In love with another man - help desperately needed.

[abigfatmess]

I am in a big mess (hence the name) and desperately need help from wise mumsnetters. I have been with my husband for 15 years (married for 5), we met when I was 18. We have a 13 year old dc. It took a lot of adjustment, but we both settled into parenthood, set up home together etc and made the best of it. Like every relationship, we?ve had our ups and downs. I?ve suffered two major bereavements in the last 5 years, we both have quite stressful jobs and work long hours (although very much enjoy them) and all the normal ups and downs that life brings. Dh is a good man who loves me deeply and has always supported me and what I do in life. He is a good father and the kindest person I have ever met. If I have ever had doubts in our relationship (which have cropped up from time to time and come purely from me ? did I settle too young? Etc) I only have to remind myself of what a good person he is.

In some ways we are very similar ? both very down to earth, similar values regarding family and money, and in other ways we are very different. He is quite ?black and white? and intelligent in a practical way. I have a real interest in the arts, theatre and poetry and tend to (over) analyse everything! Our interests are very separate due to this difference. In hindsight, it is easy to see how problems come up. I have very much invested in my career over the last few years and the differences in the way we look at life have become more pronounced. Hence why, a couple of years ago, I really, seriously questioned my marriage. This was bad enough, until I then found myself falling for somebody who I know socially through my interests. I know what you are all going to say, but for someone who has never once looked at a man in 12 years in that way, it was actually really upsetting.

To cut a very long story short, over the last year, OM and I have chatted (nothing has happened physically) but we both feel very strongly about each other. I have thought and thought about WHY this has happened ? I know that sometimes, someone meets someone else and then thinks of problems within their marriage to almost justify it. That is, if the other person hadn?t come along, their marriage may have ticked along quite nicely. In my case, I think this OM has made problems beneath the surface of my marriage come out very quickly iyswim and it is devastating.

OM works away so we have had a period of no contact (initiated by me). However, he does have family and a house quite near to where I live, so it is not inconceivable that I would bump into him at any time. He knows the situation with me and knows I am going through it. Over the last few months, dh has really been through the mill with me. He doesn?t know about OM ( I just can?t tell him) but he knows that I am questioning everything and the seriousness of our problems. Initially he was angry and upset obviously, but now he is offering to support me through this, even though he knows that the outcome could mean us parting.

I have had some counselling which helped a little but I am going round and round in circles. I have never experienced anything like this. I cry daily and am literally struggling to keep it together. I am normally a very ?together? person who can see things for what they are, but I can?t get OM out of my mind. Dh is a good man, I love him as a best friend which actually, is a good basis for marriage. However, the attraction to the OM is mentally and emotionally (the physical attraction came after that) and the OM is actually not at all, the type I would have imagined being attracted to. I know it sounds clichéd, but its just so bloody natural with OM, and at the moment, so false with dh. However, I also know that the grass is not greener, that OM and I click in some ways, but in the real world, day to day if I were with him, it could be the biggest mistake I ever made.

I then lurch to considering being on my own ? if it weren?t for dc, I would definitely have instigated a trial separation, but I just can?t see this being fair on dc.

I was also hoping that this attraction would wane, but it hasn?t. What the hell do I do?
When I read this back through, I know I probably sound quite coherent, but I am struggling so badly.

"If my DP had had his head turned by another women but ultimately it was to have no long-term consequences for our relationship, I'd rather not know."

A) impossible. You might think it wouldn't make a difference if no one acted on anything, but as WWIFN has been saying, it will completely colour the way one sees one's partner and marriage.

B) Don't you think that the H should also have a say in what the long-term consequences of the OP's actions/thoughts/feelings should be? Surprisingly enough, it's not just about her.

Hello all, thanks for your replies.

