In a long affair....please don't read if this will cause you upset/anger.

[alltoomuchnow]

Namechanged. I'm married with 2 children and I've been having an affair for over 6 years now. Something has literally "gone" in my mind and I can't take it any longer. I love OM very much but I know that we'll never be together. As time continues to go by I know that my feelings for him will get stronger. I need to end it all or accept that this is how it will be. I'm not asking for sympathy - I know I've done something very wrong and that I'll be hated on here. But I am human, I have feelings and I don't know how to cope any more. Has anyone been here and has felt this desperate....

Six years?! Six bloody years??? Fucking hell, I hope your dh never finds out. His life has been a lie for 6 years?! That's fried my brain a bit.

This all sounds very self absorbed and selfish on your part and that of the OM. Even your comment about neither of you being prepared to leave your family shows how you expect to be in control for your own ends. You may like to think you are showing concern but this is an arrogant way of looking at things.

You must end the affair or come clean to your H. For his sake don 't tell the extent of your betrayal. Of course you will lose the power you currently have over these other human beings but this is a price you will have to pay, you cannot expect to continue to have everything your own way

I realise status quo making miserable, but op needs to cut it one way.

Op, what in your heart of hearts do you want? Ask yourself this question and then figure out how misery related it would be, or whether it would bring relief. Serious consideration usually allows for an informed choice.

OP, it is not uncommon for a woman in your situation to feel suicidal. It is almost inevitable to end up seriously depressed because of the hidden life.

Take a look at your life and sort it out. Don't continue on the path to self destruction.

I don't want to continue to live like this....the thought of my children being alienated from me because of my life is inconceivable. That comment (sorry I can't look back to see it) is so true.

I'm not happy, it's not a case of having it all Logg1e. My problem is ending it. Simple in a black and white world. But I don't live in that kind of world - a result of my own mistakes.

alltoomuchnow... Read SilkKnickers post again (and again). She's very eloquent and probably perceptive about where you are now.

I think this is particularly pertinent:

• You've concealed your affair for six years; there's no guarantee that it won't still be discovered although you're obviously both adept at covering your tracks.
• When the affair ends - and it WILL end at some point, there will be heartbreak.
• Whatever you decide to do you do not need to tell your husband if you don't want to do that. If you think you can keep that secret to yourself always then that may be the gentlest thing to do.
• There is NO PAIN-FREE WAY OUT... that is a very sad truth. Make the pain yours and nobody else's if you can possibly do that.

I get the feeling that if your other man decided that he seriously wanted to be with you, you would. That's where your sadness lies because you can't prod that thought too deeply. You want the pain to end and that's completely understandable.

Can you talk to somebody in real life? Is there any counselling that you could have, somebody that would listen to you and let you talk?

There's no point in people lecturing you, you know that affairs are wrong but, unless somebody has truly been tested, they have no idea what this awful position is like.

Why is it that you aren't prepared to leave your husband? Because you sound as though you want the best of both worlds; the excitement and the passion of an affair, coupled with the security of a loving husband. A happy marriage is not one where one person is being betrayed and deceived.

What you're doing is wrong. There is no grey area there. Your only decision is whether you end it and make some serious decisions about your marriage or carry on until you're found out (as you surely will be at some point) and you deal with the fall out from that. Consider which would be worse; the sadness now, or having to face your husband and your children.

I'm not sure you are doing your family any favours by staying. I'd be very upset if my husband left us but if I found out he had being having an affair for years I'd find that spine chilling. Your husband deserves to be with someone who is not leading a double life. Your family are living with a stranger in their midst. They don't know you. If you want to continue the affair you should split up with your husband. 6 years is such a long time you can't really just end the affair and try and act like it never happened. If you were my husband I would not want to live you.

No, never posted about myself before. I've made comments on threads )very few) but never started one.....and you're right, I'm not expecting anyone to say anything to help me. But I have read things here that are helping me. I'm in a desperate position (yes, my own fault) and I suppose I was just hoping that someone has been through this too. Because at this point in my affair I feel very alone.

Thank you LyingW I will re-read silks post - and all of them when I can. Just can't now.

If your children are teenagers then you are right, the fall out from your side would be huge. Your children will rightly take their fathers side and be angry and upset at you for ruining their family.

One day you will both be found out, I have no ideal how you have not been caught so far but you got two choices.

Leave your husband.
End it with your om.

You cannot have both forever.

I am sure you will not listen to anyone advice but just wanted to spill your guts, what you are doing is spineless and I feel so sorry for your husband and that mans wife.

