Addiction has its own agenda

This week in Tahoe has been both relaxing and emotionally excruciating. 

Tahoe is beauty, wherever you look. The lake, the snow covered mountains, the beautiful homes and little old cabins nestled into the pines. The weather has been perfect--just warm enough to spend the days outside hiking beaches and getting to know the California side from top to bottom.

But all week I've been struggling with gut wrenching anguish at the loss of my marriage and my relationship with my partner of 34 years. I feel a burning ,churning, pounding in my center, as if the heart has been ripped out of my body leaving a nerves raw and exposed.

I've realized that I have not fully let him go, and I can see better now where it has to happen. 

When he started dating so suddenly, I was put face to face with the fact that at any moment someone could become more important to him than me. That would be natural and appropriate, given that we're not working to get back together. But it's still painful to know that I'll be replaced in the heart of the person who has been the most important person in my life and who I felt so important to, the love of my life, for nearly 35 years. 

I've come to consider that we have both learned what we can and grown as much as we can grow while being together, and that maybe the only way we can continue to grow as people, as humans, is apart from each other. Maybe he needs to be with a different woman to have a chance to be the person he wants to be––someone who does not bear the scars he gave her. And maybe I need to learn that I have to have expectations, that I don't have to accept being treated badly, that I am worthy of better. That submitting to being alone is better than submitting to a partnership in which I'm not cherished and treated with love and respect. And maybe we can only take these next steps apart.

But I've also been thinking that this doesn't mean we cease to exist for each other. As I thought about it, I realized that because of what we experienced together, traveling from young adulthood to and beyond middle age, he will always be an important person in my life. Even if I fall in love with someone else who becomes my partner in life, the Addict can still be someone I love deeply and who I would always be honest and real with. And not just because he's the father of my son, but because he's a human being who was truly doing the best he could when we were together. I believe he wanted to do the best. But he was not up to the task, for whatever reason. He's been scarred a lot, too, and he's trying to work through all of that. So he could not see beyond his feelings of selfishness, self pity and entitlement to live up to his promises and commitments to me. But maybe that could be possible with someone else. 

Thinking of him loving another woman and treating her the way I wish he had treated me is crushing. But that doesn't matter. Letting him go so that it's not crushing is my work. Accepting that we gave and received as much as we could and that our relationship as a married couple has come to a natural end is my work. It's absolutely gut wrenching, but so many true spiritual growth opportunities are. 

Tonight, the three of us women have been a little bored, frankly. We've seen the sights, hiked the hikes, cooked and dined out, played games and had the conversations about this and that. And yet somehow I feel empty and hollow. Is this all there is to life after all? After the intensity of everything we did in our 20s and 30s, and of being parents, raising a boy, making big life decisions together, I'm separated from that closest most intimate bond I had and will spend my remaining days playing cards and watching streaming services and doing puzzles with the gals?

Losing my relationship with the Addict is an existential blow that I never planned for. Even after 2007, when I first found out about the betrayals and the lying. Even then, I believed we'd work things out together and spend our old age walking around holding hands and taking care of each other and enjoying every moment of life we had together. Because we were for each other. I didn't know how addiction would snap back with a vengeance. Addiction has its own agenda that is not influenced one bit by what I want in this situation.

As I sit here my insides are chaos––burning and churning and tearing and anguish right in the center of my body below my sternum. Part of me knows there is no going back, no road to repair. He has crossed so many fundamental lines with me, and he's shown that he can't or won't stop doing that. And he cannot yet set down the filters installed by the pain he's experienced in life and distinguish how they have affected the way he sees and experiences me. And part of me is still devastated and utterly grief-stricken by the loss. I cannot find words adequate to this pain, but it's an existential anguish that goes to my core. And part of me is angry with him for not having integrity and for not being able to get well enough to have a shot at spending our lives together. Part of me misses him profoundly and feels a vast emptiness without his presence in my life. It's an emptiness that hurts, right in that same center place in my body. 

Going through this is exhausting. I wish there were ways out that I liked. But this is a path I must walk even though I don't like the journey right now and I don't like where the path looks like it's going. I have the opportunity to not resist the pain and it's probably the best opportunity available to me. Only when I stop resisting and accept can I find new joys and purpose.

I need some rest. Maybe sleep will help me process some of this. It feels so overwhelming.

