Need help ending an affair

[MayDeclove]

I am in an affair that I know I have to end. Besides the fact that I am 24 years older than him(51 / 27) we are both married. We have talked endlessly about the fact that we both know that this would never work even if we were both single. We agree that in another life if the same age and single that we would have been the love of each other's life.
We are in love and yet we know it has to end. We have tried several times and always come back to each other. We have never had sex, however the emotional bond is overwhelming. It truly has controlled my life for the past 4+ months. I know I need to end this but I just can't seem to make myself do it. Could use some help!!!

Mamazon, Intellectually I know you are right, emotionally I feel like I am dying. It all sounds good to just say remove him from your life completely but its not that easy. If it was one of us would have done it already. In fact he has a couple of times and we keep coming back to each other. It's not black and white and it's not simple or easy.

but if you both delete each otehrs details, and i mean destroy them totally... you will be unable to get back in touch. unable to persist in what is ultimatly a destructive relationship.

its like giving up smocking. you will have seemingly unbareable cravings but you HAVE to be strong and resist.

well you just have to be grown up about it and make a decision

you will get over it

and it has only been 4 months that isn't very long

i feel sorry for you MayDeclove
what do you think you can do in the short term and long term??
x

It sounds like you have made this man the centre of your world and to remove him from your life would cause that world to collapse.

Except - it isnt so. The world doesnt stop turning when you give him up. You dont stop breathing (tho it might feel like it). You still have a life, a history, friends. There was life before him and there will be life after.

Why was it easier to escape into this fantasy instead of addressing the problems in your marriage? Did you see him as a confidante/kindred spirit because he is also having marriage problems? Because that's not love, it's mutual dependency built on desperation.

A relationship like this can go nowhere, whereas if you could examine your marriage you might be able to move forward and feel less trapped/more empowered.

I dont know your circumstances and I am not judging, just offering a different perspective. I know how it feels to be caught between a tired, joyless relationship and one which feels full of thrill and passion - and secrecy. But eventually you have to choose.
Good luck and HTH

Hi, May...that's not a question to which there is an easy answer, which might be why I 'forgot' to mention it but I can tell you what happened with us, in case it adds anything to your perspective.
It's a pretty long story and having typed it out just now, I think MN is not the place for it...I don't know if you can CAT me as I'm not signed up. But if you can, I'm happy to share x

MayDeclove - I repeat - please don't even think of trying to break things off at this point because it is impossible. You have to live it out. That is just the nature of those feelings.

And you know what? Sometimes you live it out, and the thing dies pretty fast. And sometimes you live it out and the thing is meant to be and it all works out.

Both have happened to me

May - it took four long years for it to end, by which time I had had a baby by him, and he had descended into serious alcohol dependancy. The toll it took on his family was enormous and he lost them/they lost him.
So did I, and I thought it would kill me for a very long time, I felt like I had died is the best way to describe it.

I think I had lost respect for him because of his drinking and lying, and he lost his confidence in me when I allowed myself to become pregnant. It was horrid.

When he left his wife, he came to be with me and Ds for a few months, not living here, just turning up...he only stayed a few times, spent the rest of the time drinking alone in a bedsit, while I looked for him desperately.
He started to avoid coming round and I later discovered he had been living with someone else, who had three children of her own.

As I said, it took me probably 2 years to stop thinking I had died inside...it's been 3 years now and I don't think of him every day - well perhaps I do, but my eyes don't fill up now. Not every time, anyway...

I'll never lose the memories but I met him recently, and the love has gone. He changed...he looks scared and ill now. His new wife is unpleasant. I hate that I lost the man I loved but he isn't there any more. Perhaps he never was.

I have a theory about big age gaps, and/or affairs...something to do with a parent, maybe - it is extremely powerful, whatever its root.

Not sure people understand if they haven't experienced the fierceness of a quasi-parental love. If that's what it is.

...I hope it doesn't come across that I am proud of it...I carry the immense guilt every day, and it is a heavy, heavy burden which I deserve.
Nothing was worth that but at the time, well, you know how it is...nothing else seems to matter.

Anna8888, what do you mean by live it out? We aren't living at all. He HATES the lying and I'm not crazy about it either but I am so crazy for him that I would do just about anything to see him or talk to him. Recently he has said that he needs to get his life back and I know what he means because as Bearmama said I have made him the center of my universe. I wake up and go to sleep thinking about him. My stomach is in a knot every day all day in anticipation of any communication we might be able to have. I have lost 40 lbs in 4 months because of this. I know we can't keep going like this because the thing that feels like oxygen to me at this moment is ultimately going to kill me. I don't want it to end badly. I want to know that he will always think of me like he thinks of no one else. I can't stop crying. I have never felt loved by anyone before the way I feel loved by him. And that's with NO SEX. He is amazing and he thinks I am amazing and that feels SO good.

Flight,
I do have parental issues. My mother was a very angry individual and I was constantly the target of this anger when I was growing up. I have married 3 men for all the wrong reasons. Mainly just being happy that they wanted me. Never stopped to think about what I needed or wanted, just happy to be accepted. My current H is also an angry person and we have had a very rocky marriage. We have been together for 20 years married for 18. He is a decent man but doesn't fulfill my emotional needs. My OM absolutely does. I can't imagine my life going back to what it was before I met OM. Even though he is so much younger than me he definitely fills the needs I have. I also have a tremendius amount of respect and admiration for him. He is without a doubt the kind of person I should have been with all along. That is the crulest twist of fate. We both feel that way about each other and yet we know we can never have this. That it will never be what it should be. It makes us both so very sad.

