I know it is wrong.

[Elderberries]

This is going to be long and complicated and I have kids so it will probably 'drip' so I'll apologise in advance. I know I am in the wrong. I am hoping someone may have some insight into why I am doing the things I am doing. Maybe that will help me act better. A long time ago I had an affair. It was incredibly painful for all concerned. I fell in love with OM and I loved my partner. You can't have it all and I stayed with my partner. I have put it down simply but it wasn't simple at all. It took me and my partner years to heal. It also took me years to get over the OM. He was around. Due to work. Finally I closed the door and we built a great relationship. I love my partner so much. He is kind, supportive, clever, hard working. I am amazed by him. We are almost living the dream. Due to mutual friends I had seen OM occasionally in social situations. The spark was always there. I didn't worry. We would have a lovely time for an hour and I would walk away back to reality. A couple of years ago OM was around more due to work. He told me he was getting married. It shocked me. It upset me. Over the years OM had occasionally asked me for drinks. I had avoided. Once he was married I asked him for a drink. We flirted wildly. We kissed. I think I just wanted to know that I could still have him if I wanted..well at least a little of him. Shortly after this he started working in my team. Things changed fast. I have always found him intoxicating. If he is in a room he is in colour and everything else grey. I just couldn't look away. For a year and a half we have been dabbling with each other. No physical contact but all the other stuff that modern communication allows. Some months back he suggested going further. I was extremely conflicted. I wanted it and yet I was terrified. Guilt and lust and fear spun around in my head. It was quickly apparent that it wasn't possible for me to behave that way. And so slowly the relationship has been down graded. He has stepped back. I am in love with him - or at least an idea of him. He tells me he loves me too. He says he wants to be friends. That we will deal with this by not going out in the evenings and not drinking together. We can have coffee and lunch some times. I have agreed. It's all a load of rubbish of course. I have never been able to let go totally. Always just leaving the door open. And of course my partner...well I really love him. I don't want to leave. I am happy with him. He is a bit distracted and doesn't notice me as much as I would like but we never argue and muddle along quite well. So there you go. I know I'm going to get pretty straight talk and I think I need and deserve it.

Good post by WindPowerRanger.

OP: not everyone lives the love = monogamy life. If this is you, be honest with your partner and seek an alternative lifestyle. But be prepared for your OM to feel the same.

But I don't think your situation is about this.

If you truly and deeply loved the OM, and he you, why didn't you get together with him instead? It happens, and when it does, people do have to follow their hearts, mostly. You didn't stay with him, and he waltzed on and married another.

Your whole post is written as if you were writing fiction. The drama of your life. Why do you seek drama? Do you not trust yourself to live s valid life, without a good injection of drama? Why do you need to feel that something greater than you, or external to you is swooping you along? Do you not have confidence to steer and take control of your own life?

The betrayal of your partner is immense. But you don't have the same heightened language for that as you go for your reactions to the OM.

Stop play acting in your own movie and find value in your real life. And if you can't find that value, or build it, show some courage and live alone.

And no, the beginning of love is not generally like insanity. Only in bad novels, or amongst people who understand neither love nor insanity.

Why hurt him like that?

Well, yes. Exactly.

You still are though.

You need to get a fucking grip. Your poor, poor partner.

change jobs?
It is absolutely ridiculous to say that you love your husband. How can you love him as fiercely as you say that you do yet not be able to see what you are doing to him.

You think telling him about it was the hurtful thing you did last time. That was your mistake and you won't do that again.

Would you like some tips on how to delete your phone history and how to sneak out at lunch for a quickie without anyone noticing?

All for DH's protection of course so he doesn't get hurt.

I just never really understand these sorts of posts. Surely the correct response to a recently married man coming on to you is absolute revulsion? How is looking for a strings-free fuck behind your wife's back a desirable quality? He sounds like an absolute shit, and you are a fool to attach all of these ridiculous fantasies to him. If you had him, full time, properly, he'd be fucking around behind your back too.

And something else. I forgave my stbxh an affair only to discover that it had continued in another form. It almost killed me, the betrayal and hurt was like nothing else. Please don't do that to your innocent DH, whatever has he done to deserve that?

