Your Ex: The Letter You Write (but don’t bother to send)

I’ve fleshed out what I wrote and never sent. My ex would dismiss, avoid and ghost, so I never sent it. But the process of writing it helped me to let go!

Dear (Your Avoidant Ex)

You ran from love.

Not because it wasn’t real,

but because it was.

Your nervous system was in overdrive, wasn’t it?

Closeness felt like a threat.

Being known felt suffocating.

So you did what you’ve always done — you shut down, freaked out, pulled away, told yourself you were “fine”.

You tried to come back, more than once.

But only on your terms.

Only where there was no real risk.

No exposure.

No chance of being hurt — or truly seen. A polite “happy birthday message”, “a lunch” - and then …. Silence.

That isn’t love.

Love requires presence. LOVE requires honesty, LOVE requires emotional connection and integrity.

It requires staying when every part of you wants to disappear.

And the truth you struggle with most?

You hurt the person you loved the most. Not because you didn’t care, but because you didn’t know how to hold that level of closeness without freaking out.

You don’t really understand why you did it, do you?

You explain it away.

You rationalise.

You tell yourself it was timing, pressure, incompatibility.

Anything except the truth: that intimacy overwhelmed you and you didn’t have the tools to face it.

There’s a lot of shame there.

You don’t want to talk about it, do you? It’s too heavy.

But it’s PERSISTENT.

It shows up in the way you keep love at arm’s length, and in the tiredness you carry without admitting why.

It wears you down… slowly.

So you chose safety instead of honesty.

You married from fear, not from love.

You chose someone who didn’t ask too much of you emotionally.

Someone who wouldn’t challenge your defences.

A relationship where there was no real depth, no true vulnerability, no risk of being undone.

It looks settled.

It looks sensible.

But something is missing, and you know it.

This isn’t about blame.

It’s about responsibility.

You aren’t incapable of love.

You’re afraid of it.

And until you’re willing to sit with the discomfort — to stay present when your body wants to escape — love will always feel dangerous rather than safe.

Healing isn’t forcing yourself to stay.

It’s understanding why leaving felt like survival.

It’s learning to regulate a nervous system that learned to shut down to cope.

It’s choosing courage over numbness.

You didn’t lose love because you were unlovable.

You lost it because you ran.

And unexamined fear turns real love

into something you only understand once it’s gone.

With the understanding of a high EQ,

(Your Name)

TR