One night last week, my younger brother called me at 4 am and told me that it was important that I have children. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to do what I usually do in such circumstances, which is get up and write down what’s on my mind. I started drafting this letter. I used to do this more often early in our relationship, and I think it always helped create greater understanding. I hope this letter will do that as well.
I have in the last few weeks done a great deal of research, reflection, and personal work around my failings and wounds and how my behavior led to (or at least significantly contributed to) the end of our relationship. My intention here is not to lure you back into something that hasn’t been healthy for either of us recently, but rather to learn from this experience and to heal, grow, and most importantly, not repeat my mistakes or carry forward unreleased shame, or unresolved trauma into my future life and relationships.
I love you eternally and want the same for you. However, I also understand and respect that right now you are experiencing emotional deactivation and may not have any interest or emotional energy to even read a letter like this from me, now or anytime. That is perfectly okay. It will be here whenever you feel curious. You need your own time. Your own process. Your own path. I also understand your need to be unpartnered. I am not trying to change that either. I am not seeking to re-engage romantically. I explained to my therapist, Michelle, that my goal in writing this was to offer context and create a record that might be helpful to both of us and to leave some kind of foundation for us both to build toward a healthier future, together or apart.
So, you may do with this whatever you wish, whenever you wish. I don’t expect you to read it all at once. Or write a lengthy reply. I am not seeking anything from you. I am, however, trying to offer an apology for my mistakes and try to shine a light toward the way of healing. What you choose to do from here is entirely none of my business, and I am not seeking anything from you in response to this.
Another goal, if I am being honest, is that I deeply regret how my actions and behaviors have damaged each of us and our relationship and friendship. I would like to try to atone for this and leave things in a place where you again feel safe, free, and welcome to engage with me without experiencing the toxic pressure of unmet expectations. Because nothing is static. And, in time, who knows what dreams may come? Looking back on our relationship gave me a lot of faith in the path and made me appreciate how much of an ally time is in matters like these. “Time passes, Love doesn’t.” In giving each other space and time to heal and grow, we may come to a different place on the path where a lot that isn’t working now might be working then. And I would like there to be no unresolved resentment or unspoken apologies on my part that might come between us should we ever find ourselves at such a juncture.
Finally, I want to explicitly say in writing that I do not hold you in any way responsible or at fault for any of what has happened, or how you have behaved in response to my many mistakes. You have been remarkably brave and honest with me. You have shown me endless patience, grace, and compassion. And you have pointed the way to healing and growth for me always. I may at times in this letter say things that you experience as a critique, or an accusation, or some other such thing. Please know and believe that this is not my intention. I do not associate you with circumstances. I do not identify you with your traumas or your responses to triggers. And I do not in any way hold resentment for you. I have been doing a traditional Hawaiian forgiveness meditation called the Ho’oponopono Prayer. Which means “Making things right” and trying to bring forgiveness to myself, you, my parents, and everyone really. So as you read this, if something makes you feel shame or guilt, please know that none of that belongs to you. Do not give it any place in your heart or mind. Although we both have more work to do and healing to welcome, I love you and bear you no resentment. I have deep and sincere love for you in all ways and do not wish to cause any harm in writing this letter.
Also, I’m going to ramble and repeat myself and probably apologize for the same thing over and over. There’s a lot on my mind, and organizing all of it is challenging. Please bear with me.
Now then,
hope
While clearing out old emails, I came across one of the first emails you ever sent to me, titled “hope,” dated June 12th, 2018, 1:15 am. I forwarded this to you as well so you can review it.
In it, you included this poem you’d written back in 2010 after your “second big break up”.
Space, that’s all that’s left.
Songs play in the background
I can’t listen
I’m lost
Falling fast
without you
Even though you’re here
beside me, breathing
on my shoulder
Your hands move
along
my edges
I can’t feel you
my skin is too
thick
i love you.
A wall stands tall
between us
I built it myself
i love you.
I say it louder, but you can’t hear me
and I don’t believe it
anymore
Your ears are full of words once fought
your mind settles on the night
that never was
i loved you.
Two people roam the night
one in search of feeling
the other, desire
Forgive the speculation here, but to me, it sounds like what you are describing is a common experience of the endpoint of the Avoidant Attachment Style called “Deactivation”. It’s also sometimes called “Dissociation” or “Discarding.” It also seems to me that this is not the first time you’ve had this emotional experience. You had it in 2010 when you wrote this poem. You had it with your husband. And now you’re having it with me. It’s a pattern. A trauma response.
At the outset, I think it would be good to spell out that each of us has our well-known walls and wounds. I’m going to over-explain and give a lot of details in this, not because you don’t already know much of this, but because I believe this practice of record-keeping has been and will continue to be helpful to us both as we learn and grow and try to recognize and heal unhealthy patterns, together or apart. It will also help me feel like I have expressed my mind and heart to you on all of these matters so that I do not feel like there is anything left unsaid. And I can be at peace with where things are for now.
I will tell you sincerely that it pains my heart to know that our relationship has left you in this same place. This place of “space.” Feeling emotionally deactivated. Unable to access the river of love we once so easily shared. But it also gives me great hope, because this emotional experience is not who you are, it is a trauma response. That means that it can be healed, resolved, integrated, and ended. Just like my anxiety and abandonment breakdowns are not me, and can be healed and ended too. And from that place, a place where both of us have healed past trauma and moved towards integrated secure attachment, I would be very curious about what might be possible between us. I hope that someday you might feel this curiosity again too.
Whatever happens to either of us though, I think it is vital that we heal these traumas.
In my research, I came across an unattributed quote from a Buddhist teacher that captures for me why this is so important. “Your future will be exactly like your past until you wake up.”
This also brought to mind T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
“In my beginning is my end”
“In my end is my beginning.”
In a sense, this first email and poem you sent me in 2018 was the end from which we were beginning, and the end to which we were always going to go. However, as Orson Welles says, the ending depends entirely on where you decide to stop your story. And I do not believe that either of us has to let this story be written for us or ended by our traumas or our pasts. I believe that being in this place together is a great blessing and unique opportunity. Because even though it has left you feeling numb towards me and unable to access the strong love we have built, and it has been painful for me to experience losing you, it has also revealed to me where my healing work lies, and I believe that you have been made aware of where yours is as well. If not, I hope this letter will help us both in that regard.
I want to highlight that this kind of awareness is only possible because we do love each other, and because we have revealed these wounds to each other through intimate knowledge and experience of each other. It has been painful, and, for me, quite embarrassing and regrettable. But now we have a choice to either allow these traumas to dictate what happens to us or choose to override these responses, heal, and integrate our past selves into a healthy present. If we don’t find ways to move past this as individuals, though, we will both go on to repeat the past patterns. Either with each other or with someone else.
I believe that this is a God-given opportunity for each of us to “wake up.” To choose a different future. An opportunity that would not have come about if we hadn’t found and loved each other. An opportunity to make for ourselves a new beginning and author futures that do not repeat the same ending as the past.
