Love, love, love you. And I send my best regards to all the dear ones. ALL of ‘em.

Will be thinking of you. Hang in there, eh?

(P.S. I turn fifty in a few days. Who woulda thunk it? Wish I could be everywhere will all my friends all at once, but I do hope to visit your neck of the woods before too long 00 and I hope so even more now, because I got a pile of hugs with your name on ‘em.)

I must tell you that I can relate to your experiences here…well, only partly. 15 years ago I met a guy who felt as if I’d known forever. I was with my husband then…we’ve been together soon 20 years. At that time, my husband and I broke up (we were in college and all we did was fight and fuck it seems). This guy became my friend and then became more. We bonded like I could have never imagined. So much so that my now husband got worried…knew that this man was his only real chance at ever truly losing me forever. He asked me to come back and I did. But I was so in love with that guy…we tried to be friends, hung out and ended up sleeping together (cheating on our partners) right before I moved away. For years he and I wrote…we wrote daily, numerous times a day…we talked on the phone and chatted. We had a very intense and deep relationship and saw each other a few times…until he got married nine years ago. We never slept together but that one time, though our chemistry was so intense it made me want to pass out at times. My husband always knew about the guy and me. I am not the sneak around sort…and suck at lying. So I told him. Thankfully his personality is such that he was very tolerant of my feelings and our communicaiton…he liked the guy, we never cheated again and in fact never saw each other in person for nine years. My husband tolerated the relationship, knowing full well how we felt, because he knew first that he didn’t have much choice and that he was the one to really cause it to begin with.

Long story short, in all the years we wrote and were tempted to sleep together…meet just once more…we never did. We both loved our spouses…I have children…we knew there was too much to lose if we made that choice. We weren’t angels…but only as devilish as one can be via the net or by phone, lol. Anyway, earlier this year my best friend (and he surely was…my soulmate) wrote to tell me that the wife he’d respected by never cheating with me had cheated on him. He was devastated. I was incredibly worried about him and made him check in with me daily. His wife had found out we had written once, right after they were married. He promised to stop writing me and did for three years, only to start back up about six years ago. She never knew.

Six weeks after he found out she cheated on him, my cell phone rang…it was his wife, calling to tell me he was dead. She had no clue who I was…I’d texted him to check on him since I hadn’t heard from him. He committed suicide. I had spoken with him just three days before he did it…he told me some of the most beautiful, sweet things he ever had in that conversation, making sure I knew I was the love of his life. Now I know why he said what he said. I never ever would have thought that would have been the last time I spoke with him. I have 15 years worth of letters between the two of us, which I am beyond grateful for.

The level of pain I am feeling over the loss of my soulmate, my dearest friend is beyond words. The grief is with me it seems sometimes every minute. I think of him every day…every hour it seems. It’s been four months.

As much as I am glad we respected our situations, what I wouldn’t give to have seen him again…to be with him just once more. I think for years we both felt, as our marriages and lives had troubles at times, that eventually, one day, we’d get our second chance. We never did.

I love my husband and I love my life. But I feel alone now. I feel like my heart has been ripped out of me…something is gone that I will never have again. If you feel about Blue as I do about my lost love, then I say more power to you. I didn’t want to leave my family, but believe me how I wish our societal rules were drastically different so I could have enjoyed him all this time.

I wish you all the best and relish in every moment you get of this second chance. What I wouldn’t give for another.

I am particularly hailed by your paragraph about the unspoken perils of a self-consciously, openly, stringently ethical way of being, esp. w.r.t. sex and sexuality and relationships. Queer people and non-normative relationship configurations deal with so much condemnation and bias from the world; combating that by building our own ethical self-esteem, so to speak, in our lives can be really important — but you’re totally right that it can also be a defense against vulnerability and judgment, and your warning is well-taken! I just wanted to thank you for writing that. Be well!

I feel so much of this stuff often appears so black and white, like you read statistics on marriage and divorce or personal manifestos on why people are against something, but the honest sharing of personal experience seems quite lacking. (Just to use the marriage bit as an example, not to make it the emphasis when I mean it about relationships in general.) I realize this could have a lot to do with my age but I think the details and feelings involved with such things are often kept private except to the closest of friends. And I certainly appreciate hearing about the life experiences of someone who chose a “less traditional” or at least less expected (hate that phrasing!) path in life and love.

An all-time favorite book of mine is Elective Affinities by Goethe, which I’ve been meaning to recommend (not that you need more suggestions for you to-do list!) The multifaceted take on the complicatedness of relationships may have been written 200 years ago but remains so fresh to me. It also happens to be partially available online: http://books.google.com/books?id=WFGz7K76p8oC&dq=elective+affinities&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=wk92SvXnIsOltgeent2WCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=&f=false (If you get a chance to check it out and are interested in reading more, I’d be glad to share my copy of the English translation.)