For everyone who found Alanis Morissette’s “Unsent” to be a deeply impactful work, and for those of us who haven’t heard it yet (the only two groups), we took our our pens and our unresolved issues to write these letters to our exes that they’ll never get to read, but you will.
Archie Bongiovanni Cartoonist
Dating you was AWESOME! It was fun and freeing and a little sloppy but mostly awesome. You taught me so much about communication and compromise and how to end things without it having to become an explosion. Everything was about care, how to best care for each other, but also our friends and our community. I think that after we broke up you felt guilty, like you ruined it or you were too much. That is your anxiety brain getting the best of you, don’t listen to it. I think of our relationship as super successful and rewarding and I hope you do as well. I am sorry for the ways I hurt you and the multiple times I failed at having vital conversations that we needed to have. You continue to be rad as fuck and it’s been such a joy to see you try new things and heal and thrive from afar.
Bailey Writer
To the first person I loved, you hurt me in so many ways but I forgive you. I forgive myself for hurting you too. Thank you for your love and patience during the years we were together. Those years seem so far away – we were such different people, so young with a lot to learn. I truly hope you get to thrive and live in happiness and fullness.
Drew Burnett Gregory Senior Editor
********* —
When we first started dating you brought up Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf and mentioned that nobody had ever written you a love letter. Two months later for our first holiday together I gave you a book of their letters with a letter of my own tucked within. We were truly the dykiest cishet couple to ever exist.
I’m mad at you. I’m mad, because I wish I could look back at memories like that and laugh with you, and cherish how much we grew together and where we are now. I wish I could hang out with you and your girlfriend and our friends and just be normal. I get that you resent me for some things, but you say it as if I don’t resent you for things too. I do. A lot of things. But I also love you. And I was ready to work through those resentments for the sake of a continued relationship. But I get you’ve never done that. You even said to me at one point when our relationship was far from over that you were never friends with exes and I said if we ever broke up I’d change that. Well, I failed. And maybe that’s because your queerness isn’t as drenched in clichés as my own. Maybe we weren’t the dykiest cishet couple to ever exist. Maybe I was just the dykiest cishet man to ever exist. Too bad staying friends with your exes isn’t a cliché I can manifest on my own. Too bad, because I think we could have had a really great friendship. Too bad.
Heather Hogan Senior Writer + Editor
J,
I cannot believe you married that guy! Or that you’re now working for the most terrible anti-gay and anti-trans “Christian” organization on earth! You are so gay, dude. Sooooooo gay. You did not want to marry that guy and you did not want to marry any guy but you did it like some kind of Jane Austen side-character — “A woman of seven and twenty can never hope to feel or inspire affection again.” — but in a led-by-the-Holy-Spirit way that would have made Jane Austen mock you endlessly. But I don’t want to mock you because it bums me out you couldn’t follow your heart, that you were so scared of your heart that you ran in the complete opposite direction to hide behind James Dobson of all people.
I was thinking recently about the first weekend we spent together. I wrote in my journal that you were going to be trouble for me, even though I could never have anticipated what kind of trouble you’d turn into. You told me that weekend that God gave you a vision of me, hair down in the sunset caught up in the breeze, completely free. Both of those things came true! I was thinking about it because I wish the trouble I’d been for you had freed you the way it started to free me. Sometimes I have a great sense of guilt, like maybe if we’d never acted on our feelings you wouldn’t have felt compelled to marry the first guy who asked you six months later. Maybe if you’d just had more time you could have figured it out without panic. And guilt also that I got out and you didn’t, that I didn’t try harder to pull you with me, not for me, but for you.
I guess I also wish someone had told us David and Jonathan were gay for each other. Your seminary was so liberal! How’d that pass you by!
You were the first woman I ever loved, and the only extrovert; remembering you still exhausts me! But I always only ever think of you fondly, and wish you peace that passes understanding.