For all of this, I am grateful. In all of this, I find great hope. In everything, I see the fingerprint of the divine. Through you, I have known Love.
In what follows, I am going to explore in detail some of what I’ve learned about trauma and the painful cycle that we’ve been caught in during the past year. I’m going to make some observations about our relationship and sort of “show my work” about how my thinking has developed. I’m going to try to give a few words about practices that can be explored individually to locate an effective healing method for the traumas we’re both carrying.
A lot of my notes here come from the following sources, many of which I am sure will be familiar to you.
In An Unspoken Voice
Waking The Tiger
Introduction to Internal Family Systems
The Myth of Normal
The Mountain is You
Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It
The Art of Extreme Self-Care
Insecure in Love
Codependent No More
The Lectures of Alan Watts
and dozens of podcasts and articles, etc.
I’ve done a very large amount of reading and study about this in the last few weeks. It’s an anxious attachment thing. Over-functioning to try to understand and fix things. Although I have no desire to continue in the trauma cycle we’ve been playing out, it also seems to me that I cannot continue my life without making a strong effort to learn from this and heal the wounds that have enslaved me and destroyed our precious communion so that it doesn’t ever happen again. In any relationship.
Anyway, that’s what I’m aiming for.
Trauma
As I said, deactivation is a known and common trauma response. As is an abandonment breakdown.
Trauma is common. Nearly universal. Knowing that your responses are understandable and not your fault is an important first step to healing. Moving from Ignorance to Awareness, and then on to Learning, and finally, Mastery is the arc of the healing journey.
Trauma comes from a Greek word for “wound.” It is not something that happens to you, but something that happens inside you. An internal wound.
There are big traumas like war and little traumas like being ignored as a crying child. The big things people usually know about and work to heal, but the little things are often missed and can still have a big impact. The primary concern then is not dealing with the big things that happened but shouldn’t have, but the little things that should have happened but didn’t.
A lot of these traumas are multi-generational. Passed on to us from our parents. Because they seldom come out into the open and are made conscious, they are often unwittingly passed on through unconscious behaviors.
A trauma response is a crisis of presence. It is an incoherent experience. When a trauma response is triggered, you lose control of your response, and the trauma response overrides your conscious mind. In this way, trauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself.
Trauma responses can result in either hyperarousal or hypoarousal. Hyperarousal is a panic attack or one of my crying breakdowns. Hypoarousal is the complete lack of response. Shutting down. Going numb. These reactions, hyper or hypo, might be expressed in a variety of ways, but regardless, they universally feel unavoidable. Like you have no power to stop it even if consciously you do not wish to be responding this way. Like you feel when you are shutting down or how I feel when I am having an abandonment crisis.
Oftentimes, people blame others for making them respond this way. They blame the person who triggered them because it feels like they have no control over it. However, it’s important to realize that the response is coming from within. The emotion is internally generated. External factors are never the true cause. They only reveal the unhealed wound within.
People commonly, but unconsciously, pair with romantic partners who complement their trauma. And in a good relationship, partners will reveal and then hold space to help heal each other’s traumas. Most people think that the way a healthy relationship is formed is two healthy people meeting and forming a secure, healthy, loving relationship from the ground up. In actual practice, the process of creating a securely attached healthy relationship more often involves two people attracting each other based on their wounds, and then healing those wounds together once they are revealed. Sometimes, this doesn’t happen, but this can be a great blessing that a relationship can offer. The initial attraction comes from the familiarity of unhealthy wounds and behaviors, but the relationship lasts because of the compassionate healing that the partners share and the loving acceptance they offer each other while they heal. It is up to each party to choose whether to stay and heal or to give up and move on.
Traumas are not memories. They are a reliving of an experience. Shifting these from present experience to the realm of memory can help release us from them. When couples do this together in a relationship, they are in a way growing up together from an emotional and psychological perspective. They help each other heal their pasts and leave them behind so that they can be fully together in their present.
Nothing is Written
It is important to me to note here that, as I said before, nothing is static. I believe that in the last year, my mistakes and mistreatment of you have corrupted our relationship from an extremely intimate communion of securely attached people into something called a “trauma bond.”
I do not believe that our relationship was always been defined this way, but unfortunately, no one can ever be sure of that. My experience and sincere belief is that we started in a much healthier place, and then things turned when I got overly attached and started trying to pressure you into a commitment you weren’t ready for.
I do not believe that you have always been behaving in an avoidant style, and I do not believe that I have always been behaving in an anxious style. I believe that there is a future where we can return to secure attachment. To the times when we would listen to the Gottman lectures and remark about how effortlessly our relationship seemed to conform to their ideals. But I think the first step towards that is for me to honor both of our needs for healing and to stop pressuring you into a commitment you are not ready for. I do not know whether any part of you still feels open to a future with me. Perhaps the part of you that you cannot access at the moment will understand, and when you regain access to her, she may know the way. But for now, I would just like you to know that when I speak in declarative statements in what follows, I am not making a judgment on either of us about all of our past behavior in our relationship, but rather describing observed behavior that we have exhibited in response to recent circumstances. It’s not written in stone, it’s more like describing a passing cloud.
And for God’s sake, please understand that this is all just armchair psychoanalysis based on limited information and a superficial understanding of the existing academic literature on this. Just because I read a few books and listened to a few dozen podcasts doesn’t mean I know what I’m talking about. Nothing in this is dogmatic truth, just an attempt to illuminate a need for healing and try to point a way out of a trap neither of us ever wanted to get into, and never wants to be in again.
Fear is The Mind Killer
When you had that pregnancy scare after we saw The Fablemans in January of 2023, I went home to NYC and on our first call you told me that you needed to be on your own. At that point, I was closer to you in many ways than at any point in our relationship. We’d been to Europe. We’d only recently started a sexual relationship, and I was still building comfort and confidence there. Your son and I were getting along so well that it made you (understandably) uncomfortable. We’d started spending significant time physically together for the first time. I had started to see and believe in a life together.
And I think all of this, especially thinking you were pregnant, scared you. You were understandably worried about being trapped into something you weren’t ready for, even though you loved me. We were moving too close too soon. You needed time. You needed time to move on from your husband. Time to be on your own. Time to heal. Time to focus on your work. Time to continue the process of discovering yourself. Just time. Space. Room to breathe. To be yourself. Be on your own. Meet other people. Be in the world. You were also understandably concerned about your son and how all of this would impact him. How it would impact so much of your life. There was so much at stake for you, and I failed to appreciate and properly respect that.
I failed to meet this bid. I failed to empathize with this need. I failed to acknowledge how brave and true what you were saying was. I was deeply in love and wanted to commit to you and us. And I had bonded with you in a way I have never bonded with anyone and to such a deep level that I became afraid at the idea of losing you.
And so instead of giving you grace as I had done before, I resisted this request. The rest of 2023 became a dance of you asking again and again for much-needed space and saying that you needed to be unpartnered, and me again trying to pull you back into partnership.
