i am married. i have been having an affair with a married man for 9 months, though we have known each other for 5 years. he has been married 7 years, no kids. i have been married 10 years, with 2 kids.
do affairs ever work out? is there anyone that can give us advice? the whole internet just tells me i'm a horrible person. i need advice. i want to know stories where an affair has actually turned into a good relationship.
we know what we are doing is wrong. we feel horrible about what we are doing to our spouses though we often talk about building a life together. we do love each other, i know i do, and i believe him when he says he does too. we communicate with each other better than we ever have with anybody else. i know so much more about him, and he knows so much more about me, than my husband and i did when we got married, maybe even more than we know about each other now.
we talk to each other so much: we know each other's faults, and cracks and bad sides; we've had disagreements, even sobbing arguments, much due to the pressure; so it's not all roses - we know how difficult it is. yet we've also seen the loveliness in each other, the strengths and joys. we've shared so much, albeit in secret and absolutely love each other's company. our interests coincide and complement; the respect we have for each other's work is unlike anything i've known before.
but we hesitate to leave our spouses - partly because of the pain this will cause them, but largely because of the unknown: how do you know that you can spend months or years with someone, if you have only had a long weekend at the most at any one time? even though we talk every day, sometimes for hours, we just don't know what it will be like to live together - does the risk justify hurting our spouses as much as we will or compromising marriages that could perhaps one day somehow be fixed? would it justify it, if our relationship collapsed after 1 month together? or 1 year? is the effect divorce will have on my kids justified by my being with the man i love?
we feel so strongly, yet we hesitate... do affairs ever work out? can they turn into beautiful strong relationships? we've seen each other's worst, so we're not blind to it - yet we love each other deeply, emotionally, physically, intellectually. is that enough? or are affairs started in marriages always doomed? does anyone have any good stories?
please, i don't need to know what a bad person i am for what i'm doing - i tell myself that every hour every day, every time i look at my husband. i know that my marriage has problems, we argue continuously and, frankly, badly, though my husband is a good man, and that perhaps i should be putting all my energy into fixing it.
but when you've met someone who you think is the love of your life, and when you've found he feels the same too, does being married already mean that it's doomed from the start anyway?