Ending affair

[fsimv]

For 18 months I had an affair with someone we'll call Jenny. It's depressingly cliched, it started as friends, became emotional and then physical. At the time I thought my marriage was over. For the last 6 months my marriage has been improving, I subconsciously started withdrawing from the affair, and then more consciously knew it couldn't continue. Events with Jenny came to a head 3 months ago, at a point where we either left our partners and got together fully, or ended the affair and stayed with our partners. We both have young children.

We made different decisions. I decided to stay with my wife and end the affair. Jenny wanted to leave her husband and for us to get together.

She was completely devastated, she essentially told her husband about us anyway, and their relationship is now all but over.

At the time I thought the kindest thing was to have no more contact with her to give her a chance to recover and move on but she wants to stay in touch.

I don't know how to help her. All the advice about breakups, both affairs and normal is to have an total extended break from each other but this isn't a normal break up. If we weren't both married we would still be together, we still love each other and haven't argued or fallen out.

COVID means she is cooped up at home and can't go out and see people easily. This isn't like a normal relationship ending, it's still secret from everyone so she can't turn to her friends. I am the only person she can talk openly with. Her marriage is disintegrating so she is essentially going through two breakups at once, one is secret, in the middle of a pandemic.

We both went into the affair as equals, but we have come out so differently. We're still meeting in secret, I hug her and we talk and I try to support her but she is so completely broken.

I just don't know how to help her.
Has anyone else been in this position, what helped?

I was Jenny once and I think people who say that you need to cut contact completely are probably right, brutal and cruel as it seems. It is the greater kindness in the long run and she has to find a way of getting through this using her own resources and drawing on other supports, professional ones if necessary if she doesn't want to confide in anyone. As an aside, a number of my friends knew and they were nothing but kind and good to me so I think she like most people in the real world will have people she can confide in if she let's them in. But this is only if you genuinely are happy to stay with and love your wife and are not just staying because it's easy or for the children's sake alone. If you still have strong feelings for Jenny apart from guilt, you have a lot of thinking to do. You would almost certainly benefit from counselling yourself

You have both cheated on your partners. You have both behaved dishonestly. You have now decided to end the affair. Fine. End it. Stop dragging things out by keeping in contact and hugging her. It’s time to focus on your marriage and see if it can be salvaged, you can’t do this if you carry on seeing OW, no matter how much you protest otherwise.

@mrshonda

As hard as this is to do or to hear, you need to break contact with Jenny. This was never going to end well in any scenario. Jenny clinging on to you, even if only for comfort, will make things worse for her in the long run - she needs to find her feet and her strength so that she can move forward. At the moment, she is holding the future at bay by leaning on you.

This

If you do really care about this woman do the kind thing and let her move on. She will still have hope as long as you stay in touch with her and therefore you are unintentionally prolonging the pain.
Good luck

You're married. To whom did make your vows, to your wife or to Jenny?

There 's a time to do the right thing and stop being selfish and it's now. You're telling yourself that you're retaining your contact with Jenny because she needs you. As a matter of interest would you introduce her to another man who may potentially bring her happiness or would you not care to see her with someone else?

Your not going to get sympathy here.
Have you ever read any affair posts before?

If you really want to make your marriage work then you go no contact with this woman.
You'll tell your wife
You'll read 'how to help your spouse heal from your affair' and you'll follow the advice.

Of course you haven't had any of the negatives in this affair - it's a fake relationship build on lies and manipulation.

You quite clearly still want to have your cake and eat it. You can't help anyone until you tell your wife and deal with all the fallout.

I could go further and say that any sexual relations you are having with your wife at the moment are not fully consensual- would she consent to sleep with you if she knew? If you aren't sure the answer would be yea then what does that make you?

You have not concluded your affair.

You are still prioritizing Jenny...her feelings, her agency, her decision making. Where is your concern for the agency of your wife, whom you have been making a fool of for 18 months, with Jenny’s help? You’ve essentially robbed her of her consent to live with and sleep with a faithful husband. You are continuing to betray her by secretly channeling emotional energy into Jenny.

The truth is that Jenny does have agency here. She went into this affair with her eyes wide open and made the decision to play with fire everyday for 1.5 years. She must now deal with the consequences. Her healing is her responsibility. She can choose to move forward (via friends, counseling, books, websites, videos, exercise, etc.), but your enabling her to cling to you is impeding her recovery and instilling hope. She is determined to keep the connection, ever hoping for more. Running to her rescue and hugging her is an ego massage for you both, but it ultimately sets her back.

