ending an affair before it starts

[notabadperson]

Please, I don't need judging here, i really need constructive help. I know all the "right answers". I have become very close to someone else who is also married. We both really love our partners and know our relationship has nowhere to go. We both know the answer is to make the break and focus on our marriages, but am finding it so painful. Anyone else been through this and able to advise how they got through it??

I think it was Happywoman who posted something a while back, words to the effect that how much of a "friend" can the OM/OW be if they want you/help you break up your family and marriage. Maybe you have to look at these other people like that ie not much of a friend if that makes sense.

My DH can now see that his "OW" was really not a friend to him.

Good luck to everyone - life is not black and white, lots of grey, as I have found out myself in the last six months.

Hi Polaris,

I think this is my biggest fear - that I will drive away a lovely DP and waste my life pining for OM. On paper OM is nowhere near as good a bet as DP - but I guess that emotions seem to have very little to do with logic, common sense and what's written on the paper !

In my case OM and I have history and we know we make a pretty decent couple as we've already been one in the past. But we are both involved with other people now and missed our chance. Just hoping that time will heal the pain before DP gets fed up and dumps me too.

Oh well, onwards and upwards......

God - Polaris I think that phrase is repulsive and maybe comes from someone who has settled for maybe lesser than a good connection - I believe so many people settle and then have to justify it to themselves ie they might not have experienced true chemistry/connection.

I also don't buy the line that all men turn out the same and all relationships get mundane and boring - in which case if you connect well well that should see you over it if you have settled for lesser then it must be harder.

I don't advocate leaving marriages willy nilly - god knows I stuck at mine for long enough though circumstances of split were very different than just being bored or meeting someone else.

One very sad thing my great uncle on his deathbed said he had always loved Mrs x from his local village apparently there had been rumours about their friendship - my great aunt was a rather volatile, spiteful woman yet he stuck with her because that was the thing to do. But how sad

I have met one person in my life who I have a really really strong connection with but I don't know if we will ever be together and I have come to terms with it. It doesn't stop me thinking about him all the time and feeling absolutely certain of my feelings for him. Have known him for years and years.

Maybe life's like that - you can't always have what you want. I feel for you though. I also think it's important to distinguish between a passing crush and something deeper.

oops could have done with some punctuation in my post - sorry

and tattooed magpie we have history too so know we are good as couple

Like you OP, I was in a similar situation fairly recently. I was good friends with the OM, then when OM made his declaration, I felt uncomfortable but couldn't stop thinking about him.

Anyway, dh knew about it and was very patient and trusting with me. Though I never had a physical relationship with OM, I hated myself for being in that situation. The OM has since left his job, much to my relief, he has contacted me on several occasions and has even "bumped" into me on my way to work. I have so far, not responded to anything, averted my eyes immediately and stonewalling seems to be working, whereas before when I tried to rationalise why I don't want/ can't be with OM, he wouldn't listen and persisted. I now have a very low opinion of the OM and amextremely ashamed of myself for not seeing OM's true colours.

I am not friends with the OM anymore much to everyone's relief and satisfaction but I still feel really awful about that part of my past and most of all for hurting dh. Really, it's not worth losing your self respect over.

To anybody who is in a similar situation right now, my advice would be, the grass really isn't greener and no, I doubt that you will be "truly happy" with the second/ alternative match. He/she may say the right things now but be very wary of his/her intentions.

sincity lover - it really sucks doesn't it.

I think there must be something in the water at the moment... I have also read the thread avidly, after a chance encounter (a conversation, nothing more) with someone I met at a work event. I felt as though I'd been hit by a bolt of lightning. We subsequently met up for lunch (again, a good reason for this) and after a lengthy discussion about work, life and everything there was a sudden silence, the two of us staring at each other over the table, a long silence and..... an express agreement that we could never ever see each other again (on the basis that we are both married with DC and the attraction was so strong that we wouldn't be able to resist it)(funnily this conversation did not feel particularly awkward at the time). Weird, and not something that has happened to me before. And weeks later I still feel as though I'm grieving.

