First time posting on this site. I lost sight of my marriage and was not a great husband to my wife. I got into a gambling debt and kept it from her. I have made great strides to improve myself by getting into Grad school and being less confrontational. I have written this letter but I know I probably shouldn't send it. Any thoughts?
I want you to know that what I have written you here is from the heart and not written from a bad place but from a place of love.
You are strong, independent, and ambitious; these are amazing traits that drew me to you instantly and part of the reason as to why I fell in love with you. I wonder if these traits were partially formed from not having your father and from having to take care of yourself and your siblings at a very young age as your mother worked to support your family and was still a kid herself. I know it was very difficult to have your father not be there for you as a child, teenager, and even now. I remember you telling me how you would always hope he would show up for birthdays, milestones, etc. but would usually end up letting you down. I also remember the hardline stance you decided to take when he failed to show up to your graduation. Although not the same as you, I had somewhat of a similar experience. I appreciate the fact that now, despite my father’s shortcomings, I am able to spend the time with him that I wasn’t able to do as a child. Truth be told, maybe I spend too much time with him now, but after seeing Patty suffer through her heart attack I wretch to think we probably do not have much time left together.
The absence of my father as a child was difficult and I never felt the love of parents or a family that I should have had with a missing father and an abusive mother. I coped with this by overtly trying to get people to like me and internalizing everything as being my fault as a child. Internalization has its benefits and weaknesses. When you internalize you take on the good and bad and make no excuses for it other than within yourself. In sports and business this attribute lead me to be successful because I never blamed anyone but myself when I failed which drove me to work harder. In our relationship, it hurt us because I didn’t ask for help or want to discuss problems I was having because I believed I could fix them on my own because that is what I had done my whole life. It was unfair of me to turn on you when you questioned my financial situation. I did honestly believe that I could resolve it on my own. Not only was I wrong, but that is not the way I should have handled it. Marriage is about two people coming together to share in each other life experiences both the joys and hardships and face it as one union.
The absence of your father as a child had a different but similar effect on you, among the positive qualities listed above; I believe it created an aversion to the trusting of males. It was well known among family and friends when I first met you that you had problems committing yourself to anyone. I don’t find it necessary to list examples because I think you would agree to this. Please believe me when I say, I don’t say this to be disparaging. I especially do not dismiss the role I played in pushing you away in our separation, but I am trying to shed some light on our deeper issues. Running away from our relationship is not something new. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused but any relationship is going to have hardships to work through. I knew that when I married you I was getting all of you and this included your aversion to run but you had always come back and I trusted in you when you said marriage meant forever no matter the issue. When Dr. Seldin said he thought you had a low opinion of men he was not speaking as to me but to your view on men in general. I know this much because he has stated this to me when I discussed this with him in one of our one on one sessions.
I feel sorry for you when you say marriage is “a piece of [censored]”. It is sad that you feel this way and when you say something like this I know it comes from a place of anger. It upsets me that my actions are part of the reason you feel this way. I know I cannot convince you of this but I believe if you do not let go of your anger and try to find peace and forgiveness, it will continue to hurt you in your life. It makes me sad because I don’t know if you think you need help to resolve your anger and abandonment issues that run deeper than our surface marriage issues. I don’t know if you had a chance to read the book Dr. Seldin provided us. I think a lot of it doesn’t apply to us because for the most part we did have a loving marriage. I do think there are early chapters that speak to us greatly though. I hope you will go back and read those chapters again. Not allowing us to work on our marriage in the last 8 months has made it hard to remember how much love and fun we had for the last 7 years prior to our separation.
I held back a lot of what I am writing here in our first and only real marriage counseling meeting in hopes that I could convince you to want to work on our marriage so that in the future meetings we could have a safe place to voice our feelings in counseling. Marriage counseling is something we should have done a long time ago before we let our ourselves get this far. I wish you would have tried to embrace this more.
I know you are pushing me away because you believe I cannot be trusted and that you want to be safe. I know you have been hurt in the past and I see that it was difficult for you to commit yourself to marriage and my actions have seemed to justify your trepidation. I’m sorry I didn’t realize how my actions were hurting our marriage. I see that you have been let down in the past and focusing on trust should have been my first order with you. I hope you can see that I was hurting as well and it impacted who I was. It doesn’t mean that I ever stopped loving you nor does it mean that we were not happy or good together. It is part of growing and learning as a person and in a relationship so that you can be stronger for it.
