In her mind, she believes she tried. I believe that, in all fairness, she did try once or twice outside of an argument to bring up this issue.

Today, I just found a note she wrote me nearly a year ago about how she was feeling that something was "missing" from the relationship, but she couldn't pin it down. She wanted us to take a break, and just date or something (this was after we were engaged). She didn't know what it was.

At the time, I remember we talked about the letter and all, but I don't remember us really taking any action on it. I think I just convinced her that the only way she could find that missing thing was to stay in the relationship and keep working on it. I now see, in retrospect, a few things:

1. I should've taken the letter far more seriously, but instead I was dealing with my own denial and expectations and didn't. We should've did what she wanted then, or sought out couples counseling. We did neither, and that was my fault.

2. Given this letter, and given another instance inbetween that time and when this thing just happened, she says she did try and bring it up another time. I don't remember it (I don't have the world's greatest memory), but believe her, and her description of it, that again I basically said, "Why talk about this when things are going so well?" In others words, ignorance is bliss. I felt like talking about it, I might find out she didn't want to be in the relationship any longer.

So now, after reading that letter again today, and all, I can't help but see more of the relationship from her perspective and see that she did try. While it may still not justify her doing what she did, I understand more of where she was coming from and how she felt like, maybe, she didn't have much choice.

This is hard for me to write, because it shows that there was more to this than met the eye, and I didn't even realize it until today.

John