Still trying to work out whether it's a "soulmate" (or, for the cynical, biological urge to reproduce) thing, or whether it's the fact that the two conversations have made me realise how unhappy I am with various aspects of my own life - an uninspiring job, a DH who is never home, just a general feeling of loss of self-identity that I think is an inevitable incident of motherhood.

I guess the key is to focus on fixing those things, rather than pining

it does suck. When we first got back in touch I was very philosophical, then went through period of extreme heartbreak etc now am back to feeling philosophical again. Que sera and all that.

Not unique - I hear what you are saying. I think the problem is that most of the people in this position know what the right answers are - steer clear, walk away and work on what you have got etc. But it doesn't stop the feelings from being there and from hurting.

When OM dumped me everyone said about the grass not being greener, that it wouldn't have been the same when I was washing his pants, cooking his tea and he was snoring in bed next to me etc . But the problem is that that is exactly what I wanted - I just wanted to find that out for myself. I did want to cook his tea, I did want to wash his pants and I did want to prod him in the back when he was snoring. I just wanted to be with him, give it a go and see. I'd got no illusions that it was going to be perfect - I just wanted to see what happened.

In my case the decision was made for me - but in OPs case it must be really hard - to walk away and do the right thing. In the face of my feelings, I couldn't and I didn't - god, it must be hard to turn your back on it and I take my hat of to her.

When mine got back in touch ( after about ten years ) I avoided him for a further 6 years - 6 years ! - cos I knew there would be bother if we ever saw each other again. I finally caved as there wasn't enough going on with DP to stop it and it was just as I imagined - extreme bother.

I just don't know what to do - think I'm still in the extreme heartbreak stage but striving for the philosophical bit. Wish me luck.

me too...missing my OM like mad, but still trying to do the right thing. In my case that is make a decision on where my marriage is going and what I really want out of life without him around to cloud my judgement. But I am so much sadder at not seeing him than I am at the thought of my marriage breaking up at the moment, but will that feeling last, I really don't know. Just feel incredibly confused about it all.

Yes, Roxi, as you know we're in a similar situation. I went for my second session of counselling yesterday, but things have progressed quite a lot for me. I now feel that being dumped by X was all for the best - it would never have worked out between us and my notion of having a happy complementary relationship to my marriage was very unrealistic. I was getting a huge thrill out of all the excitement but going to hotels is very sordid and guilt inducing and I'm sure we would have been caught out eventually. It does hurt, and the last week has been really difficult at work because I was so used to getting nice supportive texts and emails that made me smile and kept me going. First counselling session was very constructive but not much focus to the second and so we agreed to leave it for a while and then I will contact her again if I need to discuss things.

After feeling totally bereft for a couple of days I did notice that things at home were nicer again - that in taking my affection and effort away I'd made things worse at home and that suddenly they were better again. I'd not enjoyed a weekend since the end of May because I'd been pining for X. I do still miss him but hope to be able to resurect our old friendship at some point.

The "wet gusset" comment struck a cord with me ( didn't get anything quite so horrid on my long thread about my problems)but I did realise that it was not really worth splitting up two homes just for some mindblowing oral sex. (Almost started wavering there a bit at the memory.... )I'm sure I will still feel upset by all this for a while yet. The whole thing opened up some very bad memories from years ago about being dumped by two boyfriends I really loved. One of them contacted me on Friends Reunited last year, just to say that yes, he was a farmer as planned on the family farm and to let me know about his children and if I kept in touch with old mutual friends. I felt really upset and unsettled for weeks by this and thought I should not even have read the message. Am I the only one who is cautious in love, gets pursued like mad and then dumped the minute I return affection? DH is of course the exception, but even he finds me a bit overpowering.

Anyway, I ramble on. There seem to be lots of us in the same boat, and we all seem quite nice.

tatooedmagpie - i also do not think it is that simple i was just trying to get op to see it in a more negative light.

