So I rewatched this scene the other day and here is my take on the whole letter debacle. I think we all know that the whole mess was caused by them not actually KNOWING what was in the letter to begin with. Clearly, there was a lack of communication between the two shows' writing teams as well as some awkwardness around how to 1. explain Elliot's long absence, which is SO out of character for him (I don't care what they say, he would NEVER have done that to Olivia in a million years), and 2. reintegrate Elliot back into the narrative after SVU 2.0 spent several years attempting to assassinate his character and rewrite EO's history into something it wasn't (bad for Olivia who for 12 years was the pure cinnamon roll victim to Elliot's mean, neglectful and years-long mistreatment). Part of the role of fandom, however, is to clean up the messes that careless writers make with canon. So this is my in-universe fix re: what that letter was and more importantly, WHY Elliot gave it to Olivia.
So I base this theory mostly on the look above. Look at him. This is as uncertain as Elliot has ever looked. It's like he's asking Olivia a question. And he is. He is handing her Kathy's take on their whole relationship. He is saying: this is what I'm supposed to think about us, this is how I'm supposed to feel about you, this is how I am supposed to view our history. Right? Is this right? Was she right? Am I right? Is this how it was? Is this how you feel too? Cos think about it, Elliot spent years going back and forth between Kathy and Olivia, being swayed by one then the other, then the other then the other. When he was in Kathy's presence, he aligned with her. When he was in Olivia's presence, he aligned with her. It's not like he never disagreed with either but he loved both, shared values with both, respected their opinions and shared their course for many years. They were the most important emotional gauges for him of what was good and right and meant to be. And Elliot desperately wants to be good and right and follow whatever his Creator means for him to be.
Once Olivia was out of his life tho, he lacked the pivotal and improving influence upon which he'd built half of his adult existence and identity. During the time they were together, Olivia helped Elliot mature emotionally, helped him confront certain aspects of his inner life, past patterns and abiding behaviours. She helped him to understand their relationship, his relationship with his kids, his relationship with his wife. She helped him to be truthful, to do the right thing. She influenced his ethics and thinking as much as his heart. But when he re-enters her life, he has spent the last decade viewing his years with Olivia from the vantage point of his marriage with Kathy. I'm not saying that Kathy manipulated his view, deliberately or otherwise. I just think Kathy viewed the situation one way (a way that enabled her to go on, served her sanity/marriage/family/belief system) and Elliot's proximity to Kathy (and Olivia's absence) meant that he naturally came to view his relationship with Olivia through Kathy eyes (almost). His wife's stance on them helped him to come to a convenient understanding, to let Olivia go, to keep his distance, to maintain his marriage. There may have been some therapy or relationship counseling with their local priest involved in this process. But in time, Elliot fell into alignment with Kathy's view that he and Olivia were "never real", they got in each other's way and that, if he really cared about her, he would wish her a happy life with a loving man of her own.
If there's one thing we know about Elliot it is that he can maintain an unrealistic and punishing belief beyond what would be reasonable for anyone else. If he had been in Olivia's presence even once during that time, Kathy's take on them would have been instantly debunked by their obvious chemistry and mutual attachment. But he wasn't. And lets also face it, the few times (one time? "Fault"?) that Elliot and Olivia actually directly addressed the state and nature of their relationship, they weren't exactly good at it. Neither were super clear or forthcoming. And that ambiguity, which was never once clarified, allows for Kathy's take, in Olivia's absence, to be the prevailing one, even if something in Elliot knows, deep down, that what he felt for Olivia was very real. Even so, during their partnership, he probably did wonder whether he got in Olivia's way, whether he truly wanted her to find someone with whom to live happily ever after. Whether she knew it or not, Kathy's take on his and Olivia's partnership activated the driving force behind literally everything Elliot does. No, not love. No, not justice. Guilt. Pure, agonising Catholic guilt.
Religions tell you how to act, what to believe, who to value, and yes, even how to feel. So no doubt, Elliot's guilt was compounded when it came time to put his and Kathy's shared belief system into words, onto paper, in ink, to sign his name to them. The honesty, authenticity and bravery Olivia had inspired in him wouldn't allow it. Because as much as he did believe in Kathy's take, some small part of him that remembered Olivia, their partnership, his own heart, still doubted. The part of him that belonged to Olivia, with Olivia, had shrunk and shrunk and shrunk over the years. He no longer had clarity on what she might have said or thought or felt, how she might have looked at him or argued with him or agreed with him. But doubt was a sin and Kathy was his wife. So he signed his name to her words, thinking that they were probably right and he was probably wrong. His doubts? Wrong. His feelings? Wrong. His memories? Wrong. What was right and wrong wasn't determined by him, by what he thought or felt or wanted. It was determined by a better being outside of himself. He was simply the sinful co-signer of their gospel.
So that's what he is presenting to Olivia here. The gospel according to Stabler. The belief Kathy gifted him, that has held him together, them together, that has enabled him to believe that he is good and right and aligned with God. That he's doing the right thing by Kathy, honoring her legacy. That he's doing the right thing by Olivia, letting her get on with the life he so selfishly delayed. He's handing it to her like Kathy handed it to him, to cosign. He's saying: I know it took awhile but this is what we were (weren't we?), this is what I think (do you agree?), this is where I am now (but I'd happily go back, just say the word). He's assuaging his guilt, guilt for staying so long in her life, for leaving it so abruptly, by presenting himself as perfectly as he knows how. At the same time, he's handing it to her knowing that there's some shrunken part of his heart that just had to act as doubting Thomas. There's a stubborn part of her in him that won't die and that it scrawled something far less perfect. Something brave and honest and resilient.
In this moment above, I think that 98% of him believes she will read "his" letter and think: yes, that's how it was. What you've laid out here is good and correct and factual and mature and now that it is all behind us, we can be friends who wish only the best for each other and want nothing more than that. However inconvenient and disorienting it may prove for his belief system, his memory of his wife and his guilt-laden sense of self tho, the other 2% of him wants Olivia to say: no, that's not how it was, that's not what we were, none of this is true. You loved me and I loved you and now you're back and I look at you and you look at me and both of us know that, even after a decade, that hasn't changed. We may think it is ridiculous that Elliot thinks this way AND that he thinks that Olivia will agree with him, thank him for his generous words. But it's just the effect of time and absence. She used to take up 50, 60, 75% of his time, his thoughts and heart. But that has been whittled away over the years. He can't quite anticipate her the way he once did and has to assume that she has changed. Maybe, he genuinely thinks, she has come to the same conclusion that Kathy did. Because both of them are better, purer at heart than he is (remember him kneeling and gazing up at Liv when the truth about the letter comes out). He's just lost one of his emotional gauges, his ethical touchstones. But he still has her words so he casts them before the other emotional gauge, the ethical touchstone he lost so many years ago. He presents himself and his adopted, purified belief about their past to be judged by her however she sees fit. And, just like he did with Kathy, he will live by whatever Olivia pronounces to be true. Whether she agrees or disagrees with Kathy, whether she embraces and forgives him or casts him out, Elliot will take Olivia's word as gospel.
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