Wounds reopened

Sitting with this, with the reality of how fast he's moving on, I've become present again to all that the Addict has taken from me: my partner, the love of my life, the past I thought I had, the future I thought I had, the financial security I spent so much time trying to create for us, family holidays, probably our family house. And I'm afraid to trust again. I'm feeling a lot of pain about things I felt I had moved through.

This is what I texted to him last night:

I just have to tell you that I am overwhelmingly present again to how much you have taken from me and how much you have destroyed in my life and how much pain you have caused me. I have lost so much that it has taken my lifetime to build. And I lost all of this not because of something I did, but  because of what you did.

And I just cannot understand why you did it

And I don’t think that you’re telling me the truth about today because it doesn’t make any sense what you said. That you paid $81 to park your car at the hotel and then rent a car to go on a date with somebody you just met on a dating app. because you have dog hair in your car. It does not make sense.

Why did you do this to us? Why did you kill us?

The only logical answer is that what we had was not good enough.

You wanted and felt entitled to more.

All of us, Son included, have to live with the consequences of what you did to our family, the choices you made so you could have orgasms.

He wrote back: 

You’re right 

I have come to have some insights into why I did what I did. Ultimately it was all extreme selfishness. There is no excuse.

And he sent the "proof" in the form of screenshots of his chats with his date and his Google map record.

And he said:

Did a very stupid thing in renting a car because I didn’t want to make a terrible impression with my car.

It was dishonest and I am going to tell Jill that I did that. 

I am probably not going to see again. We were not intimate.

He asked if I needed anything more, but I didn't respond until this morning. I asked for the receipts he had said he'd provide that he didn't provide. And I said this:

Also, please think about how you will explain to Son that you assume full responsibility for the destruction of our marriage which I tried for 15 years in good faith, based on promises you made to me and ongoing lies you told, to repair, despite all of the pain and anguish I experienced in 2007 and the subsequent years.  We will need to explain when we tell him we are moving forward with divorce.

Based on a comment that he made to me, I think he hold me responsible for the fact that we are separated.

I want him to know that it was not a failing on my part to try as hard as humanly possible, and to give as much as I could possibly give. It was a failure on your part, to be honest and to treat me with love and respect.

He doesn’t need to have details that he doesn’t ask for. And I don’t want to ruin your relationship with him at all. But I want him to be clear so that the quality of my relationship with him and his regard for me is not another loss I have to contend with.

He's read it, but no response so far.

The Addict is already dating

I'm a little gut-punched. I talked with the Addict on Monday evening about wanting to move forward with divorce. Today at 5:25pm a charge came into our joint account from the Addict's credit card for $81 at a hotel near the airport. I immediately forwarded the notification to him and asked, "Getting a room at the airport hotel?"

He texted back right away. "No.

"Paid for parking for a day."

"Sorry about that!"

Definitely felt like a lie to me. Then he texted, "Rented a car for a day."

He ended up calling me a few minutes later because he said he thought I might feel activated by the charge—which I did. I thought of all the times he secretly met with prostitutes at hotels while we were married—lying to me about where he was going and what he was doing. It's so painful when I am present to it. He was the person I trusted most in the world, the person I was most vulnerable with, the person who know me more deeply than anyone else and still loved me.

He explained over the phone.

"I had a date. She wanted me to pick her up and my car was full of dog hair, so I rented a car."

Five days after I told him I wanted a divorce, he's dating. (As it turns out, the date was yesterday, so it was only four days turnaround time.)

None of my business, and I'll be happy for him if he enjoys dating and finds someone else, but it's jarring as hell that it's so soon. I feel discarded. Like I was easy to move past. 

I know all of this is emotion and hurt and activation around thinking about everything that happened in the past. I feel so angry about what he's taken from me—the life I loved that I thought we had. The trust I had with him, like a bond I had with no one else. I feel trivialized and I feel like our 34 years together have been trivialized by his ability to just go out and date. 

He asked me about it on Monday, though. "Does this mean I can date? I don't think anything will happen, but I'll know that I don't have to stop it," or something like that. 

I don't blame him. It's been 16 months since he moved out. I've been lonely. I'm sure he's been lonely. And I know there's that part of him that feels entitled to sex. 

I feel angry that he's going to one day meet someone and treat her the way he should have treated me. I think that's it. I think that's what is taking my breath away right now.

Something more important than fear

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

I told the Addict today that I want to move forward with divorce. 

