Dear A,

I want to thank you for being receptive to the activity last week. It’s been a tough few months and we haven’t been as happy as we used to be. The constant bickering is driving us mad and our relationship isn’t always something for others to covet.

Please be proud of yourself for not shying away from our grown-up (and at times, frightening) conversation. I think we both learnt how to say what we felt without throwing daggers or chipping away at each other with a chisel.

Learning what we don’t like in each other could have opened up a can of worms – credit to us that we maintained level heads and calm voices.

Interestingly, laying down our “wants” and “don’t wants” on the page was less nerve-wracking than sharing our “needs”. I can’t help that sometimes I feel like I need to snap to let off steam. And I can’t help but think isn’t it ironic that our needs contradict? You need me to be patient with you. I must learn how to channel my irritability without directing it at you, and we need to devise a way in which you can ask for help that avoids fumbling and me getting annoyed.

Writing an Action Plan seems more career progression than relationship maintenance but we both agree it’s needed (and it appeals to my particular nature and combats your forgetfulness).

I think it’s fair to say this isn’t a guarantee of a foolproof relationship. It isn’t even a guarantee of everlasting happiness or certainty we’ll be together forever. But it is a step in the right direction. A step that has meant that during moments over the past few days, we’ve felt further apart than we were before, but I feel we’ve built a bridge together that, hopefully, we can maintain and strengthen.

People may see this as a letter of resignation, but really, it’s a letter of hope. We hope that, whatever way the coming months pan out, they will be happy months spent together.

Love,

Me.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash