How to forget?

[HelloKitty05]

I am 40. Last year got into emotional affair which was quite intense and complicated. The guy was from work, but different country (he UK, me lets say eastern Europe). It was online, stopped by him (ghosted). We still work in the same company but no contact
Dont need any moral talk. Just want to know when i will be able to forget about it? I cannot change work, he is not anywhere online

I think this is the crux of it, you miss the feeling, not him.

You didn't know the real him, with all his faults and flaws so there was lots of space for you to fill the gaps with everything you hope for and that's hard to walk away from.

You need separate the man from the myth. You fell for someone invented, and the real man dropped you as soon as he sensed some risk to the things / people he really cares for.

But please don't spout that you feel sorry for his wife. If she knows, then you've willingly blown up her life and the lives of any children they have yet you still wish he'd leave them to be with you - their lives and feelings be damned.

If you respect yourself then you'll know you deserve a man who puts you first, who doesn't lie and doesn't drop you at the first sign of a bump in the road.

Remind yourself that this never had a future, and you deserve one with someone who is honest and will treat you well. In the mean time work on yourself so that you can be a person who cares for others and acts with integrity.

You’re probably a bit bored and focusing on this because you haven’t got something else fun and entertaining to focus on. Date, find someone new. Or plan an adventure. Or anything that can take up a chunk of your time and focus.
None of what happened between you and him was real, so don’t miss out on precious new experiences because you’re hung up. He won’t be thinking of you in this way. Don’t waste your own time.

There was no plan on being together. It was classic 'my wife doesnt understand me' etc bulshit.
Thanks for your posts, they help me a lot

I got flamed last time l posted a response in similar circumstances. I will try just one more time; the best way to get over someone is to get under someone new.

OP, you will get over him but it takes time and determination to get him out of your head. The more you think about him and ruminate about the things he said to hook you in then the longer it will take to forget.
Take control, if you haven't already then block him on everything. Remind yourself this wasnt real, he was just using you to unload and playing a fantasy game to get an ego boost.
Start meeting people in real life, buckle up, get online dating and go on some real life dates, it will be a distraction and means you can focus on something else other than him. And you never know who you might meet and what might happen!

If there was no future plan, what were the promises you said he made you, that you said earlier you wanted an explanation for?
As a poster said above, the things you ruminate over will be the things that pressed your buttons the best, the no doubt lovely things he said which were to hook you and reel you in.
They were a means to an end OP, he could get off on being your knight in shining armour and the response it no doubt got and know at the same time that it would get you more invested and sign you up for the next chapter.
You were talking to whoever he wanted to be at the time, not whoever this guy really is. Believe me, his wife probably understands him very well and he’s not necessarily unhappy at home at all, nowhere near thinking of leaving and hasn’t fallen out of love with his wife, he just loves the little fantasy escape and ego boost from a dalliance on the side which is online, remote and very easy to participate in and conceal. Cheating men don’t like difficult.
Affairs just need opportunity, a willing participant who will go along with the bollocks and agree to the secrecy and bingo, it’s a piece of cake.
The easier the OW makes it for the married man, at least in the beginning, the more likely she is to be able to keep the affair with him going. She needs to care enough about it all
to start organising her life around him and accommodating his married man timetable with no complaints. So how to get her really invested? How to convince her he’s serious about this and not going to mess her around?
He knows this too so gets her sympathy with his ‘poor trapped unhappy me” bullshit and now she’s his saviour, not just his side piece, or his midlife crisis…. she means so much to him…. oh, no, not him, he’s not like other cheating men. He’s going to tell you he’s different, he’d never cheat in a million years but he’s so unhappy and then you came along to save him just at the right time… if you know Pretty Woman: “It’s fate, Edward….thats what this is..”
Then everybody is happy and convinced that Destiny has brought you together and you’re soulmates and blah blah blah….
Until usually the OW starts to asks herself if this is all true, then why am I still the OW and how come you still go to bed with your wife every night?
And starts to say that out loud.
Nobody spooks easier or faster than a cheating married man.
As it progresses and demands start to be made and promises made earlier questioned, either more future faking happens to kick the can down the road or the OW gets gaslit “but hang on a minute, you know I’m married, you knew all along that this is just an affair and you said in the beginning that it was ok that it was no-strings fun… “ etc etc. Or he suddenly just vanishes.
The above can also happen if boredom or discovery occur or if he just thinks it’s not worth the risk any more.
Concentrate on what you know is true:
He cheats
He lies
He’s ghosted you

Ruminate on that for a while instead of his bullshit and surely the attraction will wear off.

