So I woke up in the middle of the night and randomly decided to check my phone and saw your email and so I read it, and my mind wouldn't stop thinking about it and I couldn't sleep, so I figured I better go sit down and get my thoughts out to you. As I was reading what you had written, I thought, "she has every right to feel frustrated/angry/hurt/etc" and I have been continually bothered by my choices and actions lately in regard to you. I was talking to my bishop on Sunday and he said that I need to recognize that one of my big weaknesses is physicality and that I really need to focus on strengthening that weakness, and I completely agree with him. And it's a weakness that I have failed spectacularly at strengthening much while we have dated. But before you feel too hurt or angry, I have a lot more to say because you are right, there were many things going through my head on Saturday, and these things also played a factor in previous times we've been together.
First of all, I do care about you a lot. We have had some great experiences together, great talks, and great times. We are also in a very similar situation in life. I say that first to help frame the way I think my mind has come to see our relationship and in a large part how I've come to (wrongly) justify initiating or being physical during any of the time we've spent together in the past little while. We both know and have expressed how hard it is to be single so long, and obviously we both know how nice it is, and how comforting it is to be with someone. It takes away part of that ache. I think there have been multiple episodes in our relationship that have caused me to believe that at times when (according to my perspective) we both felt like the relationship couldn't go anywhere, but still cared a lot about each other, we would hug longer, or kiss, because it was comforting and it was something we could do for one another. I know that seems weird or twisted, but there are some examples that stand out in my mind that may help you see how I might come to think that. The most prominent is the first time we did something after that first bigger mess up. You came down to the house in Provo I was living at, if I remember right we had kind of a group date thing going, and afterwards we hugged and kissed a little bit, but then I asked if we could go on a drive and talk, and I expressed how I felt like I couldn't kiss you anymore because I felt like it was cheapening the repentance of that previous time things had gone to far when I came up to Salt Lake. So we drove around for a while talking, and we both expressed feelings about being single, about each other, and at the end of the conversation we were kind of at the point where we felt like things were over because it wasn't feeling right. And I was going to do my best not to kiss you, and I think what was going to be a brief kiss (mutually initiated from what I thought) ended up going a lot longer, and I (weakly) made attempts early on to pull away, but you didn't seem to be having that (I'm not blaming anything on you, if I really wanted to stop it I could have) but in my mind I thought, "We're both kind of suffering right now, and this conversation hasn't been easy for either of us, and we care about each other a lot, so I guess this is just a way we can show we do care about each other and maybe comfort each other at a difficult time." Now obviously looking at this objectively, I don't see this as justifying kissing when you're not dating, but that's what was going through my head. And then afterwards you said, "Thank you. I needed that." Which made me feel a lot better about it, and in my mind reinforced the reasoning behind it happening.
Is this making any sense? I feel like this wasn't an isolated experience, and that before and after in one way or another, in my mind we kind of reinforced this notion that this was happening, whether we'd be kissing and one or the other of us would jokingly ask, "what are we doing?" and we would kind of laugh and keep kissing or we would kiss after going too far and talking about it, but this later kiss was meant to be more out of gratitude or whatever. Now just mix that train of thought in with the fact that it was really hard (certainly for me, but I felt like for both of us) to close that door of being physically close and still do things together, AND that when we would get together we would have a better time together than maybe either of us expected to and I think we both would have thoughts like well maybe this could work...
I think that on Saturday all of the things I've mentioned were coming into play. First, I was having a great time with you. And second, there was that physicality door that we had never really figured out how to shut, and like you have said, we are both very comfortable around each other. Third, it had become easy for me to see the physicality as something that you (and I, obviously) liked, that made you feel good, comforted, etc., and so things like giving you a massage felt good to do because I could tell it was making you happy and I wanted that. Then when we had a long hug afterward the movie, and you asked what I was thinking, and I responded that my thoughts were complicated or whatever, it didn't seem to phase you and thus further reinforced in my mind the pattern and the justification of us being close because we cared about each other while feeling things weren't going to work out, and this was a way we could comfort each other. In my mind, I figured that's how we both felt about it. I was going to leave in 3 weeks, we'd already had a decently drawn out relationship history of ups and downs and things weren't feeling right to move forward, but we still cared about each other this is how we've kind of always been haha.... (I laugh because it is true, but like you, I do want to convey that I'm being serious). Now I see that we were not on the same page, and that by cuddling, or giving the massage, or anything that happened, I was being very unfair, selfish, and lazy by letting myself fall into those things rather than being strong like you were, which I am so grateful for.
I hope something I've said resonates with how you've felt at least in part, or at the very least you can see how our past interactions could lead me to make these justifications (justifications that I kind of always thought we were making together). Maybe I was making them alone the whole time, I don't know.
I have to say that in writing all this, there is a part of me in the back of my mind that keeps saying that I'm just making excuses for my weakness towards being physical. And I use the word "justification" a lot in this email because at the end of the day, I should never have chosen to kiss you while we were not officially dating, and that is a mistake and a burden I have to carry. All of the things I've written are things that were going through my mind, but that doesn't excuse in the least my choices. I could have been a lot stronger from the first time we decided to do something after we had officially "broken up" and the precedent for justifying in my mind the way I have explained would never have become a pattern.
I have tried to paint a picture of my thought process through all of this, and I am so sorry about the result of it. I feel so weak and ashamed, and I feel like the consequence of this is that I've messed with your emotions and feelings. These things that have been going through my head explain what I was thinking, but seem to me to be a large part just a justification for a weakness. None of those things I was thinking was sound, gospel-derived logic, and I guess they simply helped me to see the world in a way that made my choices not as bad. That is definition of what a justification is. The pattern of our choices made them easy to repeat, but I am very responsible for that pattern.
I need to ask your forgiveness again. Yes, there were a lot of things going through my head, but at the end of the day and despite all that, I have displayed some pretty disappointing weakness and you have the right to feel insulted or used. I am so sorry. I have let you down, I've let Heavenly Father down, and I've let myself down. I have lots of repenting to do and I know I need to get back to a place I used to be spiritually where I was stronger. You are stronger, and I thank you for your example. I don't know what else I can do to make this right, but I want to do anything that I can. You have been a great friend and my choices in relation to that friendship have been small-minded and weak. It is interesting for me to see how Satan has slowly been binding me down through my thoughts and actions over a long period of time. I am frankly afraid of where I am at right now, and I have a long ways to go.
Wow, this is way too long. I am sorry I have been so long winded. If anything in here doesn't make sense, keep in mind that I did write it in the middle of the night :) and feel free to ask for any clarifications. I hope you were able to get some good sleep.
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