I can see both sides of what everyone is saying. WWIFN - in terms of how I think it would be for dh - liberating or more painful? DH has obviously been upset but is naturally a very upbeat, confident, positive person. He is a rare type of person (I think) who, although loves me so, so much, also has a high degree of confidence and certainty that he would be okay with or without me. I think thats fantastic, and always have done, and I guess that I'm feeling he could handle it well - actually, really well - if we split like this (whatever 'this' is). Thus, it would almost be like rubbing salt in his wounds. I could be completely wrong about this analysis, but through the talks that we've had, considering the state of our marriage, he is still in a good place within himself.

robberbutton - I understand your view. I am not in any way defending what I have done. Everyone has a choice despite their feelings and I look back and realised I made many bad choices, albeit small, that one at a time, added up to this. I know of people who feel little remorse for their affairs, who can compartmentalise them within their lives and continue on in their relationships. I'm not one of them, and I've felt so many horrendous feelings about this including guilt, sadness, disappointment (in myself) to the point that I've considered doing things that I don't really want to go into here. But thank you for your views.

i know. i wrote my post in a rush and i was aware it sounded as though i was saying OP should only tell DH if she was contemplating ending relationship. it's not quite what i meant. but i just think complete transparency in relationships is not always the answer to a happy ending!

i also agree with you wwifn. of course an EA still counts as betrayal. it's just i don't think abigfatmess has done anything that bad, not in the big scheme of things. And she obviously does still have a lot of respect for her H. That's partly why she posted here. It's great that she has the self-awareness to step back and examine what's happening.

I'm sorry to talk about you in the third person like this, abigfatmess. Hope you've had an okay day. You are obviously going through a big, almost existential crisis. There's a lot going on in your head and heart right now.

Next time I come on, if you're still wanting to talk, it would be good to get back to some of the other things you were talking about earlier.

night all. MMx

Hi Mabel May

I am not too bad - had a busy day at work and this helps - although I know it doesn't solve a thing. It would be good to talk again. I can check in on here every day. Hope you are also doing okay.

Please let your husband know everything. Only having partial information - that you're unhappy - isn't fair. The information will hurt him dreadfully, but otherwise you're not being fair to him. If my wife felt this way about someone else, I'd really want to know.

I see you mentioned upthread that you think your husband could give great advice on the situation with your other man. Please don't do that to him. Once a long time ago when my then long-term live-in partner met someone else, she asked my advice as to what the other man was thinking, showed me his letters etc because she wanted a 'male perspective' on what he said and wrote. It nearly destroyed me and it fairly much screwed me up for a long time afterwards.

Hi abigfatmess - how are you feeling?

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not the best person to offer advice to you in your situation as I'm in the midst of a very similar thing myself and am feeling very muddled and emotional about it, so I don't want to project what is happening and has happened to me on to your own experiences. However, I can say that I can completely empathise with everything you are going through and am very happy to at least offer understanding and a sounding board.

I said your OM being antithesis of your DH was significant. I think this dynamic comes about more often when you are unhappy in your primary relationship.

Affairs, emotional or physical, can happen for all sorts of reasons. But I know that part of the reason for mine was a long-standing and deep unhappiness with my own relationship and my DP. The OM in my case represented so many things that my DP has rejected or doesn't "get", if that makes sense? The OM shared many characteristics with me that my DP just doesn't understand or that irritate him. I'm not sure I'm actually making that much sense or saying anything particularly intelligent.

I don't know if there are any parallels with your own situation here...?

Anyway, I hope you are feeling alright. It's good you've got a satisfying career and busy job at least to give your mind something else to think about through a time like this. I am significantly lacking job satisfaction at the moment which sadly is allowing me too much mental space to dwell on things.

Take care.

by the way, my last post is in no way justifying my emotional affair. of course it was wrong. but in trying to understand WHY it happened this is one of the factors.

Hi mabelmay
hope you are okay. I have thought alot about what you are saying regarding OM being the antithesis to dh. This is certainly the case regarding some of the traits between dh and OM, although not all. And, I can see now, that the traits of being reasonable, sensible, practical, logical etc had to me increased in dh (not sure why - age? circumstances?) and had been doing so for quite a while before OM came on the scene.

