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Originally Posted by LaPeque  I think the above posters have given you excellent advice – a short & sweet email confirming that you are happy and madly in love, and wishing your ex well is all that is needed. I wouldn’t have any contact with him from that point on … your history is just too laden with hurt and disappointment – any further correspondence probably wouldn’t be healthy for you or your marriage.
I called of an engagement to a wonderful person a few years ago. (Albeit 9 months before the wedding – certainly not days before). Since the day of the engagement I had had a persistent, nagging feeling that I just wasn’t ready for marriage – that there were things I still wanted to do first and I didn’t have peace about making a lifelong commitment just yet. I was afraid I would end up resenting my fiancé and blaming him for my thwarted dreams. So I broke the engagement, moved to Europe, got my MA and proceeded to have some of the best years of my life.
When I finally emerged from my *me me me* self-centered stage, I really reflected on the hurt I had caused my fiancé – at that time I did contact him and ask for forgiveness. I was wrought with guilt, and truly wanted to hear that he was happy … because he definitely deserved to be, and because I needed relief from my own agonizing sense of culpability. I was genuinely thrilled to hear that he was engaged to a wonderful woman who was so compatible with him, and it allowed me to completely close that chapter of my life and move on.
Give the guy that much … he might finally and honestly just have realized what he did to you and need to hear that you forgive him, even though your under no obligation to do so. But beyond that, you owe him nothing.
I do believe that everything happens for a reason. In the end, my calling off the wedding probably saved my fiancé a lifetime of misery being married to me.  It sounds like your ex saved you from similar misery. Thank him for it, and move on.
And tell your husband. |
I agree with all of this. I did the same thing a long time ago. At the time, I felt it was for the best....you know, when things just don't work out the way you think they will and you try to elicit changes so it will, but it still doesn't? And you don't want to be a big whiner, so you just keep it to yourself, thinking (Like above poster says..the 'me, me, me" stage) "I deserve better"....so you've carried all those conversations on with yourself and make your plans but when the time comes, you're too big of a coward to face hurting the other person, so you just leave. I just didn't want to deal with anymore talking about it b/c I'd made up MY mind....years later, I realized how incredibly selfish and cruel it was, but I was too immature to deal with it matter-of-factly and humanely.
I have no designs on my ex at all, I'm not sorry I left him b/c I was convinced then, as I am now that we didn't have the same goals, but I'm sorry for the WAY I went about it. I should have been more considerate.
And maybe that's what your ex is trying to do, nothing more than apologize. I don't even need my ex's forgiveness; I wouldn't blame him for hating me forever, but it was important to me that he at least have the satisfaction of knowing that I was remorseful for being so unfeeling at the time. And part of that was b/c I felt if I talked anymore to him, he'd talk me into staying which I knew wasn't what I wanted. I think there's other people who are just as immature as I was and maybe he's just one of them.
I would def. tell your dh though about the email. He wouldn't like it if he found out somewhere down the line by accident, esp. if he knows you kept it from him. Then he'd wonder why and you'd have a big ball of wax on your hands
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I'm glad you've moved on with your life; I just hope the guy's trying to let you know that it wasn't YOU; it was HIM and not trying to insinuate himself into your life again! Good luck!