Am i the most selfish person ever? very long sorry

[amy64]

Right here goes. Think you are all going to hate me.
I have been with my dh since I was 15 am now 45. Quite an achievement. Half of that time he has worked away. We have 2 dcs 14 and 16 and I practically bought them up myself. He really didnt have much of a bond with them when they were smaller and it used to be harder when he was here when he was away sometimes.
He really loves me though, is secure and dependable but we have had a lot of bickering and arguments in the past. He can really talk down to me sometimes and the kids. We are very different people to when we met. He is a plodder, I am outgoing and extrovert. I lost my dad 18 months ago while he was relatively young and now think lifes too short, go for it.
I thought we were ok, got on with it but in the past couple of years have been looking more forward to him going away than coming home, much as I dont want to admit it.
Well, the inevitable has happened, I have met some one else, it is like a light has switched on in my life. He is in the same boat as me, has been with someone 25 years, not married, kids grown and gone, is leaving her to be one his own to show commitment to me, says he would wait years for me to make the right decision. I so want to be with him. We have been seeing each other, yes it is so wrong, but I have been so unhappy, have lost a stone in weight, can't sleep with the guilt and the sadness. Do I throw it all away to be with him? I have everything to lose, lovely house, dh that loves me. the kids in a family unit, but I am not happy and I know that I am making everyone else unhappy. If it weren't for the dcs I would tell dh tomorrow, but am so worried about splitting my family just because I want someone else.
I got myself in such a state I went to the Drs and got counselling. It helps, but whereas I thought they would try to help keep the family together, it seems to come outh the other way.
If I stay in 2 years time will I regret it and think why did I let someone like that go?
If i go, do then I throw away 30 years.but will I always resent dh. While I am typing this the phone just rang and my dh is now going away to work for 2 weeks and told me he loved me. I just did not feel the same back, but suppose I always thought I did until I met this other person. We are so alike and in my brave moments I am prepared to risk it all. The right thing to do would be to be on my own and sort myself out, but I dont want to upset the kids any more than I have to. I get through it knowing he is away and we have the place to ourselves. I think if dh was home all the time I would crack up.
Sorry it is so long.Just never ever thought this would be me. Have never been on my own since I was at school and perhaps thats the problem.
An affair, as I know it is, is so utterly wrong but it has happened. What a mess my life is, i am an idiot.

Sunshiney, out of interest does/did your H know about OM ?

And you know, Nearly Silver, the single thing that would make a real difference to your marriage would be to "tell all" to DH about your affair. I understand and sympathise greatly with how you feel, but your feelings for your husband are complicated now in part by seeing him as a victim at your hands. This is doing nothing for his sexual appeal.

I too see you as being further along the road than Amy - you are trying to recapture feelings for your H, but you suspect that he can never make you feel as OM once did. I don't think you are ever going to get there until you have complete honesty together.

One of the things I shudder about now is that had I not found out about my H's affair, my marriage would never have reached its current heights. We would have gone on with the situation whereby I no longer fancied him - and we would have both persevered with the belief that he loved me more than I loved him. I'm pretty sure my H would never have left me, but having had one affair, I'm convinced he would have had another if an opportunity arose. I also believe very strongly that once the children were older, I would have been very, very vulnerable to an affair myself.

If anyone had told me two years ago that I would feel this alive and sexual about my H after 25 years together, I would have laughed and decreed it impossible - but I do - and I'm convinced that it's because we have honesty now.

Silver, in your case it seems to me you have very little to lose in being honest - you are already mentally half-way out of the door. You might be similarly amazed that he admits some indiscretions or near-misses you never knew about - it really is astonishing how many secrets couples keep, in the mistaken belief that their exposure will ruin things. Apathy and complacency are, IMO, the worst enemies of modern marriages.

One of the things I read in the early post-discovery days resonated with me - if you bought a house and cared for it for 25 years, you wouldn't abandon it if it sprang a leak or had a major problem, like subsidence. You would research everything about how to fix it and undertake a sort of cost-benefit analysis, before re-committing to it or walking away.

I also think that very rarely, it is the person that's wrong (abuse etc. excepted) it's just the relationship. Relationships can be revived, but is is virtually impossible to do this when you're mataphorically hiding another man under the bed.

WhenwillIfeelnormal - I really think your circumstances are unique, I struggle to find a single situation where I think that confession is the best policy. I know it has worked for you but I honestly believe that in most situations it would just make things worse. I would really caution against this unless you are 100% certain you are going. For most of us the only possible result of confession would be th einstant end of the marriage and a very acrimonious divorce.

I don't think you can say that VCAU. People as a rule don't discuss the ins and outs of their marriage. If you asked me before my DH had his affair, would I stay the answer would probably have been no. But when it happens to you, you don't know what you will do and this is probably true for men too.

The fact that my DH has been so honest with me about what happened and his feelings during his affair has given me a much greater respect for him and a greater understanding of him. And my handling of his affair has given him a greater respect and love for me if that makes sense. I never stopped loving my DH and I couldn't justify throwing away my marriage on an affair that lasted about 2 months.

