Mail from the Other Guy

I finished my last post mentioning an e-mail that I received from my wife’s affair guy in response to my messages demanding that he cease all communications.  I’m giving that mail and my analysis of it its own post here because of the significant impact it had on me.  It’s essentially just a bunch of lies and excuses in an attempt to justify his relationship with my wife.  While it initially did little more than further increase my animosity toward him though, I pondered the rationale behind this mail for over a year as it provided me with significant insights that I doubt he intended.

I’m not interested in just bashing or mocking him by posting this but rather trying to analyze his intentions and thoughts behind the affair.  That’s not to say that my analysis isn’t derogatory because his mail has a host of inexcusable lies, lame excuses, and unjustified attacks on me.  But simplistically assuming that he’s a just bad guy with no integrity and no redeeming qualities of any kind wouldn’t further my understanding of what attracted my wife to the relationship.  His actions were inexcusable, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t interested in learning what motivated them.

My apologies for not replying in length to your email but it’s not like I’ve ignored your emails requests.  I acknowledged that I received it, you hopefully didn’t lose sleep waiting for my agreement to your “terms and conditions”, etc. etc.  I’ve not written for the simple reason that I’ve been extremely busy working on the project in [his new city] and that includes weekly flights for meetings, trying to get organized [a bunch of meaningless information about his job including boasts about the millions of dollars related to the project].

Please don’t take my lack of a reply for assuming that I am “chicken” for not replying.  That is the last thing you should think.

I am writing today to let you know that [Wife] is and will ever be an incredibly important part of my life.  She has made an incalculable difference in my life and I think I’ve done the same for her AND YOUR life as well.  What we had and will always have is an incredibly close friendship.  No limits and no bounds to the friendship.  I know that might shock you to think that two people of the opposite sex could have a relationship of that sort without sex, but deal with it, as it happens.  We could talk about anything and everything and did so.  Virtually no topic was off limits though if something was too personal we respected that and didn’t press.  She is as good of a best friend as I’ve ever had, more so than my best male friend of 20 plus years.  As it’s said “It is what it is.”

I know you’ve come down really hard on [Wife] for the texting she did and she feels like a virtual prisoner in her life now.  Well if you can’t communicate with those who live in your house you communicate with those that are your friends.  That time when you were out with [Wife] at dinner and she texted me?  She texted to say how much fun she was having and how incredible the atmosphere was at [restaurant name].  Why?  Because I care about her, and she cared enough about both me and you, to let me know that and me she was having a good time.

I know you feel hurt and betrayed by finding out we are great friends.  It’s tough to think that  could have a friendship with another person let alone another male.  It happens.  I would like to think that because of our friendship that you and might become better friends and have a stronger marriage.  Marriage is a bitch at the best of times and when communication breaks down its worse.  Don’t ever not communicate.  But then again don’t ever beat a dead horse.  By that I mean you can’t harp over the same thing day after day after day.  (Funny the divorced guy giving advise to the married guy – by the way my Wife divorced me as she told me I was an “Economic Liability” as I was unemployed for some four years due to the shit economy – I was good at communication so that wasn’t the issue, but then again with women who knows . . .)

I understand your desire to cut off all communication by and between [Wife] and myself.  I think it’s a huge mistake as due to our friendship.  I can be a damn good “sounding board” and actually have great advise.  I also think it might create a huge rift of resentment between you two.  You can’t treat her like property; this isn’t the 1800’s.  The more you try to trap something, the more that something wants to escape.

Enough for now.  I encourage you to respond, though I doubt you will.  That’s fine, as I won’t lose any sleep over not hearing from you.

I only have ever wished and your entire family the very best and know deep in my heart that for a long time now your family has been heading that direction.  I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas, with much health and happiness to all.
Be well.
[His Name].

He was obviously under the assumption that I still believed the relationship didn’t involve sex. As far as my wife was concerned I was still going along with that claim, but I had pretty much determined it wasn’t remotely believable. One irony in this mail is that his claims about an innocent and platonic relationship only served to further solidify my opinion to the contrary. He was well aware that I knew about the constant daily texting and the lies that my wife had told in order to meet him, and he even brags about what a close relationship the two had. Someone who truly felt innocent would have made more of an effort to acknowledge my perspective and at the very least admit that the relationship looked suspicious. The fact that he was completely defiant was a clear indicator to me of his guilt.

He obviously objected to my calling him a coward as evidenced by his “chicken” comment and the general macho posturing.  I stand by that accusation though since he had failed multiple times to respond to me and was still cowardly avoiding any responsibility.  What really struck me though was the condescending tone and illogical attack at me.  He was accusing me of being an overbearing husband with antiquated views toward marriage, yet  I had just spent the previous three months with full knowledge of their relationship, attempting to allow my wife to manage the situation on her own terms. My wife was able to conduct the affair without detection because I was exactly the opposite of his characterization.

I understood the anger toward me though since I had directly attacked his character in the messages he was responding to.  Even though I was completely justified in that, he felt the need to strike a similar aggressive tone against me to retain his male pride.  Since I had given him no legitimate ammunition to attack though, he had to create this caricature of me wanting to own my wife and making her feel like a prisoner.  While it was far from the truth, he needed to portray me as the stereotypical husband acting out of sheer rage in order to assuage his own guilt.

His comments about helping our marriage and being some sort of advisor or “sounding board” initially struck me as absurd to the point of delusional. What I finally realized was that his bad marriage and affairs had left him with an immature view of relationships. He had no children and had been married to an independent woman who supported him for several years while he was out of work. The satisfaction that comes from being a contributing member of a family is something that he had never experienced, and he mistook the intimacy of an affair as the full scope of a relationship. Responsibility in his mind challenged that intimacy as opposed to acting as a foundation for a quality long term relationship.

He fantasized about acting as a sort of mentor to my wife and a proponent of our marriage not only to justify his actions but also to address his desperate need for validation. Intimacy was the area where my wife and I were struggling, and that’s where he felt an expertise. He minimized the value of our family and my role of provider because it was something that he didn’t understand, and certainly a role that he knew he couldn’t fill.

I wrote quite a long response to this mail, but I never sent it to him. I vacillated for weeks about sending it but then determined that if I did, he would feel compelled to respond.  I needed to concentrate on rebuilding my marriage, and a never ending war of words with this guy distracted me from that goal.  As it turns out though, it wasn’t the last communication we had, although I couldn’t possibly have predicted what came next. I keep promising the details of the definitive evidence I found to determine the affair very much involved sex, and that’s exactly what I’ll write about next.