To H's OW. A letter I will never send

[waterwoman]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]"I need to write to you to get a few things off my chest. I am not going to rant and yell at you – I don’t suppose it will make me feel any better and anyway, H is the one I should be angry with. [/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]I think you behaved in a very unkind way. I had never hurt you, neither had my children, but you willingly colluded with my husband in hurting us. I was willing to be a friend to you, even to support you when you left your marriage. You can imagine how I felt when I found out the truth. Stupid yes, but also utterly betrayed. [/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]He still cares about you – I have had to come to terms with that and beleive me it’s hard. I am hoping those feelings fade in time and he will come to understand fully what a fool he was. He is already full of guilt at hurting me, full of bitter regret, very remorseful and loving and is giving all of himself to healing my pain and building a better and stronger marriage with me. It’s not easy, I don’t think I am making it easy, but he is still hanging on making me feel I am worth fighting for. I hope that in time he will be able to look back and realise that the affair wasn’t some grand passion, just an infatuation, not worth the risk he took. When that realisation comes, he and I will start afresh. [/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]When he was involved with you he switched off from his family – not just me but the children too. He had no time for them, no interest in them and no patience with them. He is slowly mending bridges and soothing their hurt too. That more than anything else made me angry with you both, and his attempts to fix it give me so much hope. [/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]You need to understand the reasons he was tempted not to step away from you. He was 50, in the mid-life crisis zone. Being loved by a younger attractive woman was massively flattering and made him feel younger and as if there were still doors open to him. He is very emotionally invested in Elmwood – and I think part of those feelings transferred to you. He also enjoyed playing the Knight in Shining Armour to your Damsel in Distress. [/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]Our marriage wasn’t at it’s best at the time but the bones of it were still strong. Ironically your affair has given us a huge kick up the backside to work on it and it is happier than it has been for years, inspite of the hurt and the bad memories that will never quite leave me. I am grateful for that although I don’t imagine it was a consequence you planned for. You don’t throw away 20 years of marriage and even longer of relationship for the sake of an infatuation. Not when there is anything left worth saving – and beleive me there is much worth saving. [/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]I am sorry if you are also in pain. You aren’t a bad person just one who made a bad choice. If things were different I like to think we could have remained friends, but that boat has sailed. If you want to leave your husband, if he is as controlling and abusive as he seems to be, it has to be your decision, don’t use another man to carry you out of the marriage, or to ease the pain while you stay married – especially not one who happens to be committed to someone else. [/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]I just want to finish with a suggestion. Please don’t attempt to get close to my husband again. I have told him that if anything of the like happens again – with you or anyone else – it will be the end for our marriage. He will struggle to get over it because he does love me deeply and I doubt his children will find it easy to forgive him. If it’s you that caused it to happen you’d be hitched to a broken man who may resent you. [/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]I hope life improves for your soon."[/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3][/sIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri][sIZE=3]That is what I would like to send. I won't. So I'm sharing it here. [/sIZE][/FONT]

[january2011]

Glad you're not going to send it. Hope you feel better for having written it all out though.

[mercy]

"I need to write to you to get a few things off my chest. I am not going to rant and yell at you – I don’t suppose it will make me feel any better and anyway, H is the one I should be angry with.

 

I think you behaved in a very unkind way. I had never hurt you, neither had my children, but you willingly colluded with my husband in hurting us. I was willing to be a friend to you, even to support you when you left your marriage. You can imagine how I felt when I found out the truth. Stupid yes, but also utterly betrayed.

 

He still cares about you – I have had to come to terms with that and beleive me it’s hard. I am hoping those feelings fade in time and he will come to understand fully what a fool he was. He is already full of guilt at hurting me, full of bitter regret, very remorseful and loving and is giving all of himself to healing my pain and building a better and stronger marriage with me.

 

It’s not easy, I don’t think I am making it easy, but he is still hanging on making me feel I am worth fighting for. I hope that in time he will be able to look back and realise that the affair wasn’t some grand passion, just an infatuation, not worth the risk he took. When that realisation comes, he and I will start afresh.

 

When he was involved with you he switched off from his family – not just me but the children too. He had no time for them, no interest in them and no patience with them. He is slowly mending bridges and soothing their hurt too. That more than anything else made me angry with you both, and his attempts to fix it give me so much hope.

 

You need to understand the reasons he was tempted not to step away from you. He was 50, in the mid-life crisis zone. Being loved by a younger attractive woman was massively flattering and made him feel younger and as if there were still doors open to him. He is very emotionally invested in Elmwood – and I think part of those feelings transferred to you. He also enjoyed playing the Knight in Shining Armour to your Damsel in Distress.

 

Our marriage wasn’t at it’s best at the time but the bones of it were still strong. Ironically your affair has given us a huge kick up the backside to work on it and it is happier than it has been for years, inspite of the hurt and the bad memories that will never quite leave me. I am grateful for that although I don’t imagine it was a consequence you planned for. You don’t throw away 20 years of marriage and even longer of relationship for the sake of an infatuation. Not when there is anything left worth saving – and beleive me there is much worth saving.

