A torn heart....serious long term but ended affair and long term marriage.

[Muddled54]

Name change for this one for obvious reasons...

I left my loving, soulmate affair partner of nearly a year (friends and colleagues for many years before this) to work on what I realised in comparison was a transactionally functioning but emotionally shallow marriage after confessing the affair to my suspecting spouse. If I’m honest I think I subconsciously hoped my husband would then instigate a divorce but instead, being understandably traumatised, he expressed that he’d rather committing suicide, actually waved paracetamol packets in front of me, than live without me. So I decided after 35 years together in an OK but not closely connected marriage, I owed it to him and our three grown up children to stay in the family unit and see why we weren’t connecting as I had managed for the first time in my life with my affair partner.

I knew I’d still have connection with my ex affair partner through work and think subconsciously I knew this meant I'd never 100% had to let him go, although would have drastically reduced contact at my spouse's understandable insistance. My spouse, having been so hurt I sense wanted to see that I was prepared to cause my affair partner and friend pain to show allegiance to him and I am ashamed to say that in my shock at the time I ghosted and gave my affair partner little/no proper closure and followed my husband's demands - he'd read up all about no contact in healing affair situations and I feel wanted me to apply everything that he believed would inflict pain on my affair partner as justly deserved punitive measures. I now feel I handled this tricky situation in an inhumane, inauthentic way as as a child from a broken marriage myself I now see my elderly father so much happier with his second marriage than he ever was with my mum who is also a good person but just they didn't connect I now realise.

My ex affair partner now has told me that this uncomfortable, artificial minimalist contact at work and also my decision of recommitting to my marriage is causing him so much stress and hurt that he wants to resign to allow himself and my marriage distance to heal if that truly is my choice. Now I am finally facing losing the one person on this planet who seemed to ‘get me’ and I feel full of regret and confusion. I did try and speak to my husband at the very first instance the affair started becoming physical and when I knew I had fallen deeply in love with my affair partner - I told my spouse that I had stopped loving him in a way that married people should but still had familial love for him, but his initial reaction was so extreme, again talk of suicide, that the affair continued in secret. Honestly as friends and lovers we were like magnets drawn together- it is not something I understand myself nor had experienced before this. there was nothing fancy about what we did - just walking in each other's company seemed like heaven and i felt for the first time on my life the joy of not feeling alone on some level on this planet. I am bereft but don’t know if I have the strength to handle a suicidal spouse, and the domestic upheaval and potential family fallout all at the same time if I end the marriage…and now having so badly hurt my loving, tender affair partner, he probably could never trust me any more for not seeing through ending the marriage when I should have done, right at the start of realising I’d fallen in love with him.

So bereft, so depressed, so stuck…I feel I’m giving up love with my soulmate out of duty for my loving, hurt husband and sense of duty to work on the marriage as he has asked. Has anyone else experienced this and did the marriage survive and repair once total no contact occurred with a truly loved affair partner? And as an alternative possible ending, if the marriage ends as healing proves impossible and you try at a later stage to reconnect with an ex affair partner you’d rejected and badly hurt, could that relationship recover or does that betrayal (yes, I feel I’ve betrayed my living affair partner in trying to recommit to my husband in all ways (psychologically and sexually!) leave too deep a scar? My husband knows how deeply I felt for the affair partner but he feels family and marriage vows trump all and if he's willing to try to forgive and understand why we didn't connect enough to prevent me finding a beautiful connection through an affair, I owe it to him after such a long marriage to try and work on it too.

It’s unlikely your husband will kill himself

However you may have to contact his closest friends and indeed your children to alert them to his threats

It is clear your heart is not in this marriage but please understand that going will set of an earthquake of sorts in your own and your children’s lives

Hi

Was your affair partner also married or single?

He was separated and living alone. He had been in a long term marriage and then his wife decided that she had repressed lesbian feelings and for him it made their marriage untenable ( he's not homophobic in any sense but not right for him not to be in a 100% heterosexual relationship himself) as she'd knowingly withheld this from him for over 25 years. I was his confidant through this time of coming to terms with it all and it was one of the reasons that we became closer and I realised we really were supportive friends qwho could communicate deeply.

