This is the email I received two and a half months post-discovery ...
"I write this because you deserve for me to be much more open and honest with you about myself than what I have been, not just last autumn but in general.
I write it rather than say it partly because I know that if I am to start talking to you about it in the current circumstances I would stumble all over the place and not get things across very well, but also because I do understand that I have taken a lot of choice away from you by lying to you, and so I want it to be entirely up to you whether or when you decide to read this at all rather than pushing it on you in some heated exchange.
If you want to talk about what I write, or write, or ignore it, or read it and pretend you never did, or laugh at me over it, or yell at me over it, or post the whole thing on Mumsnet and let them talk about what an asshole I've been, or if you don't give a shit about this at all - it's entirely up yo you.
Once I send this to you, I will leave it at that unless you bring it up.
What I'm about to write is not an attempt to justify lying to you, nor to justify how bad I have been at paying attention to how though things are for you. Please don't read this at being an attempt at excusing what I did.
It may go some way of letting you understand how I ended up making the choice I did (I know it's fully in your right not to care one bit), but the responsibility is still mine for making it, and I'll regret that for a very long time no matter what happens.
You told me you don't know how to be around me any more; that you feel you can't vent; that I'm meant to be your best friend, but you can't talk to me.
I don't know whether or not we can fix that, as much as I deeply want to.
But I want to give you this to lay myself as bare as I can to you, because I believe that if we are to have a chance and if there's to be any possibility for you to ever start trusting me again in even a small way, it's not sufficient for me to go back to being how things were before I lied to you. I need to be better, both because you deserve to be treated better and because I hate the way I acted and don't want to ever hurt you like this again.
I am trying to give you the option of knowing far more about how I think and feel and what I think my real and perceived shortcomings are than what I've told you about myself in the past.
I don't know if this is a good idea or not. I don't really know what to expect from writing this - if I'll just make you even angrier at me and even more certain things won't work, or if I'll finally get to hold you again (I miss holding you so much). I have no idea if it'll increase or reduce our chances.
I don't think it'll paint a particularly flattering picture, but it's me.
You know in part how introverted I am, and over the last few years I've very gradually opened up to you about just how far that extends, but in many ways I've just scratched the surface.
I've always been socially awkward, and as I started being interested in girls it just got worse. In my mind, over the years, I built up a lot of ideas and fantasies about how love, and later sex, should work, to fit with my then extreme shyness.
Later, as I overcame some of the worst of it, I deluded myself into thinking a lot of the things I now see as deficiencies were not really problems. E.g, I wasn't avoiding asking for help about things, I was just self sufficient. In some ways I benefited, and that made it easier to maintain these delusions, - I did well at school at least in part because I refused to ask for help about things out of shyness and instead persisted with seeking out answers myself and learned a lot in the process.
But that also just let me perpetuate the idea that nothing was wrong.
I went around pretending that avoiding talking to people was ok, and that not opening up to anyone was ok. That's at least part of the reason why my relationship to my brother and my mom is as superficial as it is - in many way they are pretty much strangers to me. Sometimes it makes me sad - I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, but I know that's largely because I've gotten used to it over so many years.
It extended into my relationship to women in that I had some really twisted ideas about how to attract women/girls. My idea of attracting a girl through my school years was to quietly brood over her to myself, write poems that they'd never see, and look at them in the class room while hoping they'd eventually notice me.
From '95/'96 or so I finally started realizing that I was a total idiot about it. In part because one of my colleagues at my first job was having massive success with women while doing - in my eyes - everything 'wrong'. He'd go up to strangers and say outrageous things, and get away with it. He'd be cocky and arrogant to women. He'd play the numbers and get better at social interactions, while I would rarely go out when I was attracted to someone, because of some ludicrous idea I'd 'wait' for her. I still persisted with a lot of my ideas, because it kept me comfortable in my shell, but I started having doubts.
Throughout this period, my relationship to sex formed in large part around a combination of figuring out how to get laid without manning up and fixing my shyness and lack of self esteem about my ability to attract women in the twisted ways I had considered the 'right' way.
I resorted to online sources, and chat lines etc., and ironically ended up with a sex life far wilder than most guys my age. But it was not fulfilling. I had built up a mental image of what sex should be like that the sex I had could not meet. I kept searching, trying different things, fantasies etc. looking for something that would make it as exciting and earth shattering as I pictured it was meant to be.
What took me years to realize was that a major part of the problem was that I've let my shyness evolve into a rigid need for keeping control of myself. I couldn't just give in and be passionate and enjoy myself. I kept over-thinking things in the same way that I did and to some extent still do with respect to talking to people.
I managed to have some 'relationships' of sort, but mostly I was looking for the wrong things in the wrong places, and feeling sorry for myself about not getting what I wanted.