 

I am sorry if you are also in pain. You aren’t a bad person just one who made a bad choice. If things were different I like to think we could have remained friends, but that boat has sailed. If you want to leave your husband, if he is as controlling and abusive as he seems to be, it has to be your decision, don’t use another man to carry you out of the marriage, or to ease the pain while you stay married – especially not one who happens to be committed to someone else.

 

I just want to finish with a suggestion. Please don’t attempt to get close to my husband again. I have told him that if anything of the like happens again – with you or anyone else – it will be the end for our marriage. He will struggle to get over it because he does love me deeply and I doubt his children will find it easy to forgive him. If it’s you that caused it to happen you’d be hitched to a broken man who may resent you.

 

I hope life improves for your soon."

 

That is what I would like to send. I won't. So I'm sharing it here.

 

Wow, you were really kind!

 

I'm not posting the words I wrote and burned. I'd sound like a complete nut!

 

There's just something really wrong with it being a friend. It's just not right AT ALL!

[Spark1111]

waterwoman, you are very kind. You remind me of me when I first came here and posted a letter to the OW in my sitch. It was from my heart and beautifully written, just like your letter.

 

I assumed, she was kind and loving like me. I assumed that she too was lonely and confused. I assumed that he too needed to rescue her, a damsel in distress who had just undergone an horrific divorce with an abusive xH. I assumed she had real feelings for him, as he seemed to have for her and that her heart was broken when he chose me.

 

I also assumed, had she ever returned my phone call, that I would find remorse and empathy and maybe tears and closure and apology.

 

I COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG. Have you called this woman since dday and warned her off?

 

Because I did not, being so kind and letting it go, only to have her break NC over 2 years after dday to try and reinitiate the affair with my H.

 

Here is what I found when I forced her to take my call at her workplace: an angry, comtemptuous, blaming and arrogant woman who though less of me than sht under her shoes; who thought my pain and betrayal paled in comparison to her pain and betrayal; who actively worked on him to leave me and our children, by subtley pointing out to him how she would be such a superior partner, taking care of his every need.

 

Do not waste your empathy on her because you love HIM. He did not see the real HER, he only saw his damsel in distress with her halo on. She only saw her rescuer from her miserable lonely life.

 

It was pure fantasy.

 

I have the luxury of having thrown him out and he moved in with her and her child. It lasted all of three weeks; three weeks of chaos and drama and her unrelenting anger at her H. No undying words of love on the sly.

 

Do not romanticize their affair because it helps you to continuing seeing your H in the positive light that true love casts.

 

He was a mid-life crisisng fool. She was a needy, insecure woman who knowingly engaged a MM to rescue her from her sad, lonely life.

 

It was shooting fish in a barrel for her.

 

I hope you do not find out, like I eventually did, that her xH is a pretty good guy who remarried very quickly and appears very happy with his new family, and that my H was NOT her first MM....and she is still single, still trawling the waters, with her damsel in distress routine.

 

Focus on you and your marriage and your H. Call her, and tell her how angry you are and she better stay away or you WILL inform that H of her's.

[Dreamless Sleep]

it's all so wrong and painful. whew breath. i'm brought to the depths. you will move on. Be strong. You will find happiness and hope and love

 

Peace

[waterwoman]

thanks for your responses

 

Sorry for all the font nonsense in the post! Serves me right for copying and pasting it from Word!!!

 

LG - Yes, H sent her a text to say NC and then had a brief conversation with her along those lines in work. Because I wasn't privy to that text and that conversation I asked him to write a proper NC letter - which he did, eventually! But i didn't want him to send it as it might have just started communications up again. it was for my peace of mind more than anything.

 

She has respected NC since the start apart from one quick text - I think testing the water before they started back at school for the autumn term. She got a brief to-the-point text back asking her not to contact him again.

 

This letter is for me. My take on what went on. My attempt to make sense of something that makes no sense to me. To find some sort of closure for ME. I can't control anyone else's feelings but I can try to fathom and marshall mine.

 

I won't send it because ;

 

1. It might upset her and I don't owe her any pain. I suspect she has enough of her own.

2. It might open wounds that are healing and if that happens she might try to contact him or me .. and I don't want to speak to her ever again.

3. She might well reply to the effect that my letter is a heap of s**t and I have it all wrong - and then I would either have to question my 'reality' AGAIN, or assume she's lying to get back at me. Neither of which I want.

 

So, just for me. And it helped to share it here.

 

I genuinely wish her no ill at all. Did at first, not now. LS has helped with that transition.

[waterwoman]

Sparks - thankyou. I hope you aren't right . I can't bring myself to speak to her. I suspect that one reason she has stayed away so far is the fear that I will tell her H. I could so easily but if there is any chance that he is as abusive as everyone has been led to beleive, I couldn't take the chance of informing on her. I will also confess to not wanting an unstable angry man arriving on our doorstep to have it out with H - don't want any of their mess on my doorstep affecting my children. That makes me a coward in some ways I know.

[Radagast]

Waterwoman, that is a very gracious and mature letter. I wish you the best.

[waterwoman]

Thanks radagast and LFH.

 

One of the worst things about Dday for me was that I did become a raging screaming harridan for a while I hated being that person. Thank god it didn't last long.