I made the relationship unsafe for you. You became afraid of becoming too intimate too fast, and I became afraid of losing you. Fear rose to power in our relationship over Love. And it was my fault.
Frank Herbert said in Dune, “Fear comes like wind out of the desert. It blows through you, and all you can do is let it blow itself out.”
Carl Jung said, “What you resist, persists.”
Alan Watts also talks about this Zen principle of “Wu Wei.” Which means “Not forcing,” or “Doing nothing.”
Instead of observing this passing wind of fear with equanimity and letting it blow through, I resisted and amplified it until it destroyed our communion. Perfect love casteth out fear, but my love was not perfect. It had turned possessive. I had my eyes fixed on Jesus and was walking on the water, but the wind blew, and I began to sink. I wasn’t loving you in such a way as to make you feel free. I wasn’t loving you in such a way as to protect your solitude. I wasn’t obeying the commandment of Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet to “make not a bond of love” and let it move between the shores of our souls like the ocean that it had always been.
I failed you. I failed us. I’m so bitterly sorry. I regret this so much. I have spent so many nights thinking about this and wishing so badly that I could go back to that night and touch my heart with the peace and faith you needed me to have. To let the fear blow through instead of resisting it and making it grow. I wish so badly that I could softly offer you the same unforced loving kindness and trust that had characterized so much of our relationship. But I can’t do that now. I made the mistake of trying to clamp down on you.
The Pain of My Sins
This forced us both out of any chance of a secure attachment. You into an avoidant attachment and a justifiably triggered fear of entrapment. It caused me to break my own heart over and over and forced me to feel abandoned and anxiously attached. Over time, I think it also destroyed your sense of emotional and psychological safety with me. Because even though I was verbally telling you that I understood you wanted to be unpartnered, I was unable to accept that reality emotionally. You knew this and have felt it like a net hanging over your head for months. This poisoned our communion, your attraction to me, and the basic level of trust, respect, and vulnerability needed to have any relationship. This made your subconscious resent me. Destroyed your attraction and interest. Left you desperately searching for an escape. Sent you seeking relief and safety elsewhere. And ultimately choked our once great intimacy and communion. Which has been the biggest loss to me. You texted me once not long ago that you felt like you had “lost my best friend.”
And, in truth, you had. Without realizing it, I had let love turn into a weapon and chains. I thought I was trying to save our relationship, but in reality, I was emotionally attacking you to get you to commit to something you weren’t ready for. This was selfish. It was not genuine love. It was possessive. It was abusive. It was not the act of a friend. It was not an act of love. It was a deep and grievous sin. And I am deeply, deeply, sorry for having committed it. There will never come a day where I will not regret this. It makes me weep just thinking about it.
Anyway, I will come back to this later and probably repeat much of this. Not deliberately, it’s just been very heavily on my mind, and I feel grieved in my spirit about it. I promise I am working to forgive myself for this, but I needed to express this regret to you in writing to ease my heart and mind.
I love you.
Trauma Bond
This next part may bore you a bit, but I think it has value. I’d like to detail a bit of the dynamics, the trauma cycle, that my mistakes forced us to act out over and over this past year. My purpose here is to try to expel this trap from both of our lives forever by making it clearer to both of us when we might be caught in it if it ever comes into either of our lives again.
Again, be mindful that much of this is just my observations. It may not all align with your experience, and that’s okay, but I hope that some of it resonates and helps clarify why things have been so troublesome for us both in recent months.
My wound is Fear of Abandonment, which results in an Anxious Attachment style, and yours is Fear of Entrapment, which results in an Avoidant Attachment style. As I said, I believe I triggered these behaviors in both of us, but they were inflicted originally by prior relationships with parents and romantic partners.
My parents and brothers were physically and emotionally abusive and neglectful, and I was afraid to express feelings of love/attraction I felt for the women I liked because they weren’t Christians and I was taught that that kind of relationship was unacceptable. So I believed expressing my feelings when I had no way of acting on them would cause these women to flee and shun me, and I would lose the one I loved forever. I experienced this with Katherine at ten, with Laura at nineteen, and with Katy at twenty-three. You have seen me express this fear at several moments in our relationship when we moved closer to intimacy. Our first kiss is a great example. I was anxious I’d never kiss you again, so I kissed you back hard and with “frantic searching.” This same fear of losing you if I tried to be intimate with you also held me back sexually for a long time until I began to feel more confident and secure that you weren’t going to disappear and that you weren’t feeling unsatisfied.
In your case, I do believe at times you had to put your parents’ needs first, and were made to feel ashamed of yourself or responsible for their feelings. And I think both your father and your husband were critical, expected a lot of you before showing even modest approval, and were not open with affection or positive emotion.
This outlines some of the common struggles of the two different attachment styles my resistance and persistence of fear have driven us into. Not all of this resonated for me in regards to our relationship in recent months, but generally speaking it’s not far off.
Deactivation
Returning to Deactivation, Avoidant Attachment is characterized by a fear of intimacy and a strong desire for independence. My smothering you with affection and messages, motivated by anxious attachment, not authentic secure love, triggered this and made you feel overwhelmed, resulting in emotional deactivation. A recent example was when you said around Christmas that you felt pressured by my excessive gift-giving, and pressured to include me in your NYE plans when you didn’t want to. These experiences are valid, and entirely my fault for not thoughtfully considering your experience and how counterproductive what I was doing was. I unintentionally triggered your avoidant attachment over and over, resulting in the emotional deactivation you’re experiencing.
Deactivation is usually expressed as emotional distancing, reduced interest, attraction, and communication, and a desire to end the relationship. This is a normal defense mechanism against feeling controlled or trapped by excessive emotional and physical demands. In your case, I think it was a result of being pushed into something you weren’t ready for.
This post and this one helped me understand avoidant deactivation and discarding, how I’ve caused it, and why it’s so important right now for me to give you space, respect your boundaries, and not rush you.
The “Ick” or Sudden Repulsion Syndrome
One more thing I want to address in the context of trauma and trauma bonding, especially as it contributes to deactivation/discarding, is the many little things that began happening over the last few months that made you lose respect and attraction to me.
They call things like this getting “The Ick” or Sudden Repulsion Syndrome.
This is another example of a trauma response, but it’s a bit more complicated to sort out. This is a common experience of the Avoidant Attachment style, and it serves as a subconscious attempt to destroy attraction and force the avoidantly attached person to pull away from their partner. It’s a self-defense mechanism that gets triggered and causes the person to shut down anything that might make them intimate and vulnerable if they are not ready to be open to that.
The key about this is that avoidant people usually only get this about people whom they see as legitimate candidates for a long-term life partner, and usually only about people whom they otherwise feel are very good for them.
So in our situation, what I believe happened was that you saw me as being very loving and good for you, and saw a real possibility of me being your partner, but because of my pressuring you into it before you were ready, or perhaps due to unresolved shame from past experiences that made you unable to accept and respect my unconditional love for you, or both, your subconscious began giving you this sudden repulsion syndrome or “Ick” about little things about me to shut down your attraction and avoid a committed intimate partnership with me.
