Breaking up with a lying, cheating boyfriend or husband doesn't just involve walking away. Noooo, sir. The situation also calls for a little payback. I am not talking about getting it on with his best friend. Why sink to his level. It's better to let him know what a humongous loser he is via a perfect, epic breakup letter. After learning her boyfriend of nine months was having an affair with his ex-girlfriend, one woman composed the best F-You text you'll ever read:
Don't worry, darling. My anger won't last long. I know your life is already your punishment. A 40-year-old man of mediocre accomplishment who's incapable of true intimacy, who casually lies and cheats, who's being sued by his own aunt, who hardly has the love of his own family, who has few friends and no community to speak of, who's been living in his musty, forgotten childhood home in suburban New Jersey for almost a year, alone, at 40, who isn't even close to his ultimate dream of a book deal, who is frail, insecure, pathetic, tortured, has no moral fiber, who's dissatisfied with his career and is constantly traveling to corporate wastelands …
Whoa, talk about hitting him where it hurts. It treads on his insecurities perfectly. These are the kinds of words that will stick in his puny, womanizing, neanderthal-like brain. A part of him will always fear being unloved and alone and — worse — never living up to his potential. But that's not all. She hits him with this next:
And then a woman comes along and tries to love him, encourage his dreams, invite him to be her "other whole," and he repays her kindness with lies, secrecy, a handful of sh*tty chocolates he probably picked up at the airport on his way home from France, an unceremonious breakup based on his own inability to get close to someone who has her sh*t together and with whom he could have a real partnership, and tops it off by having an affair with his ex the entire time — at an apartment just ten blocks away from his girlfriend's. And projects onto his girlfriend that she was the untrustworthy one. And tells her the breakup was about "something I just can't put my finger on."
In case he had any doubts about whether or not her was a douche, that pretty much answers the questions. How can he even look himself in the mirror? But she saves the REAL WHAMMY for last:
This is who you are: an aging, sad, sneaky, devious man who travels from one hotel to another, putting on a face for strangers, living out of a suitcase, having no real home and no connections, lying to others, lying to himself. So I don't have to humiliate you. Your entire life is one big humiliation. And no matter how much you meditate, do yoga and undergo therapy, this will never change. This is who you are.
LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS. This letter perfectly expresses what EVERY woman feels when she breaks up with an asshole. Most of us, however, fail to get it out so eloquently, so succinctly. You know that moment all too well — you are facing down the jerk that has broken your heart. There is so much you want to say and you just can't get it out they way you want. You want to let him know how wrong he is, what a big mistake he made, and exactly why he will live to regret being such a jackass. But you are so upset, you just come off as a hysterical mess. Then in the days, weeks, months that follow, you replay the conversation wishing you had said this or that. It's maddening. Well, next time, you will be more prepared thanks to this wonderfully biting missive. Everyone should keep this in a file and have it at the ready in case of another betrayal.
Have you ever written a breakup letter? What did it say?
Image via Alexandra Zakharova/Flickr