So you both had strong feelings for each other but he felt so strongly about you, that he still had a second child with his wife and changed jobs away from you and ended it?
Strong feelings lead to strong decisions and action. He felt more strongly about losing his wife, family and reputation than the affair.
Never forget that he was quite prepared to lose you but not them when he had to make a choice, don’t invent or listen to any excuses, that’s all they are: excuses, not real reasons.
Don’t whatever you do hand yourself over as second-best again, surely you wouldn’t want to go through that again? Find an available man who puts you first, we all deserve that.
Secret affair feelings are way headier than ordinary relationship feelings and the fantasy giddiness gets rekindled because it can’t compare to a long term relationship. It’s exciting because risk and the forbidden are always more exciting than the norm.
Its value as a relationship is usually way below the value of a long term committed relationship, however, hence all the heady romantic promises to APs that never get followed through. He’s with his family far more hours a week than he ever spent with you, so ‘relationship’ is t really what it was. Even in long term affairs, the amount of time the APs spend together isn’t actually very much compared to the marriage relationship, which is why affairs can go on for months or years, affair partners spend a few snatched hours a week alone together, hens the heady first-date feelings stick around longer than in a normal relationship.
Affairs are love’s great scam, letting you think the excitement of it all means you must love this person more than you’ve ever loved anyone before, often affair partners say “I’ve never felt this way before./ You make me happier than I’ve ever been” If you’ve never had an affair before, you won’t have felt that level of excitement, lust and longing, because even the butterflies of being with somebody new can’t reach what happens to the butterflies of you add risk, secrecy and the forbidden. And to add to the scam, when you’re suddenly on you’re own wondering what the hell the wonderful words and promises ever meant because he’s high-tailed it home, it hurts like the devil.
If you’re smart you’ll stay away from him, you’re easy prey because you’ve romanticised the heck out of it and if he still fancies a bit more fantasy life on the side he knows exactly what to say.
He didn’t leave her last time, he’s got another child, people do what they want in the end and if he wants his wife and family it won’t matter what he says to you, he’s compartmentalising and when one compartment threatens the more important one, he’ll leave you again.
Strong affair feelings aren’t the same as strong feelings out in the real world, or everyone in an affair would end up together and the huge majority don’t.
People act on what they feel the strongest about, they act on what is most important to them. Everything cheating men might say along the lines of duty and honour like “I can’t leave to be with you because of the kids/ / my wife’s mental health/ it would kill my ageing parents if I divorced/ because of the the dog/ because it’s a Tuesday” all boil down to “I can’t leave because I don’t actually want to, but if I don’t promise you I will, and get you to believe it, playtime will be over.”
I doubt you’ll believe me, if the whole madness has been rekindled again, but you really should. You’ll get hurt, he’ll get hurt and his family will be devastated. Don’t walk straight back into the trajectory of the bullet you dodged last time. This time you might not be so lucky.
I bang on about this stuff because I am convinced that if people could see the damage to absolutely all involved, they would never, ever have affairs.
Run like the wind from this man, you will be investing in a fool’s paradise again if you don’t.