Nick:

This is the best essay I have ever read on how it feels, really feels, when the person you love suddenly and unilaterally abandons the relationship.

The steps you describe are so genuine; the total feeling of powerlessness and loss. For me, it has literally taken years to get to the end place you describe so well.

But in my case, there was this necessity to forgive her. Not for her benefit; she neither knows or cares. We haven’t had any contact in the 8 years since she left. No, I forgave her for me. I simply could not move on until I forgave her.

She is a narcissist. I didn’t understand what that even meant until she was gone. She did not choose to engage in this form of self-preservation. She had more trauma in her first few years of life than any child should have to endure. She was the product of an affair. She was abandoned at birth by her father and unwanted by her mother. She will never know real love or empathy. There is no treatment or cure. What a sad life!

It was so much harder to forgive myself. For my own selfishness in the relationship. For my arrogance, co-dependence, entitlement, and resentment. For my deep fear of not speaking my own truth because I was way too afraid of losing her. For being needy, desperate, not understanding and certainly not listening.

It took years of therapy and being alone before I slowly experienced the feelings of gratitude you describe. Grateful for the time we had and what I learned. Grateful for the new friends I would never have met had we stayed together. Wishing her happiness and loving her from afar while knowing we both will never have any contact with or knowledge of the other.

I am now much closer to the person she always thought I could be. Which never could have happened without the pain and tears the resulted from her leaving.