Dear Ex,
Just wanted to say a quick “thank you” for the generous gifts I realized I got from you. It’s funny because I had made a list a long time ago of the things that I really wanted in my life. Things like love, happiness, abundance, peace…. When I met you in my 20’s I knew you would be the one to give those things to me. And here we are, gosh, like, 25 years later, and I see that all the gifts have arrived! Really, you shouldn’t have.
Ok, so, first, I want to thank you for happiness. Most days I am so terribly happy. I look around at my life—my career, my home, my kids, my relationships, heck, my cats—and I’m just so pleased with how everything turned out. Sure, there are bugs in the machine. And some days I feel a little lost, bereft, glass half-empty kinda thing. But most days, it’s a whole lotta happy. And in part I have you to thank for it. When you have to struggle or even to fight for contentment, it’s funny, you end up appreciating it so much more than you would have had it just landed in your lap. My happiness is rooted so deeply now because for so long it was gone. Those hard, hard years with you, and the even harder, initial years of our divorce… omg they were so bad. But without those years I might not now have such a deep appreciation for how good things have become. Truthfully, you’ve played an instrumental role in my current, happy state.
The next is abundance. When we were together, I had no idea how fucked up my “abundance mindset” was. Like, the ways I relate to my worth. I didn’t realize that I was living from a program of not feeling good enough, not deserving of more, so I just accepted a lot of my struggles with you as part of being married, of being an adult, of living. Ending our marriage meant I had to end my relationship with the parts of me that believed I was “less than.” They say that sometimes we are attracted to people who embody the negative ways we relate to ourselves, and I think I did that with you. What a gift—because it showed me IRL how little I valued myself. I recognize now that abundance depends on me believing in my self-worth. And I totally have that now, in part because of you.
And peace! Holy smokes was peace the hardest-won! I tell ya, if you think you’re gonna have peace when you divorce a high-conflict person, you better be ready to work for it. I was not prepared for the levels of not-peace that I encountered during our divorce. It took years (YEARS!) of conflict, difficulty, adrenal burn out, fear and anger before I learned that I was in charge of my peace. I kept thinking if I could just get you to see things my way, to be more kind, to be fair, whatever, that I would have some f-ing peace. But you helped me see that peace comes from controlling the ways I relate to the things that make me angry, afraid, and upset, not from trying to control others. Because of our level of conflict, my inclination towards peace is so much stronger now. I lean in so much more to peace because engaging in battles with you taught me to recognize what things I can let go of.
The last is love. Look, being a Gen-Xer, I know now that we were all being fed the marriage-house-kids formula, and that it was a crock of shit. Maybe that’s part of why, when I met you, all the love-bombing and merging felt like gifts at the time—the things I’d been groomed my whole life to think I wanted. But that kind of love comes at a price. It costs us our independence, our self-worth, our sanity. And it’s really not love at all. Thanks to you, I see that now. I deeply appreciate all of the healthy, securely-attached relationships in my life. The ones where I can be myself, be honest, ask for what I need without consequences, can show up and care deeply for someone else and it can be enough. You helped show me what love isn’t so that I could see what love truly is.
So as 2025 ends we reflect on the year ahead, I want to express my genuine, heart-felt thanks to you. Without these experiences, I might not know, feel, or have all these things I so desperately wanted. One of my favorite Buddhist teachers Pema Chodron said, “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” I felt so trapped by our situation and now I see that I had to learn what I needed to learn—the importance of creating my own happiness, of owning my peace, of knowing the power of self-worth, and of embodying genuine love—in order to feel free. Man, much as I hate to admit it, you did me a huge favor. So, from the bottom of my heart, thanks.
Sincerely,
Toby
