Hello all, I would really appreciate some insight into what I am trying to accomplish. I am getting married in 4 weeks to a woman I have been in love with for 17 years. She left me when I was 21 after dating for 1.5 years and I never stopped loving her. I have written this letter of closure and was planning on giving it to her, but would like some feedback. Thank you for your patience in this long read and all input is greatly appreciated.

It is so strange that I am writing you this letter for closure. I have dreams of what I could have said to you; what I would have said to you back then. I guess this is it. My opportunity to let you know how you really made me feel and your actions that led to the less than desired results you had in mind. I have written this a dozen times, deleted it and started over. I wanted to wait 1.5 years to give you this. I wanted you to look at our relationship and see how happy we are now, just as we were happy back then. I wanted you to think if at this very moment, I had done to you what you did to me how lost and confused you would feel; how utterly betrayed, how disgusted that I would treat you with absolutely zero respect while you did nothing but try to love me. The disadvantage to me with this scenario is you have life experience and the coping skills to deal with this level of betrayal that I did not at 21. I know this letter is not written for the person you are now, it is for the person you use to be.

If you love someone you work at it together. That is what I wanted to do. There was no real reason for what happened other than intentions that were not based on love, honesty and truth. There was no cursing or screaming, no disrespect from me. Never did I hurt you and I was never unfaithful to you. Most of all I never neglected your needs, I was there for you 100% in every way. You were starting over and I was under the impression we were doing it together. When you finally spoke to me you said I was young, immature; a stupid kid, I wasn’t a real man like him. You told me that so many times it was ingrained into my psyche. You didn’t help with the business, didn’t encourage success or have any intentions of actually helping our future. You never contributed anything to our household and the sole financial burden was on this kid. I was a stepping stone, a brief pause for you to party, pass the time until you found someone who was worthy of you as I obviously was not.

The thing that is most hurtful about this breakup is the way you did it. It was shocking, abrupt, and accusatory; it was an attack on my person, my personality as a human being and my family. You stripped me of my self-respect, my goodness and my honor. I have never felt so violated. You took advantage of my innocence and crushed it so that it would never exist again. And you went from one day to the next with absolutely no feeling whatsoever, no remorse, no regrets after the way we loved each other. I had become a nuisance that interfered in your agenda. After all these special moments that have stuck with me over all this time, the love making and softly spoken words of love to each other; the promises of a future and love. I would’ve understood if we were having problems and the relationship was in turmoil months before and we were trying to make it work, but you abruptly ended it after many weeks of sleeping with him and crawling back into our bed. Do you know how hard it was to sleep in that bed? To lay there knowing you so quickly dismissed us and became his new toy. To think I had so much love and respect for you and you instead threw it away in the hopes of getting your new car. To think about all the lies and betrayal you weaved, the fact that you blamed me for everything, the horrible and vile things you said and did to me that have haunted me my entre life. You made me feel horrible about myself, I felt ugly, inadequate, lost, confused, stripped of my personality, I doubted myself and lost myself completely in you. I felt like this horrible monster you made me out to be. I felt like you hated me, and despised me in every way and couldn’t stand the site of me. You were the victim of my love and you called the cops on me for no other reason than to justify your selfish decisions and play the role of victim in our relationship.

But I know in my heart I did not do anything to make you feel this way towards me, I did not. I know I tried my best to make you happy. I know I was a valuable, loving and good human being, capable of loving and deserving to be loved and respected. I gave love. That’s all I wanted to give you and to receive back from you. Your affection and love. Never again did I give it, never again did I want it.

