My Dearest -----,
I am writing this letter to attempt to tell you all the things that have not been said. I wanted to hand write it but I realize that my hands cannot keep up with my mind and things will get lost. I want you to know that because this is not in my handwriting that it is not any less personal. Words on paper will never truly convey the things I want to say to you, but if I don�t tell you them then I will go through life with the knowledge that I never had the courage to tell you.
I want to keep this letter completely positive, but I also realize that if I do not talk about some of the negative then you may not hear it. I know this because the other night when we spoke on the phone you had told me that you felt horribleness for 10 years. I know that that is not true, but I also realize that you are hurting so much that when I pointed out that the good you kept repeating the negative. It wasn�t until I listened to you about the negative and tried my best to hear you and offer a sincere apology did you seem to let it go.
You are in town. I have been waiting so long for you to arrive. It is something that I have longed for for so long. I anticipated every day that one day you would be home. You would hug me and hold me and tell me that this is all over. That it is all in the past. I�d look deep into your eyes and we would start our first day of the rest of our lives together.
You asked me how you could come home. Would you just drop your bags and move back in and we�d act like nothing happened. That used to be what I think could happen, that none of this would matter as long as I had you back and I knew that you loved me again. I knew that my love for you could cover anything, even all the hurt of this.
But months of the pain has changed many things. I have been hurt so deeply that I realized that I was just covering up the real pain inside. You too.
You told me so many times that our last fight in Fairbanks that you knew it was over. I never heard you or understood why you could say that. Because when I looked in your eyes while I was home I had so much love for you that I could never imagine losing it. You loved me so hard that I never thought it was possible for you to not love me enough to be with me forever, like how we planned.
Through all of this I realize a lot of things now. I realize that I had said I would be in love with you forever. The times that we laid in bed and I told you over and over how I would never leave you, that I would never give up on you, and I knew in my heart that was true.
I never imagined all of this happening to us when I said those words. It made me realize that breaking my heart this way could make me want to run away from you instead of run to you. That a broken heart is how this could all happen.
It has really opened my eyes to why you are running away from me. That I broke your heart so badly that instead of running to me to heal it you are cowering away from me. Your broken heart was the start to all of this. That is why you said you are a victim in this.
What has happened since then has been nothing short of the worst experience of my life. The woman I love with all of my heart is now my greatest source of pain. I want to open up to you but when I do I get hurt over and over when you were in CA. It�s probably just like how you felt before all of this.
I remember you looking at me and telling me that I can�t hurt you like that, that one day you I�ll be hurt too much. I never truly heard you. For that I am so sorry.
Since all of this has happened I have been working on me. I have spent a lot of time focusing on affairs. All that that has done is led me to realize how they start and progress, and how they ruin everything.
But focusing on that will not stop what is happening. It only gives me an idea of what has happened and why.
What has happened to us has opened my eyes. I now see and hear your words and realize that I was missing doing the things that you needed from me.
I�m not saying any of this to take responsibility for your decisions, I am saying all of this because I know that in my heart of hearts that I messed up with you horribly too. That looking back on the hurtful words and judgments I can see the error. How I should have been to the person I loved the most, who I pledged my life to.
I�m sorry for breaking my vows of not cherishing you Amanda. I hate saying that because in my heart I don�t want that to be true at all. It is the worst thing that I have ever done. The hurt I inflicted on you must have been like a dagger to your heart.
I was na�ve and took your love for granted. Somewhere it got messed up and because I thought I had you forever that I didn�t need to show you love the way that you needed it. I held it back when I thought I could control you with it, and I hurt you.
For all of this I plead with you from the very core of me. I am sorry
I have never known love like I have with you. The good memories of you are also like a dagger to my heart in light of all of this. The contrast between the loving times and now is so immense that the light of the past shines so brightly on the darkness of now. It lights up how horrible this experience truly is.
I keep trying to find ways back to you. Openings for us to talk. Openings for us to connect. Each time I make a little contact with you I recess back because of what is happening. I want to try so hard to love you back to me, but in doing so I open myself up to the worst hurt of my life.
