Love Letter -- Part II

Dear ----,

I am beginning to grow fond of you. I find that much of the time we spend apart is spent thinking of you. I am excited to have been set up with you, and a calm happiness has settled into my heart making me think that maybe we have what it takes to spend the rest of our lives together.

I realized that my pushing to get to know you may have made things feel a bit unnatural, and I ask for your forgiveness for my naivete. Sometimes for me I get into the habit of being the conqueror -- I get it from law school where every topic must be braved and overcome as if it is a formidable enemy -- and I make the mistake by thinking that people too and relationships too have to be nudged and prodded for things to move forward. I forget that the natural way is G-d's way, and things go by His agenda and not mine.

As of late, I've been open and vulnerable, hoping that if you saw the real me you wouldn't reject me, and if you would, it would happen as quickly and as painlessly as possible -- but to my surprise every day, you're still here! You are still by my side asking me questions and opening up to me and telling me your secrets... not your deepest secrets, those are private [and in reality are not secrets, but are topics of your past that don't influence us or benefit either of us from talking about it]. We've all done things that hindsight we probably would not have done again had we known the consequences of our actions, but we were doing the best we could with the life knowledge we were given at the time. (Why do I get the feeling I am actually talking about myself??) You've alluded to some of your secrets and I've alluded to some of mine, and I understand now that some things are better off unspoken because they are simply not appropriate (not tznius) for two people to talk about while we are still in the courting phase.

Yet in hindsight, I have learned that you are more like me and I am more like you than I thought we were. Our respective levels of yiddishkeit, and our personality strengths and weaknesses are very similar. You've also alluded that your past is not that much different than mine, meaning that you've had a college experience and you've been the rebel during various times of your life. This side of you -- your "dark" side -- makes you much more interesting to me because it shows me that you are a real person with strengths and flaws, both of which I can admire and I can love.

When you originally weren't talking about your past and your family, I thought the worst, because what is not said can sometimes be more loud than what is said, and being the lawyer with the lawyer's trained mind [we do have a pattern of thinking which is taught to us in law school] we know to be prepared for the worst. With us, what hides behind closed doors are not skeletons, but jumping monsters with teeth and venom.

So how am I feeling now? Content; excited; balanced -- I am not expecting anything from you and I know that things can go wrong at any moment and I am prepared for that. I do acknowledge that it feels like we are nearing the end of our shidduch dating phase and we have crossed over into the "getting to know eachother" phase where we are starting to partake in activities and where we are starting to develop feelings for each other. But what can happen is that you or I could wake up one day soon and call the whole thing off. This scares me deeply and so I tread lightly, prepared that any day the hold you are starting to have in me may become a stab. <-- Can you see my insecurity?? I laugh at it too how it comes out of nowhere. I'll work on staying positive and hopeful.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that I am having a wonderful time with you, and I am hopeful that we might continue and soon move to an engagement, a marriage, and finally to building a family together. I am starting to think that together, we have the right stuff to make it happen.