Post by ionysis on Mar 13, 2008 4:45:37 GMT -5
Dearest Richard,
I think you probably know what I am going to say in this email and I will try to keep it drama-free and un-melodramatic.
Last night you were very clear that you still feel you have a lot of personal growth to go through and that you need to expend a lot of energy on yourself before you feel happy with the person you are. Whilst you feel you have to do that you are not in a position to be able to think about trying to build any kind of normal relationship with me.
Much as I love you, and you know how much I do, I’m sorry but I can’t support you in the process you are going through because it is damaging me. I do care about you immensely and I want nothing more than for you to be happy and feel good about yourself. I love spending time with you, I love talking to you, I love having you back in my life. But I don’t care about you simply as a friend. I can’t hold you or be close to you without feeling more than that. And it makes me too emotionally volatile and makes my life too unstable when my feelings are recurrently stirred up then slapped down.
Please believe that this is not merely a matter of me lacking patience. I have reached a point where I don't want to continue to exist in this state of indefinite suspended animation without trying to progress towards a situation which is going to make me satisfied or happy. I can be in this position only if I know that we are both working on moving it towards something better and healthier for both of us and we agreed last night that is not the case and isn't likely to be for some considerable time.
I believed and still do that we could make things work in the long term. But as I said last night we will never get the chance to see if we can have a healthy relationship if you aren’t willing or ready to try to do so. Instead what we have is an unhealthy situation that I really believe is not doing me good nor helping me to focus on the things I need to at the moment (personal fitness, my career and overall life organization).
You told me that you wanted to see if we could just get on and talk and have a foundation of friendship there before you could think about actually having a relationship again. I believe that we do have that foundation but the strain of trying to sustain this peculiar arrangement is constantly undermining the very foundation you are talking about. There is no natural progression of intimacy or building of trust between us. If we spend time together and relax and enjoy being with each other we feel close and happy but as soon as I start feeling like that I hit the artificial wall that you’ve put up between us and have to cut off my emotions - or you cut them off for me which is painful because it feels like a series of mini-rejections piling on top of the major rejection which hurt me so much last year.
I can't be stable and balanced, as we both need to be for any relationship to work, because the situation you are asking me to cope with is designed almost entirely around your emotional needs and doesn't at all address mine. It is impossible for either of us to tell if we could be happy together under normal circumstances because the very abnormal position you are putting me in is making me miserable and eventually that makes me lash out or break down when I can't take it any longer.
I am having to try to deal with the negative emotions, the residual resentment and the past hurt without anything which would usually be seen as vital in helping a partner in my circumstances to heal. In a situation where people have come back into each others lives after our kind of history a prerequisite would be for the returning partner to provide loving reassurance and to make every effort to reestablish intimacy and trust. I am expected to have you back in my life and to just deal with everything that has happened in the past with none of that and it simply isn’t possible.
When you first spoke to me and said you wanted us to try again I was miserable and confused and frightened. I suspected at the outset that what you really wanted was not to see if we could make a relationship work, it was more about you wanting my emotional support. Then gradually I tried to let go of those feelings and slowly became hopeful and optimistic because I began to believe that perhaps you were serious and that we could work towards something which might be worth having and was worth the effort involved - something different to what we had before. However as I came to feel that I was trying to put effort in and you weren’t I had so many emotional ups and downs and disappointments. Now I realize that you and I haven’t had the same endgame in this at all.
When you said you wanted to take things very slowly and see how we got on I appreciated that, and was happy to do it. But that was because it was my understanding that regardless of how slowly we'd move we were both moving towards the same goal. It has gradually become clear to me that what you said about us “trying again” wasn’t really what you were proposing. You want me back in your life but not in the sense of trying to build a relationship with me. You draw comfort from having me close to you because you know how much I love you, I also know you enjoy seeing me and talking to me but it is clear that you aren’t in a position to contemplate trying to see whether we could work again as a couple. You don’t feel able to do that and you can’t give me any indication of when you might begin to feel that way or what needs to change / happen for that to be the case.
In order for me to end up in a position where I am with you and also where I feel comfortable and relaxed enough to focus on my work, my friends, my family and everything else I want to do I need to trust you and for us to feel relaxed with each other. Not as friends, or "quasi-friends" as we are now, but as a couple. I don’t want a relationship like we had before, but equally I don't want this either. I want you to be someone who is there in my life who I can trust and rely on and have fun with but who isn’t the be all and the end all. But to get to that point healing and rebuilding would need to take place.