@Quitelikeit my children are all in their 30s now. My own childhood experience always made me think it sets a better example to leave an unfulfilling marriage than be a martyr and not live an authentic life. I now realise the complexities my parents had but feel deep down I do believe marriage as an institution, with the pressure not to break vows and end it, can lead us to make decisions which don't reflect our best interests nor ultimately those of our partners we might have fallen out of love with. I feel extra responsibility for my husband because this is happening towards our retirement years and being single won't have been in his retirement plans at all.

I think you're making a mistake. I'm not saying you should leave and be with your AP but you don't sound happy and your life with your DH will never be the same after this, and it doesn't sound great before.

I've been where you are. I had a long-term affair, I ended up telling my husband - I, like you, thought he'd end it but he begged me to stay, so I did out of duty. Me and my AP tried to 'work' on our marriages but neither of us really wanted to, it was just lip service. You can't fix something if one of you doesn't want to.

The trust had also (of course) gone out of our marriages. It was a miserable situation and one I wasn't willing to live the rest of my days in. I wasn't in love with my husband. There was no passion, I liked him as a friend. That really wasn't enough for me - if had have been, I would never have had an affair in the first place. So I left.

(Also I know your husband will be desperate and upset, but threatening suicide is a dick move. If you really think he means it, get him mental health support).

This whole post paints you as a victim to the whims of others, but cold truth is you have betrayed your husband in a long term affair, which you are still unwilling to let go of.
The first thing you need to do is concentrate on your marriage and if it isn't what you want then separate so your poor husband has a chance of happiness. He is struggling to cope with what you have done to him and is grieving the person he thought you were and the life he has lost because of your actions.
It is most important to deal with your marriage first rather than having your head turned by someone willing to have an affair with a married woman.
Once the marriage ends then take some time to take stock, and have space to sort yourself out rather than rushing into a new relationship.
Harsh as it is, you are responsible for your own actions and the mess your family finds itself in. Perhaps take time to have empathy for them.

Just leave him and put him out of his misery. You will never be happy if you're always wondering what might have been and he'll know it. If you strayed once you'll probably be tempted again. I think your marriage is definitely over.

Incidentally all the talk of soulmates is a bit overblown when your affair partner has only ever had to be an illicit thrill for you. The ups and downs of a long marriage are obviously completely different to an extra marital affair and in the cold light of day you may discover that your affair partner is not quite the perfect match you expected.

I'm not judging you, by the way. But I think you need to be realistic about what the future might look like and it's not necessarily happiness with one person, misery with the other.

@user9578 Thank you for your honesty and for sharing your own experience. It's interesting but I've looked online for all angles on this and I've noticed that when a man is betrayed as I have my husband and expresses suicidal thoughts if the marriage should end then they are often given much less understanding than when a betrayed wife does the same in the same circumstances. I guess the price he'll have to pay if we stay together is that he'll never know (nor perhaps will I) if my fear through not being able to risk him making a suicide attempt was the primary catalyst in keeping us together or whether it was that we genuinely wanted to explore improving our marriage for healthy not desperate reasons.

Yes op but you did not leave an unfulfilling marriage and that is where you went wrong

Had you left it when you weee not happy then met your new guy down the line all of this could have been avoided

To me it sounds like the marriage for you is over

You could tell your dp that you plan to leave him and not say it’s due to the OM - I know that’s deceitful but maybe it will be easier for him

Someone threatening suicide is not a reason to stay in a marriage. But even if you decide to, if he's threatening it or feels that way, you need to seek help for him. It's not about being less understanding, it's not something that should be used as a weapon and if he does really feel that way, he needs psychiatric help.

Would you be happier by yourself than with your husband? If the answer is yes, then it’s time to go. I don’t think you can rebuild anything with someone who is waving paracetamol packets around.
Your children are well into adulthood, they will be fine.

You may or may not reconnect with your AP. I think you need to make your decision irrespective of this possibility.

@Quitelikeit I think sometimes it takes a deeper connection to realise the potential of what a relationship can be. My marriage wasn't fullfilling for me, and hadn't been for years but I thought that was normal and accepted it. Functional in my view isn't 'thriving'. To be honest I have been lonely within the marriage for years and now have reflected that it is mostly our socialising with friends and interactions with our adult kids that 'glue it together' and bring the interest into it. I would never have countenanced having a 'fling' - this affair most definitely wasn't that and it has never happened before to me in over 35 years. The affair developed out of an already lovely platonic friendship so had a firm basis and we knew each other's characters pretty well before the affair even started becoming intimate.

