I sent this to my ex soon after we split when I was trying to figure out what went wrong.

“ I can tell you now what I’ve always loved most about you–now that it’s gone. Your incredibly comforting, soothing sweetness. I see you turn it on for our daughter and I’m jealous. You come in with flowers for her, call her darling and dearest, with honey in your voice. I used to eat that up–I was so hungry for it. It made me feel warm, loved, not alone, a real woman because a man adored me. You are an extremely seductive person you know, something I don’t believe you know about yourself. The Dr. Jekyll in you offers all the gentleness, kindness, caring, understanding and acceptance that I never got from my parents. For me it’s irresistible–it makes me feel like a normal person, not like the unloveable phantom I feel that I am. Actually many women find it irresistible. I’m is no exception.

Unfortunately there is a terrible price to pay for that comfort and yes, love. It’s putting up with Mr. Hyde– the raging, judgemental, critical, controlling Hyde. The man who blames me for his unhappiness, who expects me to fill up his empty soul. The man who really would like to kill me. I have always been willing to pay the price because I’m so desperate for the reward of that soothing, comforting, warm Jekyll. I’m just like a battered wife who dismisses her abusive husband as soon as he apologizes for beating up on her because she’s desperate for the loving man he becomes after the abuse.

The sweet Jekyll is, of course, you pretending to be who you really are. The raging Hyde is the flip side of him. I don’t believe, as you claim, that you don’t actually feel those compassionate, empathetic feelings–I know you do because I’ve seen you act on them automatically–without thinking–but on some level they are a great pretense, your mask, the innocuous, loveable self you present to the world. You said when I met you that you didn’t have a mask, that you wished you did because everyone else did and you needed one. Well, over the last 18 years you’ve cultivated your mask very carefully and you now have an extremely effective one–it could fool just about anyone, and it certainly fooled me. Well not exactly fooled–I was the only one who knew who you were under that mask–but I denied it, and dismissed it, and pretended it wasn’t a big deal, that some day it would go away. You cooperated by controlling the worst of your temper tantrums and converting that rage into everyday nastiness, which in a way was even worse because it was hard to pin down. I put up with it because it felt familiar–of course my mother had always treated me that way so I hardly knew what was acceptable and what wasn’t.

This is not to get myself off the hook. I needed the tenderness you showered on me so desperately that I was willing to put up with ANYTHING, and I mean anything, to get it. I was hooked on you, actually addicted I believe, or co-dependent as they call it. I got back at you by being contemptuous, bossy, harsh and critical of you, and withholding sex. You played your part by being the helpless, incompetent shlub that deserved to be dumped on by me. I should have known better. I should have known from the getgo that those temper tantrums weren’t going away and it wasn’t wise to marry a man who could get so furious at me. But all I paid attention to was the adoration you showered on me, the devotion and attention. I’d never met a man who actually cared what I thought like you did, who was interested in everything I did and felt. Who wanted to really know who I was and was determined to find out.