Hope you are ok – I am pleased that you have sorted your room without lots of fuss – I know that is what you wanted to do.

I don’t mean to be cryptic – and I certainly don’t want to distance myself from you or your decisions. Sometimes I find the discussions a little difficult. These sorts of decisions are very personal ones between you and someone one else – in exactly the same way as the ones I make are between me and another. I find it hard to know where the boundary lays in the conversation sometime – I don’t want to overstep the line and say something out of turn that might appear rude, indignant, or ill-judged because of a lack of understanding and I certainly don’t want to hurt you in the process. Plus of course try as I might I cannot be entirely neutral in some of the conversations as I have an emotional investment in them already.

It hurts me deeply to hear of you being ignored, to hear of how you are treated re: your telephone, to hear what you say about control over money etc. So notwithstanding all of what I have said above, I find the way in which you are treated really hard to understand or accept. But I suspect that you would say the same to me – and in part we have both been complicit in one way or another with our own current circumstances. I could (perhaps should) have done something more about my sleeping circumstances some time ago – but after a while it is simply easier to acquiesce….

In the same way that you do not want me to leave my new room I do want you to leave yours – but I know that you felt some discomfort in saying that to me. I don’t want you to hide feelings like that from me so please do say – I suspect that I need to do the same to you – to tell you what I feel. But sometimes it is hard – you said you felt horrid, (you weren’t being so), I feel jealousy. And then what I worry about is, can I enter into a helpful and supportive conversation with you if underneath it I am feeling jealous and therefore not impartial – I suspect not….

So it is not that I want to distance myself but rather I want you to make the right decisions for you. And if you do that, then whatever they may be, in turn I have absolute confidence that those will be the right decisions for “us” and for me. But that is not quite the same as you making a decision because you have been unduly influenced (even subliminally) by concern for me, or by some input from me which is not entirely as neutral as it should be.

I have chosen to sleep alone, I have chosen not to be pressurised into having sex – and I am content that this is so. For sleeping alone, in part this is because of you and what you mean to me – the need to keep you safe in my heart and to have regard for your heart too – but this was in the main a decision a long time coming for all sorts of reasons. For the conversation re having sex – again this change should have happened years ago – but this is different in that here your influence is paramount – for me there is you, so there can be no one else. So different thoughts / strategies / analyses for different circumstances – much should have happened before, some driven by “us”. And whilst I have tried to explain much to you about my choices, you have found some of it hard and distressing to hear and yet have not always felt 100% free to disclose that distress until it almost had to become too much for you to bear.

I want to help you – I want to talk – I don’t want to hurt you – I want the decisions to be good ones.

And most of all I want you my beautiful one – I love you x.