MayDeclove - but why are you not having sex? What on earth is the point of withholding? You aren't getting anywhere at the moment - in fact, you are destroying your life, he is eating you up. I know, I have been there... You are gaining nothing by putting the brakes on, you are just making the whole thing even more painful.

Anna, It's not my choice alone to not have sex. He is not prepared to take that step either. Frankly I think if we did have sex that the guilt he would feel would end this forever. Knowing that I haven't pushed it. I have held out hope that we could at least keep our friendship. We have had MANY very explicit conversations about what we would do if we were together and that has been pretty intense in of itself. We have had phone sex. Believe it or not he is really a very good person and the guilt kills him.

I think you are being very immature .

OK, so you are both married. But so what? Marriage is no guarantee that you will love and cherish your partner forever - love can die, and then you feel incredibly lonely and end up falling in love with someone else. Why fight that?

i think you are both living a bit of a fantasy

it is a protected relationship that doesn't touch on reality...lots of imagination and what ifs

that ius why it is magnetic and enthralling

Just say no.

one of the reasons I decided to post a thread on this site was because I had read other threads on here about similar situations. The person with the problem seemed to get some wonderful encouragement and support. I am disappointed at how judgemental some of you are. we feel what we feel. I openly admit that this situation is frought with a lack of reality which is why we know it could never work. In spite of that it still hurts very much to think about losing it. Thank-you for the compassion which most of you were kind enough to give.

im wondering what you wanted/expected people to say

no one can actually help you end the relationship
i think you have had a good range of ideas to think about

He is married, you are married. Do you have no self control? Of course you are what you feel, but there is a difference between feelings and actions. People get hurt because of feelings. Could you not have called it a day on your marriage before you started this or did you want the best of both worlds? Surely even you can see that staying in your marriage and having another wife's man is wrong? There was a decent thing you could have done, but you chose the easy way.

And yes I can talk. My brother has had affairs and I've seen the impact on his mental health, on his wife and on his children. My mother left my dad for some shit man too, it screwed me up.

Selfish.

Zippi I hoped to hear from people who had gone through similar things and get some advice on how to do this and how to cope with the aftermath. I never expected anyone to condone it. I don't condone it! Just looking for some help to find a way to do the right thing.
Rhubarb, Yes I do have self-control. If I didn't I wouldn't be trying to do end this. We didn't go looking for this. It was bigger than the two of us before we even knew it. I know what to do just looking for some emotional support getting there. Sorry you have experienced such pain in your life,.

well there isnt much option...he doesnt want to carry on and take it further so best for you is to finish and make a total break

and then decide what to do about your own marriage

Zippi, you are right and i know it. Just have to muster up the courage to walk away. And yes i need to work on my own marriage and see where that is going to go. Thanks

good luck

you will get over it

in twelve months time or even 6 months your life may be completely different

6 months ago you hadn't even strated this

MayDeclove, he is 27, you are 51. Does he have/want children at some stage? You said "We agree that in another life if the same age and single that we would have been the love of each other's life." That says it all. It is not meant to be - don't waste any more time. You know that. Sorry, it will hurt but just go through the grieving process and one day, he won't be your head any more.

Hi May.
It sounds very similar to the way I felt.
When I described it below I talked about it as though it was the greatest love on earth.
Well, it felt that way.

But having taken myself to bits since it happened, I have started to realise that it was not love. Or rather - it was love, yes, but it was not love for him. It was love that I felt in me and for someone he represented.
This is the crucial difference.
I am not sure how this applies, or does not apply, in other 'loves' as in a happily married couple, where there is love but not thhe all consuming pain that you and I (and your other man) have suffered.
It is presumably very easy to confuse the two - I don't think I have ever loved someone else, really, so I've nothing to compare it with.
There was not much trust with my 'partner' and I did not entirely respect him for much of the relationship - the truth was I was using him to play out something in my heart/mind, something I had never had.
With me it was the same feeling of someone accepting me, sex or no sex (and we did have sex, but not for 6 months) and it was completely compelling and made me very high. I was just coming through anorexia and this lifted me into health again - physically at least. It replaced it as my addiction I suppose.
I had been damaged by having a withdrawn mother, who never bonded with me as a baby and whom I felt never liked me; she also was jealous when I spent time with my own father, as she seeme to need him all to herself.
So I transposed this into being quite arrogant in my view that the married man did not 'belong' to his wife, he could choose whom he wanted to be with, and if that was me I supported that.
I was naive and stupid. I was so in need of someone to accept me that I got really acrried away with it, and it didn't matter if he treated me like crap, or if he didn't truly love me. I imagined he did and that was enough.
I strongly suspect it was a similar need in him, which he was using me to fulfill - but I wasn't the person he thought I was. it was in his head as much as it was in mine.

Remembering and understanding this has brought me a lot of peace in the last few years. In the sense that I own my feelings - the 'love' I thought it was, was really grief, for my own mother's love and acceptance - which was why it bloody hurt for four years and beyond, rather than being 'happy' like most loves - the 'impossibility ' of it was all part of the game. It had to be out of reach so I could grieve through it. iyswim...

I think perhaps your story is similar. I think you are grieving and that is Ok, just grieve, with or without him. I think though that he is grieving too for something, and if you tried to make a go of it it would NOT last as you're both projecting what you;re grieving for, that intense love, onto the other, and it isn't really about the real people you are underneath.

Anna is right - you change, you might need to accept bravely a new love, and move on, but in this case I think it is not a case of that. I think it is personal grief and hurt you are finally allowed to feel with someone similarly hurt, and it can be gone through like therapy can be gone through.

Let him go if he must, and carry your grief - he won't take it away for you. You must go through it to be a more complete person. We all carry childhood feelings over to an extent till we are old enough to face them

Good luck pet xx