OK. So, I decided to draft a letter to my father-in-law. My sister-in-law (and my wife) have described him as the least judgmental person they know - and SIL has said that he realizes that relationships take two. However, I did hurt his daughter, and there's alot of difficulty there.
What's below is a rough/first draft of the letter. My immediate thoughts, unrefined by my "writing skills". I am going to call SIL (who has been kind to me, even through this) and see if she thinks it'd be OK if I self FIL a letter.
Here goes (it's 1.5 pages in word! Whoo!):
October 10, 2007
FIL,
Hello. I’m not certain that this letter will even end up being read through to the end, or that I really have the right to write to you. But I feel that for me at least, it’s important that I do so, if I’m going to move on through this.
I’m sorry to have disappointed you, and to have brought about the pain inherent with a family suffering a fracturing like this.
I especially regret and apologize for the way that I acted towards your daughter. I did not act as a husband should towards his wife. In a time where I was faced with a great deal of personal stress and distaste for myself, I chose to take my anger and frustration out on those around me – friends and loved ones, who ended up dealing with a side of me that I am deeply ashamed of. I was full of negativity and spite at times, radiating these emotions out and pushing those I cared about further away, rather than attempting to deal with my emotions in a healthy way.
I became very jealous of [wife]’s friendship with "B", to a point where it began to impact my own friendship with "B", and my marriage to your daughter. I became extremely insecure and jealous of seeing a friendship that was unmarred by difficulties like she and I were having at the time. These feelings began to sabotage a relationship that I treasured.
I tried to work out my problems during the time [wife] and I were together – we both recognized that I had issues that were causing difficulties in our marriage, but we never successfully worked through them. Never made a full-on press to conquer the problems. Instead, in large part, when things were good we tried not to think about the negative issues that were affecting us.
In the last weeks, before [wife] walked out of the apartment, I was in a state of agitation most of the time. At the time, to me, it seemed like a state I really had a right to be in, regardless of what the logical part of my mind was telling me.
When she left me, I had a genuine revelation as to how I had been acting. I had been an angry, callous person who was venting poison into my relationships with everyone around me. And I had managed to finally push the person I loved most in the world too far, and made her choose to leave me. Because, even though I acted in ways that were ugly at times, I loved (and still love) Megan a very great deal. The bad times are not all there was – not even the majority of what we had, but they were a part. I would give anything, do anything, to retract the things I said and the ways I have acted over the past six months. Not because I want to be able to patch things up between [wife] and I, and with other friends, but because I want to not have emotionally hurt people the way I did.
I am making changes in my life, to see to it that I do not act like this towards anyone, including myself. I am taking anger management courses to learn to deal with the instinct reaction of being upset about something that I have no control over, or how to discern what really matters from the trivial.
I am also working through the deeper issues of personal insecurity and self-worth. Because for quite some time, I have not been happy with who I am, or where I am going in terms of my career or future, aside from having [wife] as my wife. This is something I intend to change – it is something I need to do for myself, to respect myself and the fact that I am, I believe, a good person.
I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, and part of that is atoning for the way I have treated people who are important to me.
I apologize for hurting your daughter. I apologize for hurting you and the rest of your family.
You’ve been very kind and generous to me over the years that [wife] and I were together. I thank you for that, and for your patience if you have read this letter through.