When you speak of promising to let Jenny be in charge of whether you continue sneaking around to see her, it is obvious that she is still a huge presence in your marriage. Until you disengage and cease all contact, your claim of recommitment to your wife is just hot air and your marriage is doomed. I urge you to come clean to your wife and don’t minimize. She deserves your honesty and transparency to gain truth and clarity about her life. Secrets are corrosive, so if you keep quiet you can expect your marriage to rot. You can also expect worse devastation when your wife eventually learns the truth from Jenny, her husband, or others.

I also suggest that you seek individual counseling to examine your selfishness, weak boundaries, and poor coping strategies that enable you to pursue illicit ego boosts.

You need to stop all contact with Jenny immediately and block her. She knew you wrrr married, she’s not a victim.

Then consider carefully what you want to happen with your marriage. Talk to your wife properly. Get yourself therapy.

And be mindful that just before Christmas is the usual time for OW to inform the wife of the affair.

Perhaps it’s Jenny you want to be with.

"OP you are sitting on a ticking time bomb. The OW and her husband, and potentially many others know about this.
A devastated OW, with or without mental health issues, could very well tell your wife. This happened to a friend of mine with devastating results.
Give your wife the option of remaining with you. She will either find out or you'll do it again.
Let her choose her life."

^^

This.

You wife needs to know. When you are the wife in this situation and I have been. Then deep down you know there is some horrible problem but it shifts around you and you can't grasp it. The horror of realising that the person you trust the most would bring a third person into your sexual and emotional relationship without your consent is the most traumatic part of the discovery.

She will find out. Deep down she probably knows.

I don't think you've even begun to grasp just what you've done because your focus is wrongly on the woman you had an affair with. And my ex begged her not to tell me. Of course she did. I asked her and she couldn't wait to tell me how he'd wronged her.

You've not even begun to grasp the enormity of just what you've done and you come across as weasely if I'm honest. Face up to this and tell your wife. She deserves the truth.

Jenny might not tell your wife but her husband very well might. Or she'll get annoyed when you finally decide to put your wife and family first and then she'll tell your wife. She's got you over a barrel.
The only way to extract yourself from this mess is to tell your wife yourself

So, the only person in this situation who doesn’t know is your wife. Can you imagine how humiliated she’s going to feel when she finds out- and she will.
Decisions are being made about her life without her consent or any input from her at all. I think whether you stay together is her decision, not yours. Your ex girlfriend’s feelings are important but she has the full picture and her actions decided her life choices. You can’t help her get over this if you are still around. You are still having an affair and idealising that relationship. Your wife deserves the same courtesy and must know the truth- however painful. I’d shift your focus if I were you. You’re not the prize to be awarded to one woman or another. Your wife should be the only one making decisions here- you owe her a great deal more than you owe the OW.

I don’t think @fsimv will tell his wife, somehow.

That was my intention, to cut off all contact and leave her in peace but she was desperate I don't do that. I still think it is the best thing but I've promised now I won't unilaterally do that.

Hmmmm.

So suddenly your promises mean something to you? Just not your marriage promises?

I think you're worried that Jenny will spill the beans to wife if you don't keep pandering to Jenny's misery

If you are genuinely worried about Jenny then give her some money for counselling to help her out of her depression and make sure she sees a doctor.

Then do the right thing for Jenny and leave her to it.

Jenny will not get better with you around her

Try to do the right thing by somebody, at least

You need to cut contact with Jenny completely. You are still being unfaithful to your wife. I also disagree with you - this is an entirely normal breakup, there is nothing special about it, you are giving yourself this excuse. You are not able to help her and neither are you being faithful to your wife as you still have a "foot in both camps" but you are justifying it by saying you are helping Jenny.

Explain to Jenny that your decision is to stay with you wife. You then need to block and put all your efforts into your marriage.

@fsimv the fact that you have dignified the personhood of your affair partner by applying a name to her when your wife is known to us only by her label suggests that you are more emotionally invested in your AP than you are in your wife.
You need to try to work out why this might be.
When men who have affairs refer to their marriages in the way you have - you thought the marriage was 'over'; your marriage started to 'improve' - often what they really mean is that the sex was over, or that it had started to improve.
You need to be honest with yourself if this was the case.
Finally, is it possible either your AP or you wife - or both - were suffering from, or still suffer from, post natal depression?

