Made such a mess - I deserve the fall out

[howdiditcometothis]

I'll try to keep it short.

I've had a brief emotional affair with a married man. I'm also married. Both marriages very much on the rocks.

Background - things been very difficult at home, lots of stonewalling or crying and shouting for approx 2 years - no middle ground. I've spoken to my husband about divorce and living apart - he just got more angry than I've ever seen him and threw crockery across the kicthen (not at me). Raised it a few more times - can't get him to engage with the conversation. Felt completely emotionally numb for a long time.

Anyway, an inappropriate friednship between me and OM developed. Talked about feelings but never sex. In contact every day for last 6 weeks or so. Met in person three times, kissed but nothing more. After the last time we met, we spoke the next day decided that it was getting out of hand and needed to cool it and agree to be friends as neither of us free tp pursue anything other than friendship. Hard but the right thing. So, the contact cooled a bit but still in touch. In meantime, OM's wife calls time on their marriage and they start to agree to plan to separate. Tell the kids, colleagues, family. OM got somewhere to rent etc.

A few days ago, OM's wife accessed his email account and finds a lot of our correspondence. Contacts me and demands the facts.

She thinks (and I can't blame her given the amount of emails etc) that a full blown affair has happened and I have caused the breakdown. Obviously puts different slant on their amicable agreement to part and everybody at rock bottom.

Feel very ashamed and guilty.

WTF should I do?

Plenty can come of it if you want it to. He's left his wife. You leave your husband. You're both free. You both give a bit if time to concentrate on sorting your heads out and concentrating on making sure things are good for your respective children. You build amicable or at the very least civil and fair for the children relationships with your exes. Then when you're settled , you see if you're stil in love. If you are You can get together. It's simple.

At the moment it isn't simple because the pair if you are both desperately unhappy and are hurting each other. You might be perfect for each other, but you've no chance of knowing if you don't leave each other alone to sort out the lives that are making you unhappy. Cut the romantic, doomed love, heartbreaking crap woman. Either be brave and leave your husband and strike out for happiness. Or stop it and work at what you have, and get real about this situation. You feel in love. Ofcourse you do. It's real, it feels real, it hurts but there's too many peole involved to fanny around bleeting about lost love etc. Be proative and make a decision and act.

Now your OM is single, you could build a relationship with him without worrying about his wife. It doesn;t sound like there is any life left in your marriage (I can't help wondering if what your H values is his comfy berth with a high-earning wife, particularly one who feels guilty...). It doesn;t make you a bad person to leave a relationship that is making you unhappy. It can't really be making your H very happy either.

I agree with all that sgb has said.

I think that all too often outsiders pile on the guilt, and the blame, and stick to the sentiment that the affair was always wrong and you are therefore a bad person and should save your marriage at all costs.

The reality is that sometimes marriages end. Sometimes we marry the wrong person/people grow apart/change and become incompatible.

It's all very well to say "go for counselling/work it out wiith your dh/make the marriage work," but for how long? Sometimes marriage can be fixed and people do go on to live happily for the rest of their lives. But it sounds from your posts as if your marriage was over before the affair, and in fact that you'd tried to end it before the affair.

As yourself this; do you want to make your marriage work because you love your dh? because you hate yourself for the hurt you've caused him and want to make it up to him and spend the rest of your lives together? Or do you want to make your marriage work to somehow illeviate (sp?) the guilt you feel over the affair? If the affair hadn't happened would you be trying to make your marriage work? or would you still be talking about trial separations and having arguments resulting in smashed crockery?

No-one should stay in a relationship they don't want. The only reason why you should stay is because you love each other and want to be together. At no point in your posts have you made reference to the fact you love your dh. That is very telling IMO.

There must be more stopping you ending your marriage than what you've already said.

Toddlers are resilient and adapt to change well. Are you worried about the judgement of your family or friends? Or your Hs anger resurfacing?

Surely your situation can't be as hopeless as you say- every problem that you come up with will have solution. You will need to move out of your comfort zone though and I wonder whether you yourself are so comfy there, that you can't see a way out. Change can be painful, but so will spending the rest of your life with someone you don't really love as much as you think you could love OM.

I'm sorry I wasn't around yesterday to answer these questions.

I didn't mention at any time that I love DH and I've been thinking about that a lot. I do love him, I'm beyond angry with him but in trying to focus on my marriage and him in the last weeks, I've revisited old photo albums and thought about all we've been through and built together. And there is still a warmth there for him and I really do think that I love him. I'm just not sure that I can live with him. OM aside it feels like we've reached a point where rather than both trying to accommodate the other person out of blind love, we have grown up and are more sure of our own values and morals and the way we want to live. And it doesn't match and the constant tension is leading to the rows and the lack of respect and the hurt.