I now know, I did not deserve this. I deserved a good loving relationship. I deserved to have someone love me and respect me the same way I did them. I had become so broken, that never again was a possibility. I was so nervous, I could not be myself. I could not be Casey. You would scream and belittle me; I would shake; uncontrollably and you would laugh at me telling me that I was just a kid and he was a real man as you stood in the doorway in the early morning without even hiding what you had been doing. But the worse thing of all was that I did not realize it was wrong to accept this and to live this way. It was wrong, unrealistic for you to expect this from me. But there were other issues here that I did not realize were wrong and I overlooked because I loved you. I overlooked so many red flags. The frequent trips to Chicago while I was packing and moving us over and over again. I had told you not to get the surgery, that I thought you were perfect. I’ll never forget the day you looked me in the eyes and said you were going to spend the weekend with him. You said, ‘‘they are his and he wants to play with them, but at least you got to play with them first.’’ That statement truly symbolizes what you thought of yourself. You were just a piece of property, to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. There is no room for love when someone holds themselves to being a sex object, you would brag about your golden pussy and how it got you what you wanted. I would have gone to the bank and borrowed the money, I would have co-signed for you a new car. There are no ends to what I would have done for you because I loved and respected you. You blamed the trips on sleeping with him so he would get you work, that he was your friend, but not to worry, Steve always wears a condom; he is safe that way. Was that supposed to make me feel better? In the end you promised you were through with him, that he was no longer going to help you and the arrangement was done. The few times I have brought him up you became defensive. I know there is more to this story and that I will never know the real truth; I’m sure I couldn’t bear to hear it; so he was done and you moved on to your next man without ever thinking about us or me, the consequences for behaving in such a way.

I can truly say that you were the most painful, most hurtful event I have ever been in because you hurt my self esteem, you attacked my personality, when all along I thought you loved me. I thought you loved me the same as I loved you because you told me you did. You told me I was the only person you ever connected with. All we did was laugh and love, why would I think any differently? You took me to meet your family, we had lived together for 1.5 years while I had taken care of you. It was a betrayal that was planned and systematically executed without any remorse or hesitation. It sent me to a place I can’t explain, a place so dark that it consumed my every sleeping and waking thought. There were several times when I had planned out my escape, I was going to show you what you did to me. I was going to take you to my world and let you see how dark of a place it was. If my family had not intervened, I am certain I would have followed through with it and I would be another distant memory of yours. Knowing me; really knowing me, can you imagine where I must have been to have my family try to have the State get involved? To have actually planned out my suicide and was going to carry it out; to have so much despair and pain that it could not be escaped? You have told me that those were the best years for you, so I’m glad you had that; because those are the darkest years of my life. What made them the best years? Driving around in one of his cars; going out to eat; staying at fancy hotels, living in his beach house, living at his condo? What made those years so great for you that it justified what you did to me? How are they so great when he did not respect you and I did? He was 17 years older than you and knew the game and played you. If you respect a woman you don’t sleep with her then send her home to crawl into bed with her man then disrespect her even further by throwing it in her face. Look at how disgusting and evil that relationship started, look at his character and how he treated you and other people; you wantonly left me for that and stayed in it, how could I not be considered a joke. How sad to stand here and see the full circle, to have been there when you made that decision, the way you justified your actions and the treatment I received; while seeing the outcome and how dearly it cost you…he robbed you of so much and you wantonly handed it to him. You did not gain anything, it actually devalued you even more. That nothing was gained except lessons that did not need to be learned, this is what you threw me away for and gave 15 years of your life, hotel keys and a few material possesions. I wish you could comprehend how this made me feel less than; always needing to prove something in my life. I hope that one day before I die, you can write me a letter and explain how you did this to me so easily.

With every part of my soul I know we were supposed to be. I was your opportunity to start fresh and have a wonderful life working together and building our future. We would of had our first home together and been successful in business, it was all handed to us for us to start our life together.We were going to feed off each other and explore life in a way that very few get to. I knew then as I know now; you are my soulmate.

I hate that the opportunity was there and it was not seized. I hate that 15 years were wasted. I hate that so much hurt and pain had to take place. I hate that deep inside I will always know that I was never good enough. I hate the life lessons we learned were so costly. I hate what I became. I hate what you were. I hate the fear and the self doubt. I hate that you left me for someone who didn’t love you. I hate that you did not love yourself. I hate that you did not love me back.

So here we are now, awakened from a self inflicted nightmare.

I love you. I do not know what else to do with you. My soul has always yearned for you and I have missed you terribly. I love you more now than I ever did. I love what a wonderful, thoughtful, caring person you have become. I love how strong you are now. I love you have found your self worth. What it comes down to Tina is no matter what happened, I am still madly in love with you and want to spend my life making you happy.

I am grateful to have you back in my life and will never let you go through a second of the day without knowing how much I respect you, love you, and cherish each and every moment with you. I will spend my life as your husband, loving you the way you were meant to be loved. I will always be here for you to lean on; always here to protect and cherish you; always here to make you laugh; always here…