don't make the case for leaving you sound so good that only a fool would take you back.
The emphasis is on your realizations AND CHANGES and how things would be better or different in your marriage now and "from this day forward"--(didn't notice til this year that those words are so significant and they are in our vows.)
Instead of saying " I was too lazy/selfish/clueless to ever cook dinner"
you say "I regret not helping you enough with food preparation and want to participate in making the meals together if you like, OR alternating if you want a break"...offer some new ideas to freshen the family life up like 'take a cooking class together" or making sure you vacation alone as a couple "every year" at a place of her choosing (that'll change if/when you are again partners...) a date night every week or twice a month (be realistic but it has to be DIFFERENT)
but YES you do admit the types of your mistakes without listing them numerically. NO SIN REVIEW, that's for confession. Don't undermine yourself too much but OWN your stuff or she won't believe in you...
MAYBE Admit your internal conflict with this letter, that on one hand you have realized "so many mistakes" that you are concerned if you list them all, you will remind her of things she may not want to relive, OR she had forgotten, and she won't believe you have changed...BUT OTOH you want to show her the realizations AND own up to your mistakes...and maybe admit you are walking a fine line.
Compliment HER in the letter to show how valuable SHE is to you as your wife, not "as a wife" but HER specifically being YOUR wife...got that? it's not that you want "A FAMILY LIFE" but you want a "FAMILY WITH HER"
I don't think the legalities of it matter unless you are discussing a crime or grounds for fault If it's strictly no fault and you are not confessing to a crime then it's likely irrelevant for THOSE purposes...
I'll try to come up with some specific examples...or read your outline here?
bottom line don't be telling her things to EASE YOUR GUILT; tell her things to ease her mind...
make sense?
Crimson - you are such a step by step, detailed kind of guy, like me. Pls don't get bogged down in the letter format but pls speak from the heart - what have you learned...how you can contribute to positive solutions with you newfound insights....how your wife is valuable to you....how you will do the right things for her and your son... thank your wife for having the courage to seek the truth and how you have benefited from this and so will they. Write the letter from a postion of your newly upgraded strength, not from a position of enumerating your failures.
Whatever the outcome, this letter is a chance for you to give her the gift of your strengths, love, willingness to learn, and let her hear you from your soul. If she rejects it, you will have made probably one of the most honest and strength filled overtures in your life and you can know for the rest of your days that you reached such a great place inside yourself.
