Is it really possible to love two people at the same time?

[joona]

A male friend of mine has confided in me that he has been having an affair for the last 5 years.
We have known eachother since we were kids as our parents are also close friends.

He got engaged at 23 after his girlfriend of 2 years discovered she was pregnant, but they have never married. They have been together for 9 years in total.

He hasnt been himself lately, he's been very down in the dumps & withdrawn. He told me last night that he has been having an affair for almost 5 years with a woman he used to work with.

Now i dont condone cheating, my theory is that if you are unhappy in a relationship, you should end it before starting a new one.

He claims the affair started after his relationship went stale, and that he and his partner are more friends than a couple these days. He says he stays for the child, and that he does still love his partner "in a funny way" ... But that he has also fallen in love with the other woman and canr imagine his life without her.

He says it has come to the point where he is struggling to continue living his double life, but is having difficulty choosing between them.

His partner discovered his affair about a year in, and he ended it... Only to resume it a few months later, which his partner knows nothing about.

I dont know what advice to give him.
There is a saying that goes "if you love 2 people, choose the. 2nd, because if you really loved the first then you wouldnt fall for the second"

But is that a myth or can you really love two people at once? All views are much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Sorry, just seen your second post.

No of course he shouldn't remain in a relationship he's unhappy with, but something has to give doesn't it?

Either it's more important for him to pursue his dreams OR live with his child every day. That's his choice.

As a matter of fact, earlier in the thread i have already said that i've told him in un-sugarcoated terms exactly how much a dissapprove of what he is doing. He's known me long enough to know that i dont exactly mince my words. If he was concerned about my reaction, he would have told me nothing.

And while i disagree, i DO believe that we cant help who we fall in (or out) of love with, but we CAN control what we do about it.. and unfortunately, thats where he's gone wrong. He should have ended his relationship with his partner before starting one with the OW.. but as i said, although i agree this is what should have happened, its sometimes easier said than done.

You don't fall in love with anyone instantly. You take 100s of steps on the way to allow it to happen.

You really can help who you fall in love with. You step away if you think you're vulnerable and you don't take that first step.

Anyway, it sounds like you believe what he's saying and have sympathy for his predicament, whereas my sympathies are with that poor woman who's had forgiveness thrown in her face, been deceived for 5 years and with the child whose increasing age is going to make any separation much harder on him or her now, than if your friend had left his relationship earlier.

I do feel for his partner, if my OH was doing this to me i'd be beyond devestated.. but i certainly wouldnt emotionally blackmail him into staying. Regardless of how much i loved him, i have too much self respect to stay with someone who didnt want to be with me.

Oh dear - so many judgements made - I know that this forum is for people to express their views, but it always amazes me how people seem to be so judgemental just by reading a bit of text on a screen.

I would just like to say that I don't understand this business of being "in love" or "loving someone" - in my view love is a feeling like any other e.g. happy, sad, lonely, afraid excited etc etc. It comes and goes like all other feelings do, but somehow this doesn't seem to be recognised. Sometimes I feel loving towards my partner and sometimes I hate him when we have had a row. Sometimes I feel happy and sometimes I don't etc.

I think we are all trying to get our needs met (maybe not consciously) and when someone meets all our needs and the r/ship is new and we are in the "first flush" we declare ourselves to be "in love" but this is a temporary phase that passes. When the other person is no longer meeting all our needs and the excitement has gone, we say we are no longer "in love" Then if one of the couple finds a new partner they seem to justify it by claiming that they are no longer "in love" with the former partner, though may still claim to love her.

As far as I know 1 in 3 marriages/partnerships break down in the UK and within 12 months, the majority have a new relationship. They do not consider that the institution of marriage or partnership is the problem, they believe it is because of that particular partner and a new one will solve the problem BUT 2nd marriages/partnerships break down quicker than 1st ones, which is unsurprising given the emotional baggage that each one brings to the new r/ship, to say nothing of the complexity of contact with the children.

Sorry I sound a bit preachy so I will shut up. BTW Properformer I can't understand why you keep apologising to Amazonian as I think she has been unecessarily rude and sarcastic to you.

He's known me long enough to know that i dont exactly mince my words. If he was concerned about my reaction, he would have told me nothing.

Okay, so if that's true and a) he thinks you would speak your mind and b) you really would have taken a dim view of what I think is the real truth, then that's all the more reason to lie to you and dress this up as a poor man who can't be parted from his child, who's in a terrible relationship with a woman who uses their child as a weapon.

He didn't want you to think badly of him and he certainly didn't want you to condemn him as a selfish arse, did he?