Yes it has been a very painful journey for both of us but to gain a greater insight, respect, love etc there has to be total honesty on both sides.

I think WWIFN has given you some fantastic advice. I do think you are being unfair to your husband, because as WWIFN said, he doesn't even know he is in the competition, so how on earth is he meant to compete?

As for your children, how do you think they will react? At their ages you might need to be prepared that they might not like the OM or even want to come with you. How would that make you feel and what would you do then? What if the OM doesn't like them?

I am not trying to cause you any more hurt than you already feel, but I think you do need to think about all possible outcomes. It is not guaranteed that if you do leave to be with OM that everyone who is important in your lives, particularly his children and yours, will make your lives any easier. can you stand up to that?

Thanks so much for all your posts. I thought I was so alone.
WhenwillI have seen your posts before, they are always brilliant, and thanks everyone else for your thoughts.
One thing is that om and I have not had sex. He is not getting that out of it and there is no way I could do that while I was with my dh. Find it hard enough to live with myself now.
Breaking of all contact- Yes we have discussed this, it was his idea actually says he wants me to be so sure, says he loves me enough to give me up if that is what I decide. He wants me to be so sure.
I just cant see how it can work with dh if I have such strong feelings for someone else, and I would have to live with the guilt, because if I ever told him, that would one hundred per cent be the end of our relationship.
Also I see om out and about, would be so hard to break contact though perhaps I am being weak. They are both away at the moment so I get space to myself but i know thats not the same.
Dh has been trying lately but if I stay will it go back to how it was and I will regret it and wonder what my life could have been, or if I go like you say and it doesnt work out I would have to live with that for the rest of my life. How on earth do you know that you are a million per cent sure?

sayithowitis, yes you are rightm, i am being totally unfair to my dh, he doesnt deserve it, and yes I understand about my dcs and all the problems.
I am usually quite a strong person, am so scared of having regrets either way.

Counting to ten - No, but especially after reading whenwill's insights on it (ie, possibly seeing him as a 'victim' and therefore not helping the sexual side of things) I think it would be a good idea to come clean. It was an emotional affair. If there comes a point where i feel it would be useful and not sure to blow everything sky high, i will give it serious thought.

i think it depends on each relationship, but i think in the majority of cases it would, when the dust settles, turn out to be positive.

i know it would help us immensely if i did, but i'm not ready to do it yet. i am still getting over what happened myself.

apologies amy64 about my rambling above, on your thread. just want to say i wish you well with your situation too.

Thats fine sunshiney, its brilliant to read eveyone elses posts. Thanks for wishing me well. It is helping to read all this, was scared to post but am glad I did X

I'm glad you did too Amy. I have found this thread very helpful. I am going to make a real effort to go NC finally with MM and try really hard with DH for 6 months with Relate to help before I make any decisions. Keep posting please!

Thanks NearlySilver am glad its helping. Been wanting to post this for weeks but daren't. Its all of the what ifs, what if I do, what if I don't. Can't believe I am in this situation.

Amy can I recommend a Relate book called "After the Affair" which is quite helpful in identifying the different reasons that people have affairs and exploring how to move on from an affair.

I started having an affair 4 months ago and now in the process of separating from H - when I read the book I realized mine was a classic "exit" affair - I just didn;t know how to tell H I thought our marriage was over. Since it happened we have both agreed he probably never would have accepted it.

Yes I took the coward's way out, but I'm pretty sure there's no future in my marriage and regardless of what happens with OM, I think I will be happier on my own than in an unhappy and loveless marriage.

I think the fact that OM is saying he wants to be with you is putting a lot of pressure on you and making it harder for you to make a decision. I would definitely recommend the break that the others have suggested.

There are positives and negatives from having a "no sex yet" emotional affair.

The negatives are that (and excuse me for a bit of levity) you probably imagine he can breathe through his ears for hours , discover your G-spot in an instant and produce multiple orgasms without breaking into a sweat. The reality however might be that he farts after he comes, suffers a bit of guilt-induced drooping and the whole experience is less than satisfactory because he doesn't yet know your body or what works for you.

I'm not in the least bit surprised that these relationships have taken on epic proportions, since the greatest erogenous zone is in our minds and our imagination. However, from a very analytical perspective, if sex is important to you, making a decision about committing to someone whose sexual compatibility is unknown, is madness. I can just about understand how people with strong religious principles make those decisions before a first marriage, but in deciding whether to disrupt a 30-year relationship and the childrens' lives, I can't see that you're in possession of all the facts. However, I understand your thinking and I'm relieved - because this makes it easier somewhat.

No-sex affairs are often much easier for men to handle. They very often get far more hung up about sex - and women get more hung up about emotions. Again though, this isn't biological, just conditioning.