The pain will not go if she still sees it as unfinished business and thinks he is pining for her.

I too know from both sides just how awful affairs are and also what is like to have unfinished business. I still wonder what i would do if a certain man from my past were to 'bump' into me. But that is where i leave it as a lovely fantasy from the past.

Maybe it would be easier to forget and move on if there was no way of getting in touch - get rid of phone numbers and email.

actually just thought that my last post sounds a bit arrogant and I'm talking on OPs behalf - so ignore it and I'll ask for it to be removed.

damm didnt even get to read the post.

I know it is a very emotive subject and until someone has been there it is impossible to really understand.

I do try to understand though.

It certainly is an emotive subject. After the weekend when the OM declared his feelings for me, I posted my story on MN to try and find some support and sort my head out a bit (because I was so utterly gob smacked, happy and devastated at the same time). Remembering - by the way - the fact that I hadn't actually done anything myself, I thought it a bit much that I was totally shredded by other posters. So much so, that I think MN actually withdrew the thread because when I woke up the next day and looked for it, it had totally disappeared! I can only think that I was the target of some hate posting and MN thought it best to get rid of it all. Beware!

Anyway, we seem to all be trying to do the best thing on here, despite our strong feelings. I didn't ask to be in this situation; the situation found me and now I'm all wrapped up in it.

I do think I should be a little kinder on myself, though. I tend to think I should just bag my feelings for the OM up as a stupid school girl crush, but that is just dismissing my emotions as nonsense and not giving them the respect they deserve.

I had a one night stand with the OM before I got together with my DH: they are actually close friends of years and years (makes it ten times worse, I know). He was also always by my side back then; we were great mates. Now I know the depth of his feelings for me, a lot of the last ten years or so make sense.

He wasn't confident enough in his early 20's to tell me how he felt - when we were friends - and he actually helped me get together with my DH. Aparently, he told me he went on holiday, decided he was going to tell me how he felt when he returned, but when he got back I had started dating my now DH. It's such a sad story. He has now told me that he thought he would wait until I got DH out of my system because I was 'besotted' with him (well, I was to be honest) but then I got engaged to him and OP tried to move on, unsuccessfully.

I love this OM so much; always have in some capacity, but there's nothing I can do. I try and understand exactly what he means to me and I can't find answers. All I know is that it's a special bond between us that has manifested itself in different ways throughout the years and now it's brought us to this point.

HW - It wasn't anything major - I was just over projecting and making assumptions

Polaris - I can relate to so much of what you are saying. Especially to the confusion and trying to find answers bits.

Yes, anyone who contemplates an affair will have a hard time on MN - as I discovered to my cost too. There are so many assumptions made and I think most of us who have posted about transgressing have started out by saying it was not something they were looking for and that they were shocked about the strength of feelings they rapidly developed - in my casean innocent cup of coffee in the local arts centre turned me into a gibbering heap of hormones and lust when all we had talked about was a guide to ethnice practices for older people.

Interestingly enough my DH recently told me about something he had heard on Womans Hour (?) - probably Claire Rayner from what he said. She said that years ago agony aunts would always advise the wife who was cheated on that it must be their fault and they had probably "let themselves go" because that offered a concrete explanation and other women would feel reassured it couldn't happen to them!

My OM gave me a list of reasons he was unhappy at home, and they were fairly precise - wife insisted on working nights so they hardly saw each other, she was so unwelcoming to his friends he didn't have any anymore and that life was very dull. He felt unappreciated and in trying too hard to make things right he had bought things - like car - for her and had house extended that they really could not afford all the payments on without heing left with nothing for any fun or a decent holiday each year. it was not the "my wife doesn't understand me" scenario at all. I felt very sorry for him as he clearly had very little emotional intelligence and yes, for a brief instance, my answer would have been "come away with me and leave it all, we can live on my money". The point is that there are probably some fairly simple things we can do to mend our relationships with our real partners but it is probably a wood and trees situation. I ramble on..... sorry. Today would have been day for an outing with X if we had not split and I hoped the weather would be awful so I didn't think about it, but it is sunny, so I am.

