Duplicity

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?” I responded.

What, exactly, are you sorry for?

For letting him into your life and letting him think that you loved him as much as he loved you, or for abruptly ending that love and evicting him from your life when you decided that you couldn’t “fix” him?

For betraying him to his ex-wife repeatedly via text after you kicked him out?  For sharing  personal information about him that was none of her business? For conspiring with her to keep the communications a secret from him?  For then lying about it to him when he asked you if you had communicated with her?

 Or for us finding out about it? You made a mistake trusting her to keep your conversations private: she forwarded all the texts that passed between the two of  you to him, not wanting to be called a liar. She really can't be trusted.  But then, apparently, neither can you.

Are you sorry for accepting his engagement ring as though you would love him forever, or for not having had the decency to hand it back to him two months later when that turned out not to be true?  You let him think that the separation was temporary, until he happened to find the ring a week after he had moved, neatly boxed up and buried in with his clothes that you had so quickly packed up while he was out at work one day.

Are you sorry for  the envelope that came to your mailbox from the Court that you refused to either deliver to him or let him pick up in a timely manner, opting instead to write a forwarding address that did not even include the town, thus delaying its delivery until after he was supposed to appear in court? He had no idea what it was about, and he narrowly avoided getting arrested for failing to report to a hearing thanks to your selfish negligence. Thank God he had the good sense to call the Court House to find out what it was for when the letter still hadn't come after more than a week of waiting. Are you sorry for that?

Are you sorry for often offering money to help out with his expenses, or for deciding that he owed you all of it back when you ended the engagement? I doubt that he asked you for money; he probably assumed that you were helping him out of love, and that once he could land a better-paying job all this would be resolved. After all, this was the love of a lifetime. Too bad that wasn’t true. Coincidentally, he did land a better job, but you had already made up your mind by then. Bad timing.

 

Your pursuit of a stress-free life has caused more emotional damage to him and to us than anything we have ever experienced. Our son, while flawed, is nevertheless a kind, sensitive, gentle and loving man who was a wonderful father figure for your son, especially given the boy's special needs. Very few men have the capacity to love children like he does, yet you discarded all of that when you literally erased him, and us, from your life. There is an expression that aptly describes what you did: throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Memorize this: you can’t fix people. Either accept them as they are, or leave them alone. Love is not a reward for good behavior. It is a gift freely given, something you apparently are incapable of doing.

Do I forgive you? No. I wish now that you and he had never met. Will I ever forgive you? That depends on whether and to what extent our son can recover from this explosion to his self-esteem and to his ability to trust another human being again. He really loved you, more than anything else besides his own son, and it will take a long time for that love to eventually die, in spite of what you have done to him. His heart is broken and so is mine. When his heart heals so will mine, and then I will think about forgiving you.