I also asked my H for any photos, cards, letters, anything he might have from the last OW (EA)as a gesture of "good will."
He presented them to me and offered to read one of them to me, which was written in Spanish. I never asked him to translate that card. A couple of months later, I mentioned that I still had those items. He was a little upset that I still had them and suggested that we dispose of them together. I was not ready to do that at that time.
That was a year-and-a-half ago. I still have them in my desk drawer. For some unknown reason, I felt the need to pull them out and look at them one night last week. I was very unpleasantly surprised at the emotions that are still associated with those items. My heart started pounding and my anger flew to the surface.
The feelings were strong enough to provoke me to contact an old DB friend in order to "vent" those feelings with her rather than with my H. She has rather the same situation with cards and photos which she has also not been able to "let go" of, and she's kept them for over three years now.
It sparked quite a flurry of debate as to why we both seemed unble or unwilling to dispose of the "evidence" of our H's betrayal.
No conclusion was reached except for the knowledge that the healing process is not completed for us -- no matter how wonderful our R's with our H's are.
Someday I hope to have healed and forgiven to the point of being able to finally let go of that tangible evidence of one of my H's betrayals (there were 3 all told). Sometimes I think that I must let it go NOW in order to truely heal -- but I can't. Not yet.
