Having an affair with my soulmate but feel sick with guilt about kids :(

[HollieHelen]

Hi there, can't believe I'm posting this, I just have nowhere to turn for advice on this IRL.
Basically am having an affair with my highschool sweetheart from nearly 18 years ago. When I say affair we haven't slept together and we live hundreds of miles apart so only meet up rarely (every month or so) but we have kissed (and more) and text each other loads every day.
We've both said we love each other and via text / in person we've discussed everything about being together in the future, right down to what jobs we?d do, having more kids ? but always avoiding the thorny questions of when / how it would actually happen. I have 2 kids and he has 1.
Am torn between wanting to stop this if it?s not going anywhere (though this would really break my heart as I love him so much), and trying to work out a plan for the future that might potentially work ?
Have just been reading stuff online about kids and affairs and divorces though and it makes me feel sick with guilt. DH is a really, really wonderful father and I know it would be terrible for the kids if we split up. But I just can?t reconcile that with the way I feel about this other guy who truly is my soulmate.
If I turn my back on this, I might regret it my whole life, and then I would resent the kids as being the only thing holding me back from finding happiness.
Please help!!
HH xxx

[Timetoask]

You THINK he is your soul mate, ofcourse you do. You see each other once a month and say nice things to each other! You don't have to share the daily grind of life, the ups and downs.

I am of the thinking that, once we have kids, we need to forget about our own selfish needs and think about the children first (unless there is any sort of domestic violence).

Please work on your marriage, on keeping your lovely family together, and forget this other guy.

[EuphemiaLennox]

Right Hollie are you actually prepared to think about anyone else??

YOU want to be with your soulmate, YOU would be unhappy with your DH, YOU couldn't bear to be without your children.

Presumably your DH wants to be with you, and doesn't want to be without his children.

Your children want to be with you and Daddy.

Soulmates children want Daddy to stay at home.

(don't know about soulmates wife but would hazard a guess she wants him to be faithful and committed)

But what you want trumps all this??

Not saying you should sacrifice yourself, but some serious thought to others would be good, and it seems no serious thought at all has been given to this beyond 'I want x,y and z and will be unhappy if I can't have it.'

On the plus side, if you stayed with DH, soulmate man would forever be your imaginary perfect partner, unlike if you leave and shack up when the reality of ex spouses money issues and step kids will crush soulmate talk pretty quickly I'd imagine.

[cestlavielife]

"Well, 18 years ago ... he cheated" ha ha ha. very funny dont you think ??? what script are you reading from? how does this hollywood movie end?

[HollieHelen]

No, I know what I want doesn't trump any other people's needs. My Mum was there to pick up the pieces after my Dad left and I could never create the kind of chaos he did and I would sacrifice everything for the kids.
I know, I need to end it. I know it. I just can't so far.
I think I'm getting closer to it though because just thinking about how hurt the kids could be is making me cry right now and I can't do that to them.

[Grammaticus]

Soulmate my arse.

He's a serial cheater. He cheated on you, he's cheating on his wife. What do you think will happen after the excitement is over and you are together day to day dealing with contact issues and step parenting?

[Delayingtactic]

I'm trying not to flame you I really am. But exactly how old are you? Your passivity in managing your own emotions and life are as if you're in your twenties. Get a hold of yourself, stop saying things like 'I know I need to stop but I just can't'. Of course you can. It'll be upsetting and take time to get back to normal but just cut contact. Send a text/email saying enough is enough, no texts, no calls, no emails. Ignore ignore ignore any and all further attempts at contact because you are a grown assed woman.

Decide once and for all if you will stay with your husband. If yes work at your relationship. Don't stay for the dc - he deserves better than that. If not leave and be on your own for awhile. If after all that time you and OM still want to be together you can rekindle your relationship as free agents.

[Bant]

OP - has the OM told his wife he's going to leave her? Have you discussed having those discussions?

At the moment you've got the love chemicals zooming through your brain, which you haven't had in years from your Husband. You're elated and happy and also guilty. You can't make any decisions while in this state, at least not ones you'd feel happy about later.

What you should do is - go cold turkey on the soulmate. Discuss it with him first, say you can't have any contact with him for a year. He has that time to sort his life out, you have the time to sort yours out. One year - say 1st of June 2014 you'll get back in touch. If it's already been 18 years then surely you can wait. No contact, no texting, nothing.

Then -go back and try and sort out the issues with your H without the distraction. There will still be some, of course, but after a few weeks it will fade and you can work out whether you want to be separate from your H or fix things. Because if you run into the OM's arms, it's probably going to fail. The shine will fade, you'll realise you're not sexually compatible, or he's abusive, or he's just not the dream you thought he was and you'll blame him for you leaving your H.

