Paul,

I’m tired. I’m tired of letting you down. Tired of never being enough. Tired of being stonewalled. Tired of being left. Tired of your wandering eyes.

I am tired of writing. Explaining. Crying. Fighting. WONDERING. Wondering, what it is, exactly, that you’re looking for and why any man would give a year and a half of his life to someone he found so unattractive and so unlovable?

All this time I rationalized for you. You were hurt. I thought years of pain were bringing you down and you were love-starved. I thought if we went slow, we’d be okay in the long run. 

But okay doesn’t cut it anymore. If okay means holidays without each other, I don’t want okay. If okay means overreacting to normal human emotions with a breakup (“for real this time”) only to come back two days later, I need not have it.

I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep waiting for you to wake up and love me the way I deserve to be loved.

You will be 41 in two weeks. If you haven’t learned how to keep good thing when you have it, there’s a small chance you ever will.

I want someone who is ready for marriage. Not the theory. Not the idea. Not the hope that when you finally do “it,” you won’t end up miserable like the people that got married because it was the thing to do.

You don’t have to worry about ending up miserable – you’re already there. Half your life is over and you have nothing to show for it except another failed relationship. 

Why would you ever subject yourself to this year long headache with me? In NYC? You live in the heart of the meatpacking district. The MECCA of sexy, skinny girls looking for traders. That is what you want, isn’t it? Someone “easy?” 

Because that’s what I want too. Easy. He will be sexy and skinny and our relationship will be superficial and I will never have to write him love letters like this. He will not make pasta from scratch or read poems or know that wearing socks with slippers is the appropriate dress code for kicking it back in a Russian household. He will never debate the Oxford comma with me or teach me the appropriate way to eat an oyster. When he goes to China on a business trip, I will never have to worry about him reaching out to me because he will not be going to China. He will never challenge me or force me to grow and he will never overlap with the hold you have on my heart.

I look back on how much I loved you and it makes me sick to my stomach. I loved you, all the time, without condition, and that is the only reason we lasted so long. I loved you when you were painfully under-slept and in those rare moments you showered me with beautiful, unadulterated affection. The truth is, I know we both can be happier.

And here I am now, releasing you. I couldn’t give you happiness, so now I’m giving you the only thing I can: my blessing to go find it.

Natalie, age 22