I don’t have a family that I can rely on. I am a center of support for my dad, sister, and mother but I don’t have a family in the traditional sense that I can rely on. I’ve come to realize not having this was very difficult growing up. I would give all the money in the world to have had a real family atmosphere growing up. I enjoyed being a part of your family and I am distraught that I will not be able to have a family of my own. I wish I had the same type of support system and relationships that you experience with your family. If you ever loved and believed in me; please give me a chance at this with you. I want children, I want to be a father, and most importantly I want to be the husband you deserve.
Maybe you’ll allow me to prove to you my changes but I have resigned myself to believe you will not. I have forgiven you for leaving me and the promises of children that were broken in our marriage and I feel better knowing that I can come from a place of love and not anger anymore now and have come to understand that I need to do much better at being a husband. I have embarrassed myself in my desperate attempts to show you I have changed for the better and to save my hope and dreams at having a family. But I don’t regret any of it.
My wife left 9 months ago. At first she wouldn't speak to me for months and recently we have begun to speak via text but she refuses to see me. We've seen each other 3 times since our separation. I got into a sports gambling debt and had to be bailed out by my family. She feels as though she cannot trust me and I don't know what to do to fix our marriage. We were supposed to have our final divorce hearing last week but she emailed me to let me know that it had been canceled. I checked and it hadn't been canceled! I called the court and they confirmed that neither of us showed up for the hearing which means it will extend another 6 months. She works in law and wouldn't ever mess something like that up. Am I reading into it too much? I wrote this letter but don't know if I should send it to her.
I want you to know that what I have written you here is from the heart and not written from a bad place but from a place of love.
You are strong, independent, and ambitious; these are amazing traits that drew me to you instantly and part of the reason as to why I fell in love with you. I wonder if these traits were partially formed from not having your father and from having to take care of yourself and your siblings at a very young age as your mother worked to support your family and was still a kid herself. I know it was very difficult to have your father not be there for you as a child, teenager, and even now. I remember you telling me how you would always hope he would show up for birthdays, milestones, etc. but would usually end up letting you down. I also remember the hardline stance you decided to take when he failed to show up to your graduation. Although not the same as you, I had somewhat of a similar experience. I appreciate the fact that now, despite my father’s shortcomings, I am able to spend the time with him that I wasn’t able to do as a child. Truth be told, maybe I spend too much time with him now, but after seeing Patty suffer through her heart attack I wretch to think we probably do not have much time left together.
The absence of my father as a child was difficult and I never felt the love of parents or a family that I should have had with a missing father and an abusive mother. I coped with this by overtly trying to get people to like me and internalizing everything as being my fault as a child. Internalization has its benefits and weaknesses. When you internalize you take on the good and bad and make no excuses for it other than within yourself. In sports and business this attribute lead me to be successful because I never blamed anyone but myself when I failed which drove me to work harder. In our relationship, it hurt us because I didn’t ask for help or want to discuss problems I was having because I believed I could fix them on my own because that is what I had done my whole life. It was unfair of me to turn on you when you questioned my financial situation. I did honestly believe that I could resolve it on my own. Not only was I wrong, but that is not the way I should have handled it. Marriage is about two people coming together to share in each other life experiences both the joys and hardships and face it as one union.
The absence of your father as a child had a different but similar effect on you, among the positive qualities listed above; I believe it created an aversion to the trusting of males. It was well known among family and friends when I first met you that you had problems committing yourself to anyone. I don’t find it necessary to list examples because I think you would agree to this. Please believe me when I say, I don’t say this to be disparaging. I especially do not dismiss the role I played in pushing you away in our separation, but I am trying to shed some light on our deeper issues. Running away from our relationship is not something new. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused but any relationship is going to have hardships to work through. I knew that when I married you I was getting all of you and this included your aversion to run but you had always come back and I trusted in you when you said marriage meant forever no matter the issue. When Dr. Seldin said he thought you had a low opinion of men he was not speaking as to me but to your view on men in general. I know this much because he has stated this to me when I discussed this with him in one of our one on one sessions.
I feel sorry for you when you say marriage is “a piece of [censored]”. It is sad that you feel this way and when you say something like this I know it comes from a place of anger. It upsets me that my actions are part of the reason you feel this way. I know I cannot convince you of this but I believe if you do not let go of your anger and try to find peace and forgiveness, it will continue to hurt you in your life. It makes me sad because I don’t know if you think you need help to resolve your anger and abandonment issues that run deeper than our surface marriage issues. I don’t know if you had a chance to read the book Dr. Seldin provided us. I think a lot of it doesn’t apply to us because for the most part we did have a loving marriage. I do think there are early chapters that speak to us greatly though. I hope you will go back and read those chapters again. Not allowing us to work on our marriage in the last 8 months has made it hard to remember how much love and fun we had for the last 7 years prior to our separation.
