This is my answer, edited for LJ.

Well, to start with, I don't feel sorrow so much as shame. I didn't come right out and say this to you because I didn't think email was the best medium for discussing such important and delicate matters. You wrote to me, and I suggested meeting face to face. I do apologize, and don't deny your right to be angry with me.

You suggest that I should have started out:

"I'm sorry I fucked your wife."

Well, I am. It doesn't matter, but I am.

and continues with, "I'm sorry about all the sexual innuendo I played out in front of you. It was cruel to act as if any of this was some kind of game." and finishes with, "It was disingenuous of me to call you on the phone and feign interest in your problems, when I, in fact, was one of them.

This is where things get interesting. See, I haven't been making comments like that in some time. Since about the time that [Sabbath] I slept together a few months ago. We haven't been carrying on some long term secret romance. There hasn't been a conspiracy to deceive you. There was no affair going on before that, and I, for one, wasn't even contemplating one. ([Sabbath], I have come to believe, was, but that's for her to say). I wasn't feigning interest in your problems, I really do care about them. It has, however, been two or three years since you stopped telling me about them, since we were really close.

[Sabbath] told me that you suspected she and I had been sleeping together for years. This was a great surprise to me, but it makes sense, when I think about it. How long have you been secretly hating me, and turning a blind eye? Why didn't you ask me about it? Or her, for that matter? I can't help but think that all the problems over payments on the van loan, the past due notices, the extra money that I had to pick up (not to mention the $2000 that you have owed for instrument sales that you have received but haven't bothered to give me in SIX YEARS), was that just using me? You were certainly very conscientious about clearing debts with other people, even when you didn't really owe them anything. I can't help but suspect that, thinking the worst of me, you abused my generosity. I am, after all, the asshole who literally gave you the coat off of his back one time. I'd like to think that that is unworthy of you, but I understand that you lied about going to Texas on business (apparently, [Sabbath] isn't the only one slipping out of the sheets), and so I wonder what else I believed that wasn't true.

It would be stupid (and worse, temptingly easy) to tell blame all of that on you. I have been living my own life, getting busy with my own stuff, and we have been moving in different circles for some time now. I -should- have been honest enough with myself to be honest with yo u about my growing feelings for [Sabbath] when I became aware of them about six months or so ago. I suppose I should also have told you that she was quite ready to cheat on you, and do so without remorse. I simply couldn't imagine how to begin to have s uch a painful conversation, and so I turned chickenshit. I'm ashamed about that, too. Now I have to do this the even harder way.

Anyway, maybe it's easier to do this via email, but it certainly lacks the expressiveness of actual conversation, doesn't it? Maybe I am just an asshole. I don't feel like an asshole. I'll own to behaving like one, but being one seems wrong to me. Still, I may be wrong in that. Maybe I need to change more than I realize. I do know that sometimes what I think is true isn't really, and that the only way I'll discover that is to talk with friends, who will then guide me to right understanding, if only by bashing me with clue by fours. Painful as this is, I have found that the bruises fade and that I'm better off in the end. If this makes sense to you, then I repeat that I'd like to meet and talk face to face. If not, I'll accept your decision as final and say no more about it.›