Thank you everyone, for all your advice and words of wisdom. It really has helped me make up my mind. I’ve decided that I will not be replying to him.

Inky, thank you so much for your advice, I hadn’t though to look at my problem in that way of “No, this is too big a deal for him to make drunken confessions. What else do we do when we’re drunk? Total the car, vomit, wake up next to a stranger… And call the ex.” You’re also right that it’s best to not reply because he has record of what he sent to me (Facebook) so obviously if he can’t talk to me while sober, or reach out to me, there’s no point. He’s actually drunk texted me several times over the past 4 years, and for some reason, each of those last times I’ve let him in again only to have him always pin the blame on me. At first I tried to argue back to show him that it wasn’t just me, but him as well, but he would get very angry. Then other times I tried to be nice and just accept all the blame (because clearly arguing with him was getting us nowhere) but even then that didn’t work. He was virtually always angry, regardless of how I acted, and I realized that it is out of my control and that I have to move on. Plus, the life he leads now, is not one that I could accept, and I could not tolerate being around him this way (he’s always out partying, drinking, smoking, getting high, etc). You’re right, he does have anger issues, you bringing it up reminded me about a time he got very angry at one of my friends and confronted me about talking to that person, well, he ended up punching a stop sign and started bleeding (he didn’t act like he was in pain at all) and then he grabbed my wrists and wouldn’t let go when I was trying to walk away while telling him it was over. Fortunately a stranger stepped in and told him to let me go or that he would call the cops (which should have been a sign that I needed to get out of that relationship) and then he got in a verbal fight with that guy and when I walked away he followed me, crying until I caved in and decided to stay with him. There are several other unpleasant memories I have of him, and those have really helped shape my decision to not reply. I’m worried that perhaps later I will regret not replying, but I will write down what you said to me, because your words really got me to reflect on what an unhealthy relationship it was, and what a mistake it would be to let him back in.

Ghostwriter, he still has contact with me because we are friends on Facebook. He was the one who actually sent me a request on Facebook about two years ago and I accepted his request. What you said right here “I had to realize that if I had been important enough to him, he would have made the effort to have me in his life.” makes a lot of sense and you’re right. If I was important enough to him, he would have made an effort for us to be friends, and he wouldn’t have acted so negatively whenever I tried to work out or problems. It was always me making the effort to see him, and talk to him. And he was always trying to sneak around, to make sure his friends didn’t know, which that in itself proves that to him I’m not worth much. Otherwise he would have stood up for me, and he didn’t. You have encouraged me to seek out my own closure. I think the best way for me to do this would be to write a letter to him (but of course I will not be sending it to him) and in it I will just say everything I’ve held in all these years. Also, thank you for this “Please move on and know that someone wonderful is waiting for you.” It means a lot to me, because ever since being with my ex, I haven’t felt like I could be in any other relationship. My relationship with my ex just really drove me away from giving other guys a chance. Great guys have come into my life, but I didn’t feel like I would be able to function in a relationship anymore, and your words give me hope, that there is someone out there who will treat me better than he ever did, so thank you.

Anita, you’re right about the whole contact thing. Problem is, over the past 4 years, anytime he has tried to get in contact with me, I’ve always found myself analyzing what he has said to me. And he is still the same person, still angry, hateful, immature, and yet I kept letting him back into my life, all because I loved him and wanted to be with him. However, you’r right about “I hope you learn to separate loving feelings from reality, that is the fact that you have loving feelings for him does NOT mean you are destined to be with him, that he is a good person to be with, that it is healthy for you to be with him. It only says you have the motivation to be with him, a motivation that needs to be examined in relation to your attachment history and the quality of the person that he is.” Thanks to your advice I’ve taken a long hard look at our past, and despite all the love I have for him, he is a very negative and bad person to be around. I do have to separate my feelings from him, and keep remembering that although I love him, it does not mean that I need to be with him or that it would be good for me to start talking to him again.

Thank you everyone for all of your advice. It really did help me make the decision to not reply to him. As much as I wanted to, I know that I should not. I can’t keep letting him in only for him to chastise me and blame me for everything. I only wish I had received this advice a few years ago, then perhaps I would finally be over him. Over the past 4 years I tried getting advice from friends and acquaintances but nothing helped. However, things happen for a reason, and this is a really good lesson for me. I can’t keep letting toxic people in my life, regardless of my feelings for them. Knowing the kind of person he is, it would not surprise me to hear from him again in a few months, either while he is drunk or high. However, I will keep ignoring him and I will not give into my desire to talk to him. I will not let him have that power over me. He can’t just come into my life and stir up a storm anymore.

