For you, a thousand times over

Have you ever had a relationship that just isn't working?  For many reasons, everyone's fault, and life got in the way......here I sit in my living room which still isn't decorated almost a year later after one of the worst days of my life.  I am not new to relationship failures.  I am twice divorced.  Once to a boy that I never should have married straight out of high school.  We had a better relationship before we were married than after the event.  Bless his heart, neither one of us was mature enough to be in a serious relationship and he ended up joining the Army just to get away from my dominating and dictating ways.  That marriage ended in less than a year.  The second marriage should have worked.  We were married 13 years, adopted two children, and had many great memories together.  My poor decisions ruined that relationship.  Not that he is perfect you understand, but I was the straw that broke the camels back.  The relationship I have been involved in the past ten years or so has never been what is should be - that "great" thing.  It started out of sinful acts, bad decisions, and a stubborn desire not to listen to anyone giving sane advice.  It developed into a beautiful friendship with absolute trust on at least my part.  This is the one person on earth I really can tell anything, anytime, anywhere.  I can really be myself.  He has always given me time, he listens to me intensely, and he cares about me.  In late January 2015, he told me he no longer wanted to have a romantic relationship with me.  He really doesn't want to be my friend.  I have been my normal forceful self and pushed the envelope for months, but have finally realized it does not matter what I do.  I can send or take gifts to his door.  He is not going to come back.  I can offer to help when his father is ill and in the hospital and he will refuse because he is afraid I will cause more trouble.  I can attend family funerals and get along with the rest of the family, be supportive and stand by his side......but I will still go home at the end of the day.  I stopped emailing long tomes of my love and desire.  I stopped sending gifts.  I stopped texting him when I panicked because I hadn't heard from him in awhile.  I deleted my Facebook account.  He texts me when he wants to and he calls to tell the kids Happy Birthday.  I miss him more than he will ever understand.  I love this man.  He has no idea how great he really is and what he has to offer.  Rejection is hard.  To feel unloved, unwanted, unattractive, and to realize that I am going to grow old alone is difficult.  I am broken.  And the really sad thing, for him, I would do it a thousand times over.