Dear [Emmy],

You’ve been my rock these past six years. We’ve spent so many hours talking about so many things. We’ve helped each other through some difficult times, and what’s always impressed me so about you in all that, is your great capacity to love another, even when there isn’t too much good in it for you. You’ve always been there for me; your dedication never faltering and I love you so much for that and I always will.

You are one of perhaps three or four people who has accepted me as I am so unconditionally. In fact, I’ve pondered over the idea that you could actually be my grandmother Jewell reincarnated. The timing would be about right because she died in 1980 and you were born in 1983. I see in you all the loving qualities that made her such a wonderful gram and I’m pleased to know firsthand, because of our time together, that even if you are not her in a younger body, that her generous, caring, and loving, benevolent spirit lives on in you. I love you for everything you’ve tried to give to me, as well as for everything that you did give. You are a very special person, and the world would be a more harmonious place if more women possessed your capacity to love. I love you too.

As such, I want to see you happy and I wish I had it within me to stay with you to see you get there. But this past weekend in Philly has changed so much for me that I can’t keep on in our relationship. I’ve found there, the eroticism and excitement I’ve been looking for, for so many years. Please believe me when I tell you that I so much wanted to find it with  you.   But as you know, we’ve looked for it long and hard, and found nothing. It’s not fair to ask you to keep looking with me, especially since my heart is not into it anymore. I can’t see continuing our struggles to re energize our sex lives as a couple, when it came without any great effort whatsoever over the weekend. I know we’ve been fighting this since 2003. But it’s time, I think, to accept the reality that in spite of how caring and accepting you are, and in spite of how much I love you for that, you’re just not the right girl for me; not at this time.

While I met no one there that I’m certain would be *the* right lady, I did make acquaintance a few who managed to restore my romantic passion, and one that I’d really like to date as a result. But even if that never happens, I also learned that I can’t stay in a relationship devoid of romantic passion for the years that you and I have spent in ours.

I honestly wished to find an answer to help you and I as a couple.  As you know, I did not go to Philly with the express intent to replace you, and I explained this to the girls there too. But as the night wore on and I became more and more enthralled with this remarkably beautiful lady that I spoke of last night, I found my motivations changing right before my eyes and heart. At the end of the party, I knew that I must see where things will go with her.

Now she has expressed no direct interest in anything but seeing me more at the parties, and I suspect that she won’t. But even if things never move beyond the party context with her, I want to be emotionally free to enjoy her there, and to not have to worry about how such activities will hurt you. So I must ask you now to release me from our committed relationship. I need my freedom to pursue this remarkably beautiful woman and others like her. I need to live my fantasies before I get too old, and last weekend was sure a great start down the road to doing just that.

I love you [Emmy]. But I want her. I want to be free to seize moments like those I had with her and ride the waves of passion for as long and as high as they carry us.   I need to ride the roller coaster again, and can’t afford to miss this or other opportunities to be truly happy, even if they turn out to be very short-lived, as this one is likely to be.

I’m sorry that this hurts you. If I could keep you happy but still go after my dreams as well, I would. But I can’t. My happiness and yours are no longer in lock step.  That is, what makes you happy no longer does so for me and vice versa.  So I need to be selfish here and put me first.  I must follow my heart, and my heart is telling me to end this before we waste too much more time in the futile effort of trying to get it right.   

Please understand.

More later.

Tom Hesley