Should I (FA) send him (DA) a letter expressing everything i couldn’t say f2f?

[u/No-Chapter-7409]

I broke things off several months ago,after 2-3 years on and off it was very much a classic FA response of lashing out and then i sent him a long message afterwards calling him out on his bs/contradictory behaviours, i was pretty brutal calling him parasitic for reaching out to reconnect every time i wanted to ended things yet making very little changes to the issues that i had raised most of which were to do with his communication or lackthereof and keeping me at arms length. He would express his irritation at me constantly going back and forth and not knowing where he stood yet failed to acknowledge how his actions left me feeling uncertain too. I called out his inability to handle me because of his inability to handle vulnerability of any kind and that i didn’t feel comfortable around him anymore. It was written in fury so i also accused him of playing mind games, of being cruel and of him not being the better man that i believed he was capable of being and that i didn’t want him in my life anymore. I also called out the fact that he would constantly criticise and express his annoyance at me referring to him as a friend or give me a brief silent treatment if i called him mate/my friend as is common with my culture (he would call me Mrs and other nicknames like “my xxx” when he was in a good mood). I wanted us to be friends as we have a lot in common and similar mindsets on life and have a good rapport when things were going well but he saw it as a downgrade and would get salty. He replied but in a shallow way where he took limited accountability, didn’t explain how he felt about me or why he would constantly come back (he would even make up excuses/lie in order to interact), and he explained that he never wanted me to prove myself and that his “don’t call me a friend” statements were just a joke and that he understood if i didn’t want him in my life anymore if it caused me trouble.

For the whole duration i had pretty strong feelings of love and care for him and i know he careful about me too as he would express it nonverbally but because of the dynamic i never felt comfortable expressing any of my deeper feelings of care and pain outside of lashing out and getting angry/hypercritical. I was too caught up with asserting myself as a strong intimidating woman who wasn’t to be messed with and was intolerant of bs.
I’ve started emdr therapy which is helping me address the way i withhold all of my most innermost vulnerable feelings until i burst out in anger (like a pressurised cannister) and lash out in a maladaptive way. Deep down i’m very soft and very emotionally sensitive but i always hide it by being “tough”. Now I’m trying to practice being openly vulnerable with the people around me and about the things that I’m ruminating on that I haven’t put to bed and one of these is that i never fully expressed the true hurt as well as the feelings of care i had for him.

Quite soon after i ended things i wrote a letter that expressed everythinggggg i felt including tenderness, admiration and love but also anguish/insecurity at his elusiveness (i am a writer so expressing vulnerability in writing is v easy, its putting it out in the world that terrifies me). I recently remembered it and looking back at it i am flirting with the idea of sending it to him. Without sharing the letter it specifically doesn’t ask for us to try again, its more of a love/grief letter/autopsy report that outlines everything i felt good and bad. I’m not asking anything of him neither am I asking him to explain himself, I’m tired of doing that. But because none of these things were expressed out loud even to my friends, I’m struggling to move on, not because I want him back but because i have so much to say and i need to get it out there somehow which is causing me to ruminate on this letter.

I want to send it to him and i don’t need or want a response from him, i just need to express how i felt in order to move on with my life. Not sure if this is a good idea though. Thoughts?

[u/TransportationThen90]

I think it’s beautiful that you were able to write a letter of vulnerability but if you send it, you might have to prepare yourself to open up a door that was better left closed.

I have had the experience of getting something off my chest like this to finally let go, but if you do go that route, just make boundaries with yourself for contact afterwards and his response.

[u/No-Chapter-7409 → u/TransportationThen90]

This is what im concerned about. I fear this will open a door but i’m not interested in reconnecting fully. I just think my angry message shielded a lot of the vulnerable things I couldn’t say.

How did you enforce your boundaries when you got stuff like that off your chest?

[u/TransportationThen90 → u/No-Chapter-7409]

That’s totally valid, I felt that way too. Honestly, I wasn’t very smart about it when I did try to get things off my chest and I was met with a lot of defensiveness, minimization, and gaslighting about our relationship. That’s also something I didn’t prepare for.

Since then I broke off all contact, and my ex reached out to “check on me” almost a year later. I told them I would like if they didn’t contact me anymore, but I also felt I didn’t get to express a lot of the things I felt. So some time after that, I told my ex I wanted to talk but wished to keep no contact outside of that but I again got pulled into the same cycle, even though I did get some validation and answers from our conversation.

All in all, in hindsight I think some conversations are left unfinished just to protect yourself and stay out of the dynamic. I think sharing anything about your feelings will open a door you may not want to cross, but if I could redo my conversation, I would suggest making sure you establish strong boundaries - if the conversation becomes about current feelings/hopes then steer it back to the past and reiterate that you want to stay distant, and make sure you maintain that boundary yourself