This was letter I wrote to my wife that I referred to in the above story pleading with her to remove them from our family.

I have told you that I love you, I have told you that I forgave you, I have told you that I don’t hate you, but for the past six months I feel like you have put the relationship with them before our relationship and marriage.

I don’t live to hate like you said to me that weekend, as far as I am concerned he is dead to me, I want nothing to do with him nor his family. He is and was not my friend, he will never be, there is no way to forgive and forget what he has done, there is no going back from this. I am not filled with hate, I am still filled with pain and sadness. This pain and sadness comes from me feeling like you do not respect me enough to let them go. For the past six months, it has been a roller coaster ride for the both of us, I know it has not been easy for either of us. As I look back now at what I had to go through to assure myself that you would not leave me, to sit across the table from him, to try and let things go, I so desperately wanted you to love me and stay with me. I realize now that going through all that just showed me how much you really don’t care about how I feel or felt about this whole thing. For the past six months it has been all about you and covering this whole thing up and putting things back to the way they were. I hate to break it to you, things will never go back to the way they were, it just can’t and never will, and you need to accept that and like you tell me, we need to move on.
I know our marriage and friendship was not the best before this happened, so I do accept some responsibility for your actions, but you created this mess, I didn’t, it was not my fault. For the past six months I have done everything you have asked me to do, I truly truly tried, but I can’t do it. Not because I don’t want to, but because of the constant pain and anguish that it triggers being around them. I have read books and countless articles on how to bounce back from this. I even focused more on understanding your point of view of this whole thing, to understand that this is not all about me, but about us as a whole, us as friends, our love for each other.

I feel like you are living in denial, you are a different person, you are not the Kristin I became to love and know. I feel like you have been consumed with protecting yourself and not letting anyone find out what had happened and that has blinded you to how you have been for the past six months. The only reason I went on those outings or met with him or them, was for YOU, I did not want to lose you, I wanted to save our marriage, I wanted save our friendship. As degrading and humiliating as it was to sit at a table with him, I did it and I struggled each and every time, and each and every time a piece of me died inside because it was a reminder, a trigger and these horrible images and scenarios would start circling in my head, visions of when I caught you two together, not once but twice would flash across my mind. And as I sit there across the table, almost looking down at myself wondering, why is she doing this to me, why do I have to hurt so much for her to stay with me, am I that bad of a person, did I really treat her that bad before all this happened, did I not give her enough attention and did I not show her enough love and affection? At those moments, I felt worthless to you, I felt unloved, my self esteem was at an all time low, to me it felt like it was more important for you to make things go back to the way they were, and try as hard as you can to erase what had happened at all costs, regardless of how I was feeling at that moment. I really feel like you don’t understand the devastation and hurt that I felt and was feeling every time I was around him.

When I told you the other day that I can no longer be around them, that it is just too painful. Your response felt cold and calloused, you even through in there that you understood because “I can’t forgive and let go”. I only have to forgive the person that matters to me most, and that is you! The fact that you turned around and said you are still going there for Christmas clearly indicates to me where you want to be. You would leave me alone at home on Christmas to go over there. Please take a step back and put yourself in my shoes and tell me how would you feel?. Do you think I feel like I matter to you at this point? The pain and anxiety for the past six months, all to try and cover this mess up and return things back to normal, do you realize the toll it has taken on us and what that did to me? I am at the point now where I am taking my life back for me, I have decided that I deserve to be treated the same as I treat you, I deserve the same respect that I give you, I deserve the same amount of love and affection that I give you, and I deserve the same forgiveness that I did for you.
I know I am not perfect through all this, I know I have made mistakes, and I know I have not made it easy for you these past few months, but this situation is not atypical and you did not make it any easier by wanting to keep them around. You say you love me, you tell me you love me more than I ever will know, you tell me why can’t your love be enough, it is enough, but you don’t show it enough or express it enough! I know you are not a PDA person, and that is not my point nor what I am asking for. I need and want to feel safe with you, I need and want to feel loved by you, I need to know you care. I know my behavior sometimes makes you feel like I don’t care about you, and that I am only concerned with myself and that I am not listening to you. But that is only because I feel like I don’t know where I stand in your life, and in this marriage. So I become desperate for attention, affection, compassion or some kind of justification from you that it’s safe, and you are there for me, we are together through this and we are going to make it through. It becomes a viscous cycle, I get frustrated and angry, which makes you not want to be near me, which makes me more frustrated and self consumed as to why you don’t want to be near me, it sucks. That weekend you left to clear your head, when I came home and your car was gone, it devastated me, I felt like I did when I was in Indiana. When you told me you were going to move out, that hurt even more. That will NEVER happen again, I refuse to experience that pain and anguish ever again. Now more than ever, I need to you to show me you care. You put your arms around me in Lowes the other day, I fought back tears because that felt so good, it felt so good to be wanted at that moment, I actually felt secure in your arms, but deep down I know that it’s just not enough, I want more from you, I need more from you.

I know you feel guilty and horrible about what happened, I know you are beating yourself up inside, I know you hate yourself for what you did and you keep it all bottled up inside, and it is not healthy for you nor us, and it is changing you as a person. We both have changed as a result of this, but that does not mean things have to end or things cannot be better. I know compromises will need to be made, I know I need to let things go, and I have and will continue to work on that. I have never thrown any of this out in conversation in your face to try and hurt you, never, and I will never use this to hurt you. But I absolutely refuse to be dis-respected and absolutely refuse to be pushed to do anything that makes me feel degraded and worthless just to keep my wife from leaving me, no more, it stops now and never again. We need to treat each other better, we need to love each other more, we need to respect each other and know when something we want is actually hurting the other person.

I still love you, and like I said time and time again, I don’t hate you, even after all this, if you can accept that, and you still love me and you are still in love with me and still care, then I know we can make it work.

Her response to this letter was that I should leave her, that was it, it was a cold and callous response. She also sent messages to her girlfriend stating that I was a liar that I said I would make this work, but that I was too weak of a man to keep my word. Looking back this was her rationalization for being in denial of what she has done.