To think he maybe was the man of my life but I married someone else?

[crispytowel]

This is VERY long so I'll try to keep it short.
15 years ago I moved to the UK fine another EU country. Fell head over heels for someone , married him, had two children with him. Love and passion continued for a few years, then I had PND with my first and although I did recover, our relationship significantly changed after having children. We are both very independent people so we like to have our space but it feels like we have now created perhaps too much of it between us.

Back when I was 16 yo and in sec school my desk mate had a huge crush on me and continued to for many years after. We continued to keep in touch for the past 25 years and I always wondered whether he was the one but I was always too restless to settled down before my current husband. Fast forward to now, we are in my home country for a holiday and I've met up with my old friend and we still like each other SO much. He's also married with children. We ended up having sex which was so wrong but almost felt impossible to avoid. Now I KNOW this needs to stop and we have put a stop to it. We also live in different countries which obviously will help. But I'm sitting here crying missing him instead. I don't know what I'm asking for - if you want to attack me for my actions I don't mind, just not what I'm hoping to get here. Anyone ever been in a similar place? Thanks xx

@frazzledasarock
So is it all about morals and punishment? Isn't life a bit more nuanced than that?

Honestly asking, not trying to provoke

Honestly it’s just a fantasy - no one is anyone’s perfect someone. If you’d married him you’d be wondering about someone else.

Have a last glorious weekend of shagging if you must and get back to your life, which you can change if you don’t like it.

Why is it punishment coming clean to your husband that you find him boring and mundane and have been having sex with your sparkly, fun school friend?

its a punishment for your husband living with a woman who has nothing but disdain for him and is cheating on him and risking his sexual health.

Also I bet anything your boyfriend is not quite the amazing Romeo you have painted him in your imagination.

He’s screwing around on his wife for a start, the mother of his children.

m and if he’s doing it with you, do you wonder if he’s done it with others?

OP it’s not worth it.

Give yourself a decent time limit of say 6 months to go all out on working on your marriage (and obviously not talking to the other guy). Tell your husband you feel disconnected and are worried about your future to give him a fair chance.

if things still aren’t right at the end of the six months then you can leave, knowing you tried your hardest. But don’t throw it away without a proper good go at it. It’s worth so much and divorce will have a huge impact on your children’s lives, especially if you end up moving abroad and/or gaining step kids.

@Movingsoon21
Sounds like a good idea
Wish I had a less restless soul
Also appreciate some people may think I'm a horrible person - I don't find it easy to look at myself in the mirror at the moment.

Not at all the same as your situation because nobody cheated on anyone, but I remember growing up with a huge crush on a boy in my year, I used to doodle his name in love hearts, do that stupid “LOVE” test which came out at 97%, it went in for years. We were friends, I was quite shy, I don’t know why nothing happened between us but I never forgot him and occasionally we’d bump into each other afterwards but by then either me or him were in a relationship.

until we weren’t. I was 24 then, we were both single, we ran into each other in a pub, sat down to chat... and that was that. I stayed at his that night, fell headlong into the Big Romance that I’d always dreamed of. Finally it was happening!

You can probably guess what happened next.

He turned out to be horribly abusive and controlling. Reality isn’t fantasy. And your fantasy could destroy two families. Don’t minimise what you’ve done, you need to own it, and you need to either make sure it never happens again or leave your husband.

You don’t have a restless soul. You’re a bored wife.

Tell your husband you feel disconnected and are worried about your future to give him a fair chance.

No giving him a fair and honest chance would be to tell him she has shagged someone else.

So the Op stays in an unhappy marriage, constantly wondering "What if?"

Hardly going to lead to a stable and happy family life.

They have slept together, can't undo that, tell her husband and chances are their marriage will break up, don't tell him and live a lie.

Its a mess but it cannot be undone now.

Oh well that's good. Channel that!

Honestly, all this restless soul, one that got away, forbidden fruit, one true love thing... it's all just a self-indulgent way of justifying doing what (and indeed whom) you fancy.