Stop talking about your selfishness as an unstoppable force of nature that you can't control. It's a grubby shag like every other grubby shag that came before, excused by the cheater's script of 'we couldn't help ourselves'. You can. You're a grown woman ffs. Just look at your kids, imagine them and everyone else finding out, and stop.

Grow up, find a new job and cut all contact.

You say that you don't want your dh to find out but what happens if om's wife finds out and all hell is let loose?

Limerence is very powerful. But if you cut contact, it will fade to a manageable point.

You're going to cause a whole mountain of hurt, probably very shortly if you don't pull yourself together and stop lusting after this other guy. Your husband, your DC, the OM's partner. Why? Why do you need your ego stroking quite so much. You said I think I just wanted to know that I could still have him if I wanted. You and the OM have behaved, and continue to behave, in the most selfish way. He's no better than you either - hanging around like a randy terrier when he's supposed to be committed to someone else.

If you're serious about your family and your marriage, you need to decide what you want, and either make a proper go of it with your H, without fluttering your eyes at the person who caused him so much pain, or you need to separate and let him get on with living his life and finding someone who will treat him with the respect and love he deserves.

If something is important to you, you will find a way. If it isn't, you will find an excuse.

Can you find a way to save your marriage? Get a new job, move, discuss swinging or an open relationship?

Can you find a way to be with the other man? Can you leave your husband and he leave his wife and you two set up shop? Can you see him all day at work, all evening at home and spend each night sleeping next to him?

Which one do you find finding more excuses for? Which more ways to make it work? Think about that and you will have your answer.

You also contradict yourself. You are in awe of your husband and yet you don't really talk?? You just plod along?

I think you are loving the drama. It is exciting, you are the centre of attention, but it is also immature, overdone and frankly pathetic.

Be very very careful here OP... If you continue down this path you are going to end up losing both of them... I'm pretty certain of it.

I never understand this scenario - I understand if you were stuck in an awful marriage for some reason or another, but to actually say you love your husband?

Rightly or wrongly, when this sorry business comes to light, which it will - you will come out of it looking dreadful. It doesn't sound like you care about your husband but if you care about yourself and your kids you need to stop all this. Is it really worth destroying everybody's life just cos some bloke gives you the fanny gallops? Grow up.

I think its must the excitement of feeling 'wanted' and like you've 'still got it'. I understand the need to flirt and get the kicks like that from strangers in a pub (a smile that makes you feel good) but sometimes when its gone further like this...... Its just heading for disaster. Cut him loose (married man cheating doesnt sound like a catch either) :-/

Clearly its a mixture of lust and low self esteem...you don't love your partner because if you did you would put every energy into making sure he I never put in a position by you where he feels threatened or insecure. You really need to let him find somebody else, stop spreading the faux love round, you cannot possibly know love until you have love/respect for yourself. Your post suggests you lack both for everyone concerned. The bloke is a bell-end who knows these facts and uses you. Sad really.

Oof, okay...

1. OM does not love you. If he did, he wouldn't have pursued you the first time and definitely wouldn't be doing this now.

1. You don't love OM, and it's questionable whether you truly love your DH. OM is someone you want but can't have, he's a new interest that gives you all the exciting feelings one gets in the first stages of a relationship. But that part never, ever lasts.

1. Do you have problems with impulsive behaviours. Not just this affair business, but things like impulse buying or overspending, risk taking etc.? It doesn't excuse what you did, but there could be underlying issues that would explain partly why you keep doing this. Unfortunately, that would require you to do a lot of self reflection, a lot of reading around the topic, and if required actually getting help to work on it. Are you prepared to do all that?

1. You absolutely do need to tell your husband. If he loves you, and still wants to work things out, and you honestly do love him, then you need to work on this issue before you both do anything to work on the relationship. You cannot do this again to him, and if there is any chance that you cannot have eyes for only him, then he needs to know that too.

1. Completely cut out OM. No slow fade. Just block and delete his numbers, his social media accounts etc. And work on completely avoiding him in work. If possible, get a new job. Get a new social group that doesn't include this OM or anyone likely to invite him to gatherings etc.

There's no judgement from me OP, just hopefully some straight talk. If you didn't have DC with your DH, I'd be saying you really ought to leave him because he doesn't deserve this pain, or at least give him the choice to end things based on what has happened. Regardless, he does need to know. Without any excuse making or downplaying.

