My blog this week is an email that a gentleman wrote to his girlfriend after he reluctantly accepted that her relationship with her identical twin prevented her from making a commitment to him. This gentleman gave me permission to share this with my readers, and the names have been changed to protect the identities. He contacted me after having read The Same but Different. He thanked me profusely for the fact that the book validated his concerns and helped him do what he needed to in spite of feeling tremendous sadness and disappointment. Other people in similar situations should recognize that this scenario is not as uncommon as they might think. I have edited the email for the sake of brevity:

I know it has been a difficult balance, you, me, Yolanda. You have been in a place I can’t even imagine. I know you love me and don’t want to hurt me. You also love Yolanda and don’t want to see her in pain. You sacrifice yourself and your happiness nonstop. I’ve seen your raw emotion. You have expressed your true inner self to me over and over. You and I know that the bond we share is as real as it gets. It is such a special energy we have. It pains me to see you feel guilty for finding love.

You are caught in the middle of a tug of war. Me pulling on one end of the rope and Yolanda on the other, with you stuck in the middle. Both wanting a piece of you in our hearts, and you wanting to please us both. Yolanda not being able to support, or even accept, you and I being in a close and loving relationship weighs on us both. Your being in love with me creates fear in Yolanda, fear of losing you. Her inability to support you, us, in our relationship, causes you to resist our love, and you then pull away from me, simply because it is easier than seeing her pain.

I’m not pointing the finger at her and I know she isn’t doing this on purpose, she is just scared. I think she is leaning heavily on her bond with you because of her fear of not being able to open her heart to someone outside of the twinship, like you have with me. Her fear of the inability to do so, thoughts of failure in outside relationships, causes her to fight for you, the closest bond in her life, by pulling you away from me. The pain this causes her is unbearable for you to witness. Seeing her pain made you break up with me. Her pain hurts you to such a point that you can willfully walk away from something that is important to you, from someone you love, in an attempt to salvage her happiness. You said that you could no longer see the pain in her eyes that our love was causing her. But what about you? What about your happiness in a loving relationship?

I’ve never wanted to take you away from Yolanda. Just the opposite. I’ve always hoped to gain a sister in this relationship and live with love and respect for each other. The reality is, I will continue to be an outsider in your life because it is too difficult for you to balance two deep connections in your life and too difficult for Yolanda to accept me and you.

There is no blame here, no blame on Yolanda and no blame on you, it just is what it is. If anyone is to blame, it should be me, for loving you the way I do and putting you through this. Recognizing these issues is just the first step. Counteracting those issues with reasonable, easily achievable boundaries is the first leap to finding balance and happiness with love for your sisterhood and also me. Putting in the work leads to growth, and I am doing the work, doing the research to better understand. I love Yolanda and I know this is really hard for her, and for you. I’m sorry that both of you have to deal with this.

The pain and the loneliness that I feel, by not being accepted by her, and being pushed away by you, is a pain I have never had to bear in my life, but here I am, I’m still here, and I’m in it, because I feel that you, we, us, are worth it. I can’t do this alone, and you have not chosen to do it with me yet. It is so very complex, but can be so simple. Love, honor, and support with love and gentility for every­one.

You are such an amazing soul and I love you so much and hope that we can someday, somehow find balance in love and life together. I have never quit fighting for us, all of us, to live happily and support one another, but I just can’t fight this alone. For the happiness of all involved in this complex situation and with all my love I am defeated. I will always and forever love you.

By reading about this man’s struggles, we can start to gain an understanding of our own journey. Seeing that we are not alone can give us the courage to go forward.

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