Dear XXXX-

Your name has been deleted to protect you. This is the letter I will never send, but I will always wish I had.

You may be a good person. You may have the best of intentions. This may have started innocently.

I can't sit here and bash who you are, your character, or the way you live your life. What you should know however, is there are more people involved her than you and her. Does your wife know? Your child? What would they think? Would they feel betrayed? Hurt? Angry?

I have felt all those things in the last 2 weeks. I know I have made mistakes in my relationship. I may not have pulled the proverbial trigger, but I put the gun in her hand. She looked for things outside our relationship that she wasn't getting within it. I understand my role in this mess, and I accept my culpability in this. However, the real question is why cross the line?

Why create this situation regardless of how pure the motives. Maybe you were just trying to make her feel better, to take away her pain. Noble. It stopped being noble when it started being an affair. When pictures only her husband should have seen changed hands. When the words I love you were no longer platonic. When the discussion included being willing to give yourself over to each other in every way.

If my marriage ended I would be lost; destroyed, but I would have wanted her to find someone else. I don't know how to cope with the fact that while we were married she gave herself to you. Whether it was physical or not, it may have well have been. I don't know how to deal with her sitting on OUR bed talking to you about intimacy. I don't know how to handle her taking pictures of herself in things I bought her and sending them to you. What would you do if your wife did that?

When I found out I told her to choose. She said she choose me. That she wanted to give our marriage a real try. I don't know if she has stopped talking to you. I suspect she hasn't. I can't compete with the fantasy. You have never had to talk to her about money, problems, or have worked with her health. It's easy to be perfect 3 states and reality away. I hope she sees that. The grass is greener because it has more shit in it...

I have assumed so far your motives are pure... or as pure as an affair can be, but what if they aren't. What if it feeds your ego to get a married women to say things to you she should be saying to her husband? What if this isn't the first time you have cheated on your wife. Perhaps this letter should be sent to her.

Leave my wife alone. Respect the promises we have made each other. Try and respect your wife enough to leave her before you start this. From one man to another, try and imagine being blind-sided by this. Maybe this happened to you in your first marriage... if so I can't believe you would cause this pain...