When I moved to London I'd finally started understanding some of these things. I decided to make a real effort at overcoming some of these limitations. I started going out; I started going on chat lines at least some of the time looking for friendship and to talk to make actual connections with people rather than to just talk dirty... And then, ironically I met you by talking dirty rather than by the ways I'd started trying to improve.
And when I fell in love with you, part of me jumped at the opportunity to shut down my 'project' to fix these problems. In a way I regressed - I soon stopped going out again, stopped trying to make friends and rationalized it away as not being necessary any more since I'd found love.
On the upside, I had improved a lot in many ways - I subjected you to the poems (I still write sometimes; I still don't really know if you ever liked any of them or just found it cheesy) but I also told you what I wanted, and told you I wasn't in a hurry and at least I think I didn't come across as nearly the kind of needy, desperate person I would've come across as a couple of years previously. I did a lot of things right in pursuing you that I'd have fucked up in a heartbeat previously. I think a large part of that was down to for the first time in my life giving in to instinct rather than over-analyzing every step.
But I buried my head in the sand, and embraced being introverted and used you as my personal excuse - I was talking to you, and opening up to you in ways I've never opened up to anyone else, so clearly everything was ok.
And I got a chance to play out some of the things I'd made myself believe would make sex what I thought it should be. In some ways it was - sex with you was, and is, far better than what I'd experienced before.
I still thought it should be better, and blamed myself for that, and kept trying to find fantasies that'd give what I thought I was missing. I felt inadequate. But what I first realized a long time later was that my best experiences - all with you - happened the times where I got caught up enough that I didn't think but let my emotions and desires free.
You've said more than once that you feel I get more turned on when things get rough, and I thought so too for a long time, but while I do to some extent get excited about things getting a little bit rough, I've eventually realized that the reason I've gotten more turned on in those kind of circumstances is partly because it was harder to stay analytical the wilder things get - it helps me lose control - and partly simply because if I do get too analytical, I need more physical stimulation to stay excited...
When we started experimenting with meeting other people, I still did not understand how much a part me constantly wanting to stay in control played - not just in sex, but in everything. I started seeking the kinkier experiences because I thought that what I felt I was missing was down to just not figuring out what my fetishes or turn ons were. It also helped me justify to myself that I was being particular and choosy, rather than not getting as many responses or from the right type of women because I was still really bad at knowing how to approach things.
I got jealous of you, who can get pretty much anyone you want. I didn't get jealous over the sex - and so I didn't say anything. I got jealous over your ability to easily meet people and connect to people and how you could even go out and end up fucking someone in a nightclub while if I were to go out I knew I'd end up dancing and avoiding talking to people at all. I got immensely jealous over the whole BP thing. I didn't want to talk to you about it because it was petty, and I recognized that. It wasn't you doing these things that bothered me, but my own failings. But I still didn't really understood how I was failing or what to do to fix it.
Throughout this, I never once met someone who could give me anything approaching the experiences I've had with you. The best were ok. The worst just left me feeling I'd wasted my time.
It was first when we met up with couples together that I finally enjoyed myself enough to consider it worth it for the experience itself rather than to feed my ego and soothing the self esteem issues I didn't want to address.
It was not until probably 2007-2008 that things finally started clicking for me. I realized I was meeting women for all the wrong reasons, and that my problems with social interactions was a real handicap for me not just with women but in daily life. While I don't feel a need to have lots of friends per se - at least not when we've been on good terms, exactly because you've been the only friend I've needed - I started accepting it wasn't healthy for me to lock myself in as much as I have, and that wanting to go out and have sex with random women just to prove I could do it was a rather pathetic reason and didn't say anything good about me as a man.
I wanted to improve. You may or may not have noticed the variety of books I've been reading since, but they include conversational skills, self discipline, meditation and a variety of others. Some because I was seeking out ways of becoming better, some because I just wanted to branch out and not read the same geeky stuff and be more well rounded.
I'll admit to wanting to get other ways of meeting women too, not just getting better at social interactions in general, though that was a secondary thing. I had eventually found the ways I had used - AFF etc. - to be soul sucking time sinks that I just used to hide my inability to meet people in other ways behind.
When I started going out clubbing, my rationale was that it was the only way I'd had some limited success of overcoming my social handicaps before.
It had started working when I first moved to London - I did start talking to some people. And then I stopped going out after we started going out. When I started again, it worked a bit, I was able to have some conversations with strangers now and again.
I didn't set out to pick up anyone - though it was a great ego boost the few times I had good responses from girls, I spent most of the little time I spent in conversations talking to other guys because frankly it still terrifies me to go up to a strangers to start a conversation, and triply so if it's a woman.