Monogamy is a lifestyle choice that is less of a choice via culture/conditioning. Other cultures are in favour of the male having many wives. Some ideologies favour equal and multiple bondings. In nature, many creatures form monogamous pairs, many do not. Seems to me at some level it's a choice, albeit for many and varied reasons.

One of the complexities of humanity is that we have all options hardwired into expansive minds but it's easier/more enforced to prefer (rather than question) the intimacy/security of closed rules we are born into. Cultural rules are needed because people aren't enlightened beings of light or whatever, and often can be shitbags, of course, but I hardly think you are in the league of unspeakable abusers who trail through history with bad behaviour dressed as belief.

I think it's a judgement call - within the spectrum as to what is right or wrong in your religion/culture/personality/desire for a happy life.

Having said all that, has this man become MORE attractive now that he is "unavailable" given the overall mores and t&c's of "normal" society? There might be sacrifices to be made if you decide to move for a different lifestyle, though. And the potential costs are quite high.

In the here and now of this society I think you need to make a choice. I don't think you need to share your choice with your husband if you decide to stay with him and cut contact with OM. I don't think you should hover between a world of marriage plus OM either. Those two worlds won't blend at all except in tragedy. Be sure of what you choose.

No judgement from me either, OP.

You say that, "You just wanted to know that you could have him". Well, you did, didn't you? You 'tempted' him away and he wanted to be tempted by you. So what's left to do? You've done it all.

What I'm saying is that the challenge is over, you have successfully engaged in an affair with a married man, albeit the same one. He could have ended his relationship and not got married again - you could have ended your marriage - and you both could have been together. It wasn't right for either of you then and it isn't now.

Your husband has stuck by you, he knows what you did and believe me, he will have had to swallow that damage for a long time. If you think about the well-meaning but very difficult to hear advice from posters whose husbands have been cheating - that they should LTB and that it will never be the same again and she would never be able to trust him again - well you can see that the same would have been true for your husband. How much he must absolutely love you to go through that pain in the hope and faith that there is love from you and a point going on with the marriage.

If you really cannot see yourself ending things with OM once and for all then please, end your marriage. Do it decently and kindly and make sure that any relationships you have after that have some sort of reasonable interval so that you husband doesn't completely think that he was nothing at all to you.

I wish you well, you're treading a very lonely and tortuous path and it's going to bring you nothing but pain in the long term. The glimpses of 'happiness' that you feel in the company of OM will be extinguished once you realise what they've actually cost you... and that realisation will truly make you weep.

Really think about what you're doing and be absolutely sure that it's right for you because regret is a horrendous thing to have to live with.

Let it go, you said yourself you are in love with the idea of him. I suspect the reality would be very different and that is what you need to remember.

It's human nature to feel flattered and enjoy feeling desired but encouraging him with messages, lunch dates, etc isn't going to do you any good.

Walk away, enjoy what you have and leave the fantasy of what you think you want alone. The grass is always greener as they say, you need to look after your own grass.

It breaks my heart to think that some poor woman is married to that shitbag, unknowingly being conspired against by op and her narcissistic need to tempt him away 'just to see if she can'. It's not a game, it's a woman's life. You're winning the competition because his wife doesn't even know she's in a competition.

OP isn't competing, neither is OM... neither one is thinking of their partners at all in this, that's what makes it all possible, I'm convinced of that.

You have given me a great deal to think about. I will respond to specific questions in a bit. Thank you for everyone who has taken the time to give me advice.

Leave your H. He deserves much better.

No I will not tell my partner. I regret telling him the last time. It just hurt him and caused him disquiet. I should have dealt with it all myself. The pain wasn't caused by your H hearing truth, the pain was caused by the deceit and here you are again. If you had 'dealt with it by yourself' last time, the chances are you would have fallen back into old habits quicker.

FFS! This ain't Mills and Boon. You're playing with lives of people you supposedly love and you can't even hide behind not knowing how this will effect your H because you've done it before. I don't know if you're just a selfish bitch or if there is some deeper reason behind your behaviour but I do know, only you can change it.

You know exactly what you should be doing and not doing it, is a choice.