To those that had my fiancé's heart and body,

From the moment I knew about both of you, I hated you, but I felt a great deal of sympathy towards you.

Sympathy because I knew what it felt like to not have someone's love fully. Sympathy, because one of us had his heart, one of us had his body, and one of us had his future— but none of us knew about the others or about the man that we spent our time with. None of us knew that this man that we each cared for in different ways was living a double, sometimes triple, life.

To one of you, he was your lifelong friend and you were his confidant.

You know a side of him that I could never know. You know the past him. And you continued to have these misconceptions of the man we both thought we knew. As he spoke about things with you that he never even hinted at with me, you became his "stand-in" girlfriend. A blow that hurt far more than that of a physical betrayal: an emotional one. Something I could have handled and still can is that of a physical betrayal. But to try to give your heart to two people without either knowing about the other is something that I can not wrap my head around.

To one of you, he was someone you thought you could see a future with.

He was someone you thought was a good, kind, and caring man. He was a next boyfriend for you. And you were never the wiser to my existence, and that was his goal. And for this reason, I empathize with you. I feel your pain and know what you went through. To not know about you is something that I once wished for. To live in a state of ignorant bliss, to stay comfortable in my little "honeymoon phase" bubble, and to continue planning my wedding with "the man of my dreams." But this is something that I could now never imagine. I could never imagine my life without your entrance. I could never imagine my life not changing the way that it did when your presence was made known. I could never imagine marrying the man that we once cared for. I could never imagine finding out about you years later and trying to forgive him. I could never imagine that life.

Please know that I in no way blame either of you or find you at fault for what that man did to each of us.

I do not find you to be the perpetrator, but rather a fellow victim of a man's game. However, you are the constant reminder of the life I once had, the life I almost had, the heartbreaking experience I went through, but also the amount of growth I gained by my hard work. So once again, I do not blame you, but you are not connected to my most positive memories of my life at that time. For this reason, I can not allow you to hold a place in my life.

So for that, I thank both of you.

I thank you for showing me the real man I was about to spend the rest of my life with. I thank you for sending my life on the course that it is on today. I thank you for pulling me out of my allegorical cave. I thank you for turning on the light and for making bringing joy into my life possible.

Sincerely,

A grateful woman.