Get some distance, work out if you can (and want to) save the marriage, and then make the choice. At the moment, the OM is just a distraction, a cipher, being all the things your H isn't.

But after a year, you may get back in touch with OM having left your husband and find out he's fixed things with his wife - or is still with her, at least.

Oh, and if you choose to leave your H, and take your children away from him, who he adores, that makes you a horrible person. Splitting up with him is going to be difficult enough, taking his children away is just evil, no matter how much you may love them. He should get at least 50/50 with them, if not more.

[BornToFolk]

Not how hurt the kids could be but how hurt the kids will be. They will be hurt and your DH will be hurt and your family and friends will be hurt.

Grow the fuck up, end it with your soulmate and then tell your husband what you've been doing. He deserves to know the truth.

[Bluegrass]

These things really do seem to follow a script.

I bet you've had intense conversations about how last time round it was a case of right person, wrong time, but now fate has given you a chance to put things right as you were always meant to be (and now he realises that that time he cheated on you was a terrible mistake, no one was ever as right for him as you if only he could have seen it at the time...). At that point you mull over how electrifying the sex used to be, a whistful look in your eyes etc etc

[EuphemiaLennox]

Hollie don't underestimate the wonderful contented type happiness that can come from bringing a family up together, being with someone who you know you can rely on, creating something really good and long lasting together.
This is so underestimated.

And the passionate, soul combining headrushing lust filled love affair is so over rated.

One lasts and gives years of a deep contented happiness, the other is brief but gives a high like no other whilst it's happening.

So many people have lost the long term happiness, because of the lure of the passion induced high.

You are obviously right in the middle of this now, and can't see straight and are in danger of loosing or sacrificing a whole lot for not that much.

[HollieHelen]

The not being in touch for a year thing is really helpful - because in my heart I know I would never leave DH in that time. So one year on I would be in the same position. Which means I don't really want to end the marriage.
So, I need to end the affair.
It's starting to sink in.

[AmazingBouncingFerret]

He cheated on you 18 years ago and he's now cheating on his wife. Sounds like a keeper. A real stellar bloke.

[BornToFolk]

That's good, and I hope you do end the affair but you need to tell your DH about it. It's not fair to continue in a marriage hiding that big a secret.

If it was you, if your DH had been having an affair with someone he described as his soulmate and was seriously considering leaving you, wouldn't you think you had the right to know?

[juneau]

I'm bored too, but it doesn't mean I'm off looking for a new bloke. Seriously, life is not that exciting on a day-to-day basis for the vast majority of us. Can you think of someone you know who has kids and also has an exciting life? I've racked my brains and I can't think of a single person.

You need to break off contact with this man completely. No good is going to come of this and he's not your soul mate. You broke up with him 18 years ago because he was a cheat and guess what? He's still a cheat, as this little episode is showing you.

So have the balls to end this silly little flirtation. This is not love. It's an infatuation. Recognise it for what it is and re-invest all that energy you're spending day-dreaming about Mr Cheater on your DH. You don't want to break up your marriage, so don't. Stop now, while you still can and before you sleep with this OM and risk losing everything.

[Timetoask]

Good for you. You will do the right thing by ending it.
You are so lucky to have a lovely family right now.
EuphemiaLennox write with so much sense!

You will be bored with this soulmate guy within 3 years, and then what?.

[Booyhoo]

OP is holliehelen the names of your dcs? or you? because if so that is prett identifying. you might need to get this deleted.

[Cerubina]

I think to give you courage you need to speak to a RL friend about this. Shine some real daylight on what you're doing. At the moment, you've been having these lovely butterfly-in-your-stomach feelings about how amazing he is, he's your soulmate bla bla - so far, so teenage and frankly so divorced from reality. Today you've come on an internet forum for some input from faceless people who don't know you, or him, or your family - still divorced from reality.

My husband left me for an OW and he didn't talk to anyone about doing so but her. I wish he'd had one single, solitary buddy that he could have gone for a beer with who could have said 'what the fuck are you doing? Are you mad?'

In the pressure cooker environment of an affair, with rose coloured specs glued on and no sense of consequences or what happens in your ever after when you've wandered off into the sunset, there is no perspective and no real vision of what you're doing. At all.

I'll tell you what life after going off with your OM is like. You hurriedly find a rented property near to where one of you lived (and then can't get away from the vengeful ex-spouse) and, in your situation, you live hundreds of miles away from where the other one lived. The house you rent needs furnishing and equipping, so you spunk a load of cash on crappy furniture to tide you over. You pine for your children and have to make do with seeing them a couple of times a week (if you live in your old neighbourhood) or maybe once a week if you moved to where he is. All your time with your children is rushed and doesn't feel like enough. You have to see look of hurt and bewilderment and anger on your ex's face, and try to pretend for the children that everything's basically fine. When you see them you realise that they are doing things that you're not part of any more, because you moved out.

