Have always loved another man.

[totallyloyal]

I noticed a post on fb today from a friend who had an affair, going on about how she felt about the other man etc.

I have loved another man to my dh for 16 years. I love my dh. But this guy is special. We had the weirdest connection and still do. He loves me too.

I would never leave or hurt my dh. Ever. I'm not stupid. There is no emotional affair. We are not geographically close either. Just a pure basic love, that I've never been able to properly identify and am struggling to articulate.

But something tonight has triggered me to actually think about it. Am I weird? Anyone else experienced this or can relate to his?

I've got a "one that got away", the atmosphere of being married has made me on occasion attribute feelings, characteristics, opportunities etc to him which are not real, he becomes a focus for various things, if I feel swayed towards him I've learned to recognise those things as what I need to address with dh because they always are about my relationship with him and not the other fella. The fact he's my friend, there's a never explored history and an attraction actually is quite normal and I know I only attribute paranoid importance to it because I am married.

I think if you feel you have to choose between two men, especially out of a fear of loneliness then it is a good time to be alone too.

I should add : OM loves me, but knowing I'm married he won't meet me. Sometimes I think I just love him as a friend and that I miss hanging out.

So I'm only now thinking about breaking my marriage up so I don't lose a special friend? Crazy yeah?!

Yes crazy beaver. Neither situation sounds right for you. Would you not be on your own?

Yes, probably much better on my own.

Refer to precious post with all my fears written down.

One fear I didn't mention:
Am I just being hormonal?
I don't always feel like this.
Marriages arnt meant to e easy- do I just new to work on it and put more effort than I have been into it?

You only get one life to live and you cannot waste it martyring yourself to some insignificant social construct. The only way through this is to make choices and not really know if they are the right ones so I don't really have an answer for you there! Being alone (temporarily or permanently) can help focus your mind on yourself and what you want which is sometimes uncomfortable and something people try to avoid but there is always a benefit to knowing yourself and to being unafraid of happiness. Happiness can lie in husbands, leaving a marriage, being alone, anything really, depends on you to find out what makes you happy.

I don't think 'putting more effort into a marriage', although that is the common phrase, sounds right. It sounds like you are constantly having to amuse and appease the other half.

I think the problem for many, including myself, is not knowing myself well enough and so not knowing what I really want or need from life. So putting more effort into yourself might be a better idea.

There was a film on more or less this theme out this summer, starring Michelle Williams. She had a happy life with long term H, then met another, more exciting man, and became discontented with her H, and finally left him for the new man. A big risk. After a while the excitement was over and they didn't have much in common, but H would not take her back, as he had been too badly hurt. It was really depressing. If the grass is green, why risk all (including the happiness of H) in the hope that it will be even greener elsewhere?

I suppose that's what I mean about thinking about it too, think about it from a perspective of yourself and not the mythical "one". What things does this OM represent to me? Why would i feel like that about him? Are those things missing from my life now? Why? Can I change that?

In 'The Bridges of Madison County' she stays with her husband.

I just read the synopsis of that film as not seen it.

But they all in love in 4 days? Now that is crazy!

Can't say at all what you should do but I was in this situation a long time ago. Married but met OM a week before the wedding. That was it. Stayed married for 11 years. Have been w DH ( that is the original OM) for 19 official years and married for most of those, with a DC For the unofficial years we were very good friends and generally nothing more no DC or anything else lasting with first H. Sometimes you really have to do what you feel is right not what convention says is right.

Tigerdriver: how did you feel on your wedding day/honeymoon etc?
We're the 11 years with Xh happy?

Seems similar position to me

Confused I think. A week is so short, no time to get your head round etc and then it's happening. 11 years mixed. Not happy really but masked by (the real) DH being around all the time and he and I hanging out platonically, so things were ok. I was young and ambitious and not thinking of DC at the time so that was never an issue. Btw, the honeymoon was two nights in a cheap hotel in the nastier bits of the Cotswolds so that wasn't an issue.

I think is is, really is, a case of 'the one that got away', I've been there, I know.

I know very well because it's happened to me three times. These ones that get away are pesky, & enduring. But they are boringly repetitive & that's exactly what they'd become.

They rear their heads in times of dissatisfaction & toil, they represent freedom & abandonment. A different life. A more exciting life.

