Confessions

• Sometimes, when we end our phone calls "early" (and by early I mean before I'm ready to get off the phone, even if it's 1 a.m.), I feel -- let's see, what's the right word? -- irrational disappointment. Maybe sometimes a little anger too. Irrational anger. I call these feelings irrational because 1.) The world does not revolve around me 2.) Who wants to stay on the phone all night? 3.) You are allowed (no, encouraged) to have other interests besides me. Since I realize these feelings are irrational, I do my darnedest to hide them from you because I don't want you to ever feel bad for wanting to end our conversation because you are tired, hungry or simply want to go do something else. Besides, any woman who would be seriously upset at her man for wanting to get off the phone for any of the aforementioned reasons is a psycho bitch.

• I recently realized that my fears that you will find someone else have nothing to do with you and your past and has everything to do with me and my fear of being abandoned. I never thought that my biological father divorcing my mom and hightailing it back to Jamaica ever had much of an effect on me. Whenever I thought of him, I always experienced an absence of feeling, a nothingness. I took this as a sign that I really had no emotional issues concerning my biological father. I now see that his leaving instilled in me an expectation and a fear that I will be abandoned. Forgive me, sweetie, for projecting my fears onto you.

• Approximately 99.9% of my friends think that my relationship with you is a sin. Let me repeat that statistic again. 99.9%. This has been a tremendous emotional burden for me, much more so than I have let on, mainly because I have been inclined to agree with them. I've searched the Internet for various religious perspectives on the issue of marrying someone who has not had a salvation experience and there are a few clergy out there who would side with what we're doing but the vast majority think we are headed down the wrong path. The vast majority. Sometimes I think I might buckle under the pressure of that knowledge. But deep down inside I know that we are really good together and possess something that could last a lifetime. I also know that God loves me (and you) no matter what and that my salvation is secure in Him. Those are the things that keep me going.

• From the first day that we starting talking, I have wanted to change you - change the way you see yourself and the pessimistic way in which you see the world around you. Whenever I have dispensed advice, it has always been with the expectation and hope that you would metamorphose into this confident, self-assured person. It has been only recently that I have started to come to terms with the fact that the desire to change you is highly detrimental to our relationship. What I want to learn to do is to offer encouragement when needed but more than anything to love and accept you in all of your imperfections, just as you do me.