A letter to a loser

Dear Peter,

I've come to realise in recent months that you are a loser.

A literal loser. 

You have lost me, the family unit which we created together, our beautiful children, our family home, all because you felt more loyalty towards your dysfunctional family of origin and you never had the balls to stand up and question them or yourself. 

It should never have been easier to make excuses for them than it was to advocate for us. 

It was easy for you to walk away and it never should have been. It should never have been easy for you to go back to your teenage bedroom, lossacking on your bed whilst I am at home, single-handedly caring for our kids. The day we had our first child was the day your loyalties should have switched, but that never happened. It makes me question if you are emotionally impacted by anything at all. Although any time I questioned your domestic awareness, that seems to affect you deeply. Why were you taking the minor things so personally and yet you could never feel so passionate for the bigger things? When your family were clearly segregating me from the rest of you and then being unkind to our child too? You batted that away easily enough.

Realising that you are a loser feels freeing to me in some ways. I can't expect much from a loser. But I feel traumatised that this loser-person is such a far cry from the man I met in the very beginning. At some point, I offended you so deeply that you withdrew all love, commitment and loyalty to me at all. And you can't even communicate to me what I did or why you're hurt because you apparently have no comprehension of your own emotions. When I argue that this seems to me like some sort of emotional disability, you argue back that you are extremely emotionally intelligent and reel off plenty of succinct examples of times you have appropriately shown empathy to others. So why couldn't you do it for us? What is really going on for you? 

The people who are supposed to matter to you are being emotionally abused by you.

Do you hate yourself so much that you made us the target of your frustration with yourself? I know already that you would be turning this back on me. I know I too get frustrated at times- but I work on myself and my growth through therapy. You believe that therapy is the cause of all our issues and refuse to work at all on yourself. Projecting and gaslighting away all of the real issues. 

I am at a point where I'm becoming content with the idea of you being merely a visitor in the girls lives as opposed to an influential parent. All of the trauma of your own childhood, you project onto theirs by refusing to face up to anything. You do not meet their emotional needs. You are emotionally neglectful, smug at times, distant and detached. I am happier for you to have less influence in their lives.

They are already seeing the truth. Already, they often prefer not to be around your parents and your sister and still, you refuse to see clearly their negative impact. You are an intelligent man who is emotionally lacking and I worry about how this will affect our girls over time. 

You have shown your true colours to some people who have been able to observe the way you put me down, try to demean me and discredit what I say. It's sad and this is the behaviour of a sad man. I've given you so many opportunities to sort yourself out, go to therapy, watch the videos, prioritise us but you refuse every olive branch through your own pig headed ignorance. I could have given up years ago and instead I've wasted years of my life on you, waiting for you to do better, only for you to dig your heels in even more. 

The children will remain predominantly with me, because it is healthier that way in so many ways. I will fight you tooth and nail to ensure that they remain mostly in my care, with you as a regular visitor in their lives from the comfortable distance which you have created. 

I'm sad that this truth has unfolded, that this is who you truly are. A loser. You have lost so much and you continue to lose. We have lost too, we have lost someone who could have made different choices, who could have tried and could have sought out the therapy needed, but it's too late now. I'll find a new way of life for me and the girls and who knows, maybe one day a new love if I can ever trust again. I hope that one day, you do realise what you have lost through the choices that you have made. Perhaps, hindsight is the only gain for you now.