Hadassah,

I’ve tried this already, “Tell him you want a healthy relationship and that this is the only way you are willing to become his friend again and if it goes well, then more than friends.” Not just once, but several times. I’ve tried to let him know that we need to work on our relationship and that we needed to work out or problems. However, he has never reacted very well to this. He always goes off on me when I suggest this. He starts pointing fingers and saying “Well this is all your fault. You’re the one who ruined what we had.” He then proceeds to tell me about all the people that he didn’t want me to talk to. Quite frankly, I can’t do that anymore. I made the mistake of listening to him a few times, and I stopped talking to the people he didn’t want me in communication with. Unfortunately, all that got me was isolation. I lost those people’s friendships, and the few that I regained, well it was never the same as before. I let him dictate a lot about our relationship. Anytime I confronted him about anything, he would stir up a storm about everything else or he would try to blackmail me. For example, one of the times I wanted to leave him, he told me he was in the bathroom with a gun, ready to shoot himself. Which then prompted his cousin, who I had never spoken with before, to contact me. It was hell, because I knew that I’d be held responsible for his actions. Another time after we had broken up he spammed my phone telling me he was getting drunk and listening to songs that reminded him off me. Well, he got so drunk that he ended up telling me he was in the ER getting his stomach pumped (Obviously a lie since they don’t really do that procedure for alcohol poisoning). He would also lie to me and tell me he was home sick when really he was out with his ex girlfriend (he confessed to that shortly after we broke up). How am I supposed to trust someone who continually abused my trust and manipulated me?

You’re right, perhaps I did do things that contributed to our issues in the relationship. However, after all the time I spent trying to help him, I was tired of walking on eggshells for him. EVERYTHING I said to him had to be quickly thought out, because all it took was one wrong thing to set him off. I had to use simple words around him because he hated when I used large vocabulary. He didn’t want me talking to other guys. He didn’t want me to go to college, because he wasn’t going, which is what prompted me to finally end our relationship after two years. He was holding me back. After everything I have gone through with him over the course of 6 years, I am no longer willing to walk on egg shells for him. I’m tired of having to restrain myself from being who I am. For so long I pretended to be someone I wasn’t, and that made me very miserable.

Dear Anita,

I did indeed find everything you said to be very helpful, and you’re right it is fascinating what motivates us, or how one thing can deeply affect another without us even noticing or even realizing how much it affected us.

While I do agree that my father leaving did indeed affect me. I do not want him back. Far from it. When I was little, of course I did miss him. But now, I just want him to stay away from me and my family, far far away. I say this because over the past 2 years he has gotten in contact with my uncles and stated that he wants to talk to me and my sister. He has also sent me multiple requests on Facebook, and he has been asking around about me and my sister and mom.

You’re right, I do need to write a letter to him, and thank you for prompting me to do it. It is an issue that still makes me very sad and angry, even though he left 13 years ago. I will write this letter on here, in hopes that you will read it and tell me what you think, because you have been so helpful to me, and I appreciate all you’ve done for me already. So here goes, a letter to my dad from his 7 year old daughter:

Dad,
Why did you leave us? You said you were going to get the car looked at, and you never came back. You knew you would not be coming back right? Is that why you gave me those CD’s and told me that they were for me? Why did you choose to leave without saying goodbye? You know, Mom and my teachers think I need help. They have been talking to each other. They think I don’t notice but I do. I heard them say I’m not doing good in school anymore and that they think that it is because you left. They had me talk to a lady who offered me cookies and milk. She told me to write a letter to you telling you how you felt. I remember crying a lot. It hurts, it hurts very much that you are not here anymore. I feel that you do not love me anymore and that this is why you left us. Did you grow tired of me? Did I do something wrong? I remember loving you very much and I cannot think of anything I did wrong. I thought you loved us. Mom said you left to be with your parents. Did you love them more than me? Now that you are gone, I feel that I need to be step up. That I need to protect my mom and my sister because you will no longer be able to do so. We had to move back in with grandma because Mom could not afford all the bills on her own. I don’t like grandma, she makes me cook with her and pray everyday. Just the other day I went to the store with mom and it was dark outside. I was scared that something would happen to her. As soon as we got out of the car I told her to hurry because bad people could be anywhere. Thinking like that surprised me, because I had never thought like that. And all I can think is that you caused this. I don’t want you calling mommy, or me or my sister. You hurt us enough already.