It's something I have been resisting, because parts of me don't want to do it. It's so hard to let go of everything—the past and the future I thought I had and that I wanted. It's terrifying, but it's the next rational step, and all I've been doing is putting it off. The Addict has shown so much disregard for me, my health, my emotional and psychological well-being, my explicitly stated boundaries and my anguished pleas to him to just not lie to me again. There's no universe in which it makes sense for me to give him ANOTHER chance. The avenue of repair has been exhausted. Nothing can change what he has done to our relationship. I pray often for the serenity to accept what I cannot change and courage to change what I can. This is that. This is both of those things, no matter how painful it is. 

People treat you the way you let them treat you. He has crossed so many boundaries so many times that there is just no going back, no matter how many parts of me want it not to be true. I have to take responsibility for finding myself where I am. I don't regret the choices I made, but I also cannot make the same choices again, because I don't want the same result.

I'm also terrified that Son will never forgive me. He doesn't know the details, which I've kept from him on purpose. I don't want to damage his relationship with his father by giving him intimate information that really doesn't involve him. (Mental health experts have also advised this.) The Addict is still a good father, and I believe he'll continue to be a good father, no matter how short he has fallen as a husband, partner and friend. But I think Son will see this outcome as a result of me not being willing to work on making things better. He said as much when I admitted to him—after he asked—that I was dating. "I guess Dad has more faith than you," he said, or something like that. I hope someday he'll understand that I did everything I could and more. But I can't give up my self and my self-respect by giving the Addict yet another chance when he's shown willing disregard for me on so many levels over decades. I know this is the better way for both me and Son, but I don't know if or when he'll see it that way.

My gut is churning and my heart is breaking. This is not what I wanted for my life. Not what I wanted for my son. Not what I wanted for my family. I didn't choose this and I didn't cause this. But I have to deal with the fallout.

But I guess this kind of unexpected turn of events is part of life. My situation is not unique. Finding out you have a terminal illness, getting killed or paralyzed in a car accident, losing your child: so many things one cannot control can and do happen. Our opportunity is to face them head-on with a calm, open heart, being present to life as it is—including the pain, sadness and anguish—and finding peace, serenity and happiness in the fleeting and groundless reality of human existence.

What is important? That is the question it forces. 

I have this moment. I can face each moment and sit in any discomfort and choose to be and to feel and to experience and to love instead of reacting to escape the discomfort, retreating into whatever will numb, dull or deflect the pain that is part of my whole human experience. 

Why do that? 

I'm not entirely sure. But I think it has something to do with the profound experience of being present. Being present in the fullness of the moment, with all the pain and joy and confusion and fear that can be there, feels like the best gift I can give. It's the most vulnerable I can be, and also the most powerful at the same time. Submitting to the reality of what it means to be alive means I can more fully experience life. I think.

I guess I'll find out. 

I am strong. I am grateful for so many things. I'm grateful to be alive, grateful for Son, for my family and friends, and even for the Addict, who provided so much that was good for so long, in spite of whatever else he was doing. I'm grateful for my life experiences, for the ability to support myself, for my house, for my job, for my electric car, for my health, for being born in this country and this moment in history. The list of things I can feel gratitude for is long. I am lucky. I am alive and I am loved. I'm a human being in this moment in time in the fleeting instant that humanity represents against the billions of years that is the lifetime of the universe. Maybe the "reward" for being present to it all is the experience of grasping for a moment how precious it all is.

Letting go

Today was the day that I had to let go of our little black dog. He was probably nearly fourteen years old, and he was full of arthritis, in pain and unable to get himself up anymore without assistance. I hope I didn't wait too long. It's a hard decision to make, but I tried to do it responsibly. He passed away at the vet around 4pm today, with me by his side. 

Letting go. Letting go.

Also, my dad emailed me again today. He actually sounded more rational than he has in a long time. So I decided to respond. I hope it wasn't a mistake.

Letting go, letting go. I've let go of so much with him already. One last time. Last time. 

Letting go of clinging to money has meant that I decided to pay for a training gym. I go three times a week for semi-private training and I've lost nearly 10 pounds since December 31. 

Letting go of clinging to money has also meant that I got my house painted, which it has needed for years. It looks beautiful and clean and fresh. 

Letting go. Letting go. 

Letting go has meant that I'm accepting the end of my marriage and I've been dating. 

Letting go has meant having an open mind about who might be a good partner for me. I'm trying to get past my tendency to be attracted to brilliant narcissists--a product of growing up with brilliant narcissists.

