He once believed loyalty meant her staying no matter how small he made her world. He cast himself as the tragic man who “couldn’t help” wanting more, while she was written as the woman who should be grateful for whatever was left. Her quiet, devastating letter stripped that story bare. She had not been clinging; she had been choosing. And now, finally, she was choosing differently.
In a few measured lines, she returned every ounce of humiliation he had prepared for her, without raising her voice or lowering herself. The details she named were not a plea for revenge, but a mirror held to his face: he was not irresistible, not inevitable, not the center of her shrinking universe. When she walked away, she didn’t just end the marriage. She ended the myth that she needed his betrayal to feel alive. He was ready to live with his guilt. He wasn’t ready to live without her.
