovered that I needed to set myself free of it. Not without great fear, I accepted that I would claim my freedom.
Throughout our marriage, any confrontation or request for a change has been met with incredible guilt bombs. “You don’t love me”. “I am sorry that I embarrass you”. “You never loved me”. "You only married me to save your job".
And, I played my role too. I appeased, I explained. I begged. I sucked up my disgust. But it grew. My role silenced my truth. I played it really well, don't you think?
I learned recently that appeasing is not the same as love. Frankly, I was afraid you would attempt suicide. I was appeasing... .over and over again. I realize now that that if you choose suicide or you choose dope, that is your choice. Only one person can commit suicide. I hope you will choose to do the work to heal your history and have the life you deserve to have. I'm so glad you have 18 sessions of EMDR set up. My experience is that EMDR helped so much. It was painful but it was transformative.
That evening in February, when everything came crashing down, was a revelation. From what you have said in the past 6 weeks, It seems to me that you may not be remembering all of what happened that night. The way you seem to remember it is you told me you had diabetes and heart disease and I told you I was leaving. Wow, that WOULD BE cruel! Poor pitiful you
Here is how it happened in my world:
You told me about your clinic visit. I empathized and listened. I felt the dreaded sink of fear that said "I can't say what I need to say". I acknowledged that r diagnoses were scary. It is not a disaster. It is not the end of the world. You are going to be okay.
Then I told you I had a problem I needed to talk to you about. I told you I had a call at work, someone was concerned that some guy at the VA was claiming to be my husband. I told you the caller reported that you looked like you had just come out of the woods, were homeless, you were a stalker. That call filled me with shame. I thought “Really? Is this my reality? This is what I have done. Will I always have to feel this fear and anxiety about my husband’s behavior and actions?” It is really screwed up. That feeling of shame is as fuglee as it gets. As it turned out, this event is what helped me correct my course.
In our usual relationship dynamic, I would have stifled this issue away. Although things matter a great deal to me, I have learned that speaking about difficult things is something that will create a great deal of drama - tears, anger, rage... . In the past, I chose to be silent. An honest relationship requires two courageous people. I was not courageous.
It was my experience that any talk of asking you to be anything but your pot-smoking, farting, burping, loogie flinging ___-bombing self always led to these dramas where you are the pitiful, hurt man and I, the Villainess. I was embarrassed to invite you to professional things because you DID look like an ex-meth addict with sunk in cheeks and no class. I never knew when your foul mouth would start spouting.
That day, I talked with T. She is older, married 25 years and a wise advisor. I told her how these confrontations had always played out in the past but I also told her that I was not willing to stifle it. I just could not do it one more time. She advised me to speak to you with love. Although I was terrified of the drama that would predictably occur, I hoped that we could talk about it. That you would agree to become the man of dignity that you pretended to be when we first were married. Or, the man of dignity I thought you could be.
Instead, you reacted the way you have about most things that have an emotional charge. If you feel rejected, you rage. So this night, you raged. You stormed around. You yelled. You went outside. You slammed doors. You mumbled. Then, you gave me the silent treatment. Not a word was said for 14 hours. When I was in the bathtub the next morning, you asked if I was in there. I shut the shower curtain and said please come in. You said it is okay and went outside and peed. Wow – what homeless man behavior! Just another really obvious awareness.
So, I went out to the porch to have a smoke. I said good morning, you said a surly good morning. I sat there…I truly thought we would talk about it. Ha! You said nothing, so I started reading my Course in Miracles book…doing something that is healthy and helps me cope in the world... .helps me see that love always wins. A few minutes went by and you said “is anything wrong?”
I gave you the stink eye. Really? Is anything wrong? There was a pause and then the drama returned. There was yelling. There was foul language. There was a pitiful story about your very hard life. There was insistence that you were NOT going to wear your dentures and that your clothes were just fine and it was ok to be unshaven. THAT is when I realized that this is who you are. You do not want to be a man of dignity. You want to stay the same. You seem to get some big charge off of being angry. That is who you are. It was an amazing thing to witness. And it was empowering to realize that I do not have to tolerate that.
After a while when you were in the silent phase, I said “we are making each other miserable” and you said “do you want to leave, do you want me to leave?”. That moment, I KNEW I could claim my freedom. I said I would leave. I was terrified but I spoke my truth.
Finally. I owned it. I plowed through the next very predictable tsunami of emotion. I listened as you raged and cried and stormed. It made me heartsick AND I knew that I was not going to survive staying in our marriage.
It was abusive. I was lost in misery, being pulled down to that low, low place of complete unhappiness. To be with you meant to join you there. Accepting our reality meant soul death - very slow, soul death. I deserved better. I have claimed that.
During those first few days as I was trying to deal with my panic about what you would do next, I found a really good website about Borderline Personality Disorder. These very extreme reactions are symptoms of that. I sought out help and information and have learned a great deal in the past six weeks. I hope as you enter into your therapy, that you will find the healing you need so you don’t have to live such a miserable life.
You are a beautiful soul. I love you dearly AND I will not be with you ever again. Please be very clear on that.
I will not come back to you.
Our work together is completed.
I gave it my best shot, I truly did. We had some sweet times AND we had some terrible, ugly times where my guts ached with fear for what you would do next.
I’m not going to live that way. We tried for six years but things were getting worse. You were angry all the time. You were cursing or silently punishing me for something that I had to guess about. And when I would ask, you would deny. I am not going there again. I deserve better.