But again — these things in reality have very little to do with me, or with you, but rather it is evidence of you being unprepared for a committed partnership due to unhealed trauma. It’s another trauma response.
And it is not something people usually get about people whom they do not see as a potential intimate committed partner. So, in a way, even though you experienced all of these things as signals that we were incompatible and that I was wrong for you, I believe that all of these things were actually just indicators that you have more healing to do before you are prepared for a partnership. And you were resisting me wrongfully trying to force you into partnership prematurely. I triggered this trauma response in you by putting pressure on you to commit when instead I should have been holding space for you to heal. I believe that if I stop twisting your arm so badly, you would feel emotionally and psychologically safe with me again, and these subconscious things would stop bothering you so much.
I don’t get this Ick about you, though, because I am seeking an intimate partnership with you and not trying to avoid it. So my subconscious is not sending me these signals. I have noticed a lot of little things about you, but I find many of them endearing. For example, there have been a few times in our relationship where you have woken me up because you were snoring. And I have never mentioned it because, quite frankly, it’s about the cutest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen in my whole fucking life. I mean, holy shit, you would not believe how utterly fucking adorable you are when you are sound asleep and making little pretty sleep sounds. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I find it heart-meltingly sweet, not annoying or repulsive.
So this is a long-winded way of saying that I believe all of these feelings of repulsion are just a sign that trauma needs to be healed before a committed partnership may be formed, not a sign that we are incompatible as partners. I could be wrong. But that’s what I believe based on my observations and research.
Anxiety
Now to turn this around on me, why have I been expressing so much anxiety lately? Why have I become needy and co-dependent? Why do I keep subtextually/subconsciously trying to invite myself into things where I am not welcome even though I consciously don’t intend to? Why can’t I maintain healthy boundaries and a normal focus on my life outside of our relationship? Why do I keep crying uncontrollably? Why have I become such an unattractive wounded boy instead of the confident, goal-oriented, dynamic, inspiring man you fell in love with and respected so much?
This isn’t how I used to behave around or towards you. My masculine energy evaporated along with any feelings of attraction you had towards me. I lost focus on myself, my life, and everything outside you. I was so anxious I couldn’t make jokes or engage in play. Humor and play are the two most important things for basic attraction and enjoyment of shared company. I thought about this a lot when you showed me the video of O — dancing. When we were in that same bar at Sundance, you didn’t want to dance with me even though I wanted to dance with you, but you enjoyed dancing with him. Why? Because you could sense my anxiety and his ease. This is also a big part of why you’re attracted to Devon and seeking him out instead of me, despite our beautiful history. It’s because of all the anxiety I’ve been bringing into the relationship, which has crowded everything else out.
I deeply dislike being in this energy and not knowing how to get out of it. Just like that night in October when you gave me that birthday present or at the Look Into My Eyes screening. Although I instinctively feel that you could pull me out of it, it’s so repulsive to you that you don’t have any way to reach me, and you don’t really want to. In the past, when you have pulled me out of my head and into connection with you, that has rescued me from the trauma response. It does work. But that is an example of co-regulation. Not self-regulation. And I need to be able to override this trauma response myself, not depend on others to do it for me.
Also, no woman wants her man to depend on her to regulate his emotions. You would rather put me out of my misery and end the relationship. Like “Old Yeller,” as you mentioned at dinner in Park City. All you see is a hurt little boy. And there’s nothing attractive about that.
Ultimately, like I said before. I believe that I was breaking my own heart. I had built up so much pressure around forcing you into partnership, and you couldn’t offer that. So instead of accepting that, I resisted and made myself feel abandoned and anxiously attached. I was harming myself badly and couldn’t see it.
A Band-Aid Solution
So in reflecting on this, I started seeking what I thought was a solution. I thought that the solution was to pacify my fear of abandonment so that I would stop bringing anxiety to all of our interactions and making you feel deactivated and avoidant. I wanted to identify and quell whatever was triggering my fear of abandonment and causing me to express anxiety. This is something you’ve noticed several times and that you noted as being repulsive. Like you want to immediately flee the other way. Again, a very valid reaction.
This post sparked something for me. It talks about how an anxious/avoidant couple was able to regulate by starting to walk their dog together every day.
This post also resonated for me. It talks about ways to comfort anxious attachment and avoidant attachment.
Peace Through Planning
These two things highlight a need on my side for shared plans for future connections.
Back in Covid, we were not seeing each other for months at a time. Sometimes only saw each other’s faces on the phone once a week for Criterion Tuesdays. And we weren’t always able to exchange messages all the time. Yet, during this time, I felt more securely attached than I do now, even though you were living with and married to your husband, because we had set expectations. Eventually, we developed planned activities for communion, feeding our souls, and finding joy together. We had Criterion Tuesdays. We were meditating in the mornings together. And in the evenings I would go for runs, and you would sometimes call me while you were out on a walk and we’d talk. Or talk before bed, etc.
So, I realized that a key missing piece between my non-anxious behavior then and my anxious behavior now is consistency. Having set expectations. Specific future plans. The knowing when I will speak to you next. Even if it’s as simple as “I’ll talk to you tomorrow” or “Can we do movie night on Wednesday instead?” or “I’m busy tonight, but I’ll be thinking of you.” Knowing that helps me relax because my expectations are set. I don’t have to anxiously flail for grounding or beg for time or attention because I know that I can count on you to commune with me when and how we’ve agreed. Then I’m not anxious, and I can focus on myself and the rest of my life outside of you instead of having to constantly beg to make new plans to quell my fear of abandonment. My confidence comes back. My masculine energy returns. I can give genuine interested attention to my life outside of you. I’m not left in limbo. I’m grounded and oriented toward the adventure of my life, and then excited to reconnect with you and share what we’ve both been up to at the time and in the activity we’ve planned. There’s freedom for us both. Joy. Opportunity for play. Humor. Butt touches. Etc.
Needs vs Demands
I know you’ve said that this idea of checking in makes you feel like you’re reporting in to your Dad, but I believe that is an example of one of the Avoidant Attachment Style struggle areas, which is “Interpreting Needs as Demands.” So I want to make it clear that this was not a demand or control I wanted to place on you. It’s also not a criticism or an attack on you. It is a need I have that I want to cooperate on how to fill. This can be reshaped into whatever form fits. Planning would remove the need for checking in. Then you’d only need to reach out if you wanted to change our plans, not report in with daily updates, etc.
But some version of this would be a key requirement to not trigger my fear of abandonment so I in turn don’t panic and trigger your fear of entrapment. It’s also extremely important for your attraction to me. You want to know that I have a full life outside of you. Not just so you don’t feel like I’m dependent, but because that’s a very important, healthy, and attractive quality in a partner. This certainty of plans would quell my anxiety and then remove the pressure I’m putting on you, thereby greatly reducing the risk of triggering your emotional deactivation, loss of attraction, and need to end the relationship in what they call “discarding”.
