I had a break up a few months ago. We were part of the same friend group. He lives in another country, far away from most of our friends. A lot of the time it was easy to pretend he didn’t exist because he is far away and I have not contacted him/replied to him. Overall, since the breakup I have been practicing feeling love and forgiveness for him and gratitude for the relationship being over. I feel like I have gained a whole life full of wonderful options thanks to him cheating, and me ending it. Our relationship was unhealthy, bordering on abusive. So although I generally have no anger or resentment, and mostly gratitude both for the good times we had together and enormous gratitude for having my life back, I have moments of anxiety about our shared friends.

Recently, I have been reminded that he does still exist and he is still friends with a bunch of my friends, and I think “they should not speak to him”, “he does not deserve their friendship”, and maybe even that he deserves punishment, in the form of losing their friendship. I want to be able to feel love for him, and compassion again. And I can do that some of the time. But I have moments of hurt, and I want the friends to get that how he treated me was really not okay.

I don’t ACTUALLY want them to not speak to him, or for him to lose anything else. Basically, although I have forgiven him, for some reason, sometimes I find it hard that they have forgiven him. I don’t think I could easily forgive it if one of their partners did this to THEM.