When Sharon Hewitt's fiance told her about his love for another woman she was stunned. In the months that followed, she decided to remain optimistic and wait for her fiance to make his mind up. Her story prompted many letters; our favorite comes from caringtoo, who struggled after the man she lived with for six years abruptly left:
Dear Sharon,
Yours is a well-written and clear letter, one that I appreciate more than I will be able to convey.
Why did your choice so affect me?
Because I am in a similar position. I've lived with a man for 6 years. The first three were wonderful but he left me each year for a month or so which was always shocking.
I acted in the opposite way that you did, full of fury and rage. When those emotions passed he would show up again and I would accept him. Through this, I had the most severe pain and then realized that my love for him was different than his love for me, but that he most definitely did love me as was proved by the last three years when he overcame so many inner obstacles, so that our life together was nearly perfect. Mutual love, much growth and thrilling happiness.
Yet for reasons I won't go into here, our relation was always both complete unto itself and so unconventional that I knew we would have to separate again, for a long time perhaps.
I knew and we openly discussed the reasons that for all our happiness, tuned-in-ness, twin soul feelings, that he would have to be with someone else due to be younger by far than I am. We never knew when that would happen and then it just did.
Funny that I was also in the states and he was abroad, when he met this gal who is now the love of his life. I was at first accepting but then as he distanced from me (which is natural of course) I went crazy inside.
Until I have begun to realize that our bond, now less than perfect, is permanent in our hearts, that this love has given us each so much more strength and dare I say, self-love and of course I'm in the harder position but I always knew that. He is young; I am not. He needs to marry and have children. I was married twice and have a daughter and a son and much more life experience if also currently more pain. But I know I will traverse this, find other if less potent bonds, new people to love.
Last, I told him everything I am saying here, and that helped a lot. That I will love him forever even if we are now apart and not together. I trust in time that I will get to know her and celebrate that due to our long time together, he was strong enough to find a great love and that I am part of that, as he told her on their first date. It's rough going and yet it does have God or immanence inside it, it's not what most would choose but I did choose it and here's hoping we both become stronger and better for our loses, mine maybe longer than yours, yours hopefully temporary.
You surely do know how to love and that itself will bring you future gifts with the ex-fiance or someone new. All best to you, please do ignore the conventional comments here, as I did.
To read the rest of the letters, click here.
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