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ILINIA posted 8/19/2013 12:41 PM

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

Ostrich80 posted 8/19/2013 13:18 PM

It's a beautiful letter, seems to take responsibility for his actions. Hopefully action will match what he's promised. I wish you 2 the best..I would love to see a success story

Morhurt posted 8/19/2013 13:58 PM

It sounds very sincere to me. Obviously only you can know how much his actions match his writing, and how you feel inside, but based on the letter it seems like he really does get it.