Under huge pressure from MM - please help :(

[shameshame]

Thank you for everyone who has helped on my past threads where I outlined my affair with a MM. Please accept my sincerest apologies to the many DW on here that this thread may cause upset - i am sorry in advance. I honestly have nowhere to turn.

Thanks to the great advice I received on here I managed to go 2 months NC from MM, after a near mental breakdown and moving and jobs and cities far away from family and friends in a bid to restart my life.

MM has recently contacted me saying he can't live without me (and all that jazz). I stupidly met up, he broke down and said he needs me in his life, is willing to give DW full disclosure and start again with me. Seems genuine and I still love MM (STUPID I KNOW).

I'm thrown back into turmoil now - he wants to do it before Wednesday as he is due on a family holiday with his DW and young DC and can't go through the pretence.

I feel so much pressure on my shoulders. I don't want to split up a family (I know I should have thought of that before) but he says the damage is done. Just as I was getting back on track.

Please help if you can find it in yourselves. i know plenty of OW with have said this before but I'm not a bad person and devastated at what i've become.

'infidelity never has one sole cause'. Why is this so hard to comprehend?

Because it's not so. 'Breakdown of the relationship never has one sole cause' would be more accurate. This happens all the time. Lots of relationships end for all sorts of reasons. They don't all cheat.

Cheaters have a choice. They choose to cheat. No-one forces them to lie.

'infidelity never has one sole cause'

But it does. It happens because the cheater chose to cheat, end of.

Their reasoning is utterly irrelevant to the people they hurt and the families they wreck.

charbon, thanks for your post. Never looked at it this way- coping mechanisms etc- but it makes a lot of sense.

Thanks everyone, and Charbon - brilliant help right there and something I can re-read at a low ebb.

No Fairenuff - I have absolutely zero intention of contacting him while he is on holiday with his wife. To be honest, tonight, after a lot of reflecting on the thread, i'm hoping I won't contact him when he gets back either as i'm feeling certain we are dealing with 'he will never leave his wife' territory and he has just used these empty propositions to hook me back in. Can't believe it worked. AGAIN

OP. He has gone because he is a coward. He will not leave his wife unless he knows he has somewhere to go :( You said no, so he went on holiday.

If his marriage is really over, he will come home from holiday and end it. If he doesn't, then you really do have your answer. If he does....

Even so, previous advice still stands. If he wants to leave her, he shouldn't go straight to you.

I was thinking more about him contacting you. Have you changed your number yet?

No fairenuff - i haven't changed my number and he hasn't contacted me.

OP glad to see you're seeing this with more clarity. Have you had any counselling yet to explore why you've made these choices?

You see you're right Bogeyface. It's always because of a choice someone makes.

But there are a myriad of reasons why people make those choices instead of others. It's never just about one thing - e.g. an unhappy relationship/growing apart - or (as is startingly common these days) the presence of an opportunity and low willpower in the face of temptation, despite a good primary relationship.

The answer lies within the individual. Not within their relationship and not because of what their partner or OW does or doesn't do. One of the biggest mistakes an OW can make is to assume that her lover is having an affair or leaving his relationship because of a combination of poor couple fit with his sanctioned partner, twinned with a greater depth of feeling for her as an alternative partner.

Curiously enough, it is often the same mistake made by the sanctioned and faithful partner. Many women on discovery believe that if they compete with the OW to be the perfect wife and perform cartwheels to provide the 'perfect' relationship, the problem is solved.

It never is.

The wife is in no more control of her lover's future behaviour than his OW.

Unless the person with poor coping mechanisms digs deep and resolves why he chose infidelity instead of other options, no external person or factor can fix this. None of us can control another person's choices.

It's extraordinarily telling therefore that the man referred to on this thread is unwilling to take responsibility for his choices. He wants to pass that to the OP. He doesn't want to live with being the one whose sole decision it is either to stay in or leave his marriage and if forced to make that decision on his own (as he should) certainly doesn't want to be left with no options other than to go it alone as a single parent.

It's a very familiar trait in the infidelitous. The OW/OM is often blamed for 'doing all the running' or making ultimatums, the partner is blamed for neglect, a person's job/depression/children are blamed for the stress from which the affair was an escape.

People who are poor at taking personal responsibility and have poor coping mechanisms should have a hazard warning.

Are you going to change your number so that he can't contact you?

You're hoping you won't contact him

How about don't?

One of the biggest mistakes an OW can make is to assume that her lover is having an affair or leaving his relationship because of a combination of poor couple fit with his sanctioned partner, twinned with a greater depth of feeling for her as an alternative partner.

Charbon, I think this. Why is this a mistake? (I'm not denying it is by the way, just want to understand).

The OW/OM is often blamed for 'doing all the running' or making ultimatums, the partner is blamed for neglect, a person's job/depression/children are blamed for the stress from which the affair was an escape.

This certainly fits my situation. What is the MM ever blamed for? Seems he gets away unscathed.

And yes, i'm seeing a counsellor twice but mainly talking about how I feel i've lost myself, that i am a shell as a result of what i've done. Trying to get me back. Again sorry to sound self self self.

*twice a week

Sometimes we have to put our feelings to one side and do what we know is right.

This is one of those times.

Make that right decision today. Then deal with your feelings afterwards.

You will survive, in fact you'll do better than survive. It'll make you a stronger and better person.

Staying with this person, who is doing all this for his own gratification and nothing else, will continue to whittle away at you even more.