You are selfish, self absorbed and obviously a very skilled liar and manipulatior. Your husband and children deserve so much more. If you and this bloke really, truly loved wach other you would be together properly without having to be wach others dirty little secret. I feel deeply sorry for you.

It doesn't always, brokenhearted. There are may affairs that aren't discovered at all.

There are some very perpetuating 'myths' out there.

Alltoomuch if you want to PM me, do so. I think that I have been in a similar situation to you, but as you can see from my previous post my stance is that yes, you should end the affair and yes, it WILL hurt. But one day it will all be in the past. Pain DOES lessen.

Although lying....the affair may not be discovered but I bet the spouse being cheated in knew something wasn't right in the majority of cases.

6 years...such a long time. So many lies :(

Thank you silk, appreciate that very much and when I get back home I'll re-read what you said and all the comments.

Oh my God - you do know you will lose all respect and possibly contact from your teenage children if they ever find out you'd been living a lie for SIX YEARS.

Making a prick of their dad for SIX YEARS.

They will see you completely differently. Do you understand the gravity of that - for you? Let alone for them. Think I'm being dramatic? Trust me I'm not, I've been there as a kid.

You better pray with all your might they don't find out.

I've literally got chills thinking about if it were me...but it wouldn't be me because I could never do this to my husband and children.

Finish it now, you stupid stupid fool.

You're probably right there, mammadiggingdeep. The unknowing partner possibly picks up that something isn't right, because it isn't. The cheating partner also knows that something isn't right because they're responsible for that something not being right. I don't know if it would be feelings of guilt or panic or both that would kick in then but it's a miserable way to live.

I don't know any men who've had affairs but I do know women who have. I think they feel it very much more keenly and whether it's conditioning or whether it's inherent in the species, women feel more connected with emotion and sex whereas men do not, they can compartmentalise more successfully. That's my belief anyway.

I think that the saddest realisation - for a woman - is that there is no painless way out once that path has been taken, there's no way back. Truly isolating and devastating for a woman to feel that and know that she has lost control.

Nobody escapes an affair without 'scars'... I believe that too.

You have to tell your husband. I feel so very, very sorry for him and he needs to know the truth.

Well, not tell him, but at least end the relationship. It's so unfair to have done this to him.

I can't get over the six year part, you've lasted longer than a lot of marriages!

How have you never been found out? There must have been close calls? How often do you see other man? I've never had an affair but surely it will be easier to call it of if you only see each other a few times a year.

I can't understand how you've never let slip to dh "om said this" or "when I was at (insert random meeting place)

The "slag" comment up thread was totally uncalled for, at this stage in your affair I think the sex would be the last thing on my mind if I found out I had been cheated on for six years. It goes so much deeper than that

You owe it to your husband to tell him the truth, so he can get his own sexual health checked out.

brokenhearted... You only have to read 'the script' that people post here sometimes to know the signs. Some people will be able to take that information and make sure that those signs are never present.

Not every affair is discovered and, if the cheater decides to make a go of their marriage - whether the affair is ongoing or ended - they will take the necessary steps for self-preservation. Selfish, perhaps, the affair definitely is/was, but the concealment of it is not necessarily selfish.

For the women I know of who've had/are having affairs, not one of them is not suffering pain. Unlike any other 'crime', there is very little support available for such people in pain - and it is real pain. I handheld my friend through the end of her affair and it's decimated her life, a real blight has been cast on it. Bloody awful things.

If anything, rather than wanting to stone women (and men) for having affairs, I think it would be a very useful learning to teach our young teens of the pain of affairs. Not specifically the pain caused to others who may be affected but the actual pain to the self, to the affair partner, because unless you've been there you just cannot know the depth of that anguish.

There are no winners in this situation. alltoomuchnow, it's easy to say for those of us looking in from the outside but really, in the end, there's only one way to proceed now: you have to tell the OM it's over and you have to mean it and stick to it. I can imagine how hard that is, because this has been your life for six years and like any long-standing pattern of behaviour it's not easy to see how you can change it. But it has to be done, and the sooner the better.

Others have pointed out that you are not having to negotiate the way round all the minutiae of day to day life as true partners, but it's not all hearts and flowers when you're having an affair. Suppose he fell ill or had an accident? You have no official standing so would be told nothing and could do nothing. I've heard from time to time of funerals where the OW has had to attend in the capacity of a distant acquaintance. That's no way to live.