You miss feeling me being independent, confident, bold, ambitious, self-sufficient, and emotionally strong and grounding. You want to be able to lean on me and depend on me as I have been asking you to, and the way that you used to back when you would call me in the past. But I have been so dysregulated that you’ve been unable to do that, and that’s killed our natural relationship dynamic. The one we both love and miss and wish would return.
Avoidant Attached people value direct communication. When you asked me directly what I needed from you, I took your hand in mine, held it up, and said, “This. I need to feel like we’re in this together, even if you’re dating other people.” And you stared at me because that’s a vague answer that doesn’t give you anything you can do. It is also out of alignment with your expressed need to be unpartnered and on your own.
Your Dad astutely noted that “no wonder he’s so anxious,” as everything about my circumstances and our tumultuous on/off relationship this past year has deprived me of any footing to steady myself on.
So my concrete ask would be for some version of standing, consistent plans. Opportunity for a shared activity where we can communicate but mostly have fun and enjoy ourselves. A movie night. A walk/hike. A recurring phone call. A writing session. The climbing gym. Meditation. Anything that sparks joy and doesn’t feel like an imposition on you would provide me with something firm around which to fix my anchor and right my ship in our relationship so that I can re-focus on growing my roots in SLC and investing in my life outside of you.
I think that this was the big missing piece between where we are now when I’m feeling anxious and where we were back when I was not. I think it would lay a foundation of consistency we can stand on without triggering each other.
These examples of simple communication to soothe Anxious Attachment and Avoidant Attachment seem like they would be effective to that end as well.
Walking Back Into The Minefield
The idea of this would have been to create a plan for our relationship that avoids triggering each other but does not resolve the underlying traumas we both have.
And that is why, in researching this, I realized that this was not the way to proceed.
Yes, it would be entirely possible for us to come up with a mutually satisfactory plan that avoids each other’s triggers. But that would only mask the problem. It would not solve it. Our relationship would be like navigating an emotional minefield together. At some point in the future when trouble came, one or both of us would accidentally trigger the other one again, and we would end up in the same trauma cycle as before.
And as I said on the phone when you called from New York, I refuse to replay that cycle again with you, or anyone else. Ever.
I do not want a relationship built on tiptoeing around each other’s traumas. I do not want to be in a relationship that is not meeting my needs or forcing me to abandon myself and my boundaries. And I do not want to make you feel trapped or force you into a relationship you are not ready for.
And so I agree that we are not, nor should we be, in a committed partnership. I think that the brief time apart we’ve had so far has been mutually beneficial in many ways, and we likely need more time and distance for the short term. You need time to work through your deactivation and have your unpartnered life, and I have to focus on a healthy return to myself. I also need to make peace with losing you forever and never seeing or speaking to you again. Because even if that doesn’t happen, I need to not be afraid of it any longer.
Enter The Dragon
“Where your fear lies, there is your task” — Carl Jung.
My fear is abandonment. So I am not ready to love you or anyone until I am genuinely able to freely choose to never see you or speak to you again. That fear is what’s been giving me anxiety, and facing it is the only healthy way forward for me. I must be able to choose the worst thing in the world for myself so that I will be free of the fear of it. I can’t ask you to agree to some elaborate system of plans to save me from it. I have to move straight into it and let it blow through me like the wind in Dune.
I have to dive into the mouth of the dragon and prove to myself that it has no teeth. I need to cut out my own heart to prove to myself that it will not stop beating. I know I am making this sound very dramatic when all it means is not talking to you or seeing you anymore unless you choose to share time or attention with me. But emotionally, that’s about how it feels for me.
And I know that for you it feels almost the exact opposite. You probably don’t feel much of anything in your deactivated state. Maybe you do, and you’re just not able to access or show it right now. I don’t know.
Regardless though, I have been meditating and making peace with totally losing you. I’ve been investing a lot in my life outside of you. I’ve been spending a lot of time on the phone with old friends and new friends. Investing in myself. Reactivating my social network. Having a path forward without you that I am genuinely excited about. Laying the groundwork to face my fear and thrive anyway.
Change
So I have taken a different track here and seen the need to let go of my attachment and refocus on myself, but I also see a bigger and deeper need in each of us. As I have said before, I think this is an opportunity for us both to face a challenge together that could unlock some extremely healthy personal development.
I could have a chance to practice non-attachment in a romantic partnership, which I desperately need to experience if I am going to form a healthy, loving relationship with you or anyone else. And you could have a chance to break the pattern of Deactivation, ending your relationship (discarding) and moving on to the next partner to repeat the experience.
I need to be able to love without attachment. To be vulnerable without anxiety. To be intimate without depending. To set boundaries. Not be desperate for validation or constant reassurance.
And I believe that you need to override your pattern of letting your partner’s behavior cause you to shut down and leave as though you are powerless to do anything else.
If either of us is going to arrive at a loving, securely attached long-term romantic partnership, then we will have to change how we relate to our partners. We will have to refuse to allow ourselves to be dictated to in the present by our wounds of the past. Neither of us has been truly making our own choices at certain key moments in this relationship, we’ve both been controlled by the fears and wounds of our pasts in some of the moments that matter most.
And this is the thought I would like to drill down on next.
Once my research led me to the conclusion that trying to pacify our Anxious / Avoidant attachment would only serve as a band-aid solution, and not heal the root of both of our traumas, I started to look into what real healing might look like, and what the real cause of this cycle has been.
Narcissism
Something you said came up for me in meditation. You said that you were worried that you were behaving toward me like your husband treated you. Not in those exact words, but something like that. When you called me from New York, and we spoke, you noted that you had been the anxious one with your husband. And in my research, I was reminded that my father is a toxic narcissist. So I looked into narcissistic relationships and found some interesting things.
Co-dependency, or a trauma bond, typically occurs when two people carrying unresolved shame enter into a relationship. Both parties, in almost all cases, come out of a relationship with either a prior romantic partner or a primary caregiver in childhood who exhibited narcissistic behavior.
Your husband was a dismissive avoidant narcissist. Both of my parents are toxic narcissists. And I think both of us are carrying unresolved shame from both of these prior relationships.
Shame is the dis-ease of self. Not feeling comfortable with who you are. Feeling unlovable, which in the past you mentioned several times. So both parties entering into a co-dependent or trauma bond relationship are looking outside of themselves to find love they do not have for themselves.
Co-dependency is a dance of wounded souls. It is an attempt to use relationships of today to meet needs that were unmet in the past.
Commonly, someone coming out of a relationship with a narcissist who has not healed and released the shame inflicted on them by the narcissist will end up taking on narcissistic behaviors in the next relationship. Narcissism idealizes the object of affection and then projects their shame onto them so that they can devalue and finally discard them to be free of their shame themselves. Essentially, a narcissist uses their partner as a scapegoat to pile their shame onto and then discard.
