Help me with agony ending emotional affair

[itsreallytheend]

I am a namechanger and I know I have slipped up but I really need help to get through this. Please don't flame me just yet.

I have just ended an emotional affair which went on for a few months but has history from years ago before I was married.

At least I hope I have. Last time I tried to end it, it was back on within a couple of weeks.

I am in pieces and can't stop crying. DH (who I adore btw and with whom I have no problems whatsoever) knows my friendship with this man was in danger of turning romantic - I confessed he had kissed me - so I promised not to see him again. After several stop-starts, I think I am finally managing that now. But DH thinks it stopped weeks ago.

Problem is OM (also married with dc) doesn't want it to end and has left the door wide open. He says he loves me. I am hoping my pride will stop me from going back yet again and making a total twat of myself (yes, I realise I have done that already).

Can someone - anyone - please help me manage the pain I am feeling? I just want to soldier on through until it becomes more bearable and I don't want to burden DH with it. He made it clear he didn't want to hear about it, and just wanted me to deal with it. My life is 100% with DH and dc and I don't want it to be any different. Just want this to go away as quickly as possible, even though it means I have lost a dear friend.

Actuallu I just had another think and perhaps its not the best thing to be giving yourself mental imagery that is only going to add to your already low mood.

Maybe instead you could try some positive visualisations and mentally rewarding yourself for making the right choice and for being strong?

Try thinking about your children and husband and you all happy together, try smiling and whilst acknowledging you made a mistake, talk to yourself about your strength in having broken it off. Think about what you have gained - a stronger and more secure family for yourself, your husband and your children. And tell yourself every day you are a good person who has made the right choice, that it hurets now, but it wont forever.

Just a different take.

Other than that, get busy, and KNOW that time will make it better.

Just have to keep going, and cope as best you can through the pain.

Why did you start the emotional affair op? If you say your life is 100% with your dh and dc.

The pain will ease but you have to stick to your guns.

When you're going through hell, keep going!
Get your head down, get through it any way you can and do not make contact again. It will be awful and you will want to cave. any time something bad happens you will want to tell him, you just have to find the strength from somewhere if you are serious about your marriage.
Well done for ending it, you've already done the hardest part, good luck!

You're on the right path.
Keep going.
Good luck

Feel free to laugh at this.
I once had something similar.
I could think of two minor things about OM that I really disliked.
One, he always chewed gum
two, he had huge long skinny feet.

WHenever I missed him I would focus on these two things. It actually worked.
I also realised I would probably always love him. AND THAT WAS OKAY, it was just to be placed on a shelf in the back room of my life.

I am fine now

Again, thanks to all of you, this has helped me a lot.
Drank too much wine last night, but bizarrely feeling much better now that I feel I have finally put a stop to this.
Just need to keep it up now!

I was also there once in my first marriage (not the reason we split up) with a man with whom I had a long history and agree that cutting all ties is the only way to go. THankfully although he was upset, the OM agreed with me eventually. This man sounds rather selfish and immoral. He knows that what is happening is wrong, he knows you are trying to do the right thing but he tries to persuade you to still keep in touch and makes it harder for you. He should be working with you on this and agreeing that the past is the past and you both need to move on and cut all ties.

He doesnt sound like a very nice man at all, but then we dont see those things when we are involved do we?

Take care, be kind to yourself and acknowledge that yes you made a mistake but be determined that you will not make it again. Think of yourself as a O~M-aholic and do it one day at a time. Every day you dont call him or see him is another day closer to the pain ending.

i like the 'o-m-aholic' advice mummytoatribe. OP, i have been in love with my best friend/soulmate for 20 years, and he with me, though we are both married to other people (long and exhausting story). i make feeble attempts now and again to put an end to our comms (we mainly survive by emailing each other) but i know that we will always stay in touch, we love each other too much to break things off completely. the pain has been truly unbearable over the years, and i think that you are doing really well with pursuing the healthy path of staying with your lovely DH and concentrating on your lovely family. keep at it. i cannot possibly leave my own, also lovely DH, who loves me and with whom i have two adored children. they have to come first. for me it has not been possible to cut off all ties to the OM but that's not to say it won't be possible for you. i wish you luck and strength. xxx

