Can you be in love with 2 men at the same time? And what would you do in my situation?

[nantoangels]

I'm a bit of a lurker but could really do with some of that great advice that I know you MNers can give.

I have been married to my husband for a long time and we have a grown up dd and two beautiful granddaughters.

For the last 2 years I have been having an affair with a man I met at work, whom I now love. Although I am still deeply in love with my husband.

For the last few months I have been living in rented accomodation with the man who I've been seeing. (I left my husband in order to try and work out who I really want.) And although I am generally happy from day to day, I do still love my husband, and I miss my dd and dgd's so much (my daughter and husband will not let the grandchildren come to my new house or meet this man).

I feel like I really love both men. And I know I am giving up so much by beng with this man (the closeness with my family, seeing my grandchildren grow up, my 25 year marriage) but I am loving the attention, the different relationship, the lust, the excitement - and I can see a happy prosperous future for me and this man.

But I also know I could be happy back with my husband. It would be a very different life. But I think I could be happy again.

My husband has said he'll forgive me and wants nothing more than to have me back. At the same time, this man has given up so much for me and waited for me (he left his wife a year ago because of our relationship).

I'm so confused.

soph, lullabyloo, berrie
you all sound like such lovely people.

I completely understand where you're coming from. My parents split when I was young but I too, at 28 with a young ds, STILL grieve for the life we all could have had and what my mum is now still going through due to my dad's actions.

I think the op here knows how selfish she is being and I would guess that in some way she wanted to hear the harsh truth on this thread to make her get her head out of the clouds and back to the real world.

I just hope nantoangels, that you can start to think of the devastation and disruption you are causing to the lives of those who you 'love' and start thinking about the long term consequences of your actions.
I would never judge you for having and affair or making a mistake. But it's how you deal with it now, what you learn from it, and how you put things right that matters.

Hopefully then your dd and your 'angel' granddaughters will not have to experience what some of the posters on here have been through.

sounds to me like marriage wasn't enough and now the new relationship isn't enough.

maybe you need to look elsewhere for fulfillment altogether rather than expecting either of these men to make everything alright. You actually sound quite passive about all this, like you have followed a path but not really controlled what you're doing. Why did you let new bf move in or why move in with him? you left to work out what you really want but instead just went into another relationship that will inevitably pall just like any other marriage scenario.

fwiw I don't think you're selfish like others suggest, but I do think you're letting life wash over you rather than taking decisions about who YOU are and who YOU want to be. Who are you if not judged in the context of one or other of these men?

As others have said, I think you need some time on your own to decide what it is you really want for yourself and for your future. At the moment, your judgement is being clouded - or else you wouldn't have doubts - by the physical reality of sharing your day to day life with another person. It may be that once you have uninterrupted time to really think and to please yourself, that your ideal future becomes something quite different to what you imagine now. Your future doesn't have to be a choice between your husband and your lover, it may turn out to include neither ..... because you may decide that neither is quite right, and that neither fit in with what you want to do.

I'd also think about seeking some counselling for yourself - this could help you see things more clearly.

mylittlestar- I agree about not judging for making a mistake. If I have learnt anything from my experience it is that NOBODY is above making this kind of mistake and having an affair. We are all human and are far from perfect (except me that is ) but NantoAngels has to decide if she wants to keep on making that mistake and cause many years of future hurt or whether she wants to try and put things right. That could be by going back to her DH or it could be being on her own as it may be too late to sort things out.

oh and lullabyloo- thanks re: my dc. I had already looked at your ds from reading the birth trauma thread and thought he was gorgeous- he reminded me of my ds!

D'you, I actually think that once one's children are grown and have flown the coop, we don't owe them a duty of care that extends to self-abnegation to the day we die. A child in her 20s should be grown-up enough herself to allow her mother to find out who she is again after so many years of motherhood. She should have her mother's best interests at heart, not selfishly worry about her own reaction to the situation. I can see that her loyalties would be torn, but surely as a grown-up she should be able use her judgment about the best course of action. I do know what I'm talking about, but my story would be very long and complicated and I have a sore hand today (so not much typing possible) She'll get over the initial shock soon enough and think her way to renewing contact with you.

She is probably re-evaluting the last twenty years, wondering whether you stayed with her father because of her, whether you blame her for having had to stay for so long. I do think she might be relieved to know that you weren't looking for a way out for ages, and were unhappy for ages without her knwoing. Also you are probably causing her to reassess her own relationship with her husband, to ask herself whether in twenty odd years' she'll still want to be with him.

