will this work for them ?

[higgyhog]

He is over 70, married for 38 years with grown up children. She is 54, a single parent and devastatingly attractive (obviously not me). He has some of the problems that come with old age and poor health but is a reasonably attractive man. She has never been married, has not been able to maintain a relationship and her chidren's father left her when they were small. They are having an affair in the town where both of them live and say they love each other. She doesn't want to live with him and he is telling her he will tell his wife and arrange to live alone. They have been creeping about with this relationship for 3 years, he lies to his wife about going away rambling at weekends and goes off with her. What will happen to them?

I suppose because I always try to see the best in people, because I thought that due to his age etc. he was a safe bet and although it sounds horrible that he would be grateful for my interest and affection and because I have never been in this situation before. Because one minute he was sobbing down the phone that the only person he loved was his wife, then that he didn't know what love was anyway and then that he loved OW2 and not his wife - none of which were of any relevance to me but just made me feel even worse.
The bottom line for me was that I would not be involved with him if there was a second OW, she obviously has attractions that I don't so why did he have to spend 2.5 months telling more and more lies, messing with my mind when he could have told me on 25 October that our relationship had run its course and I would not have been too troubled.

He was probably using the bondage kit on all three of you .

Higgyhog

He was also using the same hands, lips, body parts on all of you; so bondage gear is less relevant.

Point is - he wasn’t cheating on YOU. Or the other OW.

And - given his age - it’s very clear what he is doing. Living up the rest of his virility. Not that much of it left.
None of these is about you - and if you get that point - it’ll be easier to understand what drives him.
He isn’t a romantic story you made up. And I am sorry you did.

He is pragmatic in his self-centeredness. And lives his life in the now. It’s not a judgement on you.
He just tells people around him what they want to hear.
Simple, really.

Jsku, I'm not made of stern enough stuff for this type of adventure, I fall in love (not that I loved him) and give of myself far too freely. I have read a little of your wisdom on other threads and know myself that these sort of arrangements work very well for some people, as it did for me for many years, I think if someone is constant in their behaviour for 5 years it is not unreasonable to feel you know them but as you say it is all about self-centredness.

You say: I think if someone is constant in their behaviour for 5 years it is not unreasonable to feel you know them but as you say it is all about self-centredness." I'm sure your husband feels he knows you. Little does he know.

You got stung. Accept it. It was never any great romance. It was sex. In some people's eyes slightly kinky sex with the bondage stuff (my eyes imaging 60 year olds and 70 years old doing this). He owed you nothing. You both owe the people you married something though. What on earth did you want with him? For him to leave his wife? Do you really want a sleezy 70 year old? Just weird and desperate and all a bit vomit making.

@higgyhog

But you are made of the stern stuff. You had found what you needed that worked for your needs - some physical, some human connection. Not too much, not too intense.
And you assumed it’s what he needed too.

You have no idea if you were his only long-distance illicit friend.
I am actually guessing - not.
Given that he has enough energy to keep a 52yo - he must have had that before just as well.
And as you weren’t available more - he probably had someone else in the mix.
Now he just found a better arrangement for him.

Both of you were just solving your own extra-marital needs. And at some point they stopped being aligned.
There isn’t a morality involved, he didn’t owe you anything.

You haven’t fallen in love with him. I think it’s more of a pride and habit issue.
You will be Ok.

@lizzy1970a

To side track for a while. Casual ageism is something that bugs me. At what age are we supposed to give up bondage and go for more vanilla sex? Is the thought of OW 2 in her fifties with him less offensive than the thought of me at 62? Should I just put a bag over my head and give up sex of all kinds altogether? In a general context i think lots of enthusiastic varied sex is a very good thing whatever your age, and as most of us don't invite spectators what you think it might look like is not relevant. FWIW I have quite a nice body and am not afraid of it being seen on the beach etc.

Yes, spot on, Jsku, pride and habit probably right.

Is he a Dom?

Yes.

higgy - your pride has been dented, that's all. He owed you nothing; it was sex, nothing more. Both of you owed your spouses something though. Morally bankrupt the pair of you. No fool like an old fool, as they say. You thought bizarrely you were 'special'. Spectacularly bad judgement and naivety on your part.

This is the third thread you've started on this man that I have seen. I honestly think you're obsessed with them.

You saw this man once every three months for sex. That was it. During that time he met and fell in love with someone else. This woman. It may work, it may not, no one can predict the future.

You need to focus on you and you need to seek further help to stop obsessing about them. It's not healthy.

Whilst I agree it was bad judgement and naivety on my part it was not just about sex. We spent hours on email exchanges about books and poetry and as much time in art galleries etc. as in hotel rooms. For me it was far more about having a lively interested friend than anything else and given the fact that he had ED and ITP the sex side of it was not amazing, I just went along with his little foibles, some of which I enjoyed, but most not.

If you didn't enjoy the sex,and it was more friendship, then your threads make no sense, because honestly, you come across like an obsessed teen in love, the scorned woman.

There is no reason you can't still be friends if it was about friendship, but it wasn't just about friendship, not for you. I think you need to be honest with youtself about that.

@Bluntness100

I was not intending to post again but today is one week since i went to meet him for what I thought would be a goodbye lunch, which I quite accepted. I'd seen my counsellor, done some meditation and felt kindly to him but quite resigned to the situation. What has set me off again is OW2 insisting on gatecrashing the meeting, refusing to allow us to go for lunch, threatening me, and telling him that if he stepped out of line with so much as a single email to me she would do dreadful (unspecified) things to him. This thread was to ask if anyone really thought he was heading for happiness or not. He seemed so enamoured of her but also had a look of terror on his face (hard to describe)

Although I have taken a lot of flack, which I accept, for my infidelty I always respected the boundaries of meeting a distance away and not often and had no feelings of negativity to his wife. OW2 kept going on about how he had promised her "exclusivity" but she meant exclusivity except for the wife which I found a difficult concept to get my head round. Week 1 I was distraught, week 2 has been easier except for the meeting nonsense and next week I hope to be tackling some other topics with my counsellor because this is nearly behind me apart from these issues I still feel a need to discuss. Given I only found out about OW2 on 20 December in her real form and had the awful lunch last Friday I think I'm doing pretty well.

Well op. They are two adults, who have decided they love each other and wish to be together, whatever happened at the lunch is clearly not going to tell you why they feel the way they do about each other or why they spend so much time together. No one can predict their future.

Your spending time getting beauty treatments, buying new clothes, wishing him a miserable old age, wishing they aren't happy, is not going to change anything and is not pleasant. This is a man you spent an afternoon with every three months. He was always honest that he did not wish to leave his wife for you and that this was the deal.

It seems it was way more important to you than him and I get that hurts, that you'd built it into something it wasn't. But you need to put it into context, it was a sleazy few hours every three months or so. It was not some love story.

Keep up with the counselling, and focus on getting yourself mentally healthy again. No good can come from wishing them ill and obsessing on them.