"Love Letter" to the girl I am dating.

To the girl with whom I am dating,

I know it is early in our relationship, but I wanted to write you a letter expressing an observation I have made about you and me, and I wonder how we can resolve this to come to a closer understanding of each other.

On the surface it seems like you like me. You look at me with eyes of curiosity wondering, "who is that man sitting across from me?" You ask surface-level questions hoping that my answers will give your analytical mind a chance to piece together an understanding of whether I would be a good husband to you.

In our conversations, you stand your ground defending your answers and defending truth as you understand it to be. You correct misinformation immediately, and you prefer accuracy and clarity within our conversations. When you don't understand something you ask for clarification.

Our thought patterns are different. Your thoughts are very logical, mine connect like a web. You don't quite grasp how I think or the connections between our conversation topics, but you go along with it hoping that eventually some rhyme or reason will come of it.

I even suspect the way we live our lives on a daily basis differ. I look for the meaning in every action, and I try to understand why things happen the way they do from both a spiritual, logical, and psychological outlook. I don't analyze my world, I observe it and I calculate. I think from your comments that you simply live in the world and don't look into any of these factors -- in fact, I think that you find that it is a waste of time and energy to look at the world the way I see it.

Going a little bit deeper, I like to see what is behind the surface. That is where you hide and so you get defensive when I try to peer past the persona that you give to me. For me, everything is a front for something else, and I suspect you don't like people analyzing the analyzer which is you. Perhaps it makes you feel a bit out of control, and you don't like that.

I am a bit confused though. You said yourself you are a good person, yet your privacy interests suggest to me that there is something about you that you do not want me to find out, and because I see all first layers as transparent, I have perceived by your responses to my probings that I am a threat to you. You metaphorically hold up your hand and say "stop" when I peer past the surface, and I wonder why. I mean you no harm; I just want to get to know you.

If you are defending a simple privacy interest, I would understand. But I feel that I am faced with anger when I probe a bit deeper into you. There is some hurt beneath the surface and I want to find out what it is and if it will form an obstacle between us moving forward.

Who hurt you? What was he to you? What happened when you opened up to him? Was he a teacher? Was he a friend? What decision made you seal your heart shut, and can you open up again? Can you love? Can you love me without limit? When the time comes and the trust is formed, the amount of love that I have to share is boundless. Will I need to break through old wounds to find the real you? How much effort will I need to expend to accomplish this goal, and will you ever allow me to access this part of you? A belief of mine is that if I am to form a loving relationship with you, I want to know that I will have all of you. Secrets don't go well with me, and I believe they form boundaries and destroy intimacy.

Moving deeper, what bothers me is that there are years that are missing from your stories about your life. You sum up years of your life into one sentence indicating that an experience such as college was "ordinary". You sum up becoming religious as one evening's experience. You don't talk at all about your family and all these concern me. In other words, what you do not want me to know about you sticks out in my eyes like a sore thumb and screams, "ask about it." But then it seems to me that you want your past left alone. This confuses me. All I want to know is whether your past is going to interfere with our potential future.

I suppose with all of our differences, I ask myself, "can we still build a home together?" Can we grow close enough to develop the intimacy to one day become husband and wife in spite of our differences? These are the questions that are on my mind.

Love,
Zoe