and what I finally emailed to A2

subject: thoughts before tomorrow

You mentioned your sessions that you have set up with Nina. Here are some thoughts from my perspective that you can feel free to share (or pass this message on to her, if you like).

First, speaking of working with Nina, I sincerely hope you are trying to look into your challenges in achieving emotional intimacy, and NOT pursuing some course of action that you hope will result in restoring our partnership relationship. I'm too far down another road now to go back, and continuing to entertain thoughts of “winning the relationship back” will only lead to hurt and disappointment.

(and just so it's clear, I don't intend to accommodate your request to "get together and talk" while you're in this area. It would not be appropriate, and I do not want to give any more mis-impressions than have already occurred. In fact, I'm pretty much feeling like my periodic calls keep giving you false hope of rekindling things / repairing things "soon". I don't want to give you any such impression.)

I've struggled since Sunday night after our conversation with what more I should say and how.

A few impressions and observations:

over the course of our involvement, we went from friends, to good friends, to lovers (but not "in love" in the traditional way or by words expressed) or "friends with benefits", and earlier this year, you even began to refer to me outright as "my significant other". You referred to me in that way without ever professing deeper feelings (love). To the contrary, you kept me at an emotional arms-length, with statements like “it will be a LONG time before you'll hear the “L” word come out of MY mouth. " ( Valentine's weekend this year,). Or, being scared / fearful when you thought I was saying, about to say, implying or getting close to saying "I love you", even with relatively safe statements like, “you know I love how you are” And you reacted with near-panic.

This spring, it became painfully clear to me that true, deep emotional connection and intimacy was unlikely with you unless you did a lot of work to resolve inner issues in that regard...

I began to consciously move on emotionally (within) after taking stock and after reading an article about what makes a man fall in love. The article, together with some of your fearful reactions to the idea of being "in love" caused me to examine what existed between us and understand that there really wasn't any deep sharing of emotions between us - and without that, we were not truly emotionally intimate and would not be becoming so.

And, as summer began, I had come to realize that my own feelings for you were deep friendship and deeper affection, but that I was not “in love” and didn't think that was any mutual prospect for the foreseeable future. By mid-late summer, I consciously opened up to another involvement. As that began to flower, I made a difficult decision to reduce our involvement strictly to friendship. And, Linda, that's where it has to be. I'm headed down another road. You have ambitions to pursue. This is not "our time".


I also have to say that I was truly, truly stunned to find out Sunday night that back in late January you actually thought I was with ME, my truly crazy Ex. I'm utterly flabbergasted that after knowing how far I had to come to end that relationship, and how utterly I had to cut off contact because of the craziness and crazy-making... despite knowing all that, and being there for me as I healed from that for nearly 1 1/2 years.... you thought I had reconciled with her and was entertaining her at my home.

I'm not offended, or hurt... just simply quite stunned at the revelation and the lack of understanding of me in deeper terms.

I wish you all the best in all your endeavors, and I will support you in every way that I can. But I have to be clear that I have moved on.