The person coming out of this kind of relationship will commonly seek to find a new partner to scapegoat this inflicted shame onto in much the same manner. First idealizing them and then devaluing them and finally discarding them to be free of the shame they carried into the relationship from their prior experience with a narcissist.
Narcissistic Devaluing
Narcissists eventually pass through the phase of idealizing their partner and start to pick at them. Criticism. Little things bother them. So they start to look for someone else to idealize and often to cheat with. They start to withdraw. They share less. Give less. Take what is offered but don’t give much back. They begin to wear you down until you think and feel like you are worthless and a person with zero power and zero self-esteem.
This goes into a cycle of reconciliation. Honeymoon and reunion. But the cycle repeats, and the honeymoon gets shorter every time.
Until they discard you and move on to someone else. When it ends, the narcissist makes you believe that it’s all your fault. They project all of the problems onto you. If you are the one a narcissist discards, they usually move on quickly and commonly line up someone else before they move on.
The Unknowable
Now, I’m not going to try and untangle the huge web of cause and effects at play here because it’s too much for me to attempt, but I am sure that some of this stings for you as it does for me. I feel very worried that at times and in ways we’ve been unwittingly harmful to each other because we are still carrying unhealed shame and traumas from the past. I don’t believe that this has been deliberate, but I also don’t want this dance to go on.
I do not believe that our relationship has always been toxic, I don’t believe that it has always been a trauma bond, and I am not sure if one or both of us have been narcissistic. I am not sure if or how these things came up or played out. It is impossible to completely sort all of this out. I am presenting information about narcissism, trauma bonds, attachment styles, and all of this just to give some context.
All of these are frameworks, but never static and never able to explain everything. The point here is not to nail down exactly what has been at play between us, but just to highlight that the main thing here is that both of us need to heal, dispel shame, and deeply love ourselves before we are ready and capable of a healthy, secure attachment.
Also, I love you.
More hope
That said, this is not a hopeless situation by any means. The most important first step is believing that we are not doomed. That we are not powerless to change. That healing is possible.
You might be reading all of this and thinking, “Wow, this relationship has always just been a big mess, and it’s not worth ever revisiting.” But I don’t believe that.
At the core of much trauma is people being unable to do something to change a situation. Powerlessness. For this reason, yoga, breathwork, and other somatic activities can be very helpful in healing trauma. They help us feel safe in our bodies again and override the trauma response of powerlessness. It is also usually more effective to do these activities in groups because it can contribute to a feeling of connectedness to humanity rather than reinforcing feelings of isolation.
Postures and stances of power can also help to break these traumas and feelings of powerlessness. Raised hands. Superman pose. Imagine yourself standing as a king or queen. All of these can help bring power back to your mind and body and break patterns or override trauma responses.
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy” — Nietzsche
Trauma responses, once revealed, often involve feelings of shame and an experience of being disconnected from other people. Therefore, relationships, where our traumas have been revealed, can often serve as a safe place to bring acceptance to an area of ourselves where we feel shame and thereby aid in healing trauma and unwinding response patterns. Having trauma exposed without being condemned can help release the shame associated with it.
So what is shame, and how does one get free of it?
Shame
Shame is a self-conscious negative emotion. Self-isolation and self-criticism are both causes and effects of shame.
Guilt means I made a mistake. Shame means I am a mistake. It happens when we self-identify with something bad. Rather than viewing it as something that happened and that isn’t tied to who we are.
State shame is an external social condition. Feeling embarrassed because of how others might see you. Like answering a question out loud in front of a classroom of your peers.
Trait shame is within us. A feeling that we are fundamentally bad or unlovable.
We experience shame when we are devalued by others. Especially others that we seek approval from. This commonly comes from primary caregivers, romantic partners, or cultural pressures.
The root of trauma and trauma responses are most often some kind of lingering shame. Shame destroys self-esteem, motivation, authenticity, and self-confidence, and keeps us trapped in past abuses and repeating past trauma responses.
Mindfulness is the first step to identifying shame. But self-compassion is the key to healing it.
Just being able to say “I feel ashamed because…” is the first step to loosening shame’s power over us and reclaiming our power.
Commonly people will choose some form of avoidance to prevent themselves from having to face their shame. This usually takes the form of either throwing themselves into work or filling their time with fun activities, drug use, or a romantic fling, anything to distract themselves from dealing with their shame.
Avoiding shame then becomes even more unhealthy than the shame itself.
So holding space to feel shame and then bringing compassion to it helps to expel and release it. Shame-based trauma can be accompanied by a sinking feeling inside and a feeling of physical powerlessness. Shame is mostly an illusion. It feels terrible. But avoiding it can ruin our lives. When you pull back the curtain and face it directly, it usually fades quickly, especially in the face of compassion. Like the Wizard of Oz, it seems scary until we realize it is just a little part of ourselves that needs to be loved.
Shame is a wish to be loved in a place where we have been unloved. The energy of shame is a wish to be loved. Shame feels permanent and all-encompassing, but it is only an emotion. A wind from the desert. A passing cloud. A burden that part of us is carrying. Shame is not us. It is not who we are. It is an unhealed, unloved piece of our past selves.
Bringing compassion, kindness, and self-love to these emotions of shame can quickly pierce through them and release the trauma that is rooted in them. If you can have the mindful awareness to realize that when you are feeling shame, you are actually experiencing an unmet need for love, and then bring loving compassion to that place, you can release the shame and the trauma rooted in it.
Self-compassion is one of the most effective ways to treat shame.
Meditation is an accepting awareness of the moment and of what is.
Self-compassion is a loving awareness and compassionate attention directed towards the self.
Again this is speculation, but I think you have unresolved feelings of toxic shame inflicted on you by your husband regarding the end of your marriage. Your husband has a dismissive avoidant attachment style and a narcissistic personality. This means that he is quick to disengage emotionally and also uses tactics of playing the victim to induce feelings of anxiety, guilt, and toxic shame in his partner. It is also crucial to him that he be presented as totally blameless in private and public so that his ego remains protected and he never has to admit to any fault or shortcomings. Rather than take mutual ownership of any issues or circumstances present in the relationship, he chooses to pile blame and shame onto you.
Compassion
But in order to form a healthy attachment, you’ll need to bring compassion, truth, forgiveness, and release to this shame, and to any others you may be carrying. Deeply internalize that the end of your marriage was not your fault, ultimately healthier for you, your husband, and your son, and not something about which you need to carry shame. Love yourself in that place. Love yourself for making that choice. Love yourself anywhere that you feel unloved. Removing oneself from an unhealthy relationship is nothing to be ashamed of. Just like I’ve recognized that my recent behavior has been mutually unhealthy and that I need to take a step back and offer us both the space we need. I’m not ashamed of myself, I just made mistakes which I am now trying to redress and bring healing to. I have a lot of shame and unhealed trauma to bring self-love to as well, and I have been actively doing that work and plan to continue.
I think we both have different sources of shame and trauma, but in both cases, the ultimate treatment is the same. To love ourselves in these unloved places. Dispell the shame, and thereby cut the trauma off at the root, releasing us from the past and the damage it is still doing in the present, and will continue to do in the future if left unloved.
