This morning I sent Julie this email:
Julie…
First, I want to say that I love you. I love you as a person, I love you as a friend. I love who you are, your values, your beauty. I love nearly every part of you.
What I don’t love, is what our relationship has become. I don’t love the way you act around me when I do something wrong, something “different”, or need support with something.
I don’t love the confusion, the lack of a common understanding of who or what we are to one another.
I don’t love the open-ended parts of our relationship. I don’t love the lack of dedication, the lack of commitment.
I have wanted so badly for our relationship…and marriage…to work out. I have wanted so badly for this prolonged “rough patch” to end, or be somehow justified in a way that would allow us to continued as planned, but it simply hasn’t.
For nearly six months now (if you count the mysterious up-and-down periods in California) we have struggled to stay on the same page about our relationship. We have tried to communicate…and simply ended up on the wrong wave-length no matter how hard we tried.
I have thought long and hard about everything. You have given me the space and the freedom to make any choice I want without any emotional hardships from you and I appreciate that very much.
The decision, or, realization I have made is that I simply don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to keep trying to convince myself I still care for you in the same way when every time I see you I am disappointed and offended by your lack of affection.
I enjoy your friendship. I enjoy who you are as a person. I enjoy hearing about your trials, your challenges, and giving feedback to help you with the situations.
I enjoy helping you, getting you out of jams, doing things like saving your photos from the jaws of death 
I would like to be your friend…but I would like to call off the engagement. Call off the romantic relationship. Call off the life we had planned.
It hurts me so much to even think of the words I am writing here. I don’t know what else to do, though…and I just won’t stand around anymore.
What makes this easier to do, and say, is that I feel quite strongly that deep inside, you want this too. You want to be free of this loose end as much as I do. I think you like me as a person, as well, and are simply afraid of losing me as a friend.
It feels as though I am losing a wonderful romantic and physical connection, until I realize that for these last few months, I have barely had any of such a thing at all. This is not your fault, I don’t believe that. I just believe that as we grew and changed, we turned into people the other person doesn’t WANT to be in a romantic relationship with.
I would like to discuss this with you. If you get a chance to email me back, that would be great. I feel a great sense of loss right now…but somehow a great sense of truth that this is the correct thing to do.
Do you agree?
I do love you.
Christian
Does this mean we are “officially broken up”? Engagement off? It does in my mind. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to be ambiguous and unsure about something I feel so certain about. So no matter what she emails back, I consider it over.
To those wondering what the “real” reasons are, they are literally laid out in the email. I didn’t purposefully try to hide them in the mumbo-jumbo romanticism of the letter. The reasons are subtle and far under the hilt of things like cheating or fighting.
Life is now automatically and incredibly different. I feel much freer, able to be my own person again, do my own traveling. If my dad starts up an organic farm and needs someone to work it, I can do it. If I want to go live in Africa, I can do it. I don’t need to feel guilted anymore about anything.
Do I feel some sadness? Oh yes. I definitely do. Its just the way it is though. And I understand that.
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