I'm a Jerk

Because she has such a hard time telling me things, and because I want to know her so very much...

I read her diary.

She posts online at a message board, open to guests, and so I visit and look at what she's written. She's written some things that she's never ever told me.

And she's written in journals for years, and I sneak peeks at them when she's not around. She has no idea that I know as much as I do.

I don't read them to judge or condemn her, but to understand her better. That way when she tells me things, sometimes that I've already read about, I actually understand what she's talking about much more than she realises. And so I can empathise and react more appropriately to what she needs.

I feel like a jerk for invading her privacy. But I don't feel confident in my ability to decipher her hints in words. It doesn't help that I'm half deaf and have a hard time translating speech into intelligible thought. Reading really helps me understand.

All this is a prelude to this.

Up until now she has been holding a torch for another man. I knew this; she told me directly. At one point she told me directly that she was giving him 'til "mid-October" to make more time for her. The last time she saw him, the day after my heart broke towards her, he told her: "Give me some time, and I will make time for you."

That was three months ago, and he's never contacted her since.

She was completely enamored of him, and wanted him very much. She wrote a pornographic poem to him, describing pleasures she'd never given me, earnestly wanting to give to him. She never sent it. But she did send letters to him regularly over the past three months with other poems and pretty words to him.

He never responded to her.

Today, mid-October, she wrote a final letter to him. She told me about it, and I knew she had sent the pornographic poem. The letter wasn't "never contact me", but rather "you meant this much to me, this is what you could have had, I still consider myself your friend". She left the door completely open (though she perhaps won't admit it even to herself) for him to walk in and say, "Lady, I feel about you just the same way you feel about me. Now give me those goodies you wrote about."

He could with only the slightest of efforts take her entirely away from me. She made that very, very clear. (She posted excerpts from the letter on her message board.)

I wish she hadn't given him this one last chance. I wish she hadn't told him what delights he could expect if he were to convince her he wanted her. I wish she had just let it go.

I wish she wanted me the way she wants him.

She knows she could choose to allow herself to fall in love with me. But I am her default, her backup plan, her "if nothing better comes along". She doesn't in fact want me at present. Perhaps she never did.

I explored the possibilities. I fell in love with another. I didn't have sex with anyone except my wife, ever, before or after we got married. I had one date while we were separated. I had some conversations with women, and couldn't bear to think about exploring a relationship with any of them. And after all that, I finally realised the treasure I had at home. I'm not looking anymore.

But even though she had sex with one man while we were separated (more than once), made out with a half-dozen more, and really really pined after this one guy, she still feels that she needs to do more exploring before she can believe I'm right for her. That's hard. A decade of marriage and four kids later, she does not want me. Maybe never did.

I want her to want me. I'd settle for her settling for me. But I don't want to wake up five years down the road with her running off with some other guy she likes better. I want her to know that she wants me forever, as I know I want her.

I really blew it with her, when I wallowed in depression for two years after the end of my (non-sexual) affair. I destroyed all the love she had for me. I pray to God it comes back.

I pray that letter gets lost in the mail, or the guy has moved without a forwarding address, or has left the country, or somehow never ever sees it. And if he does, I pray to God he doesn't come back for the goodies promised therein. Because I'm convinced I'll be out of our bed and house, and out of her life in a nanosecond if he so much as calls her.

Oh God, save my marriage.