I am feeling a bit unsteady because OM phoned yesterday, the first time for a while. To cut a long story short, he was very full on, but I felt quite strong and basically told him to back off. I certainly feel better for taking some kind of control.
I think my sadness over the last few months (and I mean real sadness, crying, desperation) was initially for the confusion between dh and OM, and, even worse, for the confusion I felt about myself. It was like my life was doomed, I had ruined everything within myself because of this. All my successes didn't matter, because look whats happened now.....

I still feel like this a little. But, having so little contact with OM has distanced me from him. I now realise that my sadness comes from what I've lost with dh and actually, what we had lost a long time ago before OM came along. I'm grieving for the fact that our relationship is finishing and thats really difficult. I am trying to tell myself to do something to make it 'right' whatever that may be, and I'm sure that will come. However, whatever happens, our relationship and the man I've lived with for 15 years appears to be over. Thats so hard to deal with, yet so apparent.

abigfatmess - I have hesitated about posting, because I have no personal experience of your situation, and I don't want to say something naive or insensitive.

One thing that strikes me about your posts (which are amazingly articulate and well-considered), is that you are, perhaps, over-analysing the situation that you're in. I think you referred to yourself as over-analytical in your OP. Whilst self-awareness/analysis is a good thing, it seems to me that you've become, perhaps, too inwardly-focussed. It's good that you're having some counselling, but this is (hopefully) from someone objective, which risks making your process even more 'selfish' - in the sense of being all about you.

This situation is not just about you - it is about your DH as well. I'm not attributing fault or blame, just saying that the situation you are in will inevitably be the result of how both of you are; where you are in your careers, how you've changed as you've grown up and developed, etc. This is an entirely natural thing in a long-running relationship. Indeed, it would be odd not to have this kind of 'waxing and waning' in a relationship like yours.

Have you considered having counselling with your husband? Not to talk about your OM - personally I think he's a big fat red herring at the moment - but to talk about the state of your relationship. I'm not sure what kind of counselling would work for you or what would be available, but Relate seems to be pretty well thought of on MN/amongst friends of mine who have experience of it. Your DH sounds like he is a very generous man, but he must be suffering too - as well as being frustrated that he doesn't know what the problem is or, worse, how he can help to fix it. You can't do this on your own. It is a relationship which, by definition, is a two-sided being.

How much time have you (both) invested in your relationship? Do you take time to see each other away from the mundanity of daily life? Do you 'court' each other - to use a very old fashioned term! Remember the days when you were first together, and all the things that you used to do to celebrate your relationship and each others' specialness. You'll never re-create the initial lust phase, and nor would you want to, but it's a very useful exercise to try and remember back to the people you were at the start. I'd bet that they're both still there, somewhere, under the people you are now! It's all too easy to let responsibilities and the grind of daily life take over.

When did you last go out to dinner? Or to the pictures? Or for a walk? Or anything purely for fun, without your DC?

You may not feel like doing this at the moment - you talk about 'acting' or 'being false' when you're with your DH. This reminded me of a really useful NLP technique (I can't remember what it is called, nor am I a NLP practitioner), but basically it's about behaving in a certain way which will then 'induce' the feeling that goes with that. So, you behave in a way that goes with being in love with your husband - and then this helps to (re)create that feeling.

I know that this may sound a bit 'hippy dippy' but it's a surprisingly helpful technique.

DH and I have been together for 25 years (married for 20). We went through a particularly difficult patch - no especial reason - and one day I realised that his return home from work triggered in me a bad tempered reaction, and I spent the next hour or so snapping at him and generally being pretty horrible. He had done nothing to deserve it (other than coming home!). Once I realised it, I changed it. Instead of snarling, I smiled and asked him how his day had been/made general pleasant chit chat and suddenly life was so much better! I think it's very easy to get into negative patterns of behaviour without realising it.

Anyway, this is a very long ramble. I hope it's not insensitive or crass.

