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I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

lettersofnote.com

31–40 of 135 posts

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#31

My wife died 10 years ago, so I understand that pain. Dealing with death is never easy. The thing I miss most about my wife is the depth of emotional connection; she knew everything about me being very deeply in love with me and everything I did really mattered to her. It has taken me nearly 10 years to build a network of friends who can give me comparable levels of socialization and attention; I have about two dozen…

Nice to know that mere friendship (in heavy doses) can do the same job. I thought this should be possible, but was worried it might not be.

It might depend on the person. I want in-person friendships and 24 people sounds like more than I could reasonably give attention to. And I want non-platonic things

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#32
post #12

As someone in my first real realtionship of 5+ years[0] with someone I love more than I could ever have imagined, this hits pretty hard... I know it's a bit cliche and cringe to say, but my partner really did become my best friend. If I feel bad, the first thing I search for is being close and talking to them. We understand and support each other completely and do random things together, like described in the letter.…

It's an almost universal feeling, "I can't imagine who I'd use as emotional support", but if you end things I promise that you will find someone again. Not a replacement, but not a knockoff either, just different.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#33
post #8

On one hand I am happy that we have things like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, on the other I feel that peoples private and unpublished writings should be kept private. It's reasonable enough to let a limited number of researchers access private documents, but the broader public, no. This isn't a letter meant for us, it's not meant for anyone to read and I feel that publishing it is a little disrespectful.

This is history. The more we know, the better.

If you think it's "too soon" then let's wait until his stuff gets dispersed hundreds of years after his death like has happened for every historical figure until recently. I'm sure 2236 historians will love it.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#34
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can see why Feynman became sexually promiscuous afterwards, undoubtedly to numb the pain of losing his wife; seduction allowed him to have a form of that connection, albeit without the depth and love of what he had with his wife. He married again in 1952 and divorced in 1958 (and married again a couple of years later). I don't know if sexual promiscuity was part of the divorce complaint but apparently this fragme…

After reading lots of biographical material on Feynman it seems like he was a very loving father and husband (especially to his first wife) but obviously devoted to physics. I would imagine it's very difficult to find the balance between his kind of career and family such that the family feels they get sufficient attention.

It’s difficult when you want to live three lives in one human lifetime, and academia is one of those careers where that might happen to you.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#35
post #12

As someone in my first real realtionship of 5+ years[0] with someone I love more than I could ever have imagined, this hits pretty hard... I know it's a bit cliche and cringe to say, but my partner really did become my best friend. If I feel bad, the first thing I search for is being close and talking to them. We understand and support each other completely and do random things together, like described in the letter.…

It's an almost universal feeling, "I can't imagine who I'd use as emotional support", but if you end things I promise that you will find someone again. Not a replacement, but not a knockoff either, just different.

Some people don't find someone as good again though. Good spouses/friends/etc are not that replaceable.

Or rather, they're replacable practically, but the new persons are not necessarily offering the same level of connection.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#37
post #36

People appreciating this letter might also appreciate "A crow look at me" by Mount Eerie (a one-person music project), written by Phil just after his wife died of cancer, and dealing with it. Here's an example track: https://genius.com/Mount-eerie-real-death-lyrics

That entire album is such a massive emotional gut-punch.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#38
post #12

As someone in my first real realtionship of 5+ years[0] with someone I love more than I could ever have imagined, this hits pretty hard... I know it's a bit cliche and cringe to say, but my partner really did become my best friend. If I feel bad, the first thing I search for is being close and talking to them. We understand and support each other completely and do random things together, like described in the letter.…

This is not cringe at all IMO. It is the best thing that happened to me by far as well. Having someone to care about each other, feeling love and especially pure trust is really really priceless.

Hope you will be happy and together

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#39
post #12

As someone in my first real realtionship of 5+ years[0] with someone I love more than I could ever have imagined, this hits pretty hard... I know it's a bit cliche and cringe to say, but my partner really did become my best friend. If I feel bad, the first thing I search for is being close and talking to them. We understand and support each other completely and do random things together, like described in the letter.…

It's an almost universal feeling, "I can't imagine who I'd use as emotional support", but if you end things I promise that you will find someone again. Not a replacement, but not a knockoff either, just different.

Need to forget this and feel trust at some point, this is the point of having a relationship IMO
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