Have Better Breakups: Stop Writing Long-Winded Letters
Being a writer, I’ve been guilty of writing my fair share of lengthy egregious breakup letters.
They are supposed to memorialize the end of a relationship and point to the many reasons that contributed to its demise. I always wanted to lay my heart on the page and end things by listing all the reasons that led me to realize that the relationship and the man were not working for me. However, I also needed to validate my wounded heart and ego. I wanted him to fix what was broken, so we could get back on track. As if he didn’t already know.
I had a friend who used to go back and forth with her boyfriend every week. They would write these pages and pages of texts about what wasn’t working between them, and how they just needed to move on. After several rounds of that paired with a brief moment of silence, they were back to being in love. Apologizing and hoping for another chance at the relationship. I once called a man to tell him that I was changing my phone number and I wish him luck in the future. He simply responded, “ok”. He did not try to get me to change my mind. He didn’t hang up with me and try to send me an email. He did not care. Before that phone call, I told him several times that I felt he was being very low effort. He would just list a myriad of excuses to justify his behavior. Of course, I knew he didn’t care. I refused to accept it. I wanted to give him ample opportunity not to lose me. He did not care.
I realize now that writing these long letters, or making these grand gestures in an attempt for someone to stop you from walking out the door, reeks of desperation and low self-worth.
These long breakup letters are nonsense. No amount of eloquently crafted prose, dripping with raw emotion that penetratingly bares your soul, will compel someone to do what they should already be doing. To think otherwise is delusional. It’s pretty difficult to be in a relationship where only one person thinks something is wrong. You really shouldn’t have to spell it out on paper.If you have begun a dialogue about your relationship’s areas of development and there has been no response or effort to change the behavior in question, what more do you want? Understand that “they just aren’t into you” OR they don’t care enough to amend their behavior.
The more you write, the more it’s clear that you really do still care. Quite simply, this is a waste of valuable time and energy. Instead, more of us need to learn how to just end the relationship succinctly. If you are truly done, then be done. Take your dignity and go. Find someone who makes an effort to make things work for you. Not someone to whom you have to write a novel in order to shake things up. They really don’t deserve that. Just move on.
