Breaking contact with OM

[howdiditcometothis]

Back story here

I feel like I'm having a breakdown. I've taken some time away and made the decision to work on my marriage -it is not bad enough to justify ending it. I know this means no contact whatsoever with OM. He says that he understands and supports the decision I've made but thinks we can maintain a friendship. I can't do that - I'm in love with him and I can't pretend to be his friend and ignore those intense feelings. I'm posting here to stop me replying to him or picking up the phone. I know if we talk, I won't feel able to do it. I would be so grateful if somebody would tell me how they have done this. I feel desperate. I need to switch these feelings off and forget about him. Somebody must have done this successfully before. PLease if you have dealt with a situation like this, please help me to end this. I need to get my life back on track.

[thesunshinesbrightly]

You need to get over him. Do not be his friend, you know yourslef already what you have to do.

Do not back down and talk here if you need too.

I don't know how too help you as i have never been through it but i'm sure someone here can.

[howdiditcometothis]

I just feel completely weak when it comes to him. When I haven't responded to him today he has sent messages asking me not to disaapear until we've spoken properly. Promising to let me go but asking for a chance to talk it through to understand it. I feel like I owe him that after everything.

I dream about him, wake up thinking about him - feel distracted all day long by thoughts of him. It is verging on the obsessional and I am NEVER like that about anything. I feel like I'm constantly fighting myself.

I really have tried - I decorated 2 rooms single handedly over 4 days. Staying up until all hours to try and channel all the hurt into something and shift my focus. I'm drinking to blot it out. I don't know what else I can do.

[hairytriangle]

If that's how you feel do you really really think you can forget him and make your marriage work? Do you love your husband?

[thesunshinesbrightly]

I know how you feel in that respect i'm like that with my OH(Not yet living together)and i feel really :( for you must be awful.

Like hairy said do you love your husband? does he love his wife?

[howdiditcometothis]

He has split with his wife and got a new place for him and the kids - they are doing 50/50 split in care for the kids. The weird thing is I feel like I love my husband like a best friend and for being a great dad but it's very different to how I feel for OM. If the circumstances were different I would sign up to growing old with OM today with no doubts. And that in itself is strange. An objective bystander would say my DH is more attractive and OM is 12 years older.

[purplepeony]

Have you thought about moving out so you are away from both these men while you sort out your head? Even just a long holiday on your own?

I DO know how you feel as I have got that T shirt. It's awful.

If all sexual love has gone for your DH then you have to ask if you can get it back, If it has gone, then it may not be wise to go straight into another relationship until you worked out WHY it went wrong.

You have some hard thinking to do.

You could decide to leave your DH and the OM might not want you when the gloss/lust has worn off. How would you feel then?

If he is wanting one last chat, I'd do that. But then if he really loves you and wants the best for you- and that best is you staying in your marriage, then he should do the decent thing and back off. If you then decide you want to leave your DH and do, and OM is still free, then you can try again.

I know this sounds hard and clinical and believe me, I have been in your shoes, and couldn't take my own advice. But try.

[digggers]

Hey you. I've been wondering how you were. So sorry to hear your still struggling. I really would advise you again to get some counselling ASAP. You need to talk about you, how you got to where you are today, and to have someone impartial to talk honestly with about all this. You've too much pressure all around you, husband, work, OM, daughter and parents and friends percieved expectations. I'd really go to the doctors, get signed off work with stress/depression/breakdown and get referred for some counselling. And then use the time off work to go far away without your phone, taking dd if you have to and getting yourself some headspace. And pay for a counsellor in the meantime while you wait for nhs referral.

Your OM isgoing to break you if he doesn't back off.

[aegeansky]

howdiditcometothis, bravo for having come this far. You are succeeding, not failing. Of course it will be hard to let go of OM, but if you have already worked out that you value your marriage enough to want to make it work, some battling with yourself now will mean avoiding deep despair later.

You know that if you backtrack now, you will feel terrible. And then you'll end up risking being in the identical situation with your husband, except with other negative feelings in the mix.

If it's really the right thing to be with OM, you need to be sure of it and then extract yourself from your marriage properly with consideration for your husband, acheiving proper closure for both of you and knowing that you really believe you couldn't save the relationship. It doesn't sound like that to me. Either way, you can't live with ambiguity and indecision.