Your old friend and erstwhile companion,
Heather Anne
Kamala Puligandla Former Editor-in-Chief
My first ex is a gem. Audrey, thank you for breaking up with me in such a responsible and caring manner (if even I did not take it well and did have a lot of feelings in a lot of bathrooms), and showing me, from the start, the possibility for the longevity of elastic of love.
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya Managing Editor
I was going to write an open letter to my most recent ex, but 1. I think she might read this website and 2. I don’t actually want to resume any communication with her, so that might have sent the wrong message!
So instead…
To my very first secret girlfriend: I’m sorry I was so adamant about keeping us a secret. I know that that hurt both of us, probably in lasting ways. I’m sorry I told you I wasn’t really gay, because hello, I clearly am extremely gay. We were wrong for each other for about a million reasons, and I think we both know that. Honestly, it feels like I knew you in a different lifetime. I hope we’ve both grown from those scared, repressed, chaotic baby dykes we once were.
Ro White Sex & Dating Editor
Here are some words of advice for your next relationship:
-If you don’t learn who you are, you’ll never be able to ask for what you want.
-Apologizing is not as important as changing your behavior.
-“Feeling bad” is not the same as holding yourself accountable.
-You will never have a satisfying relationship if you only tell your partner what they want to hear.
-If you lose enthusiasm for your relationship, end it.
-Knowingly crossing your partner’s boundaries is a truly selfish act.
-Please go to therapy.
Stef Schwartz Vapid Fluff Editor
I have chosen to wuss out and write my letter to an ex I am certain will never read A+, but if you are an ex of mine with an A+ subscription, made ya look.
Hi L,
I know we see each other once every few years and it never fails to shock me how convinced you are that we are somehow on friendly terms. We are not friends. We have never been friends! Whenever I have attempted to allow you back into my life, you have instantly lied or gaslit or extorted me or otherwise completely violated my trust.
Getting you out of my system was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I’ve watched you do similar things to other people since then without a second thought. You told me stories about myself that I believed for a long time, even though I knew deep down that they’d been designed to manipulate me into taking care of you. Even now, I hear stories from friends about how they watched you steal money from me in broad daylight while we were together! These are things I didn’t even know about until now!!! This was so many fucking years ago and I’m still learning how legitimately awful you were 100% of the time. We are at the point where the mutual friends who introduced us have apologized to me for having done so. It’s really affected the way I trust people, and I will never forgive you for that.
When you came to my place of work in January even though I’d explicitly asked you not to and couldn’t help but rub it in my face, it fucked me up for weeks.
I would really appreciate it if you would just… not.
PS I am not “vanilla” for never having done heroin. You are a monster.
Valerie Anne Writer
I know you’re technically not my ex, but I was in love with you, and you said you were in love with me too, so even though we never kissed, I always count you in my list of exes. We had long nights of watching Buffy together, our fingers intertwined, my heart beating so fast and so loud I couldn’t hear those classic slayer quips. But it was okay, because I already had those lines memorized, and I wanted to memorize the way your hand felt in mine instead. We’d go to the movies and you’d flick your tongue across the top of my popcorn to steal a piece. You’d place your hand firmly on the small of my back, brushing your body against mine, as you passed behind me much closer than necessary behind the cash register of the bookstore where we both worked. You’d write me notes and tuck them in my pockets, you’d send me sweet texts saying you were thinking of me. But you lied to me. I know you wouldn’t call it lying, because technically I never asked. But you never told me about him. Which is fine, I guess. In your mind, since our lips never touched, we weren’t cheating. But that’s where it should have ended. It’s where you should have stopped playing games with me. It wasn’t fair of you to ask me to wait. At the time, I was only half out of the closet, only 21…god, that sounds so young now. At the time, it sounded so romantic. Wait for me, I’ll break up with him for you, we’ve just been dating for so long it will take time to extract my life from his. Okay, I said. I’ll wait. And so I waited. Until you lied to me again. Another lie of omission. You never told me to stop waiting. And you never told me he was moving in with you. It wasn’t until I found out from someone else that you told me you wanted to give it a real shot with him. A real shot. Like I wasn’t real. Like we never happened. I wish I could say we ended things there, but you kept asking me to wait, so I kept waiting. You told me not to give up on “us” so I didn’t, but I should have. There never was an “us,” not really. There were foolish hopes and empty promises, there was just me and there was just you. It took me a long time to realize that we weren’t star-crossed lovers, meant to be together but doomed to be apart. It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t fate keeping us from being an “us.”. It was just you.
