i realize now that our marriage was over years before we finally admitted it and called it quits. it was over in 2007 when we spent a month at your parents’ house while your ankle was injured. i realize now that that experience broke me and it broke our marriage. your mother abused me and i looked to you for support, defense, understanding, or even just a sympathetic ear. anything to help. and all you did was invalidate my feelings and experiences and defend your mother.

i never trusted you again after that. i couldn’t make myself vulnerable to you again after that. i felt betrayed and abandoned. and i couldn’t make you understand any of that. i tried so many times to tell you that i was hurting, that i was broken. i tried so many times to tell you that i didn’t trust you anymore and that the lack of trust was destroying our relationship and you never seemed to hear me or understand me.

i realize now that i didn’t express myself as clearly as i could have. i did not fully understand how to explain what had happened, and i did not fully understand all of the emotional baggage we both carried from our abusive childhoods. i did not realize that i expressed my hurt in ways that seemed (most of the time fairly) to you to attack you and blame you, and that you could not face that sort of criticism. i did not see my own failures in communication, and i did, in my heart, blame you. to be honest, part of me still does.

i no longer blame you for what your mother did, or for failing to stand up for me, or for forcing me to live with her in the first place. but i do still blame you for not listening to me beg for help, for understanding, for sympathy, for validation. i do still blame you for turning a deaf ear on my pleas for psychiatric and psychological help and for emotional support. i do still blame you for ignoring me when i told you that i truly believed that my burning down your mother’s house with her and the rest of your family (possibly including you) trapped inside it was a very real possibility that frightened me to my core. i blame you for not listening, not believing, and not doing anything when i told you that i was broken and needed help.

as i said, i understand now that my emotional baggage prevented me from expressing myself in a constructive manner. and i understand now that your emotional baggage prevented you from taking what i said in a productive manner. i believe that we are both to blame for the constant and ongoing failure of communication and understanding that occurred in the years since this month of abuse happened. i believe i am willing to accept my share of blame.

i also believe that you will never be willing to accept yours. i believe that you are far more damaged than you realize and that you are not capable of accepting responsibility for any of the negative consequences of any of your decisions and actions. i believe that there is no malice in you, but that you are frightened of seeing the damage you have done because you are frightened of the guilt that might overwhelm you if you ever accepted responsibility.

i am ashamed to say that part of me still believes that it is not too late for us to fix the problem of lack of trust, if we both truly wish to truly work at it. but i don’t believe that you have ever been capable of truly working at it, and i am not certain you ever truly wished to try. and with everything else that has happened in the intervening years, i am not certain i wish to fix it, either. i am not certain i am willing to put in the effort, and i am not certain i would trust you if you claimed you were ready and willing to do your part.

what i am certain of is that i don’t want to be with you anymore. i don’t want to be married to a treatment-noncompliant bipolar alcoholic who cannot or will not finally and definitively cut his toxic, abusive, narcissistic family out of his life despite all the pain they burden him with and despite being strongly advised by multiple mental health professionals to do so.

i am ashamed of myself for staying with you for so long. i am ashamed of myself for deluding myself for so long that we could make it work. i am ashamed of myself for offering you my misplaced loyalty, i am ashamed of myself for not standing up for myself on so many, many occasions when i could have and should have, and i am ashamed of myself for being too frightened to do what i knew needed to be done. i am ashamed of myself for waiting for you to ask for a divorce when i knew for so long that we needed one. and i am ashamed of myself for being too timid to share any of this confession with you when i know that it would bring me closure and you insight.

most of all, i am ashamed of how relieved i am to know that you will no longer drag me down with you.

i am not ashamed of myself for still loving you. you were a huge part of my life for all of my adult life. you loved me as much as you were capable of, and you did the best you could. all this time you have been as good a friend to me as you were able, and i believe you when you say that you will continue to do so. i wish you nothing but the best in life. part of me will always love you, but i have not been in love with you since 2007, and we have not truly been married since 2007, and it is long past time for us both to move on.

i am sorry for all of the hurt i caused you, and i am sorry for all of the ways i failed to understand you and communicate clearly with you. and i am sorry for all of the ways i failed to understand myself and our relationship. we both failed each other, and i accept and apologize for my share of the failure. i wish that you could accept and apologize for yours. i wish it for both our sakes, because i believe that this is the sort of thing you need to learn how to do in order to build healthy relationships in the future, and i want you to have those better, healthier relationships.