[howdiditcometothis]

Thanks for posting - hardly a thread which will elicit sympathy and I'm really not looking for that. I just need to know how people got to the other side of this. It feels like I've been stuck in a hellish limbo for ages now and it must be damaging to everyone involved. But HOW do I make it go away and get beyond it?

And I don't want to paint OM as some try hard loser who won't leave me alone. It is at least half my fault. I cave in in a moment of weakness and respond and I'm ashamed to say I have even contacted him - despite everything. He has always said he loves me enough to back off and let me fix my marriage but I think he wants to be convinced its actually what I want. That is hard to do when it is what I need to do and not necessarily what I want.

digggers - I really do want to say thank you to you - I have very nearly done a 'shout out' on the message boards for you and I'm just sad that I'm still failing.

Bizarrely this helps - distracts me from wondering what he's upto, where he is. Both phones off tonight.

[digggers]

Bless you howdi, you don't need to thank me. And stop having such a bad opinion of yourself! You're not a bad person, it's far more complicated than than that! People who have affairs aren't bad people. They are humans.

I really wish some of the folk who post on the relationship board and offer such great advice to women whose husbands are having affairs would come and talk to you. It really helped me reading some of those threads to put my experiences into perspective. There is a poster called "when will I feel normal?" and others who can type out the script of affairs. I was amazed at How closely alot of what they posted tallied with my experience. About how and why affairs happen, how and why we play these mental games with ourselves and others and call them love. I really hope now I've mentioned them, they'll come and advise you. I find it a bit saddening that they are ignoring your threads when I think they could help so much.

You do need to do something drastic though woman. Like I've been saying, it'll keep rumbling on, one of you will always cave. Change your number! Delete his! Get signed off and go away. Stop fannying around and continuing, you don't have the willpower to resist him, because you're stressed and messed up and all over the place. So make it impossible for contact to happen.

[AnyFucker]

I think wwifn must be on holiday...haven't seen her around for quite a few days now

[loves2walk]

Hi howdi, so sorry you are still having such a torturous time. Can you act on digggers suggestions and change mobile number? Make him stop the contact.

You tried the 'one last time' last time didn't you with the dinner and from what I remember it only made it worse for you. How is it with your H right now? Can you work on that again?

[howdiditcometothis]

Hi loves2walk. Yes I can change my number but I'll have to tell him that is what I'm doing - feels too cruel not to. He knows where I work, has my work email address, work number, knows where I live. If he wants to find me it is stupidly easy for him to.

But yes as a first step and a true notice of intent I will commit to changing my number.

Yes you're right the one last time did not work at all - made evrything more intense if anything. One positive is that we haven't met in person since then or spoken even on the phone but there have been many emails and texts so hardly the complete stop that I'd intended.

He is away on hols with his children at the moment and I told him it was a good 'natural' break - he'd be really busy and focusing on the kids. A good place to leave things but he has sent me messages and photos each day. Even one asking whether we could return there when we're old...(!)

[MerryMarigold]

Hi. I have a good book called 'His needs, her needs'. It's about how to make a marriage work, but it does explain REALLY well how affairs happen. It explains how you can love 2 people at once, in different ways, which was quite enlightening to me (I have been close but never 'gone there'). It also explains how it's very difficult for the affair to work in 'real life' as it is based in fantasy. I'm not sure how many people on here have actually ended up with the 'OM' and stayed together - I believe it is quite rare.

I think what you need to do is separate your feelings from reality somehow. What you feel is NOT real and is simply based on a lot of good interractions with someone (I don't imagine you've had very many massive fights like you have with your dh). I think it's testimony to your marriage that it can take all that hurt and that you'd still be willing to try and make things work - there must have been a lot of good times and history there.

I really hope it works out for you. Be strong. And don't contact him.

[digggers]

You are both torturing each other. It's an addiction, for whatever personal reasons you're both addicted to the thrill of the thing you have with each other. You'll never be able to see if it's real while this us all going on. But I've typed all this to you before, you can't see it because you're in it I guess.

X

anyfucker, any perspectives? Or can you do some kind of incantation, and summon up all the folk who are normally the expect on affairs here? Surely compassion and empathy are still applicable here, and the knowledge contained on these boards is still applicable to the adulterer as well as the "wronged party".

[digggers]

Experts not expect!

