How can I have been so stupid

[Fuzzywig1]

I am in a terrible terrible mess and it is all my own fault.

This is long sorry.

Before I post please can I say that anything nasty or mean you say to me I have said to myself and it is not why I am here

I have been married for 21 years to a kind and gentle but emotionally distant man. I know he loves me but he does not find it easy to be vulnerable and show it in some ways. I am very warm and physically affectionate and he is not or not consistently meaning I often would feel lonely. Sex was also always on his terms and less than I wanted.

30 years ago I had an 18 month relationship with who I thought was ‘the one’ . Yes I was very young 22 and he was even younger (19). Anyway after a very very passionate relationship he went off to drama school and decided to leave me. I was heartbroken and never forgot him and never trusted that sort of passion again.

2 years ago and out of the blue an email arrived saying he had seen me at my sons football training. We started emailing agreed to meet ( I told my husband about this first meeting) blah blah yes we started an affair.

From the beginning he told me he always loved me but buried the feelings deep he wants us to be together we are twin souls. He left his wife and now lives on his own.

I did not ask him to do this by the way

I feel somehow enchanted by him and that I lose my reason ....

I have told my husband I want to get divorced but he cannot believe it and says we have always had a lovely and sweet relationship

Eventually he found out and now I am in an awful impasse.

The om said he does not want to put pressure on me but his moving out made its own guilt and pressure. His constant emailing showering of love and gifts etc have made me stupid.

My husband seems to just want to carry on as if nothing has happened and that I’m the end I will ‘cone Back to him’.

Over and over every day I change my mind about what to do. What will cause the least harm.

I have two lovely children aged 13 and 9 and I cannot bear the thought of hurting them. I have already hurt them by being distant from their father and sleeping separately from him.

I think I have now got to the point of knowing that I cannot do this. It is wrong, I have been deluded Abd stupid.

But I am now scared to tell the om who has changed his life for me and will be devastated

This email sounds so stupid.

I don’t think people would believe this of me.

And that i has finally owned my choices and that in looking outside of my marriage to fix something in me I had been very wrong.

I know he had not an ounce of doubt he could get me to do what he wanted and that is why he left his wife. He also knew it would make me feel guilty and put pressure on me.

Do you know if he’s got the letter? When did you send it? I respect your decision btw I was just giving you my thoughts that’s all

Why wouldn’t he get the letter? I sent it last week. I can’t remember exactly when/ which day though I could if I tracked back through this thread.

I wasn’t suggesting that he hasn’t got it. Just that it’s the weekend and if you sent on Friday he may not ha e it yet that’s all

Oh for God's sake, Grumpy! If you were bitten by a dog would you stick your hand back in the dog's face to show the dog how badly he bit you? Of course not! You would stay away from that dog!

Fuzzy you don't need to justify your decision. And that decision is the correct one. You've said absolutely all there is to say and you've told him to leave you alone. There's no need to recontact him to ask "Did you get my letter? You DO know I meant what I said, right?".

Grumpy is dead wrong. Communication is NOT always the best way to handle things. There can often be more said with dead silence than can ever be said with words. This is one of those times.

Grumpy why are you so concerned about whether he has received the letter? I don't understand. It looks like you are trying to wind the OP up. She's very clear about what she thinks and what she's doing now, why are you picking holes in it and suggesting she communicate more with the biting dog?

Not winding anyone up, you will see that I’ve said I respect OP’s decision. I didn’t realise that giving my opinion was a crime!!! I won’t comment any further on this thread. Sorry if I offended you OP

Ugh

I wasn’t offended but giving an opinion can sometimes be unwise if you don’t have experience of a similar situation.

The intensity ( not depth which is quite different) of the feelings involved means it is dangerous to have any Re involvement.

And I do think in some ways I ended it less than fairly. So you saying that made me doubt myself. Briefly.

It would also be enormously disrespectful to my dh.

Luckily I have other people to support me.

Well said OP.
You sound stronger with every post. Good for you!

Ok perhaps you should have thought about the whole disrespectful to your husband piece before you cheated on him!!! Anyway I wish all parties involved the best

Just had to get that last dig in, didn't you Grumpy.

You're doing great OP. I've been following your thread since the beginning and I think not speaking to OM is exactly the right thing to do. You need to break the habit.

All I was saying is that it doesn’t appear that the OM has done anything wrong. A little respect goes along way. It doesn’t have to end on bad terms. I’m a woman btw. It’s ok everyone saying he walked away but let’s face it they were both very young!

Oh dear.

Emotions have been running here high.

So he did do lots of things wrong actually. Whether he could help himself or not I don’t know as I don’t think he is brave enough to look inside himself.

Wrong in the first place was to bombard me with love until I totally fell for him, isolate me from my friends and family then slowly withdraw whilst sending conflicting grand gestures eg bunches of flowers to my work whilst introducing me to somebody as his ‘friend’. Phoning me up and dropping me almost out of the blue .