I was hoping this would be an interesting tale. But it’s the usual guff about people being bored and pretending their young again.

😂 totally

Yes, maybe you should've married the other man, back when you were free and had the choice, though it's true that if you really wanted him so much, you could have had him. You're rewriting your history to give yourself a romantic, star-crossed, dramatic backstory to focus on, rather than working on your marriage.

In any event, you're married to your husband, now. You made a commitment to him, and you've brought children into the world who are counting on you to do what's best for them.

Your attitude of this having been unavoidable, destiny, or whatever is disgusting, imo. All of us have a million possible lives which we choose from as we go through our days. You've chosen this life. It's time to let the old one go, stop feeling sorry for yourself, stop feeling like you're somehow special, with this forbidden "man of your life" nonsense, and get on with things. Your husband deserves to know the truth, btw, but he doesn't deserve the pain that would come with it. I don't envy you that decision.

I don’t want to give you advice, because you don’t want it. You will do whatever you want. I do feel really sorry for your husband though, you are betraying his trust and he doesn’t even know.

You're having the female equivalent of a mid life crisis.

Bored wife and mum living in her personal Groundhog Day shags ex she was in love with as a young idealistic teen.

You feel disconnected from your marriage/life and this gave you the excitement you craved.

The cold reality is that your relationship probably wouldn't work,being with someone else isn't going to change your day to day grind,you'll still have to work,be someone's mum and someone's partner.

Would you find him so exciting after having to wash his underwear,hear him snore and fart and see his disgusting habits?

Thé long and short of it is your cheated and your husband deserves to know so he can make the choice to be with you or not.

Me too!!!! Many years of pining and fantasising and drawing his initials in love hearts and the reality was an abusive man drawn to flights of fancy and drama (as I guess I kind of was to want this Big Romance story). I'm just glad it happened before I met my now husband and had kids- I will never see that guy at a bus stop and think "what if?" We hurt one another and it wasn't a nice thing and it didn't end nicely, but I'll never wonder.

There's every chance this could be the same for you (I felt exactly like you do after our first, finally shag) but you'd have to ruin a whole load of lives just for five years or whatever of a not great relationship with someone you've just romanticised over the years.

Wow, this is a real bodice ripper!

You rooted your old crush. You both cheated on your partners. It is not romantic. You are not Cathy and Heathcliff yearning for one another's souls. You're a bored cheating wife, and he's a root rat.

@crispytowel how much longer will you be in your home country?

The first thing you need to do is get tested. I'm sorry to burst your bubble but it is unlikely that you are the first woman that he has cheated on his wife with.

The second thing you need to do is focus spending the rest of your holiday with your children and family. Draw a line and walk away.

OP you're not the only one with a restless soul, we all have it, everyone on here has at one point (if not many times) wanted to escape or do something crazy...but just feeling it doesn't give you licence to do it because it would ultimately be damaging/hurt other people/is clearly just a fantasy, etc.

I'd get it out your head you are in a unique situation, that you don't 'see life in black and white' like the rest of us, that you somehow have a unique personality that somehow justifies all of this. It comes across in reality that you are a bored middle aged housewife shagging a childhood mate that you reconnected with via Facebook which is literally the ultimate middle aged crisis cliche. And your responses on here all seem to point to you trying to justify what you feel and your desire to keep doing it.

Thanks for the messages. The ones about the restless soul made me feel like an idiot at first but you are all right about the mid life crisis comments. Really helped.

Like @Softplayhooray said, you are not in a unique situation, so many have been there and many more will in the future.

Personally, I would not tell DH without a very good reason too, I would not pour oil on to the fire.

But I would cut contact and completely focus on my marriage. Self reflection and working on yourself, being present for your children. Divorce is a horrid, destructive thing the majority of the time and blended families are not easy. It's not something to entertain lightly.

@Softplayhooray
Yep. Totally agree. This thread has been a massive wake up call.