[TeeBee]

I'm sitting here in the same situation HDICTT. Have told him to stay away from me as he is breaking my heart. And he is - but I just want him to text me!! Doh, and then he does and I desperately want him back again.

I'm washing floors like crazy and trying to focus on being brilliant at work. Desperately dreading later in the week when I know I have to see him again (can't avoid him totally unfortunately). If my stomach fills with any more acid I'm going to start dissolving myself from the inside. having severe chest pains because of it all - bloody nightmare!!

Get your mop out woman!!

[howdiditcometothis]

Oh God - hearing yourself described as an adulterer is like having a slap in the face. I've never slept with him but I recognise that the term still applies.

I'm not completely stupid (I know I seem like it from these ridiculous posts) and I have thought and thought about what it would be like in real life if we did end up together. Both paying maintenance to our respective spouses, all the issues that step families bring, the disapproval of family and others, the age gap. OM has said quite clearly that he has no idea what I see in him describing himself as a very average looking, too old for me bloke with a growing list of financial liabilities.... We have both pondered whether this is just an addiction to torturing ourselves but I do think it is more than that. The intellectual bond/connection whatever is very strong and a lot of the interaction has been very far from romantic but more about ideas and exchanging news stories, reviews, political ideas, music, articles. I feel like I want to explore his mind (that is very much a large part of the attraction to me) - he is v clever professional bloke but also very earthy and northern and our sense of humour is an exact match.

So, I guess what I'm saying is I have done a lot of soul searching as to whether this is real or not and not been afraid to challenge OM on that. Laying cold facts in front of him - we are both extremely vulnerable just now and we've been down the road of me saying I don't love him, we're vulnerable, we've got carried away with a fantasy, we've inflated feelings that aren't there etc etc. We each accepted this and said so but something bounces us back together time and again and there are tears and talking and even laughing (never at anybody else - at how stupid the whole ridiculous thing is and our own stupidity - dark I suppose) and we are looking at each other and back at square one.

Anyway enough about that - interesting MM re that book and being able to love two people at once. I'd say that is where I'm at at the moment - a fairly recent development. After an absolutely horrible and cold period in my marriage there has been a small but discernible improvement (largely around DD) but still a positive thing I hope in my overall plan to make it work.

[purplepeony]

Look- if this is love, then leave your DH.
You can't have both. With all the upset. It happens and you can have it- do you want him that badly?
You CAN love 2 people- I know that- but you can only live with one. Your choice.

If you want your DH then you have to draw a line in the sand and go cold turkey.

It will be hell, but the option is to continue as you are, or leave your DH and stay with OM.

Have 1 last chat if need be, then leave it.
If you really can't, then follow your heart and stay with him. Life's too short not to have the chance of happiness you want- but you will lose something and gain something, whatever path you take.

[Saffysmum]

A few messages ago OP, you said something like you are doing what you feel you need to do, rather than what you want to do. I have to say, that from reading your thread, that I think you and your OM are very well matched. You've not yet slept with him, but you connect with him on so many levels. Is it possible that you could split from your husband and be with him? If you really care deeply for him, I would suggest throwing caution to the wind, and going for it. This may be against the grain on here - but you only live once, and perhaps he is the one for you?

[digggers]

Her OM may well be the one for her. Her husband may well be her soulmate. But she'll never know while she's in this hell of both. Both of these men could potentially make her happy or unhappy, but that's more to do with her mental state than anything else, and she'll never sort her head out till she gives herself room to do it.

Be alone for a while OP. Leave them both. Get counselling. Give yourself a chance. Because even if you get thru this with one of them still loving you, you won't love yourself .

[digggers]

Her OM may well be the one for her. Her husband may well be her soulmate. But she'll never know while she's in this hell of both. Both of these men could potentially make her happy or unhappy, but that's more to do with her mental state than anything else, and she'll never sort her head out till she gives herself room to do it.

Be alone for a while OP. Leave them both. Get counselling. Give yourself a chance. Because even if you get thru this with one of them still loving you, you won't love yourself .

[Saffysmum]

True diggers, very true.

[howdiditcometothis]

digggers - you're right. I'm pretty appalled at myself and disappointed. Because after confessing to DH, here I am again in contact with OM. I don't love myself at all. I'm ruining things not only for myself but DH and probably OM to a certain extent.

A matter of months ago I would have judged somebody in this situation harshly and I can completely understand the posters who have judged me on the other thread.