Sigh. So much drama. Move on.

Yeah, that is a lot of drama and a lot of over-analysing, but I don't necessarily see where she went wrong? (Except maybe for the sleeping with the ex over an extended period of time thing.) She wasn't ready for anything bigger when they started seeing each other, and told him so. Even though her statements seemed to retroactively ' break his heart ', that sure as hell didn't prevent him from boinking her every chance he got. He went into the situation with eyes wide open. Admittedly, she should have been prepared since it didn't seem as though she ever told him that feelings were developing, and he was obviously withdrawing near the end anyway. But still, I don't see how either one of them really ' failed '. They just didn't work out.

Sometimes things don't work out and it isn't necessarily anyone's fault. It's timing. The timing was off for these two.

I find the story peculiar in many ways:

She cheated on X with her ex until the ex left town, and then she realized how much she "cared about" X. That would mean more if she figured it out while the ex was still available. What if the ex comes back through town?

"I felt genuinely ready to love again, and I wanted to love this guy, Boyfriend X, in particular."

Doesn't sound like she did love him. Just wanted to love him. Maybe the chemistry isn't great? Sex not as hot as with her ex?

Then she got sick and the relationship grew stagnant. He didn't show concern for her well-being, or else she pushed him away when times were hard. That's not a sign of a great relationship. (Plus maybe he met someone else while he was traveling and suddenly had a reason to break up with you.)

In any case, I don't think it makes sense to reach back to the beginning of the relationship to understand why this one fell apart. They weren't good for each other, even if he's the kind of guy she thinks she's supposed to end up with.

AAA, you may think there is unfinished business, but Mr. X has made clear that he’s totally fine going half way around the world and leaving you and your relationship behind. Indeed, despite the drama you created throughout the entirety of your relationship, he seems to feel good about you and not seeing you. There’s no point in drafting any letter to him about your feelings or what you’ve learned from your relationship. If you want, and can, try to take him up on transitioning your romantic relationship to friendship.

I agree on skipping the letter. LW wants words That will change something rather than just communicate her feelings. And there aren't any of those words because he's over it. There is also probably nothing new to say. Take the lessons and move on. There are lots of new relationships to be had at that age/stage. This all sounds like a lot of nothing amplified by youth.

@4, despite her feelings of guilt, it didn't seem like she actually cheated. She explained that casual sleeping together was all she was up for with X and he said it was fine.

I laughed out loud at "but in a horrible twist of fate ... I ended up sleeping with both of them last fall". There was neither a twist nor was it fate.

"I can’t bear to think of our relationship as my mistake"
If it helps, you don't have to think of it as your mistake. You liked each other for awhile in various amounts at various times and it was alright sometimes and then he ended things and he's fine with that and let us all move on. There is no unfinished business.

Sorry Tae Tae, you do like the drama -- it's not the drama's fault.

Sounds like a typical early 20s drama fueled breakup. Follow Dan’s advice and stay open to whatever life brings your way. Odds are slim but not impossible Boyfriend will come back and you’ll live happily ever after in a cottage in the woods. Odds are much better that in 30 years you’ll look back and say, “Thank god THAT never worked out. I was blinded by love and we really weren’t meant for each other at all,I just couldn’t see it at the time.”

I am a 22-year-old female from the Northeast.

Dump your current partner, wait 4 months, start fucking someone new. I literally haven't read the post beyond the first line - now Ima go read it and see how well it holds up.

@11 Eh. The advice technically works, but eh.

This girl sets off so many red flags. She doesn't realize that she's responsible for her own actions (sleeping with the ex, of course, was a twist of fate she found herself in - not a predictable result of her decisions), and she's part of the the class of people that will endlessly rationalize their own actions and say things like "it felt right at the time". It felt right at the time?

Continuing my crystal ball powers: She'll find herself in AA 1 year after she should have found herself in AA; Boyfriend X will continue signing acoustic covers of Shins songs, but he won't get married until he's lost most of his hair.

Ah, the drama of the early 20s. Been there, did that...several times. Learned that after some time had passed and I was looking at the prior person and the relationship more rationally, I wondered what all the fuss had been about. And I suspect for most people there are certain people that you will always wonder "what if." Something to think of on a rainy day but not worth obsessing about. If you can walk away as true friends who wish each other the best in life, count yourself lucky.

