The Cold Hard Truth

I gave him back his dignity. I gave him friendship, kindness, tenderness, love, understanding, respect, forgiveness, and support. I taught him how to be a man, a father, a son, a friend and a partner that he could be proud of, and that others would admire. I accepted him just the way he was and gave him the chance to be whatever kind of man he wanted to be. And he chose to betray me, not just make a difficult decision, but to maliciously injure me. He turned callous and cruel without explanation or apology. He lied about our relationship and about me, in an attempt to rob me of my truth, my dignity, and my worth.

And he did all of this, to earn points with someone else, to please and console someone else, by abusing and denigrating me. I was used for punishment and reward in a relationship where they are, and always have been incapable of being honest, caring, or accountable. And.....this is the relationship I rescued him from. The one he spent years convincing me had been a mistake from the beginning and he wanted out of. The one he had been unfaithful to from the very first week. The one he said was emotionally abusive. The one he lived in fear of, for him and his child.

The focus of our relationship was creating a life that was true. It was a conscious, purposeful, loving, committed relationship. We had known each other a long time, I trusted him, at the very minimum to be sincere and decent. People fall out of love, they make mistakes, change and grow, but that's not what happened. This was a decision to seduce and desert, to discard without concern and make a lie out of everything that had passed between two people, to take and take and take and leave destruction in many lives, and then for meagerly selfish reasons, inflict even more damage.

He can tell lies, he can evade all accountability for the life we built and the one I gave up to be with him, he can take all the things I gave him and taught him and use them in the very relationship I healed him from, he can go on as if the love, and the promises, and the sacrifices, never existed. But they did, and so do I. Every step of the way he has had a choice in how to conduct himself while doing whatever it is he needed to do, and in every instance he has chosen whatever benefited him most, whatever the cost to anyone else. He has taken everything from me, but he can not take the truth.