To try and communicate better we have been writing each other letters. This is his letter to me.
I don't know how to read him anymore and I am always skeptical. For the most part, I believe his actions are matching his words. When I read the letter, part of my heart melts and it makes me want to start building a bridge towards R. The other part of me wonders if it is some sort of ploy and I should be yelling out "liar"!
What is your take?
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Dear XXX,
It feels on the one hand strange, overly formal somehow, to start out with just “Dear XXX”. On the other hand I feel like we are back to square one and that something like “dearest wife” or “love of my life” would be presumptuous and wrong. I hope that we still celebrate our 10th anniversary together this fall, and perhaps by then we’ll be in a place where one of those greetings would fit. I promise you that I’ll do my best to make it so.
I know that I’ve hurt you grievously. I am sorry. Three words and so pitiful weighed against the harm I’ve done to you but I need to say it. Your grace and strength this week have been amazing and I think it just shows once again in one more way how incredibly lucky I am to be married to you.
Realizations of what I have in you are coming a mile a minute this week and I’m deeply ashamed of myself that it took something so catastrophic to make me see it. I am truly the dumbest man on the planet. I knew you were a wonderful mother, and I knew you were trying to make a good life for us. How I never went from there to treating you as a true confidante, really bringing you fully into my head, how I could rebuff your advances in every sense from sexual to simple friendship, is hard for me to fathom in retrospect.
To say that I fucked up is perhaps both crude and inadequate, but like “I’m sorry” I feel it needs to be said. In my head I’m crude and vulgar so why not show that too? If it bothers you I can tone it down but I also just want to be real.
Toward that end I’m trying not to overthink this or over edit it, but just let it flow. So I apologize if it’s less polished than some of my usual writing. I feel like I haven’t written enough, haven’t begun to cover the depth of how I’m feeling, but I don’t want to run on and I want to talk about moving forward, too.
For now, though, let me make some promises to you. I recognize that my promises are devalued but I have to extend opportunities for you to trust me, and to prove myself trustworthy, for anything to work.
First, I promise that I will not go behind your back again, ever. I am committed to working with you, to winning you back, and saving our family.
As a corollary, I promise that I will let you in, that I won’t be afraid to open up to you, that I won’t harbor secrets from you. As you know, this will require an adjustment from me. I hope that the therapy will help but I think just being at a point now where I’m laid bare will also help me to stay that way.
Also related, I promise to keep talking. Keeping communication open will at all times will be huge for me in making sure I don’t slip into old habits. I will do my part to change the game and make openness and communication the new habit, and I hope that you will be willing to help me.
I can’t fully promise this because I can’t do it unilaterally, but I will do my part to help us be fun together. Sex is a part of that but only a small part. I want to embrace life; I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me that I haven’t been embracing what is a pretty damn good life, but God let’s just have some fun. I hope that you’ll still want to do that with me, over time. I want us to be best friends and I know that to the extent we’ve lost that the fault is completely mine. I hope we can recapture this aspect of our marriage, and even strengthen it.
I have never stopped loving you, and don’t interpret this to mean that I’ve fallen out of love with you, but I also want to find a way for us to fall in love all over again. Maybe we really can take this and somehow turn it into a fresh start. If we can, it will be because you are the most patient, kind, and generous woman on earth to allow me a second chance.
I know I don’t deserve it, but against all odds you seem to love me. I want to prove to you that I am worthy of that love. Please be patient. Please stick with it. I know that there will be bumps in the road. I know that I’ll fall short at times. I know that you won’t always have infinite patience. But I want us to make it. I want to grow into a man who will deserve you. I know that I’m not there right now, probably wouldn’t deserve you as I am now even if I hadn’t fucked everything up in the way I did. But I want to grow, I want to finally look in the mirror and acknowledge that I’ve got issues and to start facing them instead of running away and lying to myself and others. I think I’ll grow regardless, but I desperately hope that you will be by my side while it happens, helping me, undeserving though I am.
I love you, truly.
XXX