Communion
In an emotionally and psychologically safe and loving intimate relationship, platonic or romantic, there is a unique opportunity created to authentically share deeply personal and vulnerable truths. Guilt. Shame. Fears. To talk about them and their origins. To try to get to the root and bring acceptance and integration to them. Sometimes we share these things consciously, other times, our unconscious takes over and reveals things about ourselves to our partners and us that we didn’t consciously know about ourselves.
I am not seeking a partner who is a completely perfect work fit for preservation under museum glass. I am seeking a partner with whom I can continuously grow and discover more of myself, and each other. No one is ever going to have a secure relationship with someone based on the prerequisite that they must be perfect to be loved. The key is being willing to work on getting better. Together and separately. Being able to share all parts of oneself, good and bad, shameful and admirable, healthy and in progress, and be accepted where you are and supported in where you’re going.
So although I agree that for the time being our relationship has become toxic due primarily to my failure to hear and accept your need for time, space, healing, and independence, I don’t believe that it has always been toxic, nor do I believe that it must always be so.
In fact, I think the fact that recent experiences have laid bare a lot of work that we both still need to do is a sign that our relationship is still bearing fruit. This fruit has been bitter, but ultimately points the way towards good health. And although we do need to do a lot of this work on our own, I think that looks different for each of us.
I would also like to say clearly that I am open to offering you support or engagement around this as you may seek it. I know that you may not agree with much of what I’ve written here, but I don’t believe that all of this has to be done in silence and complete separation.
As I said, my task, my work, is to break this unhealthy attachment to you and return to myself. To my interior life, but also to reinvest in other friendships, and collaborators, and to pivot my career away from my current job and back to work that connects with my soul. That not only provides an income, but meaningful community and a deep sense of purpose. To heal my feelings of shame. To break my fear of abandonment. To come home to myself and love myself deeply and unconditionally, as I have loved you.
On the other hand, your work in this circumstance is similar but different. Again, forgive me for speculating, but I think your challenge here is to not surrender to the deactivation. Not to allow your current emotional state to re-define our past or dictate our future. I will not press you, and I think certainly for the short term space will be the best thing for us both, but as you feel able. As you feel interested. As you feel a thought or feeling come that you would like to share with me. However, you find it. I think it would be healthy for you to try to resist this deactivation and dissociation.
This can look very simple. It can be texting me 11:11 if you see it. Or sharing something funny and random you find on Instagram (something I intend to start doing more too). Or asking a question. Or sharing something you want to discuss with me. It doesn’t have to be us going on a date or anything romantic. But just little things to connect in small, healthy moments and ways. I don’t know how you will feel reading this or what you will think of it. But I just want you to understand that I would like the door to be off its hinges and to make you feel free to come and go as you please. Most importantly, I would like to once again make you feel safe to do so. And that trust and safety can only be rebuilt over time and with repeated small positive experiences.
My therapist admonished me about this and told me, “You cannot do the work for her, John.” And I know that. But I would like to encourage and support you in exploring these things and reflecting on them. I would like you to take very seriously the idea of loving yourself and finding and releasing any shame with self-compassion. If it helps, I would encourage you to remember the way I loved you. Or the way I tried to love you. The way I tried to bring unconditional love to every part of you and our relationship. I failed many times as we both well know, but that kind of love is the kind of love you should seek to have for yourself, and the kind of love you should demand to experience from a partner. I hope you will take seriously this work of self-compassion and self-love. Especially, as it doesn’t look like I will be around to do it for a while. And I would like very much to know that my person is well cared for and loved.
Healing Strategies
A few words on how one might approach this practically. First, mindfulness meditations. Second, self-compassion and loving kindness meditations. But most of all, the best thing to do is to just try many different things and find what works for you. Yoga, breathwork (I’ve attached a guide I’ve been using). All of it. But find what feels like love in your body. Find what releases shame and moves you into self-compassion.
Notice a trigger and have a strategy to self-soothe and regulate to pull yourself out of the trauma response. There is no failure in healing trauma responses. Only feedback. It’s all to be seen as information about the wound and what does or does not work for you specifically.
This can be a struggle at first between a healthy self-regulating response and the old familiar trauma response, but with experience and repeated attempts, eventually, the effective method will be found, and the healthy response will become habituated. This removes the trauma response. It leaves the wound in the memory and brings you into a healed, integrated present.
A mistake I have been making is resisting the trauma response. The phrase “what you resist persists” captures this too. Another example is that if you tell someone “Don’t think about a purple giraffe,” they immediately picture a purple giraffe. Or if you want someone to fall asleep and you scream at them to fall asleep, they never will.
So in my case, just being aware that I’m feeling anxious or abandoned doesn’t resolve the trauma response, it just focuses me more on it. I said this to you in October when I was having an abandonment breakdown. I said that I was sorry I was acting this way, but I felt powerless to pull myself out of it or to change my behavior. This is the trauma response experience. The crisis of presence. The incoherent experience. This is speculation, but I think your version of this is that when you feel deactivated, you feel you have no power to reactivate your emotions. You may consciously remember that you do love me, but are unable to access those feelings emotionally, even if you want to.
Instead, it’s necessary to step out of the emotion and experience it as an observer and recognize that one is not that emotion. Then one is able to choose from a variety of methods to self-regulate. Once one has regained a measure of control, they can choose a different response. Meditation helps a lot with this kind of mindfulness about emotion and being able to step outside of it and choose a new path. So I have been meditating like it’s a part-time job haha. Your words at Sundance, “I think you just need to focus,” really resonated for me. The antidote to anxiety is presence. So I have been prioritizing just being with myself and stepping out of my own mind and emotions. Multiple hours a day at the beginning and end of each day.
The Goal Falls Short of The Reach
The goal of this is not to put a band-aid solution over the problem, but to remove the ammunition so that when the trigger is pulled, no damage happens. Instead of navigating through a minefield of trauma triggers, I want to dig all of them up so we can be free to walk together or on our own.
This means facing my fear of abandonment by experiencing it and taking away its power. It also means ceasing to pressure you to commit to a relationship so you aren’t forced into avoidance. And finally, it means experimenting more with self-soothing and developing a robust mindfulness practice combined with somatic therapy and self-compassion.
Please Forgive Me
Clearly, there’s a lot of work still to be done. I don’t think we’ve always been in this state. I think that although I felt love for you since July of 2018, I didn’t start to become attached until sometime around or after we started having sex. I recall those months between the first time we had sex and the pregnancy scare. My chief anxiety at the time was around sexual performance, which passed. But in many ways that was the closest to being fully partnered that we’d been up to that point in our relationship.
And so from that peak, you needed, understandably, to pull back. To slow down. You became very conscious that you weren’t ready to get married or pregnant again. And I failed to respect that as I should have. I should have understood and accepted that. But I had become too close and too attached and didn’t want to lose you. So I resisted. And forced this to persist and grow. When you told me before that you wanted to date other people, I said “I want you to explore this and find what you’re looking for from it.” And my nonresistance was the correct response. The loving, unpossessive response.