Meanwhile he is also trying to fit in when he will see his children. When you take out all the evenings and weekends when one or other of you is having contact, you don't have a lot of time left together in your romantic idyll. When you are together, no doubt you have a lot of sex in your rented bed but the rest of the time you are trying to get used to each other's ways of doing things. And maybe he's not so perfect when you sit on the toilet seat that he dripped on, or he sits there moping about his children and wondering if he did the right thing.

Your parents, your husband's parents and all your friends look at you and wonder how on earth they judged you so wrong. They wonder how you could do that to your children and hypothesise about how long the new relationship will last.

You have less money than before, and so does he, because you are now maintaining three homes rather than two. You have grief from both spouses, especially the wife, who wants to take him to the cleaners financially.

That's really just for starters. For goodness sake shine a bright light onto what you're doing and stop talking like some drippy 14 year old.

[Cherriesarelovely]

When you wrote that you just could not imagine/face having the conversation with your DH about you leaving him for OM it was sort of obvious that you actually didn't really want to leave. That is how it seems to me anyway. I have had several friends in a similar situation to yours. One did leave her DH, but she was incredibly unhappy with the marriage anyway and she didn't leave for the OM she was single for a few years. The other 2 avoided their "crush" and the feelings eventually went away.

Brilliant post Cerubina.

[PoppyAmex]

Cerubina good post, really sobering.

[Viviennemary]

Sometimes this sort of thing can work out. Just look at Camilla Parker Bowles. But often it ends in tears.

[scarletforya]

Well said Cerubina

OP that's your future. Think about it.

[itwillgetbettersoon]

My husband, out of the blue, left me and the kids for the OW. I hope for your sake that the OMs wife doesn't find out and contact your husband. If she does ( and wives do notice that husbands are behaving different so I'm sure yr husband and his wife have noticed) you will lose everything especially if OM stays with his wife and your husband kicks you out. Don't assume that he will leave the house and kids - he might ask you to do it. Is it really worth it? If the marriage is dead then leave but not for OM.

[QuintessentialOldDear]

You are in love with the idea of your own life 18 years ago. You have stepped back into the role of the high school girl with the fab boyfriend and her entire life ahead of her.

Breaking up your, and his family to re-live this dream is not just pathetic, it is pure midlife crisis. This is 40 year old balding man buying a Ferrari he cant afford (and us women laughing branding it his "penis extension") territory. You know that dont you? This is you realizing you are no longer that young girl. With her life ahead of her. This is the bored wife with 2.5 kids rebelling in her mind thinking "is this all there is to life?" and "How did I get so side tracked?" "What happened to passion, to lust, to longing, and planning your future?" You live in the future you planned back then, and it does not look anything like what you planned.

You need to stop texting, stop sexting, and stop daydreaming, and refocus your mind to YOUR life and what you really and realistically can do to make your life exciting and full.

[TotallyBursar]

Cerubina has painted your future but I'll add to the end of it:

The daily stresses make him realise he was right 18 years ago, he's broke, stressed and you are not his Cinderella...he thinks about his kids, he thinks about his wife...he begs to go back, even if she says no you are still fucked over because oh, here comes the 'baggage' free new intern/secretary/MD/whoever & she's pretty & flirty & younger than you maybe, less stressed definitely - she still wants it 3 times nightly & has no little ones waiting to have a cuddle & bedtime story...well after a 10minute screaming abdab.

I want to say this is not your choice anymore, you need to tell your husband that you think he's worthless and deserved no kindness or respect from you so you cheated; sold his future out from under him and then see if he wants you. He deserves more than he's been dealt so far.
However it seems the one thing you need to learn how to do is stop pretending passivity is all you've got - you can do it. You don't want to.

You have a lot of non judgemental answers. I'm afraid I am not in that camp. If his wife came on here I would council her to drop him faster than a handful of dogshit.
When did your husband, this good man, become just a thing to you? He is not spoken of as a person who will sob until he retches when his life is turned on its head, the innocent party from whom you would take his kids because 'you couldn't bear to leave them' he is an afterthought in your posts.
Wise up - you are not a special snowflake, he is not a knight in shining armour you are not love's young dream. You are far from that.
Leave if you are unhappy but not for Sir Serial Cheat & his magic, transient , promises.

[saintlyjimjams]

If you want a fantasy escape have a crush on someone uncontainable - a movie star, a gay friend, whoever - so long as it stays in your head. Soul mate sounds a serial charmer-cheater & full of too much drama. Stick with the good father. You haven't really expressed a reason not to be with him other than you want charmer-cheater / who doesn't sound a great catch tbh.