THE LETTER YOU DESERVE FROM YOUR AVOIDANT EX (that you will never receive)

Dear (your name),

How do I begin to form an apology that could ever measure up to the pain I caused you?

Even now, after everything, I don’t know if words are enough. But this is the truth I never gave you—the truth you always deserved.

I went to therapy in the end.

And there, slowly, painfully, I began to understand that what I gave you was not real love. It was a half-love—a wounded, hollow, frightened imitation of the thing you offered me so freely.

I ran because I was terrified. Terrified of the very thing I’d spent my whole life pretending I didn’t want. When we got close, when things were amazing between us, my whole nervous system went into panic. I was freaking out, I was awake at night pacing, everything felt overwhelming, it was all too much for me to hold - real love was too much for me to carry.

I see now that I carried wounds into adulthood that I didn’t even know existed.

I grew up in a home where emotions had no place—a father who dismissed feelings like they were weaknesses, a mother who turned me away with, “no one wants a sad face around here.”

I learned early that no one would meet me emotionally, so I closed myself off. I thought that was normal. I thought that was strength.

Boarding school only reinforced it—emotion was something to hide, repress, control. So I became what I was taught to be: successful, contained, responsible, unshakeable. A “gentleman,” a businessman, an image. Money, clothes, cars, achievements—everything except emotional honesty.

And then you arrived. You—who loved with a full heart, without fear, without armour.

You - who stroked the corner of my eye with tenderness I didn’t know what to do with. You—who said “I really like you” and meant it. Real love knocked at my door, and I panicked, because I knew you would eventually see the truth: that inside, I felt defective. Empty. Unworthy.

When intimacy came, when reciprocation was needed, when I had to let you in—I collapsed. I chose cowardice instead of courage. I chose to call you “too much” "confrontational," when the truth was that your love simply demanded that I show up fully, and I didn’t know how.

You were never the problem. It was me—my fear, my repression, my unhealed wounds. And instead of facing myself, I hurt you. I gaslit you. I made you question your worth when you were the only person who truly saw mine.

I am ashamed of how I ran to someone else. Someone who demanded nothing of me emotionally. It felt “safe” because there was no risk, no vulnerability—just two guarded egos coexisting. But that isn’t love. Love is surrender, honesty, openness, and risk. Love is everything you tried to give me. Everything I refused to hold.

I see now how unfair I was. How cruel. How deeply my avoidance wounded you. You suffered because of pain that had nothing to do with you. And that is something I will regret for the rest of my life.

I don’t expect forgiveness.

I don’t expect another chance.

I don’t expect you to come back—even though I wish for it with a desperation I can barely describe.

My remorse follows me everywhere. It is the shadow I created, the one I can’t outrun anymore.

I spent years burying difficult emotions in work, in image, in alcohol, in distraction. You were the only one who ever tried to bring me out of hiding. You were the only one who ever saw the wounded child behind the polished exterior. And I failed you.

I failed us. I failed myself.

The truth—the truth I never said—is that it was you. It has always been you. And losing you is the price I pay for the walls I never learned to climb down from.

I am sorry. I am so deeply, irrevocably sorry.

If you can ever forgive me, even in silence, even from afar, I hope one day you do.

With the honesty I should have given you long ago,

Your avoidant ex