Dear Nairobi:

A little summary of what you shared in previous threads, May and December last year:

You met your ex boyfriend when you were 19, he was 23. “He has been my first everything and the most important person in my life”. You lived in different cities and saw each other one weekend a month, which was not enough time for you, “I always felt like I wanted more”. You had doubts about the relationship, feeling that  you were “losing (your) opportunity to meet other people and experiment”, and many times you went to see him “thinking about asking him to take a break”, but once with him you forgot about the break because, you wrote, “I was reminded that being with him made me happy”.

His family was religious, and over time, “He has become increasingly religious”. When he traveled with you, spending the night with you, he lied to his parents because they disapproved of sex before marriage. You and him talked about marriage and children, but you believed in living together before marriage and he (and his family) didn’t.

He had a family business and “a very absorbing family and group of friends (also religious)” who told him that you are not right for him. He used to be sure about you, telling you that you were “the best thing that had ever happened to him, that he wanted to marry me and be with me forever”, but then “he’s giving up… I’m willing to fight to make it work and he is just giving up”.

“He is one of the sweetest, nicest, most caring people I have ever met, but I kept waiting for him to be brave and stand up for us until  I realized it was most likely never going to happen”. He broke up with you, “essentially ghosting me” by May last year, and “He later admitted that he was heavily influenced by friends’ opinions when he did”.

Following the breakup you were very depressed but “decided to pick myself up and make some changes. I got my driving license, a new car, a new job and I’m currently studying a masters”, you wrote Dec last year. “Unexpectedly I found someone else too” He is “everything I wanted my ex boyfriend to be: he is clear, ambitious, knows what he wants” and you have been with your new boyfriend for eight months.

Recently, your ex contacted you, “saying he had made the biggest mistake of his life and that he realizes what a coward he has been. He says that he is willing to change things”, but you are aware that “he is not a decision maker and he is not brave when it comes to life changes”.

Your problem is: “It just breaks my heart, knowing he’s like this because of me. I want, more than anything, for him to be well… I genuinely want to see him thrive”.

My advice: write him/ email him a letter. You read to me like a very sensible, understanding, insightful person. You are probably in the position to give him better input and advice than anyone in his life. And so, if I was you I would write to him about your understanding of his situation, the difficulty growing up with religious parents (I bet there are books and articles about that that you can locate and suggest that he reads), the need of a child, into adulthood, to please the parents, the conflict between self interest and the need to please parents, and so  forth. I would suggest to him to see a quality psychotherapist.

In that letter I would also let him know that you are in a committed relationship with another man for quite some time, that you are not available or willing to resume a relationship with him, and that you so very much want “for him to be well… to see him thrive”, but not within a relationship with you.

anita