You might think that the disclosure of any kind of affair would be the absolute deal-breaker, but if you truly believe your husbands love you, in all probability, this won't happen. Like Counting, if you'd asked me (or my husband) what I would have done on disclosure of his affair, we would both have said I would have called time on the marriage. I on the other hand believed that if I had been the one having an affair, my H would have forgiven me. He agrees that this would have been the case - and without going into too many details here - he once thought I might be, and decided he could live with it as long as I came back to him.

When faced with infidelity, I have concluded that no-one really knows what they would do until faced with it. I think you know what you would do if heaven forfend, there was a next time, but that's more to do with having seen the pain the first time round and doing it again - that would smack more of creating a deliberate hurt.

One of the reasons too why people don't disclose infidelity is because they realise that having done it once, the taboo has gone and it will be much easier to do it again. Going undiscovered means never having to face up to the pain it causes, so it makes it easier and easier to do it again - and sometimes, people want that.

If frightened of disclosure, try the 80%/20% rule. 80% of our fears never come to reality - so we have to work out whether for the 20% that do, we can live with the consequences. For someone like Silver who doesn't think her marriage can survive anyway, it appears to me that she thinks she can live with the consequences.

I think you deserve to be happy and there's no reason why you would loose your home or uproot the children, if DH is away anyway then just seperate and split properly in a couple of years when the property market is back on track too.

Would you have separated without the affair then? Or did it make you realise.
Its so hard. I know that me and dh have had good times,along with the bad times. If I was so happy why would this have happened. But I know that I love OM. God what a mess. The no contact yes I agree its a good idea, but I feel like I would just be waiting for that time to come round. Plus the guilt is awful.

To be honest it has not been no sex, we have had sexual contact but not all the way, though I am ashamed to say it and it was fantastic. And I am so sure that if I tell dh that would be definitely it, so sure.

Maybe that is for the best - at least you will have a good idea what OM is like in a physical sense without crossing the Rubicon of full sex, which seems to be a no going back sortof scenario - pleased all these helpful posters have come to your aid, Amy, I'm no expert and only ever post about what I know and feel, which is a bit odd compared to other people sometimes.

Your posts have been lovely veryconfused. Your name is so sad but that is what we are. One minute I think go for it lifes too short but then I think oh my god I can't. Either way would always wonder.
I think im my case dh working away does not help much. Am very independent and like my own space and I like meeting new people. Thats half the problem. I feel like if I lost OM i would be devastated but if i left, everyone else would be. Do I say with dh because its the right thing and everyone else would be happy or do i go for it. Will always wonder and obviously the dcs would be happy if I stay, but once they have gone whch may not be that long in the future, will I wish I had moved on.

Amy I'm not sure if I would have separated without the affair, but things were so bad I couldn;t have gone on much longer. To me it felt like a massive amount of pressure that built up which was kind of released when H found out.

In your situation, with your DH being away a lot, perhaps you have enough distance not to feel that pressure - but I can see you can imagine that this might happen if your DH stopped working away.

Commemoi why were things bad? Was he treating you badly or were you just not happy. Do you have any dcs?

No, Amy, H never treated me badly. We had our ups and downs and arguments / grievances like any couple. But our relationship had slowly disintegrated, and about 2-3 years ago I realized I didn;t want to have a physical relationship with him anymore and really didn;t want to spend time in his company - anniversaries and other special occasions became hell, we both retreated into our own worlds. When we had to spend much time together we bickered and snapped. he kept trying to suggest ways to fix it which is something I will always respect him for, but by then for me it had gone too far.

I don;t have a great deal of respect for myself for not facing up to our problems years ago and trying to do soemthing about them.

We have 1 DC who is quite young

Commemoi thats a bit like me. Silly question but was your dh devastated when you left or did he accept you had problems?
I feel so sad because it is like I have met someone else and now realise what life could be. I know it is not the real world at the moment with om, but i cannot see how I can be truly happy now. I think about being on my own and at the moment would welcome it.
I admire you for having the guts to do it.
My dh loves me but we are very different now. I feel myself pulling away.
I know i will never tell om to go away, so sometime, somehow I have got to make my decision and stick to it to be fair to all involved.

Both, Amy. He is devastated, but he also accepts things had not been right for a long time. He has said he felt relieved in some ways, but I have caused a terrible amount of pain to him too and he didn;t deserve any of it

WhenWill's earlier post on here was spot on, I think, btw. Even if you don;t tell DH about OM directly, I think you must start talking about your current doubts about your relationship.

Well I know he senses things are wrong. He is very unhappy and I hate myself for it but i cant falsely reassure him.
I cannot believe i am in this situation, always thought I was happy before.
I just keep thinking it will sort itself out, am so scared my dcs will hate me and so will everyone else. Even if om does not work out I cannot see how I could get those feelings back with dh.
I have been to counselling, as i said, have more sessions to go.
It was strange thought they would do get out of you anything to keep the family together but it was complete opposite, like so far it has basically come out to go for it. I so want to but am petrified and surely the worse thing is to tell dh you are seeing someone else. I am sure if i didn't tell him he would find out anyway, so that would be even worse so it would have to come from me. Thats terrifying.