I know that if I was stronger, that if somehow I didn�t have so much to lose I could face my hurt and try to reach out to you. But because I love you so much, because you mean so much to me, and because of the situation I simply don�t have the heart in me to break like that. Each failed attempt takes a chunk out of what is already so hurt.
I realize that a lot of our problems in the past were about control and equal-ness. That you did not feel like you had say in many of our life decisions. So with that I am afraid to tell you some of how I feel because I don�t want you to think that I am trying to control you or that if you do not do something that I want that I will punish you by doing something.
What is happening hurts me so much Amanda. I don�t want us to lose each other forever. I have been working so hard on me. I think you may have gotten a brief glimpse of what I have been doing but I will state some of it here just so I can say it out loud.
Realizing that I lost you has opened up my eyes to the fact that something was seriously wrong in our relationship. I never knew that there could be a life where we weren�t each other�s future. I never could have possibly envisioned that. And now that is what is happening and I am watching it happen right before me. It completely kills me.
We losing each other is the most tragic thing that could have ever happened in my life.
I love you so much that I want to hold onto you tighter than ever and never let you go. But I realize that the tighter I hold the harder you push away.
I can say that without a doubt I know I will get to the bottom of the things that went wrong with us. I have been looking deep down inside of me and us and have seen some things that have opened my eyes to the pitfalls and snares that allowed us to hurt each other. Especially the ones that I did to hurt you. But knowing all of this will not make us work out, it only shows me what happened and where we went wrong. I can only work on myself; I cannot work on the both of us.
And that�s what I want to talk to you about.
A second chance.
The situation of you being in CA makes it so I can only work on me. And no matter what I will continue to work on me and grow into the man that I need to become.
I want us to begin working on rebuilding a new life and marriage with each other. Taking the best of what we had with each other, discarding the bad. I don�t want our old marriage either. It was what has lead up to the worst pain in both of our lives. I want an all new marriage and an all new future where we both take equal parts in making each other the source of our greatest happiness.
But I realize that you may not want that with me, that you may want to start over with someone else. This is my worst fear because I know you love so hard that once you love someone else you may never love me again. These words are the ones I have been holding back because the very thought of it sickens me because I would have lost you forever, and you me forever because I love just as hard as you.
I only want to speak my heart to you. If I let you leave Florida again without telling you how much you mean to me, how much I love you, how much I want us to work out. That would be one of the worst mistakes I could ever make.
I realize that I am opening myself up for a tremendous amount of heartache. That being completely broken by you leaving again is very real. To watch you walk out of my life again may be just as heart wrenching as the last time it happened.
But for a chance to tell you just what you mean to me. For the chance to tell you that I am willing to work on a new future with us. One where each of us has an equal say in how to rebuild and the opportunity for us to fall in love with each other all over again.
I know that it will not be easy, and that it will take a lot of work. I am willing to put forth all of me and set aside the past. To set aside the hurt of the affair, the hurt of all of this. I also know that you will need me to show you that your heart is safe with me.
I mentioned a lot of what I would like our future to look like in the letter I sent you in AK. Those are some of my hopes and dreams. I want you to tell me all of your hopes and dreams too. That way we can put them together and find a way for us to achieve all of them. Together.
I am opening my heart up to you Amanda. The choice is for the both of us. I can only choose for me and I am laying it all on the line telling you that I will do everything that is needed to have a wonderful future with you.
But you are a completely free person. Something that I missed along the way in our relationship and that has led up to us now.
We had each other 100% and we lost each other, only to be hanging on by a thin string and sometimes we pull at it to see and feel each other.
The pain of all of this has been more than I thought I could ever bare.
I still love you -----.
The choice is yours. If you want to begin to find a way back to try again with me I am open to it.
But if you want to be happy with someone else I know that I must honor your decision and deal with a future where we are no longer.
Please don�t leave me in limbo. We both deserve to be honest with each other. I am not forcing you to make a decision. I also want you to know that I hurt too and that this situation of you going back to CA hurts so much that I don�t know how much longer I can hold onto this thin string between us. I feel like I�m the only one holding onto it and that if I let it go there will be no string left for either of us to grab onto.
With all of my heart I love you
-me