How come Jenny told her DH about you, but you haven’t told your DW about Jenny? Did you both make a pact to tell your partners and then you chickened out? If not, then why is Jenny upset that she’s ended her pointless relationship?

I agree with previous posters, you and Jenny need to stop contact. There’s no other solution!

I'm just wondering OP, how you feel? About your decision? About being with your wife? About not being with Jenny? Apart from the dreadful guilt presumably about both women. Is it a relief to have ended the affair? Or do you pine for her as well as worrying about her?

Because if you've decided this in order to stop having chaos in your life, and the stress of managing all the deceit etc that's different than deciding it because you realised you actually really love your wife more. If you love your wife more and are appalled that you gave yourself permission to behave this way, then the affair needs to end properly, ie no more contact. Meetings for comfort and hugs etc will keep the flame burning and especially if you have the added forbidden aspect, nothing more likely to get you back involved than being in each other's presence but holding back, allowing the sexual tension to increase while acknowledging you love each other still.

What made you decide to do these things, do you know? Both the affair and the breakup? And actually, why have you now decided that you do want to be properly with your wife? When you didn't before.

Because getting to the heart of your own motivation might help you to work out what to do. Of course you don't want any of you to be in such pain, but sadly that's not an option here. Someone is going to be. Maybe all of you.

And if you really, really are fully committed to your marriage (why, suddenly?) I think you'd want to stay well away from Jenny to protect that, and give your marriage a chance. And of course you need to take into consideration that as you've been deceiving your wife and she has no knowledge, and if you've no intention of telling her, there is going to be a very real limitation on how close and honest your relationship with your wife can ever actually be. So the potential for a satisfying and lasting marriage would be fairly small.

Also, if you're definitely not going to change your mind and commit to Jenny instead, then Jenny will be better off with support and help from others to recover, not from you.

If both women knew all the facts, and both still wanted you, but both promised not to make your life difficult whatever you chose, (I know that's pure fantasy) which woman do you actually want to wake up with every day for the rest of your life?

Start with being honest with yourself, and then it might be easier to work out what to do.

Are you actually a person that wants one good honest relationship for life? Or do you feel a need for the secrecy, excitement, fear, guilt and stimulation of this type of roller coaster?

I do understand your concern for Jenny and the state she is in, but I think she's deluded if she thinks keeping seeing you will help her recover. Though she might think it will help her get you back. From hugging and holding, comforting, caring, being concerned, being moved by her distress it's only a small step away from being back together.

You have not concluded your affair.

You are still prioritizing Jenny...her feelings, her agency, her decision making. Where is your concern for the agency of your wife, whom you have been making a fool of for 18 months, with Jenny’s help? You’ve essentially robbed her of her consent to live with and sleep with a faithful husband. You are continuing to betray her by secretly channeling emotional energy into Jenny.

The truth is that Jenny does have agency here. She went into this affair with her eyes wide open and made the decision to play with fire everyday for 1.5 years. She must now deal with the consequences. Her healing is her responsibility.

I agree with all of this.

You’re a coward and full of shitty excuses. Your wife deserves better

I agree with epoch time sorry op but you must cut ties dragging out wont help either of you .

I agree with others. You are petrified she will tell your wife! It’s your oblivious deceived wife who has my sympathy being married to an egotistical idiot

I suggest you help her by being with her.

End your marriage and be with your affair partner. Then you can both be with lying cheats and your ex’s can move onto others that have a modicum of love and respect for them.

Do you want to be with Jenny as it certainly sounds like you are putting her needs first.

If the affair is truly over bloke her number and do not contact. Although I hope she tells your wife as you clearly don’t have the balls to do it. You can quite happily screw someone else for months but you can’t tell your wife so she can leave you and find someone decent.

OP - You wanted advice on how you can help Jenny. I think you need to encourage her to see her GP because you have stated she is very depressed. Also encourage her to seek counselling. Once she is getting the help she needs you need to leave her alone because she has become dependant on you and you are basically having an emotional affair now after the physical affair.

OP. You aren't the person she needs to help her get over it. The very opposite. Be very blunt, but go no contact. Anything else us cruel. Leave her alone now. Youve made your choice, now get out of her life. You need to be prepared for her to hate you for it. Which will help her move on. If you genuinely want to help her. Be cruel to be kind