Ethan Plath Writes Olivia a Letter ‘Letting Her Go’

Ethan and Olivia Plath are saying goodbye for the final time.

On the Aug. 13 episode of Welcome to Plathville, the former couple met to finish sorting out the last of their things before leaving their shared Minnesota apartment for good. When Ethan realized that Olivia didn’t want to keep many sentimental items, such as their photos together, he asked her why she wasn’t struggling more to move on.

“There’s stuff that she threw away that I was like, ‘Why’d you throw that away?’” he told the cameras. “I mean, but she’s always been like that. Like when she cuts something out of her life, it’s gone and she never looks back. And I know if she can do that with her own family, I don’t stand a chance.”

He then said to her, “I feel like you don’t care and it infuriates me. I feel stuck and for the life of me I can’t seem to do anything about it, but you don’t have that problem.”

She explained that she does care, but they had been separated for nine months and she had been grieving the loss of their relationship long before that.

“It’s been a few years worth of watching the relationship die and fighting to save it and not being able to, and then just finally accepting it and moving on,” she said. “So I was just hoping he was going to work through things on his own and he hasn’t.”

Ethan confessed that he never thought their breakup would be permanent, even reflecting back on their biggest fight where he said he “couldn’t stand [it] anymore.”

“I really thought that we would fight about it for like a week and then we would start working on it,” he said.

“Yeah, well, you kind of did that a lot,” she replied. “It was not a healthy relationship.”

Although Ethan said he believed they could have made things better, Olivia maintained that she disagreed.

“I think the way that things are playing out between Ethan and I is a direct picture of what happened in our marriage, of me saying, ‘This doesn’t work, this needs to happen, this needs to be fixed,’ and him putting his head in the sand or under the hood of a car,” she said in her confessional. “And then when things fall apart, saying, ‘I just don’t understand what happened.’”

At that point, Ethan decided it would be best to leave, and he acknowledged that “it’s just denial” that was holding him back from signing the divorce papers.

Later, Olivia went through old photos from the beginning of their marriage, and realized that they were just “two kids who did not know what they were doing.”

“It’s hard to see Ethan in this much pain and struggling this much with everything, but I spent years logged down in stress and being on the other side of things,” she said. “I’ve realized that I felt more alone when I was in a relationship than I do being by myself.”

Olivia admitted that she still has love for Ethan, but she also felt like she wasn’t “good enough” for him and never would be. She went on to say she wasn’t going to make it her “job” to fix him.

“We didn’t mesh and we weren’t compatible in a lot of ways,” she said.

Back at his place, Ethan sat down to write a letter for Olivia, which she asked him to do instead of sharing with her in person.

“I basically wrote in my note that I was sorry for all the ways that I fell short in our relationship that brought us to this point and I hope that she finds what I couldn’t or didn’t give her,” he revealed. “I wish her the best and I love her and if there’s anything that she ever needs, I’ll help her as best I can.”

He noted that the letter was “my way of letting her go,” even though he didn’t want to.

“I definitely think that I have more happy memories with her than bad memories, but the happy memories are just as painful as what you would consider a bad memory,” he said. “I definitely do feel like me and Olivia grew up together. We stepped out in the world together on our own. We gave it a good run, but not everything works.”

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Welcome to Plathville airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on TLC.