I am done feeling bad that I left you but I feel bad about something else now.

I feel bad that I started dating you when I had so many reservations, when my gut was telling me not to. Your apartment smelled atrocious and the sex was less than stellar. I thought you were nice, but I knew how much you were into me and I knew I didn’t have those feelings with the same intensity. Those were red flags that I should have listened to because they bothered me the entire relationship.

I thought I would grow to love you, and I will maintain that I did, but you did so many things that bothered me that I knew would make me resent you and I never spoke up. You belittled my travel experiences. I think you belittled a lot of my experiences and successes but I can’t think of any specific times that you did, so I’m not as confident in saying that. But you did support my work I suppose.

I should have spoken up more. If I had spoken up, it would have at least given you the opportunity to fight for yourself. But I took that chance away from you because I didn’t believe you could be any better than what you were showing me and I didn’t want you to know that was how I truly felt. I wanted to be optimistic for you. I wanted to believe you could be better. But I didn’t believe it and you showed me time and time again that I was right for the time being, that in the near future you weren’t going to be supportive enough for me.

I believe that someday you will get your act together and that you’ll hold yourself and the person you love to a high standard. I hope that you won’t resort to dating people that steal your stuff or live with their ex husband still. I hope that now that you are able to make a fresh start.

But I am so glad that we are not spinning each other around in toxic cycles anymore. I’m glad I cut it off when I did, before it could get any worse.

I feel terrible for telling you you weren’t good enough, and I hope you didn’t think I meant you would never be good. I hated telling you that. I hated hurting you.

But I am so hurt that you were willing to depend on me for so long without ever asking anyone else for help. I hated that. I wasn’t able to be your sole provider. I wasn’t able to take care of your life for you.

I hope you’re better now, and I’m sorry that we’ll probably never be friends again.

Im sorry that I knew this would ruin our friendship, that I knew you needed me as a friend more than a girlfriend/fiance, and I still went through with it anyway, always thinking I could be happy with unmatched expectations. I doubt I ever truly gave you the chance to meet them, but the fact remains that you didn’t. I told you you weren’t an adult, I told you you weren’t good enough, but it wasn’t that you were broken and messed up. You just weren’t what I wanted.

I’m sorry I convinced myself it would work out, because I think we did have a great friendship and I ruined that by dating you.

I’m sorry I didn’t cut things short sooner after having so many doubts.

When we got engaged I thought that things would be fine. I was genuinely happy when we were engaged. I believe we would make it. I believed in you. I believed that I was right for risking the friendship, that I was right for ignoring the red flags, that I was right for putting aside my doubts. I thought you could provide me with what I needed out of a partner for life.

And then I remember the first time you told me I should break up with you because you were a failure for not being able to drive and I thought I was being kind by telling you I would wait for you but I got so resentful that you didn’t get a lawyer. I got so resentful that you didn’t plead your case more heavily. I got so resentful that you just gave up. And that’s when I knew, and that’s when I should have ended it. And I wonder if we could have been friends if I had ended it then, as I am now casually friends with quite a few people I’ve had relationships with who were good people but it just didn’t work out. Maybe we could have been friends if you didn’t proceed to take advantage of me. Maybe we could have been friends if I hadn’t let it get to the point where every single person I knew saw how unhappy I was with you.

Because now it’s just so blatantly obvious that I was unhappy the entire time your license was suspended, that I always had something about you to complain about.

It was just the last straw. When I found out you couldn’t drive after all, after waiting six months, it just entirely broke me. How long could I wait for you to get better?

Thank you for your kindness, for the emotional support you gave me.

But if I could go back in time I wouldn’t have played footsie with you at your apartment, or shown up to that movie theatre in a dress, or held your hand, and I would date him instead.

But you gave me the tools to find out why speaking up is important, why expressing what I need is important, why maintaining my standards and expectations is important. You reinforced that my instincts are right. You have made me value what I have now that much more.

I hope you’re on the path to a better life.

But I’m not your cheerleader. The only reason I don’t doubt you can one day pull your life together is that you haven’t texted me. You said you’d text me when you found out whether you were going to jail or not, and I saw the case got dismissed, and you didn’t text me. So I think you can probably do it, because you learned to cut out people that doubt you from your life. Also if that’s not the reason you decided not to text me, still don’t text me. But if you ever need a reason to not text me, but you’ve thought about me enough to stalk my Reddit post history, then that should be reason enough for you to not reach out to me, because I will always doubt you.