Message for Ruth (WIP)

Hi Ruth –

This has been so intense, in the best way that a human can experience intensity. You’ve woken something up in me that I haven’t felt in years, and I’m so grateful for that. You gave me human kindness and comfort that I haven’t felt in over a decade. Our time in Hawaii was like I was riding MDMA. 

Distance from you is so painful for me. It’s wild how much I miss you.

I don’t want to watch either of us burn our lives to the ground.

After a lot of soul-searching and jorunalling, this is what I have come up with. This is hot precisely because it’s so destructive to both of us.

In another time this could work. Or maybe this is what it looks like when it works.

If this thing between us is more than just a passionate fling, and if there is any change of something working romantically between us, I have to do a two things first:

1. I need to deal with my marriage, cleanly and honestly. If I don’t, it will torch my family, my kids, and our reputations. I care about you too much to drag you into the middle of that mess. I need to separate my marriage without you being the reason. Even still, it’s going to be painful and messy.
2. I want you to thrive in your career and I don’t want to compromize your future here or mine. We would need to make career changes to our reporting structure.

I want you to know that you aren’t the cause of my pending divorce. I didn’t share the details with you but I have been suffering in my marriage silently for a long time. I thought that once committed to marriage, there was never a reason to leave. I stoically thought that I had to take on all the pain. But over the past year or so, I’ve reflected that just maybe that is all wrong and that I deserve more. That my kids deserve to be around a dad who’s actually happy in his relationship and not around parents who fight and don’t always bring out the best in each other.

You woke me up to the fact that I don’t need to settle, you reminded me what intimacy and fun feels like, and that I am loveable. And it felt so amazing.

Once I have cleaned up my wreckage, I’ll see if you’re still around.

So right now, I need to step back from anything personal between us and just be back to strictly business. I gotta cool my jets and take a pause.

I don’t know where life will land us after that. Maybe it brings us back together, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe this space will give you time to find someone to build a family with. But if we do get back together, it will be clean, it will be fair, and it won’t put your career, your relationship—or mine—in jeopardy.

That’s where I’m at. Sucks to admit it for me. It won’t be for me but I need you help.