You've only got his word for it that his partner 'emotionally blackmails' him. Until you've heard her version of events, I'd be very wary of judging her like that.

charbon he KNEW i would take a dim view on the fact he was having an affair full stop, as he knows my relationship with my son's father broke down due to infidelity on his part. Yet he still chose to confide in me, which is something he did off his own back... So yes, i do believe he was telling the truth. With all due respect i have known this man for 21yrs.

And im aware that he and his partner sleep in seperate rooms, and have done for some time.. she told me this herself & blames it on his snoring. But reading between the lines i assume there's more to it than that.

In response to your previous statement charbon that you CAN choose who you fall in love with, im sorry but i still totaly disagree.

No, you dont fall in love instantly, i agree with you on that. He developed a friendship with this girl, which gradually turned into more as time went on. He should have put a stop to it before it went too far, but he didnt. His mistake was that he acted on it.

But even if he had'nt acted on it, does that mean he wouldnt have had the feelings for her that he has now?

Of course it doesnt. I agree you have to know someone intimately to 'love' them.. but that doesnt mean sex. You can know someone intimately without the physical side of things. To me, love involves the heart and the mind.. thats what you fall in love with... You dont need sex for that. If it was just sex, it would be lust, not love.

What i mean is, you can stop yourself from doing things you shouldnt do... But you cant stop your heart from feeling what it feels.

I don't think he does love the OW.

I also think you're seeing this far too romantically. You said:

"But even if he had'nt acted on it, does that mean he wouldnt have had the feelings for her that he has now?"

So what? Just because he developed 'feelings' for a friend, doesn't mean that those feelings were likely to last or meant anything more at one stage than a bit of a crush on a colleague. In many relationships, people develop 'feelings' for other people, but it means absolutely nothing if you don't fuel the flames of it and it certainly doesn't mean you're soul mates who are meant to be together.

We all have a choice whether to get in a bit deeper.

He did, but he didn't give his partner a choice to fall in love with someone else. He's had her fidelity for 5 years under false pretences.

If we could control what our hearts felt, none of us would ever get upset or angry. I dont think any of us enjoy those feelings, but we get them because we cant do anything to stop them. Just because we dont want to feel them, doesnt mean we wont.

However, we can choose not to act on those feelings. Eg - if we're angry we dont have to lash out.. but sometimes we choose to, and usually end up regretting it.... We'd still feel the anger though, whether we acted on it or not.

In the same instance, just because my friend developed feelings of love for OW, he didnt HAVE to act on them & embark on an affair with her. He chose to do that. And THAT'S what i think is wrong.

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. You can't help feeling attracted to someone else because that's involuntary, but only deluded romantics would say it was 'love'. If you don't want to fall in love then, you choose to back away. If feelings are not nurtured or given into, eventually they will subside. For most sane and rational people, it takes a while to 'fall in love' and it's normally preceded by mere infatuation. All along there are choices and steps taken.

Anyhoo, ironically enough if your friend does decide to leave his partner now and she finds out she's been comprehensively deceived for 5 years, in her anger she might well decide to move as far away from him as she can get. Whereas she might have been more reasonable if he'd been honest with her from the start.

If he's really that committed to being a dad, he might blame his ex-partner and the OW in equal measure for the situation too.

Really, he either stays with his partner and gives up the OW, or he leaves his partner and accepts that he's got fewer parental rights as an unmarried father and therefore won't live with his child full-time.

What he shouldn't do is maintain the status quo, because the only person benefitting from that arrangement is him.

for most sane and rational people, it takes a while to fall in love

I think that's quite a harsh thing to say. There are thousands, maybe millions of people who believe in love at first sight. I admit i am not one of them, but i would never judge those who do believe it as insane or irrational. Just because these feelings dont exist to you or I personaly, who are we to say they dont exist for others?

And as for my friend, as i have repeated several times, he didnt declare he loved OW immediately. At first it was just friendship, (like the one he shares with me), which gradualy became more. Yes it probably did start out as an attraction, but what should he have done? Not spoken to her because he found her attractive?

We ALL find people other than our partners physicaly attractive, its human nature. Does that mean we should only allow ourselves to become friends with people we find unattractive? His feelings of love as i understand, developed from their friendship. And even if he had cut off the friendship when he realised these feelings had developed, it doesnt mean they would have faded, especially when he saw the OW in work every day. The crime he has committed in my eyes, is allowing himself to deceive and lie to his partner, by acting on his feelings for OW while he & his partner are still together. That is something that should not have happened.

