Letter number 3: Effort

Dear Alexandra,

I feel like my last letter was quite negative toward you, and I want to be fair. Of course, you did betray me and all to readily cast our relationship away — but reflecting there were moments where you were redoubling efforts in your own way quite recently that perhaps I could have been more sensitive to or aware of.

It wasn’t that long ago that we were fomenting ideas about the kind of wedding we’d like. I even remember you spontaneously saying “I can’t wait to be able to say I’m your wife” — it felt thrilling to hear that. We oscillated between wanting something small but also wanting to have some bands play. We looked into conducting the ceremony at Stonehenge.

For our last anniversary in August you gave me a jar of ‘date night’ ideas — some of them were a bit rubbish to be honest, like you’d run out of ideas — but there were some lovely ones too. There was recognition of some of our barriers. One had ‘No tech night’ — something I know you’d have found tough (I would too in truth, I’m trying now to have defined time where I keep my phone in Airplane mode).

There were things we could do together in there — record a song together, take a shower together. We never did that, that makes me sad. Ways to learn about one another — sharing childhood films, things like that. We didn’t really make the most of those date night cards. You never seemed that keen when I suggested it, and I perhaps didn’t try hard enough.

You also found lots of online escape room type games we could play together as well as physical kits. It could be challenge as you liked to take control, and I got frustrated sometimes — but on the whole they were fun. You even talked about us creating some puzzle games, getting as far as coming up with high level concepts and even a brand for us to release them as. I was up for the idea but maybe I should have expressed that better, maybe we should have started on it.

I suppose what I’m saying is that I do recognise now that clearly you were looking for ways to rekindle something, to assuage the doubts you were having about us — possibly subconsciously — I think deep down you recognised that you were through your online activities neglecting our relationship, you got so angry if I made any suggestion like that, that I just kind of accepted my lot of having to fit in in between your ‘other life’ — the one where you denied my existence.

For Valentine’s day you’d created a print of maps of where we met, where we first kissed and where we agreed to become a couple — lovely and thoughtful, even if the date of our relationship starting was wrong by ten years. I think that’s one of the struggles I’m having — that was less than a month before you started this dalliance. How could things have changed that quickly?

As I’ve said before, I can accept that people’s feelings change — you were so young when we got together really, maybe you felt that you were trapped. What I just can’t get my head around is that you were willing to let somebody else identify as your boyfriend at the same time as me, that you couldn’t tell me that it was over for us before you went that far. Because if you’re engaging even in a virtual relationship to that extent, sending gifts, writing love notes — you know that it’s not working for us any more.

If this was just an idle fantasy for you that you had no intention of consummating beyond a virtual sense then you’ve not only been spectacularly cruel to me then you’ve been cruel to this other fella too. But I’m descending into negative again — and this letter was supposed to be acknowledgement of my recognition of some signs that you were having a struggle and a dilemma. You hadn’t cast off all vestiges of our relationship until right before this strange online drama started to play out in late February/early March.

What worries me is that perhaps it was the right thing that we ended things as they were — but I don’t want you to fall headlong into something damaging. Obviously I have a conflict of interests here — part of me is hurt, and doesn’t want this other dude profiting from my hurt, but honestly and truly I’m more concerned with your future happiness. I can accept that despite my best intentions perhaps I couldn’t deliver that for you, it breaks my heart as it’s all I wanted — but I’ve also realised that unknowingly I’ve sacrificed a lot of myself and my own happiness in trying to do that. In some ways I’ll be better off.

I just worry about you and what comes next for you. You’ve shut yourself off from Facebook. You blocked me from Twitter yesterday, I’m presuming because you saw a tweet I posted about sitting in my contemplation spot. I’ve been very careful not to post anything anywhere public that will compromise you, because I know how sensitive you are — and currently very fixated on how things affect you rather than thinking of your impact on others. However I do need to get through this from my perspective too.

I did joke when we last spoke in person that you could always block me on socials if you needed to — but to let me know first. It did hurt a little to see that, but I’ve decided to be philosophical about it. It might do me good to not be exposed to that environment which is an extension of your online world where I never existed. I remember getting in trouble once for replying to one of your tweets innocently but potentially compromising your online single persona. I hadn’t realised my non-existence extended to Twitter at the time.

I’m trying really hard to give you space to sort things out for yourself, I need to do that. So I’m not going to message you, and I’m going to count it as a win if I can avoid checking when you were last online on messenger, or look at your Twitter feed (I do have other Twitter accounts :D ) to see if you’re okay. But it is also borderline stalking behaviour, whatever the underlying motivation, and it’s both unhealthy for me and — frankly — a little unfair on you. It’s hard to switch off that role in my head that is to look after you.

I do think that I’ve perhaps done too much of that — made things too easy, too one sided. I’m not sure how I could have done it differently, but I do think about it. People need to have things to overcome to grow, maybe I contributed unwittingly.

I’ve digressed — but this letter was to acknowledge that, with hindsight, it’s clear that on some level you were trying to rekindle something, find common ground — you’d recognised on some level things weren’t working. We perhaps lazily blamed lockdown, we blamed your ongoing assessment at work that needed completing. I do think that you passing this was probably a catalyst for thinking more about the future — how quickly your focus shifted from looking for jobs up here to finding some more locally. I did register, but not strongly enough.

I just wish you could have been honest with me. As I hope that I showed when I did come down and confront you, I am a reasonable person — the last thing I would want is for you to feel trapped in a relationship you didn’t want to be in, and I feel heartbroken more than anything that you didn’t feel you could confide in me if that’s the way you were feeling. It would have been sad, but you wouldn’t have been driven to infidelity and then torturing yourself for going down that road.

More than anything I want you to take from this experience the learning that you have to be able to talk to people close to you. Even if you can’t quite explain the way you are feeling — lockdown, PMDD, hormones, relationship fatigue — I don’t believe for a minute you had a clear and cunning plan through all of this, but I would have listened, I would have tried to understand.

I hope you are doing okay,

I love you, Bert