AIBU to think thirty happy years should count for something after a stupid flirtation?
Man here, in my sixties. DP and I have been together for thirty years, with children and grandchildren. Until this week I would have described us as happy. We enjoy each other’s company, go away together, do things as a couple and look after one another. I love her and had never imagined a future without her.
I’ve done something stupid, and I’m not asking anyone to tell me it was fine.
A much younger woman who works in my building started messaging me. I enjoyed the attention and let it become flirtatious. She sent me a selfie and I replied “Beautiful, thank you!” We’ve chatted in her office a couple of times and I said I was looking forward to the next catch-up.
Nothing physical happened. She suggested lunch and dinner and I avoided taking those suggestions up. I wasn’t trying to leave my partner or start another relationship. It was a bit of flattery that I indulged when I should have put a stop to it.
DP found the messages on my phone. She also spoke to the woman, and she believes us both that nothing sexual happened.
I handled being confronted badly. I tried to describe the meetings as business-related, which understandably looked ridiculous alongside the messages. I also said I hadn’t known how to respond. The more honest answer is that I liked being flattered and didn’t want to shut it down. I’m embarrassed by that.
I expected her to be furious. I expected to have to apologise, answer difficult questions and work to regain her trust. I’ve told her I’ll do whatever it takes.
What I didn’t expect was for her to say our relationship was over, start looking at houses and question whether she has ever really known me.
That’s the part I’m struggling with. She seems to be looking back at our whole life together and wondering whether every loving thing I’ve done was some kind of act. I tell her I love her because I do. I enjoy spending time with her because she’s the person I want to be with. Those things haven’t suddenly become false because I behaved badly.
We had booked to get married, partly to make things simpler when one of us dies. She feels I haven’t seemed enthusiastic enough. I can see how that looks now, but I’ve thought of us as spending our lives together for decades. I haven’t been keeping my options open.
I know she’s entitled to decide this crosses a line for her. But I’m finding her reaction devastating. She says she doesn’t feel heartbroken so much as that her feelings have gone. Meanwhile I’m terrified of losing her.
And, rightly or wrongly, it has made me wonder whether she loved me in the way I thought she did. I thought we had something strong enough to survive a mistake, including one that was entirely my fault. Hearing that she can contemplate ending it so quickly makes me feel as though our thirty years mean much less to her than they do to me.
I haven’t said that to her because I realise it could sound like I’m making my behaviour her fault. It isn’t. But it is how I’m feeling.
AIBU to think an inappropriate but limited flirtation is something a happy relationship of thirty years could recover from? I accept that I’ve damaged what we had. I’m struggling to accept that it means what we had was never real.