A year of love in one email

I wrote this in March 2026, shortly after a breakup. I revised the text later. It remains a diary page about how I experienced those days, from my side of the story.

I don't know where to start with this post. It felt so good to have my love in my life. I had so hoped we would still find each other when things became a little more difficult.

At the end of January, I'd read her a letter I'd worked on for a long time. I tried to put into words what I was missing, what I needed and how much I loved her. I wanted to feel more that we were sharing a life. And I felt heard.

At the end of the spring half-term break, she stayed here for two nights. In the morning, she woke up earlier and sat on the sofa crocheting my blanket. How wonderful that was. Just sleeping beside my love and having such a chilled-out weekend. Going to the sauna on Saturday. Falling asleep together for an hour in the relaxation room. It didn't really need to be any more than that.

Perhaps that's also why it hurts so much. Because those ordinary, warm things were there too. Because I was happy there.

After that, I felt something change. She wanted to be alone. I went over a few more times, once without letting her know beforehand. I wanted to surprise her. She wasn't pleased and looked exhausted. What felt like a loving gesture to me clearly didn't come across that way at that moment.

When she said she needed time, I replied that I'd give her space and get in touch after the weekend. Meanwhile, I felt the unrest in my body. Something wasn't okay. I just didn't know what.

And then, that Saturday evening, an email arrived. After a year together. After the trips, the laughter, looking after each other, all those little things that had come to have a place in my life. An email to say she was ending it.

I couldn't get my head around it.

I felt like a tick in a box that could be erased. As though everything we'd shared suddenly meant much less than I'd thought. That's what was going through me at the time. What it meant to her, I didn't know.

All week, I woke up around five in the morning. For a few seconds, I didn't know yet. And then it came back. Oh yes. It's over. And in that way. That pain again, before the day had even started.

I needed a conversation. Someone sitting opposite me. To be able to ask what had happened, even if the answer would hurt. Those emails didn't make me feel, at the time, that I understood why we'd ended up here.

You get an email from your lawyer. Or from the City of Ghent about a municipal fine. That kept going through my head. Of course, an email can contain things someone cannot manage to say aloud. For me, at that moment, having to say goodbye like that was terribly difficult.

An email. A fucking email.

I was sad and angry. I'd tried so hard to be respectful, to give her space and to stand up for myself at the same time. With that letter, I'd tried to do something other than erase myself. I wanted so much for it to work this time.

Something old was touched too. The ground shifted beneath my feet. My whole nervous system was in the red. That weekend, it grew so dark in my head that for a while I didn't want to go on. That's difficult to write down. It is part of how low I was then.

I also found it difficult that my daughters saw me like that. A dad who cries, who is distraught and doesn't understand for a while. You want to spare your children so much. And sometimes you're sitting there yourself, not knowing how to get through the evening.

During that period, I also used AI because I no longer knew how to put things into words and wanted to step outside my own patterns. I recognise that I can lose myself in relationships, simply because I'm already happy there's someone in my life. I wanted to learn to say what I needed. Time together. Care. The feeling that there was room for me too.

In that distress, I also responded harshly. I wanted to be heard. Looking back, I also want to take responsibility for my own words. My pain was real. Not everything I wrote out of that pain helped us understand each other.

I loved her dearly. That didn't suddenly disappear because an email had arrived. Perhaps that was the hardest part: being angry with someone and, at the same time, wanting nothing more than for her to come and sit beside you.

If my daughters read this later, I hope they know their dad didn't always know how to do things either. That I loved, was afraid, did my best and sometimes didn't know what to do with myself.

Should you ever feel grief like this yourself: you don't have to be ashamed of it. You're allowed to miss someone and, at the same time, say that something hurt you. You're allowed to ask for care and clarity. And if it gets too dark, tell someone. You don't have to carry it alone.

For now, I'm trying to pull myself together. I don't understand it all yet.

Sigh.