But in January of 2023, I resisted because I had become attached. And I think that is what triggered you to feel entrapped and become avoidant and me to feel abandoned and become anxious. Since then, we’ve more or less been cycling through that a few different times. This cycle of reconciliation. Honeymoon and reunion, then rupture and discarding.
Which is unhealthy. And ultimately my fault. And I’m very, very sorry I didn’t receive you better, or recognize the trauma I was inflicting sooner. I regret it very much, and although I am grateful for many of the good experiences we got to share this past year, I regret deeply the trauma and the stress and pain it’s inflicted on both of us too. I feel convicted in my heart that I have been harming you, and it makes me feel terrible. I am genuinely sorry. I didn’t understand. I responded from what I thought was a place of love, but I see now that it was also clouded with selfishness, fear, and possessiveness.
Anyway, I say all of this by way of asking for your forgiveness and also freely offering mine. I know that there have been moments where both of us have regretted hurting each other. I think that it’s important to focus on forgiveness and not harboring resentment. Because if either unforgiveness or resentment lingers, we won’t be able to be friends, let alone lovers anymore. Like that time at the taco place before we saw the shorts program. You said something, and I made some kind of snide remark and gave you that resentful look. I apologized afterward and immediately regretted it, but that’s not enough. I have to let go of that resentment completely and fully. Because you don’t deserve that, none of this is your fault, and it’s wrong of me to let my disappointment blame you for simply being honest and open with me. So I regret that moment and am working to root out and release all lingering feelings of attachment. I hope that my apologies will help you do the same. I’m very sorry for the harm I’ve caused you, and I am firmly resolved not to repeat this behavior ever again, with you, or anyone.
I think this is also related to why I sent you that angry series of messages on Instagram recently. I got angry because I do not want the revelation of my traumas and wounds brought about by my vulnerable love for you to define your entire view of me, or us, or our past, or to prevent there being a possibility of a healthier future between us or other partners.
You are not your deactivation, I am not my breakdowns. What I was trying to express, albeit poorly and angrily, was that we do not have to let these things control us, or let them define one another for each other. I hope that in reading this you will have a better sense of what I mean by this and understand why I felt upset at thinking all you saw in me was a wounded boy. I know that is not how you see me, I just feel very vulnerable. I’m sorry.
Freedom
We’ve discussed at length the ideas of freedom and liberty. I’d like to suggest a new perspective.
“Freedom is what you do with what has been done to you.” — Sartre
We cannot control what has been done to us in the past, but we have the power to choose a new beginning and a new ending.
Job Chapter 34 Verse 3 says, “For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat.”
I would encourage you to sit with these words and try them. And see what of this rings true for you. And find whatever path forward seems right to you. You will know the way. You will read the signs.
hope
Going back to your email “hope” from the first week of our relationship, you proposed not tearing down walls, or avoiding the inevitability of building them, but rather to scale our walls and meet on top of them.
That is what I have written this letter to propose. We did this once so deftly it was astonishing. I think we were a bit naive at the time, but I think that where we are now is some of the most important emotional territory to explore, as individuals and as a couple. I’ll try to frame this in a way that expresses what I mean.
You naturally want a partner who challenges you to be better. Your Dad challenged you to figure things out for yourself and be your own protector. Your husband challenged you in your career and in outdoor spots. Devon challenges your commitment to art, to pushing your edges, and to being a better snowboarder. etc. I am not a housebuilder, a snowboarder, or a pho chef. The areas of my competence where I have always challenged and inspired you, if this isn’t too arrogant to claim, are in the realms of the soul, communication, empathy, and love itself, among others.
So I would like you to think of this not as a bid to get back together with me, but as a challenge to mutually decide not to be ruled by our wounds and to choose to master this chaos and create harmony and order in our souls that we both want and need. A challenge to not be controlled by past trauma and abuses. A challenge to cast out fear with love. To let the wind blow through. A challenge to turn shame into self-love. A challenge to practice radical compassion.
A challenge to scale our walls together again and meet on top.
Think of this
as hope
If you decide that you are happier having moved on and wish to continue on that path, I bear you no resentment and respect your decision. There’s no deadline or expiration date on this bid. It will be here eternally. Always calling you towards the path of love and healing, wherever that leads. With me, or without.
In case this is the last of our letters, I would like to say that I am eternally grateful. For you. For us. For love. For the path. For all of it. Never doubt for a moment that I hold you in high esteem and deep affection. And although I regret the damages of the last few months, I have far more gratitude for everything else, and still more gratitude for the path to healing that has been made clear as well.
One more thing. Once, when I was at your house in Draper, your husband came to drop off something for your son. I waited upstairs in your bedroom. I heard you both say “I love you” to each other at the end of your conversation. I do not expect you to continue saying this to me if you no longer feel it and are never able to reactivate your connection to the immense love we have shared.
As for me, I do feel love for you. I have and always will. And I will never stop saying I love you. No matter where you are. Or who you’re with. My love will be with you, and Molto always.
I hope that as we both continue down the path, and time passes and love does not, we shall meet and once again find a way to keep holy communion together.
An Eternal Valentine
My gift to you this Valentine’s Day 2024 is a single red eternity rose.
It will last one calendar year, Valentine’s Day 2025.
In the meantime, I will respect and hold sacred your right and desire to be unpartnered and on your own. I will not interfere with this. I will not chase you. Not send you gifts. Not call you or stalk you online. I will not inundate you with texts. I will not send letters. I will not ask to see you. I will not in any way pressure you to include me in your life or share anything with me that you do not feel comfortable sharing. I will let go. Wu Wei.
However, I do not believe that you will be in this phase forever. I do believe that you will again seek and be genuinely ready for a partner someday. I intend to set my house in order so that I may be ready for a partner someday too.
And so, if in one year’s time, or at any time in the days or years to come, you find yourself feeling like Bella and missing your Max, if you remember the days of our sacred communion in the time before I began wrongly pressuring you for commitment, if you find a way to reactivate your love for me, or if you find even a passing curiosity of any kind about me, about us, about anything.
I hope you will look at this rose, remember Our Molto Holy Moment of Forever, and reach out as you feel comfortable.
And if not.
If you should find another partner with whom you share an eternal intimacy and love unfeigned.
Or if you should just simply never feel the longing and curiosity return.
Then you may throw out the rose, and keep eternity with you always.
A final gift.
From Your Ever Loving,
John
The Beginning
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
…
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph.
…
Not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
…
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
…
At the source of the longest river
…
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
-Four Quartets, TS Eliot
My Darling,
May God bless you and keep you in mighty grace and favor.
May the Almighty Love of the Eternal Living God rest upon your soul forever.
May all be well.
My best wishes and strongest prayers are with you always.
In Eternal Love and Gratitude,
I remain,
Your Ever Loving,
john
Molto Always Mi Amor
:^^^
