Help me from saying, writing...

[SweetCyborg]

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Wife said:
[...] you have to know it is hard to be friends with someone who hates H so much because in the back of my mind I feel like you think I am a complete idiot loser if I am married to someone who you think is so horrible and unworthy of any respect as a person and who you despise so much.
OM said:
My issue with what you are doing is not about him but about, as your friend, what I think is a formula for your long-term happiness. I don't agree with your decisions on principle, but understand your reasoning and recognize that ship has sailed and I just have to overlook it and leave it in your court. It doesn't mean I think you're a complete idiot loser, although I appreciate the classic language.

I never told you that I learned a few months ago he spilled the whole story about us this summer, drunk, to a couple that are mutual friends of wife and I; the woman is a coworker and close friend of my wife. That's purely hateful, and just one of an abundance of reasons I feel the way I do about H. You might be unable to accept my feelings as legitimate but I feel perfectly justified. I'd be lying if I said it doesn't reflect on you in some small way, and I work to overlook that. I understand your reasoning for what you are doing, but frankly your connection with him will always be confusing for me.

Anyway let me explain the flip side of things for me and what is a continuing challenge. I feel like I have been very understanding and accommodating through our entire saga. I'm sure you know I had to understand and accommodate a lot with you, with a lot of the destructive things you were doing to yourself and to me, but I was motivated because a) I was in love with you and b) I was determined to keep my Red Hots promise to be unconditional--I took that very seriously because I felt nobody was being unconditional with you and I was going to give you that. Powerful combination of motives there. Meanwhile, he was attacking you and me both; I sometimes responded but never provoked. Moreover when you and I talked about him I had to be sensitive to your angle, kept my personal feelings out of it, and lots of times even gave you advice on how to talk to him that I think you carry with you even now. I kept things to myself and only shared my story with very close friends when I needed support. I don't think anyone was even close to as understanding and accommodating as I was through those times, or realizes how difficult that was for me. I also don't think anyone tried to accommodate me...at all.

Now you are asking for my understanding again, for me to accept that you are sincere about wanting to be my friend and to accept that you feel our experience was genuine but that because of your difficulty with the emotional conflict you need to kind of box up any feelings of closeness and not think about them, and because of your choices and his insecurity that I should accommodate and restrict communication to what he would find acceptable.

So I know where you are coming from, but can you see how I would feel that it is unfair to me to again have to bear the burden of understanding your situation and accommodating it when I feel like you have never reciprocated that for me? Wouldn't you feel insulted? It's actually very easy for me to fall into thinking instead that you are just trying to get the most out of me that you can, depending on your circumstances, and that what you value is not actually my friendship but my generosity and that you take my understanding for granted.

(Incidentally I wonder if you remember that in the summer of 2007 I suggested as a guide for you that maybe we just shouldn't do anything you felt like you couldn't share with him. That really pissed you off, and you told me I was on his side and wanted to dole out "rules", and you wouldn't have any part of it. I think you only wanted me to respond to you romantically then, on your terms. That's a big reason I felt like you meant business and engaged more deeply with you. I think my suggestion was a good one, but it's ironic and somewhat upsetting you're using it now.)

From a broader perspective, I just feel like you don't see the full arc of what happened between us, and why I felt betrayed after responding to your pursuit and essentially being your husband for over a year before you went back. I even asked you to consider that and to apologize to me for that betrayal, and you said you would, but you didn't. That undermined your sincerity to me A LOT. In fact at that time somehow you convinced me that I owed you an apology, and I did--like a [censored] idiot--at Starbucks.

Anyway you are probably going to see this as re-hashing when your priority is moving on, but I just can't see us being friends if we can't get this stuff out and, as you say, try to get on the same page about things and actually demonstrate we give a [censored] about each other. I worry this email will cause you a lot of stress or make you feel like I want an unending conversation, and you might not respond or just tell me to stop. As always, what I am looking for is understanding, which is what a friendship needs to survive, especially after what we've been through. I'm envious of all the opportunity you and H have had to talk through this painful experience and feel sad and slighted that our relationship didn't and probably won't have good opportunities for talking things out even though it is ostensibly valuable to us both. I do really miss Cory and A a lot--it is a truly special and wonderful connection we have, rare in a lifetime even--but the choices you have made ask a lot of me, and I honestly don't know if the whole thing is a fair deal. I feel like you won't be able to communicate with me like you would a real friend, and I don't know if I can just indefinitely put off dealing with our baggage and scale down to just talking about the weather at the drinking fountain.

c