I was very saddened by the last paragraph of your 16.53 post when you talked about your relationship being over, as it seems that you do love your DH very much - just that you have got out of practice of being in love with him.

abigfatmess - I feel your sadness completely. And what you say about grieving for what could be the end of your relationship strikes a chord with me. This is what I am feeling at the moment too.

I echo the last poster's advice to at least try some couples counselling as this may clarify a few issues and might give you and your DH one more chance. Do, if you have the time, take a look at the more recent posts on my thread (see the last page of thread "is it possible to have an affair but stay happily married/attached? etc" - sorry, don't know how to do links). Some of the advice from posters here to me may help you at this stage.

It's a very anxious, sad time - I know this only too well. I think you are in a similar place. I realise that the OM became for me (as a couple of posters suggested to me at the time) a means of running away from confronting what I really needed to head on: me and DP and my profound feelings of unhappiness in our relationship that had actually been niggling at me for years. It sounds like it might be the same for you. Do take a look - there may be something in those posts that is helpful for you.

And well done for being so strong when the OM got in touch. That must have been hard, so I really commend you for taking control in that way. MMx

BecauseI?mWorthIt ? thank you for your thoughtful post. I am amazed that people have said I sound articulate when my mind has never felt so confused! At one point I actually felt like I was going mad, so it is comforting to be told that I am coherent!

I understand your advice and can see where you are coming from. Dh and I did have a few sessions of counselling a while back. It wasn?t entirely successful, but I felt this was because I wasn?t being 100 percent honest about the situation (which I know, is completely my fault). Before all this flared up, we did actually take time out together ? the odd weekend away, meals etc. I honestly can?t say the exact point when it tipped from being ?okay? to all of this as there certainly were problems before OM (although I admit that OM seemed to bring them to the surface more quickly). I rack my brains, thinking about the point when things stopped being normal between us. I do wonder whether my interactions have caused it, but, I mean that this might have happened over months, possibly years. It is so easy to get caught up in your own life and job isn?t it?

The other thing is that we have had problems before and we worked at it. Nothing specific, but we all have ups and downs and we are both (normally) level headed people - the grass isn?t greener? types. You are right that this is both of us ? I am coming to realise that and I do need to think about dh?s life/career etc and how this brought us to this point.

All I do know, is that for some reason, the thought of the long haul frightens the hell out of me with dh. I don?t know why, and I don?t know how/when this feeling started to set in, but it has. This leads me onto mabelmay ? hope you are ok ? I did look at your other post. Wow! A wealth of information, and read lots of it. You have really come on a very difficult journey and seem like a very strong person. Well done!

It is so strange though ? you were talking about pensions ? funnily enough, in recent months, dh has also talked about upping his pension and I remember feeling physically sick and even about investing in property overseas for the ?future?. I remember telling my counsellor about my panic and she gently reminded me that I always have choices. I obviously don?t know your personality, but she said that I came across as somebody quite tied by conventions and what ?should? be (ie, I ?should? be married, I ?should? stay married for the sake of dc ? all of these shoulds are created by me), yet, I am having these feelings that I need to part from dh. She questioned me a lot on whether I am acting on what I think I should think or whether I am acting on what I really think. Sorry to be so heavy on a Friday night, but that really gave me food for thought!

I must admit, when/if we separate, because dh is a good man, I can almost see people wondering why. Deep deep down I know that absolutely doesn?t matter, but I also agonise over why it isn?t right. I guess that comes down to becauseImworthits post ? perhaps I?m too inward looking. It?s a difficult one, because I also have this gut feeling that if I don?t do it and push everything under the carpet to make ?the best of it?, it will still have to be addressed later. Like you said mabelmay, its like the OM has highlighted problems/doubts/feelings that have lurked for a while.

Just read back and sorry for it sounding like a load of gobbledygook! If it helps, when I talked about doing 'what I think I should do' or doing 'what I think I think I should do', I meant in terms of separating from dh. I think she was helping me to clarify my reasons/fears/doubts for leaving and she felt that I felt it was my duty to stay.