Tolstoy outlines his view on his relationship with his wife

In the last year of his life, Tolstoy writes a letter to Sophia that he says includes a true picture of their relationship and his view of her life. In part it reads: “As I loved you when I was young, so I never stopped loving you in spite of the many causes of estrangement between us, and so I love you now. Leaving aside the cessation of our conjugal relations (a fact that could but add to the sincerity of our expressions of true love), those causes were as follows: first, my increasing withdrawal from society, whereas you neither would nor could forgo it, because the principles which lead me to adopt my convictions were fundamentally opposed to yours: this is perfectly natural and I cannot hold it against you ... In recent years, you have grown more and more irritable, despotic and uncontrollable. This could not fail to inhibit any display of feeling on my part, if not the feelings themselves. That is the second point. And in the third place, the principal, fatal cause, was that of which we are both equally innocent: our totally opposite ideas of the meaning and purpose of existence. For me property is a sin, for you an essential condition of life. I forced myself to accept the painful circumstances of our life in order not to leave you, but you saw my acceptance as a concession to your views, and this only deepened the misunderstanding between us.” He describes himself as debauched and profoundly depraved sexually when they marry and her as pure, good and intelligent. In spite of that she has spent 50 years carrying for him and his children and sidestepping temptation. “Your life has been such that I can have absolutely nothing to reproach you with.” He tells her he will give up his disciple Chertkov if she wishes (p677, Tolstoy, Troyat).