I’m not going to get to a position where I trust you again or where I don’t have this horrible rollercoaster of emotions when the relationship we have has so many artificial and (for me at least) emotionally damaging boundaries (no physical intimacy, no commitment, no fundamental reassurance) as well as no actual effort to heal past hurts and reestablish trust.
Trust CAN be rebuilt but not without love and not without commitment and I don’t think you can tell me that you have either of those things in quantities sufficient to put in the work a relationship like ours would need, given the history, to get it to being something worth having. In order to do that you would have to risk both hurting me and being hurt yourself and you are too indecisive and too unsure of yourself right now. You need to have reached a stage where you know your own mind and have the strength of will to stand by your choices and your principles.
There isn't much that hurts worse than walking away from someone you love (and hoped for so much future with) out of self-preservation....but I think it hurts worse in the end to have you in my life when you can't give what is needed to establish a whole and healthy relationship because you simply don’t have it in you. You need to think carefully about what you want out of life, how you get there and who you want to be with. In the meantime I have to try to get on with my life on my own. I know that it is likely that this will mean we grow apart but I don’t have any choice because the way things are now is hurting me more than helping me.
You don't need to tell me that this will not make me happy. I know that. The times when I am happiest in life right now are when I'm sitting watching a movie or playing tennis with you. But the times when I am most unhappy and feel most pain are also when I'm with you too - when we stay in the same bed, when I feel closest to you and realize I've hit that invisible line again, when I forget and move to kiss you, when I fear that you might be lying to me. So I've come to the conclusion that the underlying current of loss and emptiness that I have when you aren't in my life is more bearable than the rollercoaster of affection, hope and happiness interspersed with rejection, disappointment and pain that I'm going through now.
I know this may seem selfish but for once I’m going to put my needs first. If you ever reach the stage where you feel that you are right in yourself and you then want to see if the two of us can try to have a normal, functional relaxed relationship then perhaps you can address the matter in a way which takes into account BOTH of us. For now though I truly think it is the best thing for me if you go and sort yourself out on your own.
Please do still feel free to come round on Friday afternoon and we can talk things through properly and decide where this leaves us and what level of contact, if any, would be the best way forward for us both.
Lots of love
xxx
I think you probably know what I am going to say in this email and I will try to keep it drama-free and un-melodramatic.
Last night you were very clear that you still feel you have a lot of personal growth to go through and that you need to expend a lot of energy on yourself before you feel happy with the person you are. Whilst you feel you have to do that you are not in a position to be able to think about trying to build any kind of normal relationship with me.
Much as I love you, and you know how much I do, I’m sorry but I can’t support you in the process you are going through because it is damaging me. I do care about you immensely and I want nothing more than for you to be happy and feel good about yourself. I love spending time with you, I love talking to you, I love having you back in my life. But I don’t care about you simply as a friend. I can’t hold you or be close to you without feeling more than that. And it makes me too emotionally volatile and makes my life too unstable when my feelings are recurrently stirred up then slapped down.
Please believe that this is not merely a matter of me lacking patience. I have reached a point where I don't want to continue to exist in this state of indefinite suspended animation without trying to progress towards a situation which is going to make me satisfied or happy. I can be in this position only if I know that we are both working on moving it towards something better and healthier for both of us and we agreed last night that is not the case and isn't likely to be for some considerable time.
I believed and still do that we could make things work in the long term. But as I said last night we will never get the chance to see if we can have a healthy relationship if you aren’t willing or ready to try to do so. Instead what we have is an unhealthy situation that I really believe is not doing me good nor helping me to focus on the things I need to at the moment (personal fitness, my career and overall life organization).
You told me that you wanted to see if we could just get on and talk and have a foundation of friendship there before you could think about actually having a relationship again. I believe that we do have that foundation but the strain of trying to sustain this peculiar arrangement is constantly undermining the very foundation you are talking about. There is no natural progression of intimacy or building of trust between us. If we spend time together and relax and enjoy being with each other we feel close and happy but as soon as I start feeling like that I hit the artificial wall that you’ve put up between us and have to cut off my emotions - or you cut them off for me which is painful because it feels like a series of mini-rejections piling on top of the major rejection which hurt me so much last year.