Over the whole time I've been going out, I got three phone numbers from girls, mostly by chance, neither of them attractive to me. Of course this is probably because I never once asked for one. One of them I met up with for drinks with a few of her friends next time I went out, the other two I exchanged a few texts with and left it at that.
After a while I often ended up just dancing instead, defeating the purpose. It was fun, and nice to have time to myself, but ultimately it wasn't what I intended.
Still, through that, and through some other things, such as spending a lot of time practising eye contact and practicing minor small talk with cashiers etc., some of which I've mentioned or hinted at to you, I have over time gotten much better, just from an abysmal starting point. I have a long way to go, and still find myself resisting.
When you got pregnant I was terrified. I was happy, but I also had absolutely no idea what to expect, and I did not feel ready for a long time. I was worried about whether or not I'd be as distant and cold to him as I am to other people apart from you. I then started worrying about just how my deficiencies would affect him.
The day [DS] was born, many of my priorities shifted over night. I felt completely different. I knew instantly that I loved him unconditionally, and that I wanted to do everything to give him a good life. I loved you even more than before, for making me a father - if it'd been left to me, it would have taken far too long before I'd felt ready.
I was conflicted in some ways, in that I still held on to a lot of fantasies about how my life ought to be that were grounded in my failure to understand just what it is I'd been doing - how I liked the idea of going out and meeting and having sex with other women far more than the reality of it. It was frustrating giving up on things.
But even when exhausted, I've enjoyed being a father more than anything else.
When I wake up and don't want to get out of bed, I know it'll be ok because I'll soon get to sit down with him cuddling up next to me. When I'm leaving work, I instantly cheer up at the thought of seeing him light up when I pick him up.
Gradually I started realizing just how much better my life could be if I just dealt with my self-delusion and accepted and dealt with my shortcomings like a man instead of pushing it under the rug.
I accepted that I have to find some way of dealing with my social anxieties because while I could keep on pretending to myself, I needed to be better around you, and I also need to know I can be a good role model for [DS] and make sure he doesn't end up with the same problems with dealing with social situations.
At the same time, I was still deluding myself about sex. When time went by and we didn't start having sex again, and you got upset when I was hinting about it, I stopped trying and never stepped up and tried talking to you about it. I also didn't want to breech the subject of going out and meeting someone else with you, because I thought that would upset you too. I was ok with that for the most part, but I missed feeling closer to you. Overall, I felt it was frustrating but nothing I felt I couldn't deal with until things would get better.
When you started the [post-grad course], things both started falling into place and falling apart.
Falling into place in the sense that I realized that things wouldn't get any better if I didn't find some way of stepping up and prioritize family, and that it was more important for me to do that than chase some stupid fantasies, and it finally started hitting home what it was I was doing.
Falling apart because despite what I wanted, I just had no clue about what I needed to do. I genuinely thought that having [his family member as an au pair] with us was for the best even when you were telling me flat out it wasn't working - I told myself it'd be even worse if she wasn't there, probably at least in part because I didn't want to step up and tell her it wasn't working, and in part because I was still sticking my head in the sand about many things, and in part because I discounted what you said with the excuse that you were just saying it because you were tired and angry.
I got angry at you for getting angry at me for not helping around the house more, by telling myself the things you wanted done were unreasonable. I felt you pushed me away with your anger, and rather than face up to why you were angry, I acted like a spoilt child and withdrew further and shut down and stopped telling you things.
I still don't fully understand how I went from that to lying to you. Having in many ways withdrawn from you, I guess maybe I grabbed at the chance as a way of getting back to something that I felt I could have control over because I had blinded myself to the ways I could control the situation at home, while at the same time being too much of a coward to ask you. Or perhaps that was another way of trying to assert control over the situation.
Not having control scares the shit out of me, and overcoming that is my biggest challenge.
I'm not going to go any more into the ways I tried justifying it to myself, because they're all excuses and none of them makes lying to you any more acceptable.
Instead of leaving me feeling in control, it just left me numb. I think perhaps I went back that second time out of some twisted delusional idea that perhaps it just felt wrong because it'd been so long, and it'd feel more right the second time. It didn't. Instead it just made me feel empty, and fucked up and in contrast with those few moments we spoke the night before, I got ten times as much joy out of those few words from you. I've had two and a half months to try to figure out why I didn't at least stop and think and cancel after we had that chat, and I still don't have a good answer.
What I am left with is a massive feeling of shame that will persist for a long time, not only for having lied to you, but for having let all these things go unchecked in the first place; for not having understood the many other ways I've been wasting my time on chasing illusions when I could have put in a real effort at improving myself and being both a better man, husband, and now father."