Choose to grow, not sink to nothing!

Again (sorry!) I don't think it's always a mistake to think that. Sometimes it is genuinely the case. Sometimes not.

'I told MM to go on holiday and reevaluate..'

Now put that together with the fact that his W also wanted him to participate in the family holiday

And you have proved Charbon's point that this person is unable to take personal responsibility for what happens

In his mind: W wants me to go on holiday, and Shame wants me to go on holiday....therefore I go

He has reopened the dialogue with OP (potential to restart affair)

And has bought himself time, ie put off making any decision

Win-win for him, lose-lose once again for OP and his W (although she doesn't know it yet)

Thanks Hissy and JaceyBee - been reading your contributions and they are honestly helping x

Is the counselling designed to help you feel better about yourself? About how your life is?

Genuine question.

I'm an ex agoraphobic survivor of domestic violence, with a crappy dysfunctional family that'll kick me whenever they can.

I had an hour a week to help me regain strength and over time I got better.

Until you remove the source of your anguish, how can the counselling ever help you? What you are doing IS wrong, with the best will in the world, how could anyone think any different.

No pops or flaming from me, but try to find a way to live more authentically, honest and truthful with yourself above everything. I found the truth was so liberating and empowering.

I do sincerely wish you the strength to end this charade, and start YOUR life the way you know you want to live it.

But if the OP loves him, then what? I think a lot of this trouble stems from that.

You can't love someone who isn't loving you.

It's an exercise in futility.

Love yourself first, and don't compromise.

To fuck an entire family over, to be a party to that, to even talk to a shit like that is beyond comprehension.

If Shame were the heartless bitch she'd not be so conflicted.

The only thing is to put herself first, and to love herself first, not a man who is only in it for himself, to the literal détriment of all others.

And i've been on mumnset for long enough to say that the 'But I love him' line is a sack of festering shit.

It's done nobody any good at all to be trampled, worn down, humiliated, belittled, objectified or flat out betrayed.

You can't love a man that only loves himself. There's no space for you in a relationship like that.

I've only read the first two pages as my bath is running- but you need to think about your long term future if he does leave his wife for you. The "FOR YOU" bit is the important one. His wife will never forgive you, his children will never forgive you, and you will be in the middle, trying to negotiate time with his dcs, and dealing with a woman who hates you. It isnt the ideal recipe for marital bliss. I do know one couple who are still together many years after an affair, but they were both married , both unhappy, and spent a long time trying to work out how to minimise the pain to their dcs. They had a very tricky time of it, and only the fact that they plainly adored each other and were very well suited (and had been friends for years before they got together) saved the relationship.
I would put some distance between you and him, and see if he still leaves his wife. It all sounds too much like hedging his bets for my liking.

It's a mistake because it is never the whole picture and also because you have no way of verifying that the depiction of his marriage or his claimed feelings for you are true.

Claims of poor couple-fit and depth of feeling for the new partner is again passing the responsibility for infidelity on to external factors or people. In simplistic terms a person is saying 'my relationship made me do it', 'my wife made me do it' and 'the OW made me do it'.

It also means that when there are inevitable low points in subsequent relationships, or doubts about compatibility, because the person is in the habit of blaming these external factors for his choices to look outside of his relationship, behaviour patterns get repeated.

If that person never looks inside himself and admits that he made him do it and there were no excuses for that other than cowardice, selfishness and an unwillingness to exercise more difficult options such as couples counselling, leaving the relationship with integrity or even a 'wait and see' policy until pressures such as the care of young children pass, history very often repeats itself.

This is what OW/OM and recovering spouses have in common then. A valid fear that if the relationship isn't perfect all the time or there is ever future cause for doubts about compatibility, infidelity is a probable outcome especially as this has happened before.

Moreover, third parties who by the very nature of a secret relationship are not privy to what went before their arrival in the dynamic or what has happened within the marital relationship since, must rely entirely on what their lovers are telling them. I often wish that OW and OM could time travel and see with their own eyes the relationship between their lovers and spouses before their interception. Or that they could be a fly on the wall in their lovers' homes and see what's really happening there. Because those OW and OM don't get to see their lovers in their home settings and never get to hear the perspectives of the people who are being deceived, their pictures are distorted and one-dimensional.

The only person who knows the whole truth is the person who is telling lies. It makes no logical sense to make life decisions based on the testimony of someone who is lying.

Having reflected more on your post OP, what strikes me is how you talk of losing yourself and becoming a shell of what you once were.

It's such a striking contrast to what your lover is doing. He doesn't appear to favour that level of introspection or question himself about the damage this affair has done to his sense of self.

Yes he might talk about his regret that he is messing two people around, not to mention his children's future outcomes. But unless you say differently, there is no sense that he feels he has lost himself and is a shell of the man he once was.

try to find a way to live more authentically, honest and truthful with yourself above everything

Yes, absolutely.

Charbon is talking alot of sense.

I think there are alot of wishy washy sentiments about how it's always the relationship that's at fault and therefore it takes two people to create that, and by proxy, extends blame quite nicely onto the wife and relationship whilst the cheater somehow abdicates blame.

That kind if thinking is terribly unhelpful and I would not want to enter into any dialogue that started with that premise - seemingly open but actually very directed and closed.

Talking about an individuals capability, behaviour patterns and decisions is much more useful and doesn't cover the whole thing in this blanket of 'no ones to blame... Therefore I can blame others' rubbish.