I'm also confused if there were no plans made, what promises could he have broken?
Is working for the same company keeping him at the front of your mind? If so moving jobs would seem the best option to help you move on, especially if you are also married yourself (not clear from your posts if thats the case?).

As said above, I wouldn't believe any of the things he's told you about his own marriage. Despite what you wanted to believe he's just as capable of lying to you as he is to his wife - his wife would just know him better to catch him at it. Every other woman thinks they are special and that the fact that a man is prepared to step out on his wife is down go their irrestible charm. They never are. Chances are he's looking for some validation and to prove he's still irresistible- especially if his wife is fed up of his bs.

This sounds really tough op. Affairs create a type of intimacy that can't be replicated out in the open. A shared secret and feeling that important is hard to walk away from. If he ghosted you those feelings have no where to go.
Coming up to Christmas it must feel even harder. Have you got something nice planned with people who will care for you?
No moral judgement from me, we all fall foul of our hearts sometimes.
Is there no way at all for you contact him and get that resolution? If you still work together there must be some way, a discreet email perhaps? I wouldn't recommend trying to rekindle anything, you'll only get hurt but I can see why you feel you need closure.

I would like a closure but he didnt give one so i am not asking. If he wanted he would contact, right?

I agree, he would have contacted you if he cared. I don't think its a good idea to contact him, at best youll get rejected or ignored. Still curious what promises he made if it wasn't that you'd be together? What did he say that's kept you so hung up?

Appalling advice.

No you're over emphasising this in your head especially if you've not met him in person it's Limerence which will fade

That we will meet

I would try and look at it that you've had a lucky escape.
My dh had an emotional affair with a colleague in another country. As long as it was remote it was easy for him to keep it a fantasy. Once I knew, and they actually saw each other face to face and slept together he hated himself, and her. He ended things with her a few days after and never spoke to her again. I imagine that was far worse for her than things dropping off before they ever met.

Probably you are correct. I was able to ignore him for a week. It is getting better. Thx

The worst part is that he was not even my type, older. But his accent... I cannot stop thinking about it

He used you for what he needed in the moment and dropped you when it got real for him.
Remind yourself that anything between you was only in your head, not his.
One of you will eventually leave the company and one day you'll find you don't think of him anymore.
If you have a husband / partner, the ongoing thoughts of this man are a clear sign he's not the one for you. Being with the wrong person for you will keep you hanging onto this fantasy of a relationship you thought you had doe a minute. Let him go and find some happiness within yourself.

It’s called ‘future faking’ OP and very common in cheating. Words are cheap and you can say what you like and be who you want to be in a fantasy situation, especially online.
If he’d said sorry, it was all bollocks, he was just enjoying a bit of online fun and was never actually intending to meet you in real life, how long would you have hung around and given him his ego boost?
It’s a cliché for a reason, it’s how a large amount of affairs of any kind end.
Very, very few men put their money where their mouth is once an OW starts making demands, or has expectations based on his lies that of course x or y will happen in the future. At some point the OW expects the vague ‘future’ to become ‘now’ and will hang on trying to believe it’s going to happen, trying to believe the ‘Of course I’m going to leave her for you” (or in your case “Of course I’m going to meet you in real life.” ) until the pain and humiliation of waiting on his timetable starts to get too much and the promises get questioned, trying to force an outcome.
It’s amazing how long some of these women will hang on waiting, when the man has a long list of promises and excuses but no actions.
Some give ultimatums to the married man and give up, others get angry and tell the wife to try to force him out or take revenge and others just get dumped and ghosted as the man gets bored with the hassle or panics or has been discovered.
Those who go on to a new relationship are a tiny, tiny number, the men who do this usually really actually don’t care about their wife and marriage any more and were leaving anyway, so there was never a dilemma about the affair situation in the first place.
He’s bolted because he’s panicked or been rumbled, or he’s got bored and didn’t think it worth the risk. If you keep replaying his accent or rereading his lies, this will keep you stuck obsessing. It’s a habit you need to break by doing other things the second you catch yourself ruminating.
Careful that this thread isn’t just enabling you to write about it, read about it and obsess further. Many of these threads from OW asserting that they ‘want to forget’, become spaces for further obsessing and discussing and prolonging and enabling, with OW just ending up justifying and arguing the case for the man, becoming more entrenched, clearly not wanting to forget at all and not listening to advice.

Thanks! Actually this thread helps a lot to understand what's was IT and i Wilk never do IT again
Thanks to all and have a great calm xmas :)