The best breakup letter you’ll ever read

Don't worry, darling. My anger won't last long. I know your life is already your punishment. A 40-year-old man of mediocre accomplishment who's incapable of true intimacy, who casually lies and cheats, who's being sued by his own aunt, who hardly has the love of his own family, who has few friends and no community to speak of, who's been living in his musty, forgotten childhood home in suburban New Jersey for almost a year, alone, at 40, who isn't even close to his ultimate dream of a book deal, who is frail, insecure, pathetic, tortured, has no moral fiber, who's dissatisfied with his career and is constantly traveling to corporate wastelands.

And then a woman comes along and tries to love him, encourage his dreams, invite him to be her "other whole," and he repays her kindness with lies, secrecy, a handful of sh*tty chocolates he probably picked up at the airport on his way home from France, an unceremonious breakup based on his own inability to get close to someone who has her sh*t together and with whom he could have a real partnership, and tops it off by having an affair with his ex the entire time — at an apartment just ten blocks away from his girlfriend's. And projects onto his girlfriend that she was the untrustworthy one. And tells her the breakup was about "something I just can't put my finger on."

This is who you are: an aging, sad, sneaky, devious man who travels from one hotel to another, putting on a face for strangers, living out of a suitcase, having no real home and no connections, lying to others, lying to himself. So I don't have to humiliate you. Your entire life is one big humiliation. And no matter how much you meditate, do yoga and undergo therapy, this will never change. This is who you are.