My Love, I hope I do not come across as condescending when I tell you how proud of you I am. You are so much stronger than you think you are.
I knew you were strong when I fell in love with you. Do you remember last Summer when I told I loved all of you, even the married parts? Even the parts of you that were made of things necessarily exclusive of me—specifically, your family? I couldn’t remember exactly what I said, so I looked it up in the message archive. Here’s what I said, and I meant it and I mean it (I circled the part that is the most immediately relevant to what I’m saying):
So yeah, what I’m referring to is where I’m talking about your values, and how they manifested in your life—I saw how important your marriage and your family were. I love your value system and I truly believe that you are someone who has spent most of his life acting with integrity to your values. I see such strength in that and that strength has always been something that I have loved about you. It is, in fact, one of the primary reasons I fell for you.
I was blinded by my own egocentrism in that I assumed you were married to someone like me. At that time, I thought you were just missing sex and a bit of fun and I could fill in those gaps. I said I was a catch, but I didn’t realize how much I could actually bring to the table. I was ALMOST right to say that your marriage was, for the most part, you, But it would have been more accurate to say that you were swallowed by your marriage and that in order for your marriage to persist, you had to abandon parts of yourself.
When I tell you I love you, I mean that I love all of you. I love the part of you that broke up with me l after Christmas. I love the part of you that waded neck-deep for days through an emotional swamp in Fayetteville, Texas. I love the part of you that loves Jordan, that loves Robin, that loves Charlie. And I know, deep down, I actually kind of love all of them too, even if there is zero chance that love will ever be reciprocated in this lifetime.
My point is that you have shown me, over and over again, that you are a kind man who loves and loves and loves. Your deep desire to honor your values—to live with integrity— is where your strength lies. The struggle for you has been in figuring out where you heart is throughout all this. Once you know that, like, really know it, that’s where you’ll be, and that’s where you’ll find your strength. I believe that you are the sort of man who can do anything., so long as you do it with integrity. I love that about you.