The thing I will not let go of is my right to have boundaries and the right to take responsibility for myself and my choices and not accept responsibility for other adults and their choices. Letting go of the need for people to be other than they are and letting go of the notions that I can change anyone and that I need to keep unhealthy people in my life.

Letting go. Letting go. There is freedom in it, as well as grief.

I'm trying.

No mud, no lotus.

Letting go of clinging to money

One of the things I want to let go of is clinging to money. I often put things off because I'm worried about spending the money. But this can turn into a bigger expense later. So I'm going to let go of clinging to money and focus on using money appropriately.

Clinging to money comes out of a fear of not having enough. My parents were irresponsible with money, and we always lived paycheck to paycheck. I've never felt like I had enough money. I don't want to say I'm letting to of the fear, because that feels too simplistic. We've been bombarded by "just let go of it" as a solution. But what doesn't get faced gets pushed down to fester. I want to be with that fear, see where I can take responsibility, and take action on those points. 

• Be present to the fear.
• Identify actions to take.
• Take action.

2023: A Year of Letting Go

This is going to be a year of letting go. I don’t know what that will look like, but I’m hoping that it will create flow and ease.

Inside of a year of letting go, I want to clean out my house and get rid of things that I am not using, including clothes, books, and other household items. I also want to let go of old habits so that I can create new ones. I want to let go of being sedentary. I need to let go of my marriage. (That's a big one.) And along the way, I will have to let go of some things, and maybe many things, every day.

I want to let go of my need to control things and arguments about that with my mom so that I can respond more positively and have the best relationship possible. 

I want to let go of resentments about being the only person who I can count on in my life. That is a source of power and I can meet that with gentle gratitude that I am able to be independent and take care of myself. 

I may need to let go of other relationships. I may need to let go of my job, and I want to let go of my dissatisfaction with my job. I need to let my son go out into the world with my full support, and without the burden of my worry and concern.

RELATIONSHIP

• Let go of my marriage

FINANCIAL: 

• Let go of excess spending 
• Cancel all my unneeded subscriptions (Apple, streaming services, digital news subs, MyWoof and other dog things) 
• Cancel all my parked URLs 
• Cancel Amazon subscribe and save that I don’t need Look for all other automated charges and cancel those 

HEALTH

• Let go of excess weight
• Let go of old habits and excuses not to exercise

 STUFF

• Clean out photos on iCloud
• Let go of stuff I don't use or need or want
• Clean out fridge, freezer and cabinets
• Clean out storage shed and garage
• Let go of subscriptions to email lists

MENTAL

• Let go of black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking
• Let go of dissatisfaction with my job
• Let go of limits on my career
• Let go of waiting for the perfect moment

Ultimately, I want to let go of what I think I know and how I think things are. That will free me up a lot. A year of letting go. 

Next step is to attach actions to all of these things, such that if I do the actions the results will follow.

Don't Worry Darling

I just watched "Don't Worry Darling" and I'm a little freaked out because that's what the Addict did to me. He let me believe I was living in a happy life while he was doing the life that he wanted to do. He made me feel crazy, lied to my face about things I saw and felt that were real. Took my automony through those lies so that I could not choose. Pathetically keeping me where he wanted me in a fake world because in the real world he felt terrified and unseen. So fucking unnerving.

And just like at the end of the movie, I feel the pull of the happy life I thought I was leading. And like Florence Pugh, I have to make a choice. And I have to choose myself.

Why can't I just do the thing that makes sense?

After our post-disclosure couples session, in which the Addict told me that he still wanted time--a year--to work on the new person he feels he is becoming (have heard that before), we talked and I told him that I don't need to be divorced right away. I said that my main concern is that he poses a financial threat because he's been, until recently, willing to drink and drive. Our house is a big part of our retirement plan and I don't want to lose it if he hurts or kills someone while drunk driving. I told him that if he can add a breathalyzer to his car that will keep it from starting so he can't drive drunk, then I'd feel less urgency to divorce. After all, he's already out of the house and I am free to date whomever I want, which I've started to do. I'm free to live my life on my terms. I don't hate him. So divorce doesn't feel urgent to me, except for the financial aspect.

WHY CAN'T I JUST SAY IT? Why can't I just do the only logical thing on the table and GET DIVORCED??

I think I came across the answer today, and it's something that I've thought before, but maybe now is the time I'm ready to face it.

In Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, Lori Gottlieb writes, "If I live in the present, I'll have to accept the loss of my future."

Before Round 2, I had been so looking forward to the rest of my life with the Addict. As far as I knew, the horrific, hurtful things we had dealt with as the result of his sex addiction were 14 years behind me. What stretched out in front of me was a beautiful growing-old with someone I loved deeply. Family holidays, travel, grandchildren, rocking chairs.

If I live in the present, I have to accept the loss of that future I was so looking forward to, so invested in, so happy with.

If I live in the present, the future becomes a big unknown. Unknowns are scary. I'm 58. It's not like I have decades ahead of me to start over. I feel like it's now or never to get things right. Maybe I'll never find someone I want to be with as much as I wanted to be with the Addict--someone funny, creative, caring, brilliant, musical, affectionate, gentle and loving. Maybe I won't find anybody else who will love me enough to make me their Person.

If I live in the present, I'll have to accept the loss of my future. I am stopped by grief and fear.

Second Disclosure

We went through the disclosure process again. But this time we each had our own therapist there instead of just our couples therapist. I prefer this, because it feels better to have someone that's on my "team" rather than someone who is on the team of coupleship and repair. (Although, a couples therapist shouldn't be on any team--it's really for you to choose as you work with them.) Last time around, we started repair way too fast. That was my decision because I didn't know better.

Anyway, I sat through the litany of the Addict's confessions feeling surprisingly detached, but still present. I didn't cry. At the end, I didn't feel much of anything. But a lot of feelings came later. There have been so many lies, and that was something I wasn't really cognizant of until disclosure. There was no new Awful Thing. It was really the vastness of the lying that took my breath away. And the ease and regularity with which he did it.

As I tried to get my thoughts together for our first couples session after disclosure, this is what came out as I wrote.

Statement to the Addict

Hearing the truth of what you’ve done and the secrets and lies that have been going on since the inception of our relationship has helped me understand that the bottom line is that you want to do what you want to do, but you don’t want any consequences from your choices, so you are willing to lie to me, no matter how that affects me. I know this, because you’ve seen how it affects me, you’ve watched me go through deep pain and sadness, and yet you continued to do it. You have repeatedly risked the lives, health and well-being of our family to do what you wanted to do—spend retirement savings, drink and drive, drink and drive with our son in the car, betray me by having sexual contact outside our marriage. You hid the truth of it because you did not want the consequences of your choices and actions.

Hearing that your definition of sexual sobriety is that you can go online and masturbate to another woman’s body once a week for 15 minutes sounds to me like telling an alcoholic that he can have a glass of wine once a week as long as he drinks it in 15 minutes. Looking at images of women online to get you aroused is always the first step toward you having sex with prostitutes. That is not a willingness to surrender to your program and to having a secure, loving relationship with your wife, in which you turn toward me—and work things out with me—instead of outside the marriage into fantasy and prostitutes. It’s the same pattern of doing what you want to do, and following your own thinking—which has normalized pornography and prostitution. This makes it clear to me that the sexual stimulation you feel entitled to is more important to you than your relationship with me. It’s clear not by what you say, because I hear you say how much you love me, but what you do and all the things you’ve done over the 34 years that we’ve been together until I finally caught you again. You were always free to choose differently, but you didn’t want to. Every hand job, every blow job, every pussy you ate, every prostitute you fucked—every betrayal was a choice you made. You chose yourself over us, and you’ve done it consistently for more than three decades.

I appreciate that you have given me the truth, because now I’m free to choose based on who you really are, what you really want and what I want. And I want something different from who you have shown yourself to be. 

You have abused my trust, you have gaslit me, manipulated me, lied to me and betrayed me. Then you promised you would never do that again if only we could work to recover. And I did that. My reality was blown apart and my heart was shattered, but I gave my all. I wasn’t perfect, but I was 100% in, which made it easy for you to lie to me again, because I believed all the promises you made. And all the lies you told - I believed them too, because I believed in you. Despite the agony of betrayal, I tried to give you a tabula rasa—a clear space for you to be a new person without carrying the burden of the things you’d done in the past—because I believed you had the willingness and capacity to change, I believed you had integrity, I believed I was important to you. I believed those things because you led me to believe them by lying to me. You took advantage of my willingness to try to repair our relationship to do what you wanted to do and have what you thought you were entitled to. In 2007, I begged you—and over the years after that I begged you every time I caught you lying to me about drinking—not to lie to me again because of how deeply painful the lying was. And you promised you would never do that again, never hurt me that deeply again. That was another lie so you could continue to do what you wanted to do and get what you were entitled to without the consequences you didn’t want. You started lying to me again just weeks after I discovered your betrayal the first time, returning to secretly masturbating to porn without the intention of ever giving it up—I’m sure you felt entitled to it—and you never stopped.