Thank you Anita for having me write this letter. How was it? A lot of things came to my mind, and I had a good cry. I guess he affected me in more ways than one. I feel as though he stole my childhood away from me, and now that you had me write this letter for him, I want to take it a step further and write a letter for him, coming from his now 20 year old daughter:

Dad,
I know you’ve reached out to my uncles, and to others and that you’ve asked about me. I’ve also seen your various requests on Facebook. Just stop. I’m never going to speak to you again. I have no desire to do so and I don’t need or want you in my life. You lost the privilege when you walked away. You had the choice, 13 years ago, to stay or to leave, and you chose to leave. Now accept my choice to not want to talk to you or have you in my life. You caused me harm, and for many years I blamed myself, thinking I did something to push you away. But I didn’t do anything wrong, you just failed to say that to me. You left like a coward, without saying goodbye or giving a reason. You left, and no one was expecting it, not even mom. You should have seen the hurt on her face when she was explaining to me and my sister that you’d never come back. I know that shortly after you left you contacted mom and told her to come back with you, and she contemplated it, but she made the choice that we were better of without you. And that was the best choice she ever made. We may have struggled for several years, but everything is all right now. Mom met a great guy who makes her happy and I now have a little brother because of that, so thank you for leaving. You opened up the door for new people to come into my life. While I do feel like you stole my childhood from me, it is not entirely a bad thing. You simply opened up my eyes as to how hard life can be. So stop asking around, don’t call my uncles. Don’t ask to talk to me because all you will get is a resounding no. Whatever sob story you have, save it because you don’t know how hard life was for me after you left. I heard you told my uncles that your sources tell you that I am not in school and that I am dating a married man and that I spend my time partying. I heard they told you things about my sister as well. It’s funny how life works out, here you are begging for scraps. And guess what, those people have lied to you. It makes me laugh because what they told you couldn’t be farther from the truth. My mother raised me right, and your sources saying all those lies about me do my mother a great disservice. I’m not going to bother telling you the truth because you don’t deserve any explanations from me. I’ve already spent enough time being hurt over you leaving us. Leave me alone, I don’t want to hear anything from you ever again. Of course I know mom is still seeking her divorce from you and it makes me happy that you do not oppose. However, don’t think you’ll achieve anything more from all of this. I will be frank with you, if only to give you a warning. Stop asking around about my family, you have no right. I talked to a lawyer, and I know that getting a restraining order would require me to go to Mexico, since that is where you live. Have no doubt that if you keep insisting, you will leave me no choice. I would rather not deal with you, but if this is what it takes, be prepared for a hell of a fight, because there is no way I will let you get close to any of my loved ones. For so long I have felt like I have had to protect them from the world, I saw my mom cry when you left, and when she could not afford everything we wanted and even when she struggled to feed us. There is no way in I am letting you back in. I will fight you tooth and nail if I have to, and know this, you will not win. So turn around and go back to where you were hiding, because if you push me any further, you’ll regret it and I will do my damn best to make you regret it.

Wow, these letters took a lot more out of me than I thought they would. And you’re right, I already feel better. I’m glad I acknowledged my feelings. Thank you Anita. Somewhere between the letter from my the 7 year old me, and the now me, something clicked. I felt the need to let him know that if he pushed me any further he would regret, and I didn’t say that because I want to hurt him. But because he has already hurt my family enough, and I won’t let him do it anymore. I felt the need to protect the child in me from any further pain from him, as well as the rest of my family, because I don’t want him to destroy what I have. I thought I would have corrected him about everything his sources have been telling him about me and my family. However, when I was actually writing that letter to him I realized he didn’t deserve any explanations from me. Sure, I could brag about how well I’m doing, but then I realized, I don’t care what he says or thinks anymore. It doesn’t matter what impressions he has about me because I now what I am and what I am not. I don’t need him to validate my actions anymore.