LW, you sound like one of the saner people who writes in to these things.

You've suffered some heartbreak. I don't know if you're a country music fan, but the traditional method coming to terms with human folly like this is drowning your sorrows and singing (or perhaps even writing) a few sad songs.

You also say you've learned from it. And the lessons you articulate sound like pretty good ones to me. This right here is the beginnings of wisdom.

Welcome to the human race.

"Overnight, the person who had given me a thousand chances was not willing to give me just one more—and this was the chance I wanted desperately."

Yup. Shocking, ain't it, when the thing you take for granted dries up with no warning, idnit? It took him refusing to give you the thousand and first chance for you to value the idea of giving chances. As long as he continued to give you chances you continued to use them up. You didn't value them until there weren't any more to be had. Which tells me that if he had given you that next chance, you wouldn't have valued it either, and it would have turned into the thousand and first squandered chance, just like all the rest.

Ankyl @7: I know, right? Plus this gem: "Suddenly, I was thrust into a trap of my own design."

Such melodrama! Such 22! LW, these are known as "learning experiences." Learn things. Apply them to your next relationship(s). And next time, listen to mopey pop songs to deal with your heartbreak instead of boring Dan and his readers with your 22-ness. Let this guy be the fond memory he deserves to be and move the fuck on.

I thought I was bad for leading a guy on while being fucked up for almost a whole semester! I think that was about 12 weeks. This letter had me counting on my fingers as to how long she messed with this nice guy and how long I messed with the various nice guys in my life and how long it took me to get better at figuring out, well, figuring out a lot. At 22 I was still a few years away from getting into therapy and the root of my fucked-upness that had me working against myself-- and screwing up everyone else while at it. Seems that times haven't changed much. Young women are still messing things up in roughly the same ways.

There is, however, one thing young folks have going for them now that we didn't way back when: Facebook. Don't send that heartfelt letter. Write it, but keep it for yourself. Instead, keep the letter you do send short. Say that you're sorry and wish him well. Don't say anything about fate bringing you back together. Wait a year, then friend him on facebook. In my day this was a yearly Xmas card, a mere way of staying in touch impersonally. Leave it at that.

Wow. LW, you sound really exhausting. And really self-absorbed. Hopefully you are just young. Feelings are powerful things. Going to have to learn how to deal with them. If not, you will never stop creating drama.

You have 0% control over what Boyfriend X does and 100% control over what you do. Stop treating your own actions as things that "just happen." You have the ability to choose. Use this experience to make better choices in the future.

Sometimes I think it would be cool to be able to be in my early 20s again.

Then I read letters like this and remember how utterly exhausting it was to be in my early 20s again.

So, basically, you were a pretty crappy/erratic girlfriend, your boyfriend finally got sick of dealing with it, and only then did you realize the error of your ways and just how much you truly cared for him? No. You only think you’re in love with him because he no longer wants you. You are someone who appears to feed off of drama and conflict. I dunno, maybe that will change with age, but I know plenty of people who make it to 50 still doing the same shit, wondering why they can’t have a successful relationship.

Don’t write him a letter, write yourself a letter explaining what you did and the ways in which you are going to work on yourself so it never happens again. Read as needed. He’s not the one for you, but he can be the catalyst for a new life, a new perspective- the one who inspires you to change your ways so you can learn to find true love and contentment in future relationships.

The Grateful has been running through my head:

You told me goodbye
How was I to know
You didn't mean goodbye
You meant please don't let me go

Tomorrow comes trouble
Tomorrow comes pain
Now don't think too hard, baby
'Cause you know what I'm saying ...

Many of the other commenters have been coming down pretty hard on AAA. It's not that I think they're absolutely wrong. It's that I think that's counter-productive. AAA asked for advice, not a lashing. She seems already to feel pretty bad about herself. My advice is to feel only as guilty as you need to lead to positive change.

Here's a basic exercise that can be done without professional help (though I like to recommend professional help to practically anyone in their mid-20s).

Write that heartfelt letter with everything in it. Put it aside for a day. Then separate every phrase in it into columns:

What I felt
What I did
What that led to in terms of actions (what happened next)
What that led to in terms of feelings (how I felt about what happened)

The idea is to start identifying patterns, especially patterns that aren't working for you over the long term. Further, the idea is to validate the feelings while not excusing the actions. Good luck.