I can't comment much more beyond seconding the suggestion to distance yourself from both men in order to come to a decision free from influence. Would you consider maybe doing VSO for a year or two?

yes you probably can ...you're probably a very different woman to what you were 25 years ago and, yes, people do change. Sometimes people change together and sometimes those changes pull people apart. In my opinion that doesn't make either one of you right or wrong, just destined to go different ways. As they say, "it 'aint a dress rehearsel" so look to what YOU want for the future. If you do go back to DH then things won't be the same, your actions will have changed the relationship and he certainly won't forget. I agree with many on here who say that maybe the solution is to give yourself time on your own to sort out what you want before you make an ultimate decision...though of course there is always the risk that the decision might be taken away from you too !

I'm so sorry for the others that feel hurt around you...but hey, shit happens and life carries on and, as adults they will learn to cope and then make their own decisions on what they have to do to protect their own family.

Good luck to you...tough times ahead me thinks......

A child in her 20s should be grown-up enough herself to allow her mother to find out who she is again after so many years of motherhood. She should have her mother's best interests at heart, not selfishly worry about her own reaction to the situation.

Wow- that would be an amazing woman who in her 20s could turn around to her mother and say.' You know what- it's ok that you lied to your dh, friends and family for x years while you were having an affair, it's ok that you have truly hurt so many people, it's ok that you gave up on a good marriage, and it's ok that you are now living it up with someone else because you deserve to be happy, so what if some other people have had to suffer.'

I'm sorry I just don't share your opinion, Duchesse, it seems to me that you would have to be quite emotionally detached from your family to be able to put it all behind you.

I am not saying that someone should stay in an unhappy marriage, I understand that people can grow apart/change and lose their identity. I'm sure her daughter would have been able to put her mum's best interests at heart had she been up front and said that she wasn't happy and needed to separate from her dh.

I hold those views because I believe that ultimately none of us owes anybody the right to be happy at our own expense. There is no law that says that once you have children you cease to be able to behave like a human being. I am quite certain that not rocking the family unit while the children are small is overwhelmingly a good thing, but why would a grown woman with children of her own who is no longer living with parents, still need her parents to be living together for her own wellbeing? It's crazy.

If she can see her mother and her father as much as before (although obviously not in the same circumstances as before), if they are available to her as much as before, and if the new partner is not a violent child abuser likely to cause harm to her kids, then what is the problem? She is just disappointed that her vision of reality does not correspond to reality itself. Once she takes that in board, she ought to come round.

But then, as I hinted yesterday, I did not grown up in what most people would view as a happy family unit, so maybe my view is rather different from most people's.

Furthermore, if you want my frank opinion, I think it is outrageous that the daughter should be holding her mother to ransom over seeing the kids in order to make her go back to the abandoned dad. These are not the actions of a daughter thinking about her mother, but about herself.

Message withdrawn

But the daughter isn't trying to get her Mum to go back to the Dad - she wants her to make a decision.

The worst thing in this situation is the factr that she is keeping everyone in limbo. No one is happy because she is keeping everyone hanging on. It is only natural that the daughter is upset because she is seeing her Dad going through alot of pain.

Agreed Dassie, You just can't leave people dangling like that even if you are worried about losing both of them. You have to choose. You say you love these two men, well start acting like it. You are treating two people you claim to love shabbily.

erm didn't you VOW to stay with your husband until death? given that you think you could be happy with him i think it's a no-brainer. you'vw got a whole family that wants you back.

i think if you find life dull,it's up to you to inject some excitement with your husband, boring though that may sound.

Thing is Duchesse, I did grow up in a very close family unit where it has always been emphasised how important the family unit is. Even as adults we often took holidays together and always spent celebrations together. I was also brought up to have high moral standards, particularly regarding, truth, honesty and respect. Now, as I have said, I am in a similar position to NanofAngels's daughter and I am not deliberately withholding contact to force my dad to go back to my mum- I don't think that will ever happen in my case- I am doing it because I no longer know how to relate to him in the way I used to, because he won't open up and talk to me so I can't begin to understand why he has done this and why he did it in the way he did, well there are many reasons and they are difficult, emotional and complicated. Maybe not all families are close, but in our family things will never be the same again FOR ANY OF US and it affects us all. It's never just about one person. And actually I don't believe that one's own happiness should come before everything else. I just don't think it's quite as straightforward and detached as you make it out to me, but believe me, sometimes I wish it was.

For you Soph28

and a (((hug))) from me ...cant post anymore on this...too raw.

Thank you guys. That's it from me too.

I remember having this dilemma too...when I was 19.