A Year on....

Dear Husband

I’ve been trying so hard to get over all that has happened to our marriage since your affair. I want to feel better about our relationship, although a major block for me is that I don’t think that you understand the effects of the affair, the lies, the deceit and your treatment of me has had on the core of our marriage.

You think I just want to dig everything up about the past, my take on this is that I want to dig my way out of the sheer awfulness that was the period of your affair.
I know that you are not involved with her anymore, and I believe that you do love me very much. I am appreciative of the work you have done so far in our marriage and our reconciliation, the help with running the house, taking some of the responsibility for “stuff” that needs doing - you are trying to understand the full measure of the pain you have caused me and also trying to understand what I need to help me heal from this. For that I thank you.

Still, there is much I just cannot understand and digest about our marriage and the relationship we had during your affair. Many people have a misconception that affairs happen because there is something wrong in the marriage, but as we have discussed at length, the issue was not with our marriage, rather the issues are within you - your low self-esteem, your constant need for your ego to be stroked, the pedestal that your family put you on, the lack of importance of anyone else in your life. Your perception that the world revolved around you. We have discussed also at length Narcissistic Personality Disorder - shades of which both you and the whore appear to have. Birds of a Feather stick together.

I don’t need a blow by blow account of every second of every day that you were involved with her, but I do need some clarity. I have tried to wash away the pain many times, I have tried to trust you since I found out about your secret life with her, but that trust was violated. I sometimes feel I never really knew you. You were a horrid stranger to me when all this was confirmed last year. A stranger for such a long time and a you lived a pretend life here with your family that apparently meant nothing to you as long as you weren’t found out and could continue to have your wonderful ego stroking pathetic life with her.
I do believe you are remorseful and ashamed of what your life had become, and who you had become.

I don't envy what you and her shared, because it was not real. It was based on fantasy and what you both perceive a relationship should be, deluded as it may seem in black and white. No responsibilities to anyone or each other, no bills to pay, no illness, no dirty laundry, nothing that could possibly get in the way of your fantasy life. No thanks, not for me. I want to be real, feel real. Not live a fake secret life, scuttling around in dark corners so no-one could see you for what you both are.

I do believe that you strive each and every day to be a much better man, husband and father than you were when you were involved with her. And because of that I have to restate my commitment to making our marriage work, but I need your help.

I think I have closed a part of my heart and emotions to you. I do trust you on many levels – with the girls, with our finances, with our financial security and the like, but I have a really hard time trusting you completely. It’s not that I don’t want our marriage to work, it’s not that I am looking for an escape, it’s not that I want you to suffer during endless rounds of questioning, rather I want to belong to this marriage fully and whole-heartedly and know ALL parts of our marriage, including the time you were having an affair. The questions and mind-movies I have going round my head some days eat me alive from the inside out. What I do not know about that time in our life become dark and endless imaginations in my head. Only the truth will stop those. The secrets of our marriage haunt me day and night and often erode my commitment to making our marriage work again.

I have as you know thought a great deal in the last year about this – I don’t want to have a relationship with someone that lies to protect himself, that hides away because of his own fears, that can’t confront the facets of his personality that are unpleasant. That needs to have affairs with pathetic no-hopers to bolster his ego and destroy his wife and family. I have tried to give our marriage time, energy and hope. I have been committed to our reconciliation and believe we have the ability to make this work.

I have hoped that you would, of your own volition, come to me and talk about what has happened, openly. For most of the part, I feel I have brought the subject up, usually at times of great stress and when certain things “trigger” the memories of our broken marriage and the reasons for it. You have given me reassurances and for those I am grateful, I want to be wholeheartedly in your arms again, and feel without reservation, the joy, happiness & completeness when we dance together, or sit in the garden, or cook together.

You say that I have built a wall around myself. You are right of course. It was built out of the fear and pain and hurt of your actions. Much of how I needed you to talk to me hasn’t happened and therefore has delayed my and our healing. The questions I ask get avoided, or you become defensive, we both have anger outbursts, storming out of rooms, shouting, half answers, no answers. “I don’t knows” or “I can’t remembers”. I don’t want to have my marriage occluded by lies or hurt or pain. I want to be married to YOU. I don’t want to be married to the memory of what we were, and what you and her did to destroy out marriage. I want to wash away the badness and build it again on truth, openness and transparency. I want to fall in love with you again with an open heart. A heart that is open because I trust you with it.

I know you want all this pain and hurt to be in the past but ignoring it won’t make it go away. We can be better, we can have a better marriage, we can eventually put this behind us but I can’t put behind me what is unresolved. What I know is that I need to be able to ask you anything, anytime and the truth comes out openly. I need you to share things with me you think I might not like, or I wouldn’t be happy about what you have done, instead of always burying it. You are asking me to trust you again, but if you don’t trust me with your past, how can I trust you with my future? It’s a fair question.

We both know we are in limbo at the moment. We have stalled a little and we need to work on our relationship to move it forward. We both deserve to be loved and we both deserve happiness in our lives. If what I asked you at the weekend, and today is more than you can, or are willing to give me, then we both need to understand that. I have loved you wholeheartedly and unconditionally for a long time. I felt at times your soul was woven into mine, especially since we had the girls. Maybe if my love for you hadn’t have been so deep , then the pain of your affair would not have been so profound. With your help as we discussed on Sunday, being open, willing and honest in our communications about the affair and with time, we can diminish the pain we both feel and our marriage can be better than ever.

Much love