I held back a lot of what I am writing here in our first and only real marriage counseling meeting in hopes that I could convince you to want to work on our marriage so that in the future meetings we could have a safe place to voice our feelings in counseling. Marriage counseling is something we should have done a long time ago before we let our ourselves get this far. I wish you would have tried to embrace this more.
I know you are pushing me away because you believe I cannot be trusted and that you want to be safe. I know you have been hurt in the past and I see that it was difficult for you to commit yourself to marriage and my actions have seemed to justify your trepidation. I’m sorry I didn’t realize how my actions were hurting our marriage. I see that you have been let down in the past and focusing on trust should have been my first order with you. I hope you can see that I was hurting as well and it impacted who I was. It doesn’t mean that I ever stopped loving you nor does it mean that we were not happy or good together. It is part of growing and learning as a person and in a relationship so that you can be stronger for it.
I don’t have a family that I can rely on. I am a center of support for my dad, sister, and mother but I don’t have a family in the traditional sense that I can rely on. I’ve come to realize not having this was very difficult growing up. I would give all the money in the world to have had a real family atmosphere growing up. I enjoyed being a part of your family and I am distraught that I will not be able to have a family of my own. I wish I had the same type of support system and relationships that you experience with your family. If you ever loved and believed in me; please give me a chance at this with you. I want children, I want to be a father, and most importantly I want to be the husband you deserve.
Maybe you’ll allow me to prove to you my changes but I have resigned myself to believe you will not. I have forgiven you for leaving me and the promises of children that were broken in our marriage and I feel better knowing that I can come from a place of love and not anger anymore now and have come to understand that I need to do much better at being a husband. I have embarrassed myself in my desperate attempts to show you I have changed for the better and to save my hope and dreams at having a family. But I don’t regret any of it.
You may be on moderation now, post in small frequent replies and stay on this thread until you reach 100 posts (for your thread, you can also post on other peoples threads to give support). Especially on this Newcomers forum, where the posting activity is very active, and your posts can quickly fall to the bottom of the page or even several pages down. Keep journaling and asking questions - people will come! Most important - POST!
Get out and Get a Life (GAL). DETACH.
Believe none of what he or she says and half of what he/she does.
Have NO EXPECTATIONS.
Take care of yourself, breathe, eat, sleep, exercise.
Take the parts of this advice that you need and don't worry if I have repeated something that you have already done.
Here are a few links to threads that will help you immensely:
Agree she wouldn't mess it up and didn't go for a reason.
Why do you think the letter is the right approach at this juncture?
Gordie 40s W 40s M20+ kids 2016 BD W fantasy affair w OM1 I do everything wrong 2017 I start to DB W says TLTL files for D PA w OM2 2018 I do LRT W drops filing and OM2 situation slowly improving
Many will tell you not to send it. But because you have had so little contact and she did "miss" the court appearance, it might be alright to send it. But, you need to shorten it, a lot. Read it back and delete the anything that is repetitive. Also, delete anything that makes you seem needy or weak. I know that you want to pour your heart out and say everything you can possibly think of, but you need to make it much shorter.
"Maybe you’ll allow me to prove to you my changes but I have resigned myself to believe you will not."
Do you see what is wrong with the quote above? Don't ask something and then answer it in the same sentence.
Be prepared for some major 2x4's coming your way by the vets here. Don't take them personally. Just know they are trying to help.
M-42 W-40 S-12 D-10 Together-13 years Married-10 years Separated-6/2016 ILYBINILWY-7/2016 EA-4/2016 (best guess) PA-7/2016 (best guess)
I agree with Darknes and I have yet to see a sent letter 'work.' I would suggest you stick to business, go into 'respond' rather than 'initiate' mode and leave her be for now.
This may not be what you want to hear, because like so many of that come here, you are looking for a way to 'fix' things. However, I would step back and let them unfold.
Work on you and rebuilding your own sense of self and your own life.
T 13 M 7 Me 48 H 46 SS 15 BD 7.14 PA D final 5.16 (H filed)
We receive & we lose, and must try to achieve gratitude & embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses - Dubus
