Since You Stayed

End.

Unless some extraordinary circumstance I might feel the need to report here suddenly happens, my learning arc with respect to the married-man affair of the past three years appears to have come to an end. I doubt I'm going to have much new to say, so I'm closing out this blog. Because Chi knows where this is, I'm going to leave my last post as a message for him, in case he ever wonders. I've made it my policy that I can't speak to him unless he speaks to me, so this is the only way I can speak to him.

Dear, sweet Chi,

I don't know how likely it is that you will ever come here to read what I've written about our relationship. Quite possibly the answer to that is, never. But if you are here, you're thinking about me, it's probably safe to assume you miss me and you're looking for clues about my feelings, and I want to leave you something so you'll know.

No, I am not angry at you. Yes, yes, yes, I still love you. No, I do not think you are worthless, I do not hate you, and yes, I will still talk to you. 

A year ago you chose, once again, to stay in your marriage, even though you were still deeply unhappy. I assume you are unhappy still or you wouldn't be here to read this. Since you stayed and I never heard from you again, I hoped that would be because your wife woke up finally and you reached a new understanding and a happy new beginning for you both. Not because I'm angry or unhappy with you or sick of you or because I don't want to see you ever again; but since you didn't choose me and you're still in that house, I want it to be for happy reasons and not unhappy ones, because that is what would be best for you.

But that doesn't appear to be the case, if you're here.

I want you to know, first and foremost, that I will always speak to you if you speak to me. If you're in trouble, if you're lost, if things are bad and nothing else is helping and you don't know what else to do, I'm here and you know where to find me. I will never steer you wrong, and I won't let you do anything dumb...as you already know from the last time we spoke.

I want you to know that I love you very, very much, and when you never spoke to me again, that has been one of the saddest things that has ever happened to me. Unless you and Rory turned over a new leaf and you're actually happy, of course. If that happened, I'm happy for me because I'm happy for you.

I want you to stop running yourself down and punishing yourself over what happened. Yes, the ending of our love was very sad for me. But, I learned so, so much! I learned about love, I learned about affairs, I learned about you, I found out I can read astrology and tarot, I learned about Rory, and most of all I learned about myself.

I learned I still had serious emotional problems that needed fixing. My marriage with Simon was so happy I never would have known this if he'd lived, and if you and I had tried to stay together, I still wouldn't have known it, and would have behaved in ways that would have doomed us as a couple. Since you left me, I had the opportunity to learn this and to work to heal and better myself.

That is what all relationship is about, but oh, especially when there's an affair. I did my work, I'm still doing my work, and I'm going to keep doing my work. 

It's my job.

If you're here, I'm assuming it's because you don't feel a bit special at all. I want to tell you once again that you are. Yours always was a beautiful kindred intellect and a sweet, funny, beautiful spirit, and it was a privilege to know you and to be with you, even in the limited way and for the limited time that we had. Only in your difficulty addressing your own emotional issues instead of everyone else's have you disappointed me. In every other respect, you and Simon have always been everything that I wanted. I suspect I will never meet anyone like of either one of you ever again.

But, that's not my job. Getting well is, and that's what I'm doing. I've learned that I need to be a lot less relationship-dependent, and that the best thing for me would be to fall in love with my work, not other people. So, I'm off to do that.

I'm easy to find. You know where. If you're stuck, if you need help, if you miss me, if you need advice, you're always welcome. Should I actually see or hear from you again, it will be a wonderful surprise and I will be very, very happy. Please know that.

I said no to seeing you on a regular basis before because I knew it would lead to a real, full-blown affair if we did that. I didn't want that because I knew it would be bad for you. You would never get healthier if we did that...you would use me to hide from your problems some more and only get worse. And I would never, ever, ever, ever do anything that would cause you ultimate harm, or that I knew would not be in your highest good. 

Popular wisdom says that we other women should stay away from you married men because we're hurting the wife by taking someone else's man. As if you are Rory's property, and your main job in life is making her happy, along with all the other Looky-Lous who observe your relationship from the outside, and believe they know the truth about it when they do not.

Sweetheart, living as nothing but an emotional and financial service station to other people is not your job. She has an much of an obligation in your marriage as you do. You're a human being, and you deserve some standards of decent treatment. You had forgotten that, or, to put it more accurately, you never learned that at home in the first place, and that was why I made the decision to step in to begin with. That, and unhealthy reasons, detailed in this blog, which I have since remedied.

If "the wife" doesn't wish to be hurt by the arrival of a third party, she needs to work on herself as hard as I've worked on myself, which is one of the reasons I wrote this blog. Affairs don't happen because people are being willfully ugly or mean. Affairs happen because three people didn't get well from three sick childhoods.

I want more than anything that you heal from the way you grew up. I want more than anything that you come to know yourself as a deeply good and worthy being. That's your job. Quit distracting yourself by running yourself down, cleaning, watching TV, doing volunteer work, and embroiling yourself in the problems of those close to you, and embroil yourself in your own childhood problems instead, so you can achieve this work before you die. That's what I'm doing. If you show up here, whatever else happens, I am going to require that of you. That's what I'm doing myself.

It's come to my attention that one of my real problems is that I don't believe in myself, so I try to escape into relationships and other people's problems instead of finding the courage to actually finish something, and then go out into the world and risk and try with my writing, instead of wishing and dreaming while I tell myself it'll never work.

Correcting that issue in my behavior is where I'm going to be.

If you're here because things aren't working and you're in absolute despair, come find me. You know I'll always listen and have some thoughts.

And if you don't come find me, always remember me as fondly as I will remember you.

I love you forever and ever.