Latest / The Letterbox Podcast / Dear Him | A Letter About Love, Betrayal & Letting Go

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Dear Him | A Letter About Love, Betrayal & Letting Go · The Letterbox Podcast

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  Hello and welcome back to the Letterbox podcast, the place
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  where people share the letters they've written in the moments
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  of life that changed them. Before we begin, today's letter.
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  If you've been enjoying these episodes, I'd love for you to
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  follow the podcast, leave a review, or share an episode with
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  someone who you think might enjoy it.
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  Every share helps these stories reach the people who need to
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  hear them. And these letters, they really
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  deserve to be heard. This week on the letter booked
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  broadcast, I'm doing something a little different because I've
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  actually got 3 letters from one person and together these
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  letters tell a story. The letters were sent to me by
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  Ange. She's 41 years old and currently
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  in the middle of completely rebuilding her life.
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  Last year, she truly believed she had found the person she was
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  going to marry. They spoke about marriage,
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  children, growing old together, and all the ordinary moments
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  make up life. She loved him more deeply than
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  she'd ever loved anyone. But what she didn't know was
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  that the relationship she believed she was in wasn't the
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  relationship she was actually living.
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  Angie told me that over time, she discovered repeated
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  betrayals and secrets that completely shattered her trust.
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  She also told me it's not the first time it's happened to her.
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  But this was the most painful. Angie said something that really
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  stayed with me and it was that walking away wasn't the hardest
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  part. The hardest part was grieving
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  someone who was still alive, whilst also grieving the future
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  she'd already imagined for herself.
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  During this season of her life, the letters became a way for her
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  to make sense of her heartbreak, honour the love she'd had, and
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  slowly find her way back to herself.
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  And that is what this trilogy is about.
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  The first letter is about letting go of someone she
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  thought was her forever. The second is about
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  rediscovering who she is after losing both the relationship and
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  the identity she'd built around it.
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  And the third, a letter to her future child, a reminder that
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  even after immense loss, she still believes in love, hope and
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  the family she dreams of creating one day.
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  Since writing these letters last year, life's already started
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  changing for Ange. When I was speaking with her,
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  she was preparing to travel around Europe on her own and
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  later this year said she's hoping to start a new chapter
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  teaching English in South Korea. She said for the first time in a
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  long time, her future feels unwritten again, and whilst that
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  used to terrify her, it now fills her with curiosity.
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  So Ange, thank you for trusting me with your words, and thank
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  you for allowing your story to be shared.
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  She hopes that someone, somewhere listening today hears
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  this and realises that the end of 1 chapter doesn't mean the
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  end of their story. Sometimes the life you grieve is
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  simply making space for the one you never imagined.
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  So let's open Angie's first letter.
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  This one is dear Him, Dear him. I never loved anyone more than I
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  loved you in this lifetime, but I also know more love is yet to
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  come for me. For the longest time, I believed
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  our souls had found each other. I thought that no matter how
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  difficult our story became, somehow we would find our way
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  back to one another. I believed love could heal what
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  honesty could not. I believe patience could build
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  what trust had already started to lose.
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  I know now that love by itself is not enough.
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  It took me a long time to accept that.
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  I spent months replaying conversations, wondering which
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  version of us was real. The man who held my hand, the
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  man who told me I belonged with him.
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  The man who dreamed about a future with me, or the man who
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  kept parts of his life hidden until they found me instead.
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  The hardest part was not losing you.
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  It was losing the future I'd quietly built around us,
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  aggrieved birthdays we would never celebrate together.
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  Trips we would never take, a home that would never exist.
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  Children. I imagined ordinary Tuesdays,
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  tiny moments that never happened but somehow still broke my heart
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  when they disappeared. I wanted so badly to believe
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  that if I loved you well enough, deeply enough, consistently
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  enough, we would become the story I thought we were writing.
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  But love cannot carry two people when only one is carrying the
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  truth. For a long time, I wondered if
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  you ever loved me at all. Thank you for the love you gave
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  me. Thank you for the lessons I
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  never wanted. And thank you for showing me
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  that the greatest love story I still have left to live is the
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  one I will write myself. I don't hate you.
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  I don't carry revenge in my heart.
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  I carried love for too long to replace it with bitterness.
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  Now what I carry instead is acceptance.
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  Not because everything makes sense, but because I've stopped
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  asking life to rewrite what already happened.
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  I hope we both become people who no longer need to hurt others to
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  survive our own pain. And if our souls ever meet again
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  in another lifetime, I hope they meet with honesty first.
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  I release us both with compassion, gratitude, and
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  peace. And thank you.
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  Thank you so much for sharing something that's so vulnerable
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  and for writing about heartbreak with such honesty and also so
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  much compassion. There's so much in this letter
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  about love and grief and acceptance and choosing
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  yourself, but also that ability to move on and let go, which is
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  not easy. If you're listening today and
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  any part of Angie's words felt familiar, I hope you know you
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  really are not alone. This is only the beginning of
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  Angie's story, and over the next two episodes we'll hear the next
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  parts of her journey, the letter to herself, and the letter to
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  the future child she still dreams of meeting one day.
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  So please come back for those. They really are very special.
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  If you'd like to support the Letterbox podcast, please follow
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  the show, leave a review and share an episode with someone
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  who you think might like to hear these.
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  And remember, if you've written a letter, maybe one you've never
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  sent or one you've kept hidden away, or one that you finally
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  feel ready to share, I would love to read it.
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  Thank you again for listening and I'll see you here for the
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  next letter from Ange.