Fleecy, thanks so much for your words.
At this moment, I feel like I can't breathe. I've tried to cut contact twice before - this is the third time. The first time, I went back after a few weeks but that was before I found out the extent of his feelings, the second after 10 days. It is exactly like an addiction.
I grew up in a house rife with affairs (my father's) and I know the pain they cause. I broke a friendship with a woman who went off with a man whose wife was eight months pregnant because I felt so strongly about it. I used to have no truck whatsoever with people who said they "couldn't help it".
Now I discover that I am actually capable of loving two people a great deal at the same time. Maybe I should just be grateful I got to be with one of them.
I am desperate to switch these feelings off.
Part of me wants to do that, and another part wants to throw caution to the wind.
It's really hard to fight against all the time - I feel exhausted.

yes. utter exhaustion is my uppermost feeling a lot of the time. over the last few years i have grown to accept that i do, and always will, love two people. that's the way it is. however, i was very fortunate to have had a stable upbringing with two parents who loved each other and are still together now. i want that SO badly for my two children, to have what my brother and i had. i can't bear the thought of inflicting pain and suffering on DH and my kids just because of my own selfish addiction to another man.
onwards, IRTE - i think the positive visualisation advice was excellent. i resolve to use it more myself, too. i resolve to visualise all the cosy fun times we have as a little foursome of a family. and i resolve to visualise how i would look back at those happy stable serene family times with longing and grief and self-loathing, were i to fling them all up in the air for reasons of OM-addiction!!

I feel your pain IRTE - I have had OM for over 10 yrs, we're both married, kids, neither of us going anywhere. Over the years I've fluctuated between complete dependency to cutting contact (managed 6 weeks once and it nearly killed me). Like Fleecy I think I have reached the point of accepting that I need him in some way in my life - we don't really see much of each other these days, but he is there on email, text etc. Forget the moral judgements, what is right, wrong etc. it is the way I need things to make it all tick over for me, my own marriage included. It is all too easy for people on the outside to find simplistic solutions for situations that are almost always more complex.
If I had the chance to rewind, I wish I had had the strength to finish it the first time I tried because living like this isn't easy, but he has been part of my life for too long now that I just can't not have him in it in some way. If you have the desire and strength then do it now because the alternative is not the path to happiness.

podster it is a great comfort to me to read you, OP and others on this topic. i echo podster's words 'the alternative is not the path to happiness'. no indeed! however, it is the way life has worked out, for me, and i am beyond black and white solutions by this stage. OM and i love each other very deeply and in a long-term way. that won't change, whether or not we remain in contact. i seem to need him in my life in order to function. all i can do is to minimise the pain for the others in my life by seeing him very rarely and by restricting our comms to writing, with the occasional phonecall. it's an epistolary relationship, in the main. but i wouldn't be without it, and nor would he. or rather, i can't, and nor can he.

Hi OP, my H is in the same position as you trying to get over OW whom he 'really loved'. We are 4 weeks in to my discovering the affair (I have a thread on here too). I don't know what we would both give for it to have ended after a couple of kisses. You have no reason to listen to me, but STOP NOW, PLEASE. You have a chance and a choice not to cause any more devastation to your family.

One thing that helped my H was thinking "what was the fruit of the relationship?" While it was going on, it was lies, deceit, unfaithfulness, him treating me and the DCs like shit, not doing well at work, ignoring all his friends. When it was over? Unbearable agony and the potential loss of everything actually good in his life- me, DCs, house, money, friends and family (which might still happen). Don't choose that for you.

Also, would it be easier getting over OM or DH?

Just SUCK IT UP. Absolutely no contact. 'This too shall pass,' etc.

Thank you all for listening.
Fleecy/Podster - have these always just been emotional affairs, or did they become physical at any stage?
Robberb - I am so sorry to hear your story, it must be utterly agonising. And you are right, I know the pain I would feel losing my marriage would be worse than this.
It's why I am determined to keep trucking along, and why I started this thread so I can keep coming back to remind myself why I must.
This has really helped me so much and I will keep reading it.