The guy likes you, he just wants to fuck around while he's abroad and not have to deal with you needing him emotionally. Getting a letter that sounds anything like the one you just wrote sounds like putting an emotional chore on him, I'd avoid that. If you do need to send something (closure isn't a thing), run it by half a dozen friends, male ones too, before sending it. You're not that close bc he didn't go out of his way to take care of you when you were sick - he's not that nice a guy, there's not that much love there. Didn't sound like you were officially exclusive at any point so no cheating happened, there's no need for any of this angst, the only thing I'd recommend is to go see a shrink if you find yourself in this level of distress on a consistent basis in relationships or for a touch up now and then and know that in five years and certainly in ten none of this will matter. It probably won't matter in two years. Or in one.

@22thats solid advice for anybody. Thanks for sharing.

Dearest advice seeker:.

There's a bumper sticker in Hawaii that reads "Do Not Mistake Aloha For Weakness."

Whoops.

And also must add that I work my ass off so my kid will be able to go to a private college where the most pressing problems of the transition to adulthood will be like yours. Thank your parents the next time you see them and give them a big hug.

Sigh, once in a while I wish to be in my early twenties again, I miss some of the ego boost and perks of male attention (like never getting a ticket or getting towed), then I read something like this letter and remember the exhauting drama. Yeah, getting older is not so bad!

@15 avast2006
Brilliant point.

AAA, my heart goes out to your "guarded little heart"; I think talking to a good therapist could help you a lot, including helping you open up.

Creator Deity reads LW's submission, thinks to self, 'I gotta stop creating so many white women.'

Geez, that "same age but different year in school" power dynamic is definitely one of the most oppressive ones!

@31, yeah I was trying to figure that one out.
The only way I could see it is if one was a TA, grading papers/tests in the very class the other was in????? But why would the LW not just state that?

22 year olds are such drama queens. She was so in her head about the whole thing she couldn't see what was staring her in the face. She did the guy a favor, I'd say.

Anyone that assigns the letter "x" to a former boyfriend in a story that also contains an "ex" is destined to live a life of unnecessary confusion.

If there's a happy ending it's that boyfriend X kinda sounds like he eventually got his shit together.

LW,
Don't write the letter.

Normally I would say write the letter but don't send it. In this case don't even write the letter. You've indulged your insecurities and damage and excuses, and documented them in countless conversations and thousands of words (above, I counted).

Move on.
Move the fuck on.
Let X move on. He def doesn't want to receive that letter.

@31 Yes!! Probable sign of too much therapy with no capacity for reflection.

Fifty bucks says if he came back around and said he was interested in a relationship she'd suddenly discover that she needed some time to herself and that getting back together just didn't feel right for some reason.

Chase @ 37 - Most probably, but not "suddenly" - about one month into the relationship.

Ricardo @38: Touché.

In LW's defence, at least she lies correctly, when others incorrectly lay.

I'm kinda wondering why people are assuming X should have been more 'receptive' to her after she burned every bridge he tried to build to her?

Sure, he broke up with her while she wasnt in the best of health, but he did try to be friends. If I am an ahole to my friends and after a certain amount of time they don't want to associate with me, are they the assholes for not engaging when I reach out and claim I am sorry? Especially if they've already moved on?

LW should move on. But X had every right to do the same when he did. Even earlier actually.

With the (boring) nice guys getting shit upon this way is it a really a surprise that so many men are such assholes towards women. What is the point of being nice, decent, reliable, etc. when all it gets you is being dumped on this way? The converse (gender reversal) is also true. I don't know if it is true same sex couples as well. General rule: sadly, it is much easier for nice people to turn nasty then it is for nasty people to turn nice.

Something else that might help AAA feel better. Consider that there's every possibility that if you'd behaved differently the relationship might have imploded anyway. X fell for you without knowing you well. He was traveling when you were scary sick. He took a job overseas. All we know about him is that he's a nice guy who liked you. We don't know if you really had anything much in common or any of the qualities that would have made a long lasting relationship work. If we rewrite this scenario into one where you never led him on and where you never cheated on him, this might not have been the right guy for you anyway. Let it go.