This thread is actually reassurring, been feeling like my head is a mess and i'm a terrible bad person (not actually done anything physical and nor do i intend to) but I do love another man and connect with him on such a level that i will never stop loving him, of that i'm sure. We met when i was 15 on a crappy british holiday camp on our last evening there with our families, we climbed out of our caravan windows at mnidnight to meet in secret and stayed up until 6am talking, i knew instantly he was the most special person and he 'got me' instantly at a time when i felt noone else did. He gave me the chain around his neck ( i still have it) and we vowed to be together and that was it, we wrote every week pretty much for years and we always continued to love and adore each other. There were hundreds of letters and we delved completely into our hopes,fears,issues and they were always so loving and full of hope however bleak life became at times. As he lived far away we knew we had to try and respect that we couldn't actually be together until we were older as he was always a little more sensible than me that would've acted first and thought later, but in our twenties we both entered serious relationships and agreed we had to maybe give each other space to find happiness in a more normal way. It seemed sensible at the time and i never really believed we would not end up together but I fell in love and married and had two children and i do love my dh very much but have never stopped thinking of X. My dh will never know me how he does, noone will actually, and i feel like part of me is constantly missing, i have had counselling and there is no magic solution but even if i wanted to find him i couldn't as he moved and he wasn't on social networking sites, believe me i looked.
Anyway to cut a long story short i was diagnosed last year with agggressive breast cancer after the birth of my second child, i had to undergo chemotherepay, surgery and radiotherapy and i was unsure whether this was it, my time was up and after the initial concern about my dh and kids and family was this worry that X may never know i have died and so i found him, it was primal and i needed to do it just to say hi, thank you for being there for me all these years and to regain contact so if anything happened he'd know. I even told my husband as he knew we were close friends and he thought nothing more, i told him that i wanted him to know in the event of my death and my husband didn't find this odd as there were a couple of other people i had found on facebook. Anyway i found him after a long trawl of the internet and txted hi mout of the blue and he rang me within seconds, the minute i heard his voice it hit me like a brick wall and we both got upset and emotional. He said he never stopped loving me and had looked for me for years bit didn't know my married name, it was like comeing hime talking to ghim and i forgot how much about me he knew and how much he adored me, he always had and it would seem still does. He mentione old places of employment that he had thought he'd found me at but i'd moved on by the time he had found me and even quoted me form a newspaper article i did ten years ago he found onlinej. Needless to say we fell deeply in love again although i don't think i ever fell out of love with him, fast forward 3 months of no physical contact I asked him never to contact me again as our love was so intense and scary and unpractical. Its been teh worst feeling. The treatment finished and i'm as all clear as the docs will say so thats good but my heart is in bits, we both can't be that horrid person that ruins other peoples lives and i DO love dh and he does love his partner and they would be devastated plus he still lives far away so where would we live? My eldest is in school and i wouldn't move - would it kill our love by hurting so many people as hes the nicest sweeetest person and he just couldn't do that. Saying goodbye was the hardest point of my life, different to the diagnosis day as that was placed upon my shoulders whereas leaving X was something i made myself do and my heart is broken, i still sit out on the back steps of an evening when the kids are asleep and wonder if i will ever see him again, i wonder how he is - we were in tears the last time i ever spoke to him and we told each other we loved each other and then the line went dead and i know i can't ever contact him again as it wouldn't be fair to re-ignite this all again. Not fair on our partners or each other but i am now 35 and i met him 20 years ago and i would love to 'walk away' and i do think of my dh, more than i have ever thought of anyone as i am determined to make my marriage work but i'm lost for answers, X and i would have too many obstacles in our way and i love him so damn much i couldn't ask him to lose everything he has, his frineds, family and partner he loves and he couldn't and wouldn't ask that of me. It is hard hearing people become venomous over this subject because i never thought this would ever happen and i married my dh with the intent that it was for life and so will strive to attain that but i do curl up and cry sometimes at night and i can't help but feel this feeling inside will never go away. Its a life lesson and i am trying to learn from it, still have counselling and some days i feel great but its a constant pain and SO far away from teh 'wet gusset' post its untrue..