Hi OP

Just wondering - have you given thought to why your emotional affair began? What need did it meet?

IRTE

oh, physical, on and off, for sure. nowadays it's mostly emotional, partly for moral/guilt reasons (ha - clutching at straws here - i'm hardly holder of the moral high ground!) and partly because of limitations of time, distance and emotional elastic.

billybunter makes a very good point. i went and saw a therapist for a few months when things were at their very worst a few years ago (had told DH about OM, we were in couple counselling, things were rocky) and this is what he kept coming back to: 'what need is this meeting for you, that isn't met by your marriage/current life set-up'. that question and the answers i eventually found to it really helped me (though not, as discussed, discard OM from my life completely, i admit.)

ps robberb: you force me to consider this from another angle, which is very good for me. thank you. i can imagine how it must feel to read accounts such as this when you have suffered from the other side. i am sorry for what you've gone through.

Go cold turkey, be strong and think about this:

You will never forgive yourself, and your children and husband will never forgive you. if you weaken and take this affair further. It will probably break up your family.

You have children. Their feelings and stability are more important than yours.

The grass ain't greener. It's all fantasy. You have not picked up his socks and pants for XX years, he's not seen you grumpy and frazzled in your PJs, you've not had money worries and stress and exhaustion of babies together ie you have not lived in the real world with this man - you cannot say you love him or he loves you.

Take off your Mills and Boon specs.

Another OMaholic here ....taking one day at a time.....2 weeks NC yesterday. Keep going 'itsreallytheend', just think the deeper you get in, the harder it is to get out. I wish I had ended it earlier (after a the first kiss) to prevent all this pain. Good luck, and stay strong xxx

billyb - he is not meeting any need that is lacking from my marriage.

I am paranoid about being recognised, so to keep it vague - OM pre-dates DH, but feelings were never acknowleged before. Now they have been. There was a gap of a few years where we didn't see each other, but previously had rather intense friendship. Since seen each other again, has all come to the fore. I do believe I love him, same as I always did. I also love DH.

I am 100% certain I would never form a "new" connection outside my marriage. I adore my DH. This is about something that was never resolved in the past.

I know what I have to do. I just need the strength to keep doing it. And it is really helping to get all these words of wisdom. So easy to lose perspective if you try to do it on your own.

Fleecy - does your DH know that OM is still in your life?

It's hard? Of course it's hard! It should be hard! Of course, it should never have been easy in the first place, betraying your family for some fun on the side. And with a charmer of a man who wants to carry things on. Wow - his wife is a lucky woman

In your last post, you talk about your history with this man, your feelings as if they are this animal that cannot be tamed, a ball of emotions that have over taken you, the fact that your feelings for this man were not acknowledged somehow validating how you have acted.

This is bollocks.

You made a choice to do what you did. You are a grown woman, not some pathetic creature in a romcom, at the mercy of their emotions. If you wanted to have something with this man, then you could have. But you should have finished things with your husband first. Didn't want to? Well then, maybe these "feelings" weren't so important.

STOP attaching mystery and romance and history to your feelings for this man and accept what you have done for the sordid and cheap thing that it is.

Tell your husband and give him the choice of controlling the relationship.

When your husband finds out, you won't be thinking about the hugeness of your feelings, or what a history you have with this man. You will see the reality of what has happened, everything will be clear and you will realise.

Yes, I know all that too pfft. You are very right. Is why I am forging ahead with this being an end to it all.

Arrggh lost long post.

Listen to me and Pfft. Because if you don't you will 100% regret it.

It's very simple. Imagine your children telling you when they are adults how utterly devastating it was when you and dh split up and how it's affected all their other relationships. How they can never get those years back and can't forgive you for that.

If you were in a deeply unhappy marriage or an abusive situation I wouldn't write such harsh words. But in your case, there are no 'excuses' for destablising their lives.