This second time around, when you started getting massages and handjobs again, with all the benefit of Landmark and therapy and Buddhism and 12-step, you knew better. You knew what sex addiction was and where the secrets and lies would take you. You had all the information and access to all the tools and support, but you stuck with your own rationalizations and justifications. Which let you keep doing what you wanted to do to get what you felt entitled to without any consequences. And, once again, you took away my ability to choose for myself whether or not I wanted to be married to someone who was doing the things you were doing.

You are not willing to commit to the things I asked of you so that I could possibly feel safe. You’ve told me you’re not willing to put in weekly or daily practices to check in with a therapist and others on your sexual abstinence, triggers and behaviors, and to be honest in that process, hiding nothing, for the rest of your life. You’ve told me you’re not willing to go to counseling consistently at least every two weeks and to explore trauma-specific modalities in order to understand and resolve the childhood traumas and beliefs that led to these acting out behaviors. You are only willing to pursue insights into these things. But you’ve already had so many insights—from Landmark to therapy to Buddhism to 12-step—and yet here we are, with you secretly squirreling away cash in dribs and drabs, like a child saving his allowance, so you can have threesomes with prostitutes. If you want something different, you have to do something different. But you would rather do what you want and get what you feel entitled to.

Despite the astonishing lack of integrity, care and empathy you’ve demonstrated since the very beginning of our relationship (not always, but when it suited you), you’re not willing to do what I need to feel safe. You continue to want to do what you want to do, but you want me to consider staying in our marriage. I don’t want to be married to you if you have to masturbate to other women, even when you know where it has always led. I don’t want to be married to someone whose feeling of entitlement to sexual stimulation is more important to him than my need to feel safe, loved, secure and cherished. 

I have not been a perfect, blameless partner. But I have always given you everything I had to give. I have never lied to you. I have loved you so much, admired you so much, supported you, believed in you, wanted nobody and nothing more than you. And it was never enough. I was never enough. I know that, not by what you say, because you always know what to say, but by what you’ve done. You have hurt me so deeply that I cannot find the words to express the depths of sadness and grief I feel. The emotional abuse you’ve committed is as real and painful and damaging as any physical abuse. A wound to the heart is as real as a black eye. And that’s what you’ve done with every lie. My heart and my spirit are battered and exhausted. 

There’s a saying: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I have lost count of how many times I’ve been fooled. Shame on me. But I think I’ve finally accepted, as much as I resisted it, that I can’t believe what you say. Lying to me is your way of being in the world. You do it so easily, you’re so good at it and so willing to do it to have what you feel entitled to. I don’t believe you will never lie to me again. I don’t trust you. Without trust, a marriage is nothing.

I have been resisting this. I have been living in wishes and fantasy and hopes. I want to wake up and realize this has all been a terrible dream. I want that so badly, sometimes I think it might really happen. I want to wave a magic wand and do it all over so I could do everything right and you could be satisfied with loving me. Being apart from you feels so wrong. I miss feeling your love—because I know that was there, too. But I will never be enough for you. Which means I cannot trust you to love and care for me above the things you feel you need for yourself. And I would never be able to believe you anyway. I believed so much last time and you used my trust and love like a weapon against me—allowing me to believe while you continued to lie and betray my heart. I don’t know if you can imagine what that has done to me. Picture a dog that’s been beaten, crawled under a house to survive, and then gotten lured out with the promise of love and safety only to be beaten to a bloody pulp again. That is how hopeless and heartbroken I feel.

This is not an ultimatum. I already know what you would choose because you’ve already made that choice over and over again with every betrayal, only pretending, when you get caught, to commit to me. I’m not asking you to change. But I need to find someone who can choose me, choose our relationship, instead of himself, without resentment, and without feeling that he is giving up something he’s entitled to.

I wish our story could have a different ending. I always wanted to grow old with you. In my imagination, we are two little old people walking slowly down the beach holding hands sharing a quiet love as deep as the ocean and vast as the sky.

I have to read this regularly, so I don't forget.