Lolabelle - of course your story is different, at least you know this person inside out and I desperately feel for you, it must be so hard. I so wish you'd looked for this man before you got married, but life isn't like that.

The wet gusset comments are directed at situations when people have just met or know each other through work (where everyone puts on a front to seem socially acceptable for a few hours a day) - they don't even touch on what has happened to you. I'm sorry.

Oh goodness Lolabelle. Your story is totally gutting.

I'm so glad to hear that your health is back to how it should be; so that is the good news in the story. But, hell, you sound like you're in bits. Do you ever think you'll get any closure from this? Is there anything you can do to move on from it?

I know you don't have the answers of course, or your post wouldn't read the way it does.

This thread and MN is certainly is reassuring. It's helping me stay of instant messenger (our preferred form of communication), which I have actually deleted from my PC. I mean, who the hell can you talk to about this type of stuff, without sounding like you're being a fleighty teenager?

You're right, that horrible comment from the other MNer is so far off the mark. I was being told that my OM 'was just trying to get his leg over' and 'taking advantage of a vulnerable new mum'. I wasn't born yesterday for heavens sake! I've had men chasing me plenty in the past for just one thing. I think I can tell the difference when a dear friend makes a declaration after fourteen years of friendship! I suppose it just goes to show that unless it's happened to you, you can only see the black and white. Which is why it's out of the question to even talk about it with RL friends and that makes the situation worse. People are incapable of not judging as we are such a supposed threat to the security of family life.

Burn us.

wow lolabelle. Just checking this thread at work - that's a tough place to be. I'm glad the cancer is clear.

Your story rings so many bells for me - I also met my OM in my teens and he's been in and out of my life for nearly 30 years now.

Like you we got on so well, loved each other to bits, never argued but I thought we were too young to settle down at the time,so we went our separate ways and I spent the majority of my twenties basically trying to find someone who made me feel like he did. Never happened and was never likely to happen as, looking back now, I was still too hung up on him. By the time I had realised that, he had met the woman who is now his wife and I just tried to get on with it. Met DP and have been happy for most of our time together - with the excepetion of the past couple of years or so.

The hardest part of all this is that I will never be able to speak to him again or see him again - I can if I want to, I have his number, his email, his address and DP has told me he will understand if I do - but I can't because I know I can't just be his friend. Its all or nothing. Maybe one day.

I wished we had just taken the risk of being together on our early twenties before allowing each other to explore other realtionships, it was at this point we now realise lost each other. I appreciate now (reading back a bit) what was meant by that 'wet gussett' phrase, i guess i have never really told anyone my story on here as there is obviously and understandably so much negativity about affairs and i guess i am a bit in denial that this was one but i guess it was. Hate labelling it that though.

On a more positive note it has 9along with the cancer) made me see the whole world with fresh eyes, i try not o judge anyone and in uderstand love on a deeper level and how it i struly the most important thing in the world. I really need to remind myself of how i have a perfect future with my dh and kids waiting for me and i can't keep stumbling back into teh past emotionally but I do have off days and so have now realised drinking wwine alone of an evening whilst listening to The Scientist by Coldplay is not a good idea at any level!! There are still certain songs like that that can actually stop me in my tracks in shops and it takes all my control to not crumble and start sobbing but these moments are becoming rarer, i guess its a bit like grieving. I know we will never eever be together, its extremely doubtful i'll ever even see him again but it just has to be this way. Wish it was more superficial and lustful, god i've never even slept with him!! Not even going to think about that...