But they're just men, as we are just women, they don't offer the answers, only distraction.

I'm absolutely sure you felt as heady & excited by your DH/P when you met them & if you hadn't settled down to a life of wet towels on the bathroom floor, children in the bed & hairs in the plug-hole, if they'd buggered off & left you for dust a year in, you'd feel a yearning for what could have been.

& what could have been?

Exactly what you have now I imagine, it's not all Liz & Dick out there you know.

Most enduring relationships are comfortable, personable & fun. Occasionally sexy, sometimes wild, but mostly comfortable, understanding, intimate & kind.

You'll never get there if you hanker after an impossible fantasy.

Tiger driver: why not leave sooner?

How did you bring it up with him when you decided to?

I can't help but think that if you have feelings for someone else, then it is because you are not entirely happy where you are. I can relate, sadly, to that.

My first gf was killed in a car crash nearly 20 years ago. Do I still think about her occasionally? Yes. Have there been times I wonder 'what if?' Of course. Am I still in love with her? No. Was I still in love with her when I was with my ex? No.

Crushes are all very well. But the OP has said she has loved this guy for 16 years and that he is special. Your poor DH. He deserves to be the one who you think of as special.

I'm quite interested to know if this man is an ex of the OP, or someone with whom she never actually got round to having a relationship with.

If there is no proper 'finish' to a crush/attraction (especially if there was no actual 'start' either) then it's easy for these feelings to hang around for ever years. With the object of desire becoming a fantasy figure almost. There will be no reason for these feelings to end as they exist in a bubble, unaffected by everyday life.

I'm speaking from experience here but thankfully i can now, these last 10 years or so (!) see it entirely for what it is. ie: a fantasy.

When you think back to a lost love you only tend to remember the good bits. Comparing a long standing marriage to a much shorter love is like comparing a visit to the theatre to watch the new musical for the very first time to going back to watch it for the 22nd time. Some people in long standing marriages are lucky enough to enjoy the 22nd time as much as they enjoyed the first. Most are not that lucky. They might enjoy the odd song but most leave them feeling unfulfilled. The trick is to try to avoid becoming 'les miserables"and harping to the past and instead try to inject a bit of "dirty dancing" back into your current relationship!

LOL - on the heels of this thread, I dreamed about my 'OM' last night, my crush from twenty years ago. I dreamed I met him again. He was still essentially the same, but greyer, with a goatee beard for some mad reason.

I have had the occasional very erotic dream about him, which always leaves me feeling very disturbed.

One time a long time ago I had a dream in which he remarried and I was so devastated it wasn't me, that I murdered his new wife.

I just wish he'd go away actually. In my head, I mean.

I think these things have the potiential to rage out of control vv fast and just thinking / waiting for contact is the thin end of the wedge and very disprutive. I try very hard not to think of mine at all which was working for a long time til I saw this thread:)

"I've got a "one that got away", the atmosphere of being married has made me on occasion attribute feelings, characteristics, opportunities etc to him which are not real, he becomes a focus for various things, if I feel swayed towards him I've learned to recognise those things as what I need to address with dh because they always are about my relationship with him and not the other fella. The fact he's my friend, there's a never explored history and an attraction actually is quite normal and I know I only attribute paranoid importance to it because I am married. "

Thank yo so much for those words Offred. I am going to keep hold of that right now. Can I just ask, are you still friends with your 'one that got away' and does your DH feel about it? I almost ended up in EA territory but have cut contact with OM for now and am doing everything possible to peice back together my marriage, but I really beleive what you said above and would love to think that in time when DH and I are strong, that OM and I could be friends of sorts as I care about him and he needs a friend right now. Maybe I ma being very niave?

have skimmed through alot of these posts, so apologies if i am repeating someone else.
do you think the idea of 'the one that got away' is a symptom of our idealised society? chick flicks and chick lit are full of the idea of having one, true love, and even sleb stories perpetuate this.
surely there will never be a perfect couple? the grass is NEVER greener on the other side - it's just got different types of weeds mixed in!
and i am speaking as someone who had an EA; and initiated divorce (even though me and OM had finished), because I felt disloyal to dh continuing the marraige knowing how much i loved someone else.
OM and i would never have worked - i see that now. i was just carried away by the romance of it all. (But, yes, i think i still love OM very much)

I don't think I could be married to someone and love someone else.