A Letter to My Ex's New Girlfriend
Or, the letter I wouldn't have read if someone had sent it to me
This week’s post is inspired by this one from my friend, Tiffany Philippou’s, substack. Tiff’s Tough Love is an excellent read and definitely worth a follow if you don’t already. It might seem like writing a post to my ex’s new girlfriend is a bit off topic for me but really I want this Substack to be about the importance of being honest with ourselves, no matter how shameful that feels. So this is a personal post, if you want the more “professional” stuff then do check out the rest of the archive here.
He told me about you when we were dating. I’m trying to remember if I asked first but I think he brought you up. He described you as “just someone I went on a few dates with. Nothing came of it but we sort of stayed friends.” At the time I thought nothing of it, we were in that first flush of dating where you can’t get enough of each other and it seems impossible that anyone could come between you. I wonder now if that’s how he describes me to you, “just someone I went on a few dates with.”
If it wasn’t you, would I care as much? I’d definitely care, of course, in the way we all do when someone we once loved, loves someone else. But I don’t think I’d have taken it so personally. I wouldn’t be looking back at all those times when I teased him about liking one of your Instagram photos or angrily told him to go fuck you instead and he’d rolled his eyes, said if that’s what he’d really wanted he’d be doing it. I wouldn’t be asking myself if he’d ever actually cared about me or whether I was just a stop-gap on the way to you. I wouldn’t now be questioning how much I believed that I shouldn’t have. I wouldn’t doubt myself as much as I do.
That doubt eats away at me. How much was true and how often was I a fool? Did something happen between you when we were together? I wonder if you ever feel that doubt now. If you ever lie beside him in bed and wonder why there’s a little pool of anxiety lapping at your chest. If you go back over conversations you’ve had or check other women’s Instagrams, looking for clues that will make sense of the phrasing. Or was that just me?
If you were here I’d warn you about that feeling. Tell you to listen to it more closely than you are right now. I’d ask you to think about the times you shared that feeling with him - did he get angry or defensive? He doesn’t always; sometimes he’d hold me and tell me there was nothing to worry about, and the feeling would seep out of me and onto his shirt. But most of the time, most of the time he’d throw it back at me, tell me if I felt like that then what was the point of us being together? That I should never have been with him in the first place, that he couldn’t offer me anything and I was realising it now. He’d turn himself into the victim. Do you run in to protect him when he does that? I did. It never helped.
Mostly though, if you were here I’d ask you how he was. I’d ask you if he was happier, if he’d found a job, if he was able to laugh with you, if he actually went to those art exhibitions - that you know about and I can only appreciate - without having a huff that you were making him leave the house. I’d want to know if it was just me that made him sad, just me that drained him of energy. Everyone tells me that he’d be like that no matter who he was dating. Is that true? Was it just me? Or is it you too?
The last time I saw him in person, I asked him if he was seeing anyone. He said no and I knew he was lying. I wondered if it was you, but then my brain dismissed that idea. My brain dismissed a lot of things when I was with him. Does yours do that too? Because there is so much to love about being with him - the way he makes you laugh, the tenderness he shows you when you’re scared, the way he’ll sit and talk about things that matter with you for hours, the care and concern he shows your relationship - in the beginning. And all that good stuff is so good, that it makes you overlook the bad until one day you can’t.
Will that day happen for you? I don’t know. I hope for both your sakes that it doesn’t. While it’s painful for me, I hope you’re both happy, that he really has changed, that our relationship taught him something that he’s taken into yours to make it better.
But I also want to warn you. I want to tell you to trust your gut when you wonder why he spends so much time on his phone and hides it away when you’re near. To listen to the voice which tells you you’re not supposed to have to beg your partner to want to spend quality time with you or demand that he tells his friends about you or feel scared to post about him on your social media in case he freaks out.
I want to tell you to be better at relationships than I am. That maybe if you can get it right then the two of you will be happy or you’ll leave and be happy alone. Either way, you’ll be happy. Weirdly, even though right now I want to scratch your eyes out, that still feels important to me. Be happy.
If by some strange chance you read this I think he’ll tell you that I’m angry and bitter, that I’ve forgotten the good parts of our relationship, that I never really understood him. But I’m not, and I haven’t, and I did. It’s why I can tell you that if you ever break up, you’ll miss him. And that a big life lesson is that you can miss someone you loved and still have made the right decision, even when it doesn’t feel like it.
But you won’t read this and if you do, I think he’ll tell you I was just someone he went on a few dates with, we didn’t stay friends.
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I am a Lawyer, and during the first ten years of my career, a Divorce Lawyer. And I remember thinking it should be mandatory for women marrying divorced men to meet the first wives. I think the same goes with girlfriends. I really hope your ex’s new girlfriend reads your post!
Ack, the mindfuckery takes a while to process. You wonder how you could be ‘taken in’ by their lies and mental gymnastics and how you could override yourself. Until you remember how hard they worked to make you doubt yourself and believe them in the first place. He planted the seed about her early in your relationship and then had the brass neck to wonder why your doubts grew from there. I'm 100% sure it's not all sweetness and light with her; that's just the societal fantasy and oppression women have been sold where we believe that the ‘right’ woman makes a man spontaneously combust into a better partner.