This time: he saw me, a normal person might have said hi but instead he took a weekend to think and then craft an email carefully. Which seemed innocent and friendly. And then game playing and hooks to reel me in.

Yes it was my choices. I know that.

He moved out in part I think as he knew that would pressurise me. And had an amazing sense of his ability to get people to do what he wanted.

He denigrated my dh and got angry every tine I defended him and said ‘mothers defend their children’ called him a big baby etc.

None of these are good actions. And whilst I am deeply ashamed of what I did I would never pursue someone and there is a difference. Nor did I denigrate his wife. I didn’t know her and it was mean and undignified

His lack of struggle and calculating over leaving her should have given me pause earlier than it did but by that time I was deep into fantasy island.

The thing is grumpykid that he made his choices. If I contact him it will not help him at all.

I am tempted to write him a letter to explain myself but this is pointless and wrong thinking

He saw how desperately unhappy I was and so conflicted all the way through so much so I had suicidal thoughts. And my body was telling me I was wrong from the beginning. I went to meet him before ‘anything’ had happened and I was literally shaking from head to foot. And all the time he would whisper it will all be ok.

I know I made very bad choices but I do think he made his own.

I am sorry for him too but that is an unhelpful emotion to my relationship with my dh and family so I need to turn away from that.

Aside from all this though today has been a hard day. Limerent fantasy and remembering all the nice things ....

But it gets better when I am with dh.

Bad when driving on my own.

I am still very worried about dh. He seems to be too focussed on the fact he is happier than before. He does repress difficult feelings. I worry he will get properly depressed.

Also it didn’t end ‘in bad terms’. I haven’t said anything horrible or disrespectful to him.

This sort of language is very odd in the circumstances. It wasn’t a business arrangement

I knew someone would make that obvious remark about cheating....

The only way I can describe it is it was like dipping your toe in a pool and then finding yourself falling over a waterfall. I knew I was making choices all the time but emotions can drive out reason. And if you think you are affair proof that is even more dangerous. I thought that about myself. If I hadn’t have been so sure I wouldn’t have replied nor told dh nor my family about the initial contact. I felt it was ‘safe’.

I don’t think you owe GrumpyKid any explanation whatsoever. I’m pretty sure everything is clear from your previous posts anyway, they are just misreading / misinterpreting everything (wilfully or not).

As I said, you’re not obliged to explain yourself any further to anyone - but you’re doing an excellent job of it anyway

Honestly you sound like a new person since starting this thread. You are rightly focusing on your DH’s feelings and blocking the desire to think/worry about your ex and how he feels.

Just popping on to say I agree with AnotherEmma - you sound like a different person to the woman who started this thread. Keep being kind to yourself as well as your DH.

Fuzzy i wish you nothing but happiness and luck. I hope you work things out with your DH.

I am my real self. Unfrotunately i do have a tendency to take on traits of people i associate with. Even down to inadvertently speaking in a liverpudlian lilt when talking to my liverpudlian friend. and I think i was taking on some of his ruthlessness.

Unfrotunately i have had another contact today. He has messaged me on linked in to say he accidentally sent me a request to link in and has done to everybody who has viewed his profile. I think i did that several weeks ago but of course this could be made up. But there is no begging or pleading he is just saying he didnt want me to think he was being weird. Well i still am not sure but it gives me horrible panic symptoms when he contacts me.

Ive remembered all sorts of weird behaviours that i dismissed at the time as well.

Trouble with the contact is that i now have to tell my dh as i promised this to him.

Which then jsut re triggers him.

Oh GOd i wish i could turn the clock back.

I realised who i was in love with was myself or the version of myself he made me think i was /the person i thought he was 20 years ago, but he never was it was all just a mask.

And he was in love with my 'mask' as well ie glamorous, successful and confident.

But that is not really who i am at all. I like doing my knitting and making soup and talking to my friends more than going to flash parties.

Please don't sound so despondent. You don't deserve that. You sound as if you are in turmoil, Fuzzy.

Can you bring it up with dh without having to 'make a big thing of it'?

I think om needs to leave you alone now and I hope he does. It is not fair to you or your family.

I'm not sure what you or others would think of this, but I don't think you would be being deceitful if you didn't mention it to your husband. Om has enough of your emotion and head space. I hope you understand what I mean

You need to tell him that if he contacts you again you will report him for harrassment.

Then block him on EVERYTHING. LinkedIn, Facebook, Whatsapp, email, your phone.

If you don’t do this, you are leaving the channels open for him to contact you and therefore hurt you and your husband YET AGAIN.

PS
“Even down to inadvertently speaking in a liverpudlian lilt when talking to my liverpudlian friend.”
I do this too

That is either a sign of empathy or not having a strong sense of self depending on what you read (the accent thing). You probably ‘mirror’ body language too. It’s quite funny.

I promised dh so I will tell him gently.