A Love Invitation

[Jack and Jill]

Dear Jill,

 

Many years ago, about six months after we met, we started a wonderful dialogue between the two of us on a couples site called “Dating Direct”. Though we knew each other quite well through my business, and I shared with you a lot of the emotional trauma that I was going through in my break up with Norma (name changed) I just wasn’t in to you that way, no matter how much I wanted to be. Instead, I needed a friend to talk and share with.

 

For whatever reason, I was an emotional wreck having tried to work at the previous relationship with Norma for years and it taking me to the brink. On the rebound, in recovery, whatever – I signed up for Dating Direct to fill the hole in my life and find someone I could be open and passionate with. I encouraged you to do the same because I wanted you to find someone right for you too. You were reluctant because you thought you had found the Mr Right (me) that you were going to marry, but I wasn’t comfortable with the accolade.

 

Then something strange happened.

 

You did signup and I started to have a wonderful series of written, passionate, deep thinking exchanges with you on dating direct. Somewhat embarrassing now, but I called myself “hurricane” because that is what my life was – filled with exploration, the search for truth, and a new expression of inner freedom after the breakup. The letters we exchanged seemed to reach right into me and reflect who and what I was about, and what you were about. They touched me and I looked forward to them with such eagerness. Though one part of me still seemed pretty disinterested in having a relationship with you and my heart was more about caring for you, and being an older soul to help you through your lonliness, the growing message was “Jack – here is the person who really gets you and reflects who you are. Maybe she is the one to be with after all. Trust her, and trust in her love for you because it will carry the relationship through until you find it all flowing naturally”.

 

So here I am, almost nine years down the line. Married for almost four years. But honestly?…. still really struggling at times.

 

You know I’m a person for whom the truth sets me free and the need to live with an open heart is paramount. And when I find doors closing in front of me, whilst it may hurt, I can live with it as part of life, unless the doors are important to health of my relationship with you.

 

Here, after so much soul searching and sharing and counselling, the bottom line still seems that the person I need to reach in you is either non existent (which I don’t believe) or tucked sufficiently far away from my reach for whatever reason.

 

So I invite you, dearest, to try and rekindle that exchange that we had all those years ago in the hope that it will bring us closer. It might not be so filled with dreams and esoteric thoughts, but now it can be filled with the more down to earth, shocking, boring, fearful knowledge of who we are. Serviced by years of being together. And being alone. Living with our thoughts of who we are and where we have succeeded or more likely failed. Of the good times and the bad times. All of which are so much more valuable than those dreams and esoteric thoughts, because now this has become the truth of who we are as individuals and a couple. This is all we have to move forward into our years ahead, touched and accelerated by a little hope and faith and trust.

 

I invite you to reply and not feel any favour or obligation as to what you say. I will hear and read and read again and no doubt be hurt or embarrassed or ashamed. But I know for sure that if it is written from the heart and I have the courage, then it will reach into me.

 

I promise to listen, dear, with an eager ear and an open heart.

 

Love, Jack x