An open letter to my husband,

When I cam to the decision to walk away from this life we created together it was with the intention to make both of our lives better. To end while we could still remain friends. To leave before we broke each other down and the mere thought of one another brought feelings of frustration and disdain. I knew our time of together had come to and end, I had just hoped we could remain amicable and be the example of divorce having a positive outcome. We were both so unhappy in our marriage, we had just blinded ourselves from “seeing” it.  Although I was very wrong in this thinking and you have chosen to take the hard and difficult road. I want to share with you my side and view of things and even though you have done everything in your power to ruin me and cause great pain not only in me, but in our children. I want you to know that I don’t hate you.  I have tried, but it just doesn’t suit because at the end of each day, these two realities are still true;  we were friends and I loved you.  

We spent the last eleven years loving, learning, laughing, fighting, crying, wearing each other down and lifting each other up.  We have been to hell and back and our marriage endured more trials than those who’ve been married forty plus years. It has been a roller coaster ride and honestly, I wouldn’t change anything.  It wasn’t all bad and it wasn’t all good but it was life, lived; experienced.  I wish that I had been the wife you needed me to be. That I had been “in” love with you, that I could still find a reason to stay, but people change.  You changed, I changed, the world around us changed and I can’t continue to hope and believe that we can find our way back from where we came.

I am sorry, truly sorry for the pain you feel and the hurt in your heart.  I know how much you loved me and how broken you feel knowing that we will not raise our children under one roof. I know you ache from my not being there. I know there is an emptiness not only in the bed next to you, but inside of your heart for the loss of me.  I am sorry that I don’t love you as you deserve to be loved. But see that is why I made this choice because you do deserve to be loved. You deserve to have a woman who not only loves you but who is in love with you. You deserve a woman who will compliment you, who will light up when you walk into a room, who looks forward to seeing you and accepts you as you are.  You deserve to be loved for who you are and what you give to this world.  I hope you know I appreciate you as the father of my children and the man I spent these past eleven years with.  

Marriage is difficult, kids are challenging, health issues are discouraging, and life is hard. It isn’t that I did anything wrong or that you did anything wrong it is just that among the chaos that life threw at us we stopped fighting for one another and started fighting against each other. Our visions changed and we no longer saw eye to eye. We were always the opposites attract, but somewhere in our years the tie that bonded us was broken.  We did our best to mend and repair but no matter what we did there was always the obnoxious knot keeping us from smoothing it back together. 

I want to thank you for so many things, we created two amazing boys. You opened your heart and your arms to my three children by way of choosing to be their father and loving them as your own. You taught me to not fear the unknown and to not be fearful of those things I can not control.  You taught me how to be self-sufficient and resourceful.  You created the need to learn how to mange a family of seven on a tight budget and then worked hard and duteous to allow the kids and myself the ability to participate in extra curricular sports and activities.  You listened when I pushed you to think more of yourself and to reach for those jobs and positions you thought were unobtainable. You did your best to give us what we needed and then pushed harder to give us what we wanted. For all of these things I thank you.

I do hope that you will find healing and happiness.  That someday you will come to see that I did not come to this decision easily. That I fought hard and tediously to keep our family together but in the end I knew what was best for all of us was to call “the game on account of rain”.  I hope one day you will be able see that we are better apart than together.  Thank you for everything, the good, the bad, and the experiences. They have helped me to write this letter, to not have hate in my heart, and to pray that one day you will find peace and great happiness because of our life together and because of its end.

With love, forever and always,

Your wife