I met, fell in love with and married a "damaged" man. I didn't know this initially as it was a lovely, calm, warm and very sweet relationship but one where he was carrying some very deep wounds of childhood abuse. Over time together, we loved each other very much but these issues were making it impossible for us to live a full life. I worked very hard at things, trying to help, but he was not able to face or deal with his own issues and he was self medicating by drinking which I didn't want to be around.
As a result, after only a year of marriage, we separated for 18 months, and for a year of that we didn't see each other at all and got along with being single. The separation was at my request, we were both very tearful about it, still in love when we separated but at the time I felt that we were better off apart as he needed to be healthy in himself to be a healthy husband to me.
During our separation, I dated a few people once or twice but really wasn't interested as I was still in love with DH and I never slept with anyone else. He didn't date anyone, but he leaned on a female colleague, who obviously fancied him, for counselling and emotional support and for many months she became his "bestie" and they did everything together.
She was his confidante regarding the separation and his issues and he got very close to her indeed emotionally. He told her he loved me and wanted to reconcile and she was very kind and nurturing towards him and he thought this was a really genuine friendship. He says, with hindsight, he doesn't think he's ever really had a close friendship like that before (childhood abuse and so on) and he says they got on really well and he really enjoyed the time they spent together.
After nine months as best friends, they had sex. Then they started having sex fairly regularly for a few months. She wanted more from him, told him she was in love with him, but he said he loved me and wanted to fix himself and fix the marriage if I would take him back. She was very upset about this and didn't understand why he didn't love her /want her if they got along so wonderfully and were so happy together. He said that at no time did he have romantic feelings for her and he told her that.
Over this time, he had begun seeking counselling and making the changes I had asked for in the ,marriage. He worked through some very troubling childhood things, stopped drinking and started getting to a place he knew he needed to be. He never stopped messaging me and telling me he loved and missed me. As I saw progress, we met up and agreed to try dating again and see if we could start over again.
Once we did, he told me about the woman he was seeing and I told him if he wanted to approach reconciliation that he would need to stop seeing her completely as I didn't want to try and reconcile our marriage with a third party involved, even as a close friend, as he had been sleeping with her and it seemed messy.
He readily agreed and explained to the lady that we were attempting reconciliation and he could not see her at all anymore. He and I began the process of reconciliation and it was going wonderfully because he had taken the time apart to do all the things I'd asked and he had worked through, in counselling, the issues he had been having. We started to date again, and we were very much in love all over again and it felt like a wonderful new start.
However, contact at times remained with this other woman as he needed to see her at work, and I think after a few months of "no contact" and things going so well with us, he felt it was okay to loosen boundaries a bit and he started having chats with her again at work. I think he naively though it was okay now and they could just go back to being friends. It blew up in his face because she was still in love with him and speaking with her blew up a whole can of worms of her saying she missed him and loved him and so on which by turn made me really upset.
He then understood she was going to remain a problem within our marriage, so he rearranged things at work so he was working out of a different branch and no longer needed to see her. I appreciated him doing that and I didn't feel any threat as he seemed to have no romantic feelings towards the woman, although he admitted he really missed their friendship and wished he had never had sex with her so he could keep it.
The problem was, after he completely cut contact with her and could not see her again, for a couple of months he was very depressed and grieving over losing his relationship with this woman, and over two or three months he acted like he had broken up with someone or someone had died or something. I found this very strange and wondered if he was in love with her. He assured me he wasn't, and said he just missed being her friend.
This hurt me very much as I felt (a) maybe he was in love with her and didn't know it (b) it was awful that he was grieving losing her instead of being happy over gaining our marriage back. He has repeatedly told me he is not in love with her, he never was in love with her, never felt romantic feelings towards her but he has felt some deep sense of loss over the friendship element which he said he had never had before with anyone and which he said was hard to give up.
Can anyone help me with this, as this situation had really caused a problem for me emotionally. I realise he has formed a close, emotional bond with another woman and that he has grieved over losing that, but for some reason that has caused me a huge amount of pain as I couldn't imagine forming a close bond with another man when we were separated.
I'm experiencing insecurity and a feeling of no longer being as special or unique in his eyes, and I find it hard to understand why a relationship that did not include romantic love or infatuation is so hard to let go of.
This woman, interestingly, is very much like him and also a childhood abuse survivor. They had some sort of close bond and he was able to share things with her in a different way to how he does to me and I am struggling with how painful that feels.
Our relationship is wonderful, and it's obvious he loves me and dotes on me, but why do I feel so sad and rejected over this? I know I asked him to separate but I had also tried very, very hard to get him to get control of his issues before I asked for that and I was a very devoted wife and partner so it hurts me badly that any kind of bond was ever formed with anyone else :(