Letting go, finally

[JGuy]

Last night, I experienced a backslide in my process of detachment. I made attempts to reach out and hang out with 3 different friends after work, but all 3 of them had other plans. I needed a friend and didn't want to be alone on Friday night. At home later, I felt like watching a movie. My W and I had been dark with each other since the MC session earlier in the week. Wanting to not be so cold and distant, I thought of inviting her to watch the movie with me. I hesitated at first, not sure if I could trust myself to resist trying to connect with her in a way that might cause a detachment backslide. I thought that watching a movie might be fine, however, given that we are on good terms. After all, it may be helpful to just spend some pleasant time together without talking about the R. I decided to go ahead and invite her, but I was careful to choose some movie options that were NOT romantic movies. We ended up watching "The Book Thief".

Well, it was a great movie, we both loved it. But movies have been making me cry recently, and I couldn't hold back the tears at a couple of points near the end. I didn't look at my W or seek any closeness from her at all, I just let those moments happen. She definitely noticed, and as she always has, she found my sensitivity endearing. Since my tears had nothing to do with her and were more about the movie, I wasn't overly worried about it, but secretly, the movie did open up all kinds of feelings about her.

After the movie, we said good night and she went downstairs. I was flooded with emotions about how much I love my W. I cried, much more deeply, alone. I did so silently, so that my W would not hear. I could see how my heart was still very attached to her and has only begun the first baby steps of the grieving process of really losing her. I felt so much sadness and compassion for myself as I witnessed my experience fully. It was both painful and beautiful. I felt proud of myself for having such a strong and resilient heart, but also afraid because I didn't want to be slipping backwards and attaching again.

Then I heard my W's footsteps, and I stopped my tears. She came into my office. She could tell. She hugged me and said "I'm so sorry" two or three times. I tried to just remain silent because I didn't know what to say. It was so hard, it just felt so wrong not to say anything and just remain aloof and not respond to her at all. Despite the image in my mind of Zeus waving a 2x4 at me, I chose to speak. I tried to speak with honesty but while also taking responsibility for my own feelings. I said "I really need to let go of you. I have been doing so, but right now, I'm slipping". My W said "Me too". She was also crying. We were silent for awhile, then our hug ended and she went to bed.

I had so much more that I wanted to say to her, to show her what I was holding in my heart during this time of trying to let go. Knowing myself and how my emotions work, I knew that I wouldn't be in touch with these feelings later, and if I was going to capture them well, I would have to express them now. So I wrote her a letter. While writing it, I thought that perhaps I may never give it to her at all and it would just be for myself. Or if I did, it would be later, once she was fully back "in".

The gist of the letter was to tell her some of the things that I would have done if history had played out differently and I had known that she was struggling alone with dissatisfaction in our R, 5 years ago when things first started to go downhill with her feelings for me. I wanted her to know what kind of man I am, how I would have respected her right to have these feelings and how I would have gracefully supported her freedom to do whatever she needed to do to honor the process she needed to go through, to figure out what she wanted. I would have taken my own co-dependent patterns more seriously and would have sought help to work on myself. Ultimately, if she had concluded that I wasn't the right man for her, then out of love for her, I would have wanted her to be free, and I would have let go. The point of the letter was that I wanted to show her the kind of man I am, that I am a safe person to be honest with, that my love for her transcends the M and my own personal needs. Her fear of being honest is what led to all of the betrayal and affairs, after all.

I tucked the letter into my journal and went to bed.