I strongly disagree with your view that the way you feel about someone can be controlled. If we could all choose who we love, the world would be a much simpler place, divorce rates & single parent families would be non existant... because in an ideal world, we would more than likely all choose to be madly in love with our childrens other parent, and live happily as family unit. But that is an unrealistic notion.

Can we love more than one person at once? Of course. And we're designed to do so. Friends for example. Members of family. Our children. Because we have more than one child, it doesn't mean we stop loving the other one, or love them differently.
But, like others say, it's about what you do about it.

Perhaps this shows that if you coast along with someone you know is not 'the one' out of duty, then you are more likely to be tempted in future. People who at least share a common memory of that first flush of excitement maybe less likely to stray in the future. I can see how using tactics to make someone stay backfires in the end.
MN is full of it. It still amazes me how so many women can 'accidently' have so many kids by the wrong person, at the wrong time and in the wrong circumstances. Yes men are responsible too, but it's more life-changing for women. Not meaning to insult anyone, just personally find it hard as never 'taken a risk' or 'hedged my bets' in my life. Looks like a lot still do though.

Seems to me that what the OP's friend has is 2 women, each with battered egos. One who values herself so low that sleeping separately, needing to 'push' for marriage and emotional blackmail is acceptable to her, and one who in 5 years has not concluded she is worthy of a man's full-time affection. Some self-esteem issues from the off maybe, but I'd guess that her friend has caused a lot further erosion.

The right answer in this situation is for the friend to DO SOMETHING. What he does he has the luxury of deciding for himself (and the responsibility) because nobody around him is making a move either. Only he can know which way to go. He has to try and see the different future scenarios and work out which is happiest for him - yes he is a git, but the answer is to be true to yourself when faced with multiple possibilities, then deal with the outfall as best and respectfully as possible.

Agree with both Charbon and Opentooffers takes on this. However, the issue of "love", "in love" or whatever word is being used to describe how the OP's friend feels for these two women is beside the point. This man is not treating his partner with any respect (nor, for that matter, the OW).

Whether you can love more than one person at the same time isn't really relevant is it? Surely the correct question is, should you be having a secret affair whilst pretending to your partner that all is fine.

Of course he can't choose - at the moment he has both and choosing one would mean he loses out on something.

I would venture to guess that if he felt he could continue with both women without discovery he would happily do it.

If I thought I could find 2 or 3 men, one hot young thing for sex and telling me how marvellous I am, one who was good round the house, one who was funny and I could get away with seeing all of them, I would.

Problem is that it would probably only work if I lied to one or more of them and practised that deceit continuously when with them. And I don;t think i'd like myself very much for doing that. So I don't.

geekdad you are right, he isnt showing respect for either of them. I dont think he see's that though, he's far too wrapped up in his own confusuion. And although he is a good friend of mine, i am appaulled at what he is doing and have urged him to make a decision either way, for the sake of his own sanity if nothing else.

He agree's that he needs to be honest with both of these women, aswell as himself. But he is finding it difficult to decide which way to turn as whatever option he chooses, he loses something he doesnt want to lose. Which is his own selfish fault for allowing things to go this far in the first place.

He's not wrapped up in confusion he's G R E E D Y

And an arsehole

LOL

Why doesn't he tell them both the situation and let them decide which one of them wants him. As long as he's honest with them and tells them both their own personal pro's and con's - I can see that working out quite well for them.

That would be an idea worth trying, if he was man enough

At least the dipshit behaviour confusion would end

kewcumber no, the question shouldnt be "should you be having a secret affair while pretending to your partner that all is well*

I think anyone in the right mind already knows the answer to that one. Nobody would say that they approve of an affair carried out behind someones back.

Its the reason he's given me for having this affair that im questioning. That he loves both women. I dont know if that's possible, as its not something i have ever experienced myself.. which is why i am asking for other peoples views on this matter.

All is not well with his partner. They sleep in seperate rooms, he has refused to set a date for their wedding after 7yrs of engagement, and he already told her he wanted to leave when the affair was discovered a year in (which is when she played the child card). He ended the affair but missed the OW, it resumed a few months later and has continued for another 4 yrs.

He says he does love his partner 'in a funny way' but that he loves the OW too.
He agrees that something's gotta give, but he is torn about which woman to choose... The mother of his child who he has shared so much history with, and doesnt want to hurt, although he feels their relatioship is more like a friendship these days.

Or the OW, who he obviously does have deep feelings for. 5yrs is not exactly a fling, and if he didnt believe he loved her, i dont think she would even be an option in this. But she is.