If he had never written this letter, if he had simply said 'I want to be with you, fully, or I need to go my own way'—which would have hurt less?

You're asking something very real, aren't you? Not just about what might have hurt less, but about the difference between a clean break and an explanation that leaves you tangled up in his words. There's something in that question that tells me you're still searching through the letter itself—looking for the moment where it all could have been simpler, clearer, less painful. And I wonder if part of you is asking whether the pain would have been easier to bear if it had come without the weight of all those words he felt the need to say. A simple "I need to go" would have been sharp and immediate. It would have left you with grief, yes—the grief of losing someone you wanted to keep. But it might not have left you here, still turning the letter over in your hands, still trying to decode what was real and what was him trying to protect himself or you or both of you at once. When someone writes a long explanation instead of speaking plainly, it often means they're doing something more complicated than just ending things. They're trying to be gentle. They're trying to make sense of it for themselves. They're sometimes trying to stay a little bit connected, even as they're leaving. And that muddles everything, doesn't it? Because you're not just grieving the loss—you're also grieving the gap between what he said and what he might have meant, between the person he was trying to be in that letter and the person you actually knew. But I'm not sure the answer to "which would have hurt less" is really the question that matters most. What strikes me is that you're still trying to calculate pain, still looking for the version of this that would have been bearable. And that tells me the hurt isn't really about the letter's form anymore—it's about the fact that he left at all. Is there something in the letter that keeps pulling you back? A phrase, a reason he gave, something that doesn't sit right with what you felt between you?