You are talking about your affair as if it is something unique and special whereas it is the oldest story in the world.
You have admitted your affair to your husband and decided not to leave but have gone on now to continue to yearn after this other man. You are being unfair to your husband and trying to blame him for your inability to decide what to do. You are not his friend. Your words show how self absorbed you are and how you are looking for valid external reasons to leave.
Do the decent thing and do your pondering after leaving your husband. You are now going to twist the knife you stuck in him. People meet others but act with DECENCY and RESPECT. It almost sounds like you are saying if your OM doesn't want you you may as well stay with your husband.

I don't feel I'm a victim. I am fully aware I have choices which will impact on my husband and possibly affect my relationship with my adult children. I have already given up the affair and contact with my affair partner 6 months ago (apart from the bare minimum at work but that has dwindled to virtually nothing now because my ex affair partner is also so hurt I can see he's understandably trying to create distance for himself). The point is my husband has really asked me form the bottom of his heart to try and make the marriage work and on a certain level I really do think I owe that to him. The trial for me will come when my ex affair partner has left our workplace and I am faced with the reality of losing contact with him 100%. In what I fully understand was probably an unrealistic view, I was hoping everything would settle down and that once feelings had calmed on all sides that I might be able to salvage the wonderful platonic friendship I had with my affair partner before we fell in love with each other and embarked on the affair.

I don't think you are being very clear-headed about this, your original post is full of faux- romantic phrases; all this talk of soulmates and beautiful connections and tender feelings and such, tells me that you are not being realistic.

You have already decided that your marriage is not sufficient and that you will not be happy if you stay in it.
Your DH may be unhappy about that, but if you leave him he will have the opportunity to meet someone else with whom he can build a deeper connection, and it is only fair to give him the space to do that.
Do the decent thing, call it quits now and move forward to working out how you and DH can unentangle your lives with dignity.
I suppose you also need to be aware that things with AP might not work out - grass is always greener and all that - and that you may well end up with neither of them. Presumably that would be OK as you will be able to be your authentic self.

God you sound so self absorbed OP.

It's all about you isn't it?

If you aren't happy in your marriage then stop romanticising your affair and leave your poor husband to get on with his life and meet someone who doesn't just think about themselves all the time and have some guts for a change.

What a load of navel gazing bollocks. You've been shagging about behind your husband's back. Get real, actions have consequences, what did you think would happen. If you're not happy end your marriage

You need to leave your marriage. Your children are all fully grown adults and have to accept you don't want to live in an unhappy marriage any more. Your husband threatening suicide is classic controlling behaviour and it's extremely unlikely that he'd follow through.

Your life doesn't have to be your marriage or your lover, it can be what makes you happy. It sounds like your marriage is over for you. So do what makes you happy. I'd suggest some therapy to unpick why you treated your lover so badly to keep your husband happy. Why does his happiness trump yours? People get divorced everyday. It's time to move on without guilt and realise that you deserve to be happy.

Jeez, just leave your H and tell his GP about his reference to suicide. Your reasons for staying seem rubbish. It would’ve been better to leave rather than start an affair.

Leave it up to OM to decide what he does about his job and keep yours.

Sod that. Leave and be with your affair partner. Life’s too short to spend with a man who’d threaten suicide to emotionally control and blackmail you.

Enough’s enough. Go and be happy.

You’ll also get a load of abuse here for admitting to having an affair. Ignore it.

Staying out of guilt never works.

I think k it's a bit unfair to cast him in the role of baddie! He was wrong to say it but he may really have felt that low and devastated. In reality he'll most likely be OK but of course OP should help him look out for his MH/inform someone.
OP I'd end it now, nothing is going to get better here. Ending it first would of course have been better but you are where you are. At least your dc are grown up so it's not as hard as it could be perhaps.

I would suggest that if you feel your marriage is over then you leave, and live by yourself for some while. In fact you should have done it prior to starting an affair. No matter how much you say your lover was wonderful, living with him 24/7 won't be the same as seeing him for sex etc. I know I'm stating the obvious it needs to be said.

Sure, but we’ve all felt low and devastated. Very few of us get through life without feeling hurt. But most people don’t threaten suicide. It’s the oldest trick in the book for guilting someone into staying. It’s not OP’s job to look after his mental health. It’s his.