I can't be stable and balanced, as we both need to be for any relationship to work, because the situation you are asking me to cope with is designed almost entirely around your emotional needs and doesn't at all address mine. It is impossible for either of us to tell if we could be happy together under normal circumstances because the very abnormal position you are putting me in is making me miserable and eventually that makes me lash out or break down when I can't take it any longer.
I am having to try to deal with the negative emotions, the residual resentment and the past hurt without anything which would usually be seen as vital in helping a partner in my circumstances to heal. In a situation where people have come back into each others lives after our kind of history a prerequisite would be for the returning partner to provide loving reassurance and to make every effort to reestablish intimacy and trust. I am expected to have you back in my life and to just deal with everything that has happened in the past with none of that and it simply isn’t possible.
When you first spoke to me and said you wanted us to try again I was miserable and confused and frightened. I suspected at the outset that what you really wanted was not to see if we could make a relationship work, it was more about you wanting my emotional support. Then gradually I tried to let go of those feelings and slowly became hopeful and optimistic because I began to believe that perhaps you were serious and that we could work towards something which might be worth having and was worth the effort involved - something different to what we had before. However as I came to feel that I was trying to put effort in and you weren’t I had so many emotional ups and downs and disappointments. Now I realize that you and I haven’t had the same endgame in this at all.
When you said you wanted to take things very slowly and see how we got on I appreciated that, and was happy to do it. But that was because it was my understanding that regardless of how slowly we'd move we were both moving towards the same goal. It has gradually become clear to me that what you said about us “trying again” wasn’t really what you were proposing. You want me back in your life but not in the sense of trying to build a relationship with me. You draw comfort from having me close to you because you know how much I love you, I also know you enjoy seeing me and talking to me but it is clear that you aren’t in a position to contemplate trying to see whether we could work again as a couple. You don’t feel able to do that and you can’t give me any indication of when you might begin to feel that way or what needs to change / happen for that to be the case.
In order for me to end up in a position where I am with you and also where I feel comfortable and relaxed enough to focus on my work, my friends, my family and everything else I want to do I need to trust you and for us to feel relaxed with each other. Not as friends, or "quasi-friends" as we are now, but as a couple. I don’t want a relationship like we had before, but equally I don't want this either. I want you to be someone who is there in my life who I can trust and rely on and have fun with but who isn’t the be all and the end all. But to get to that point healing and rebuilding would need to take place.
I’m not going to get to a position where I trust you again or where I don’t have this horrible rollercoaster of emotions when the relationship we have has so many artificial and (for me at least) emotionally damaging boundaries (no physical intimacy, no commitment, no fundamental reassurance) as well as no actual effort to heal past hurts and reestablish trust.
Trust CAN be rebuilt but not without love and not without commitment and I don’t think you can tell me that you have either of those things in quantities sufficient to put in the work a relationship like ours would need, given the history, to get it to being something worth having. In order to do that you would have to risk both hurting me and being hurt yourself and you are too indecisive and too unsure of yourself right now. You need to have reached a stage where you know your own mind and have the strength of will to stand by your choices and your principles.
There isn't much that hurts worse than walking away from someone you love (and hoped for so much future with) out of self-preservation....but I think it hurts worse in the end to have you in my life when you can't give what is needed to establish a whole and healthy relationship because you simply don’t have it in you. You need to think carefully about what you want out of life, how you get there and who you want to be with. In the meantime I have to try to get on with my life on my own. I know that it is likely that this will mean we grow apart but I don’t have any choice because the way things are now is hurting me more than helping me.
You don't need to tell me that this will not make me happy. I know that. The times when I am happiest in life right now are when I'm sitting watching a movie or playing tennis with you. But the times when I am most unhappy and feel most pain are also when I'm with you too - when we stay in the same bed, when I feel closest to you and realize I've hit that invisible line again, when I forget and move to kiss you, when I fear that you might be lying to me. So I've come to the conclusion that the underlying current of loss and emptiness that I have when you aren't in my life is more bearable than the rollercoaster of affection, hope and happiness interspersed with rejection, disappointment and pain that I'm going through now.
I know this may seem selfish but for once I’m going to put my needs first. If you ever reach the stage where you feel that you are right in yourself and you then want to see if the two of us can try to have a normal, functional relaxed relationship then perhaps you can address the matter in a way which takes into account BOTH of us. For now though I truly think it is the best thing for me if you go and sort yourself out on your own.
Please do still feel free to come round on Friday afternoon and we can talk things through properly and decide where this leaves us and what level of contact, if any, would be the best way forward for us both.
Lots of love
xxx
