in my letter to DP.....

[AmcryingbecauseIloveyou]

Below is a letter I intend to give to my DP tomorrow. I'd like to know if anyone could give me some feedback, how they'd feel if they got this, anything I could rephrase/omit/make clearer?

There are a lot of things I want to say so it seemed easier to just write it all down and give it to him. Also less risk of getting emotional (I cry at the drop of a hat!)

Thanks in advance

So it begins:

Dear DP,

I love you and want to be with you always. I am committed to us, and believe we are a good match for one and other, and want us to work through everything together.

I have thought long and hard about this situation, and the only thing that is in every way non-negotiable with me in our relationship is the issue of your drinking.
I acknowledge you have worked incredibly hard to change this, both for your own personal reasons and also to appease my feelings. But the situation is still not resolved, because on some occasions it still creates a problem in our relationship. It is not acceptable to drink to excess, to the level you do on rare occasions, and I will not tolerate it happening again. I know a lot of people struggle with it, but it is just not something I am capable of accepting anymore. If it happens again, that will be enough for me.

Other than this, I am very happy in our relationship. I love you very much and think you are very considerate and loving. I am so grateful how you provide so much for me and offer me so much commitment.

I need to work on:

• -Considering your feelings when I make judgments about your family and your career/job / work relationships
• Supporting you in your decisions in relation to your career
• Being so anxious about our relationship and consequentially letting this anxiety effect my mood
• Stop being so dramatic / unnecessarily emotional and letting any situation elevate into a full-blown crisis
• Try not to go over and over the same things (though I do this as a result of my anxiety, I appreciate it is stressful for you).

I think these are the things that effect you the most, but I would really like it if you could give me your own list, so I can take in everything you need from me.

I would like it if you would:

• Continue to address your drinking
• Work towards being more attentive to details and planning and sharing the responsibility for these things. It feels like a burden sometimes to be the only person who seems to be worried about the how, when, how much aspects of the plans we make together
• Work on being better with our money (and your contributions to that)
• Try to remain as calm as you can when we discus things that are stressful. For example, our plans for mid year ? even though I know I do ask you about this a lot.

I am not trying to make you, nor do I want you to feel as if all our problems belong to you. You support me much better than I support you. I think we contribute equally to what works and what doesn?t work with us.

I love you, I will always love you. This is a particularly hard time for us, but not in terms of our relationship, I don?t think, more so in terms of the situation we find ourselves in. But I am prepared and believe we can get through this time if we communicate better together.

A lot of people say you shouldn't write a letter like this, that you should talk, but many people find that they simply cannot be as articulate talking face to face, because their emotions get in the way, so what they want to say is lost in crying / shouting / stammering.

For that reason, writing it all down and letting the other person take time to read it (over and over!) can be really useful.

I think your letter is very balanced. It is not really accusatory, it's nice and balanced. It takes time to list ways you can change, so it's not just a big list of his faults It emphasises how much you love him, which is vital.

I think it's a good letter.

sorry for repeated use of balanced there.

Have you both tried counselling? I know it sounds like the easy answer but counselling is hard work but can really pay off imo. It sounds like seperate counselling would be good with maybe a few combined sessions, you for your anxiety and him for his drinking.

When I first got together with my dp he had issues from his past because his ex had cheated on him with his friend, I had issues because I'd be in an abusive relationship (both mental and physical) we needed to work out how to have a normal relationship and now we've been together 7 years and are getting married, we still have the odd arguement but on the whole we are a much stronger couple.

The feeling I got from it is that you are putting in writing a very big thing - that if he gets completely drunk again the relationship is over - but it's quite hidden. And you don't say it all that clearly:

"It is not acceptable to drink to excess, to the level you do on rare occasions, and I will not tolerate it happening again. I know a lot of people struggle with it, but it is just not something I am capable of accepting anymore. If it happens again, that will be enough for me."

• it sounds a bit vague to me. Vague enough for him to get very drunk, you remind him of your threat and for him to claim that you never made it.

Another thought - if his drinking is non-negotiable with you, why are you (it seems) saying that he can drink, just not to excess. That sounds highly negotiable to me.

People with an alcohol problem often can't drink without drinking to excess.

Sorry this isn't much help is it . . . I get the impression that this is the main problem yet in the letter it comes across as ignoring the elephant in the room.

It's a very timid letter.

I think it is a good letter, but i think you should screw it up and put it in the bin! It is very "critical parent" Im having counselling and she is helping me to recognise patterns in behaviour - that we ALL have.

If you become the "critical parent", he will respond like the "adapted child" basically with petulence (sp) and resentment. It is impossible to communicate like this.

I think you need to ask him to go to counselling with you, or you need to go yourself - you have flagged up something vitally important and that is your anxiety - that is why im in counselling and it affects everything and is very difficult to deal with and makes your decisions/views skewed to the "what if" worse case scenario.

There are relationship issues for us, my DP wont go to counselling - thats his choice, but it works for me, and does actually affect the way DP behaves to, because in learning to manage my own behaviour, it means i indirectly manage his if that makes sense.

My counsellor has never suggested writing things down, ive done it in the past and well, its never ended well.

It does sound like he is at least making an effort with the drinking so you need to encourage this - i understand your need to make it clear that you will not tolerate the alcohol abuse - maybe ask him to get help?

What is his problem with alcohol? My DH is an alcoholic and has been sober for 2 years. I tried all sorts of threats about his drinking, but the only thing that worked was when he recognised that it was a problem and sought help. It won't work until he sees that there is a problem.

If I sent that to my DP, I don't know what he would take away from it - I think there is too much going on in it to be effective, IMVHO.

What is the one most important thing you want him to take away/do as a result of getting the letter? (I'm guessing that would be the drinking). I would pare it back and concentrate on that, personally. Anything else will distract and potentially confuse your message.

Personally, I would leave the 'lists' for another day, and probably re-think what I actually mean by things like 'be better with our money'. I know with my DP I would need to define what I meant a bit more clearly in terms of what I/we expect to make sure we were both on the same page - like agreeing some sort of practical, tangible solution for the problem which we are both happy with, e.g. rather than 'you need to be better with our money' - try 'we will both try to stick to a weekly/monthly budget we have agreed is realistic', IYSWIM.

Oh, and I do think discussing it would be much better than giving him the letter - although I think writing the letter is important for you to organise your thoughts and what you want to get out of the discussion.

Talking about it instead isn't such a good idea because it's far more likely that if he forgets what was said, the onus will fall on you to prove it, whereas with a letter the onus is on him to read, absorb and understand it.
I think you should go ahead with the letter but I agree with what BalloonSlayer says. Men do need certain things spelled out for them, not because they're any less intelligent, but simply because of the way their brains function differently to women.