Letter to an Old Boyfriend

You know who you are:

First, let me say before everything that I am never sorry that we are not together. Going our separate ways was the very best thing.

I am only ever upset that I did not leave you sooner. (That's not actually the only thing that upsets me when I think about it, but it's always the main thing.)

You were so not good for me.

I am not better for having been with you. I am not better for having loved you.

Only wiser and more experienced in what not to do. What signs to look for the next time around. What pitfalls to avoid.

Deciding to leave you was hard. I don't know how you tell it, if you tell it; whether you say I broke up with you, you broke up with me or it was mutual.

It's hard to say, really.

Our relationship started to unravel and disintegrate because you stopped participating, showing up, being involved. You checked out. You went emotionally AWOL.

But it ended because I called you on it, and you were unwilling and unable to change. (Yes, I am convinced it was both.)

I want you to know that when I think of it now, I am never ever sorry it ended. (Not sorry it started either, because we did have some really good times.) Just sorry I didn't walk away sooner and with more of my self-confidence intact.

I never loved you in a way that was blind to your faults. I saw them all and I loved you anyway. I loved you anyway because I believed that you could be a better man and I loved you anyway because to me you were good enough, perfectly fine, and just simply wonderful exactly as you were.

I look back now and I see that you weren't so special - that's just the way I love.

I think it's the only way you can love a person for life: to see their faults and love them any way. It's the only way you can keep trying, keep forgiving, keep perservering through all disappointments.

You have to forgive a person their shortcomings, overlook their faults as you know they overlook yours...know there are things they are not good at, but have respect for them any way.

There was a time when I believed that's what we had, but the moment I realized that we didn't, it was easy to walk away. Not that it didn't still hurt. Not that I didn't feel rejected, but I can honestly say that I have no regrets.

From the Archives 6.14.08