Vanessa Friedman Community Editor
Do you remember the day after we broke up? You drove back to Williamsburg from your parents’ house, ostensibly to exchange our stuff, and I didn’t want you to come up to my apartment so we sat in your car for three hours, crying and talking and laughing. It almost felt like a regular afternoon, except that the day before I had told you I didn’t want to be together anymore. I tried to explain better, that afternoon in your car.
We’re only 23, I said. We still have so much more life in front of us. I want to date other people. I want to sleep with other people. I think maybe I’m not meant to be partnered with just one person. You cried, told me you would wait. I shook my head. You’re going to find someone who wants exactly what you want, I said, and you two are going to be so happy. And by the time we’re 30, you’ll be married to her, and I’ll still be single I bet, and you’ll probably be happier than I will be… but at least I’ll be being honest.
You are 32 now, and married, and happy. We don’t talk anymore, and I’m never sure if that’s on purpose or just the way things go sometimes. I know it doesn’t matter to you anymore, but I am sorry I hurt you. I know it doesn’t matter to you anymore, but I am so happy that you are married and happy. Sincerely.
I wish you my very, very best.
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Comments
All of these together is the sweetest thing I’ve ever read. It feels like a cohesive story somehow? I might just be overly emotional from not having spent enough time with my queer friends lately.
Ugh my heart
Valerie Anne, my heart! 💔
💜💜💜
You all almost made me cry. Thank you for the honesty and the sincerity and just everything here.
thank you for this!!
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
I wasn’t emotionally ready for this today but maybe there is no day when I would have been! y’all’s exes were so lucky 😭
dearest k,
keep the vitamix, i bought my own.
xo.
a andrews
hahaha everyone else was so kind
honestly i’m proud of you. stay bitter, good riddance!
I am glad that I am not the only one with a monster for an ex. Zero nice things to say about her too.
I guess I’m reading these over again to press on some bruises for funsies? idk
Carolyn’s is just a total gut punch. And Valerie Anne!!! I went through something VERY similar (Flew! Across! the Atlantic! Took a bus across the UK, twinkles in my eyes! To be met at the bus station in Scotland with the person in question and.. their still-girlfriend), and had almost managed to wipe that memory out until I read yours.
carolyn <3
<3
whew, y’all. 🖤
I don’t have that many exes…but I have a lot of feelings I could write about. I identify a lot of Valerie’s letter. I too have a couple people in my life that even though we were never officially anything, I think they sould count as exes. Ex-loves at least, I guess.
@Malic I feel so seen, because that list basically includes everything I said to my ex when I dumped her, and definitely includes everything that I talked to my friends about. Thank you.
@Anna & Malic – agreed! I broke up with my ex for similar reasons, and screenshot this list so when I need a reminder of what I deserve…it’s there. Oof.
Grateful this is my first read as an A+ member. Some of this really hits home 💕
I re-joined A+ just to read this and it was so worth it!
These were beautiful and heartbreaking so I thought I’d leave my own footprints on the interwebs.
Hey dude,
We were wrong for each other in so many ways. Despite all of our flaws and oppositional contrasts we clung together like the last two humans on earth despite the fact we never should have tried.
And trying hurt you, although it hasn’t really hurt me, even if it has hurt my wallet, because we were lost in a reckless young love built entirely on codependency and really great sex.
I’m dating a new girl now and I know it hurts you and I don’t care. She has a blue eyes and a crooked smile and one day I want to marry her.
Thank you for the things you taught me, and for all of the conflict that gave me the chance to keep teaching myself. You need therapy, boo. Unchecked PTSD will never build a good foundation.