I'm trying so hard to rebuid a closeness and a bond and even though I don't particularly want to have sex, I've tried really hard on that - bought beautiful underwear, made time for early nights, suggested stuff we used to enjoy, even tried tantric sex techniques. Read books on re-establishing a sexual connection. He responds when he feels like it (i.e. gets a great shag and rolls over and falls asleep) and I feel like a complete fraud because my heart isn't in it. When he touches me if I'm caught unawares, I have to really try not to flinch (not because I'm frightened but just because I don't want him to IYSWIM).

As to practicalities, I feel stuck. I can't see a way forward with us together yet I can't see a way of making that jump. My job is demanding and in fairness to DH he is good at picking up the slack childcare wise when I get very very busy (any other domestic duties are a different story but I do appreciate it). We live away from both our families and have no support - I just do not see how I can do my job without his help.

And yes I would be very very worried about the judgement of family and friends although at least a few people know now that things are not as perfect as I have led them to believe.

WRT to OM, I have told him I can't be in touch even by email as I find it too painful and I promised when I told DH about the connection that I would cease contact. I've agreed to meet him one last time to say goodbye to him and see his new place. People might think that is mad but I need to find some closure so that I can move on and I think this would help me. I can express the feelings that I have tortured myself with and lay it all to rest.

You're only prolonging the pain of you meet him again.

It'll always be one last time , one last chat, one last text, one last email until one of you is strong enough to be certain. Until then the addiction you both have to the situation (the thrill, the drama, the feelings of meant to be, the sexual tension) will continue and get more and more painful, fucked up and less likely yous can ever be together in the future. Believe me I've lived it.

Childcare is no reason for staying with your husband, FFs woman listen to yourself. You are willing to stay in an unhappy situation thru fear of the unknown, denying your husband the chance to be loved properly, keeping your OM in a painful half life, hurting his relationship with his family and setting an example to your child that it is better to stay in a bad place through fear, hurting yourself and those around you, than be brave, take risks and strike out for truth and honesty.

I know it's difficult. I've lived it, it's horrendous. But you have the power to make it stop. Don't kid yourself with a last meeting: there'll be more of them. Don't be a coward and stay with a man you don't want to be with. Stop the pain, take a risk, jump!

You're right your situation is hopeless. You have me convinced of that now along with yourself. You sound completely unable to see a way out. It is not that one doesn't exist but you are refusing to see it.

If you were my RL friend saying this to me over a glass of wine I would be near to throttling you! It is so frustrating that you are prepared to live in this way with your H when you feel so strongly for someone else.

No amount of hot orgasms over tantric sex (must google that - sounds good!) are going to compensate for the lack of love and affection in your marriage.

I appreciate you both bothering to post even though I'm being really annoying. I wish in a way I could tell one of my straight talking friends in RL as their advice might just jolt me into reality/action. I haven't told a soul and perhaps that is part of the problem.

I don't like what it says about me that I am so pathetic to leave a marriage when my child is so small. I feel that people will lose respect for me completely. I also think that this must happen a lot - that people fall in love with somebody outside the marriage but put it to one side and continue to stand by their vows. After all love isn't just about those crazy feelings that course through your veins but what you do and how you live. I don't know.

OM is not a bad person at all and he has said he would feel really proud to patch me up and send me home and know that I made a proper go of my marriage and ended up happy.

I think I am strong enough to see him to say goodbye and commit myself to the marriage. I am really trying to fix things.

Sorry I'm not finding you annoying frustrating yes, but not annoying.

The things you say are wrong in your marriage are such big things - different values particularly that I don't know how they can be resolved. I would expect them to get harder - if you are changing and growing in different directions then the gulf between you will surely increase. I also think that as children get older different values/ aspirations come out that maybe weren't apparent and if you can't bridge those sorts of gaps, parenting decisions are going to be really tough.

My H and I have similar values about education and manners and tv time/healthy eating so I thought we were perfectly matched. Then a discussion on here about sex in 16yr olds that I mentioned to him and I've discovered we are poles apart in that 1 issue and had an explosive row about it. The issues get much bigger than which sort of childcare/primary school/bedtimes etc that you face when they're little.

But back to your points- you say that people face these dilemmas all the time. Well they do and 45% of marriages end in divorce not because people haven't tried hard enough, but because people have tried their best and found they have grown apart or the love has gone or whatever.

Many of my friends are divorced and I have never thought they didn't try enough - I've just thought what a tough time they've been having and of course wondered why they'd thrown the towel in. Not judgementally, just natural curiousity.

You need to give yourself permission to be happy, whether that is single, with OM/ divorcing H or with H in whatever way you can. You did the right thing in not pursuing an affair and telling OMs wife what she needed to know, but you need to also do the right thing for yourself.

personally i think that you are lying to yourself and even if you successfully say goodbye to this OM , there will be another one on the horizon and you'll continue to be unhappy and fuck things up. You don't love your husband. You're a time bomb waiting to blow whenever anyone turns your head. If you succeed in staying faithful you will be unhappy and unfufilled. and you will damage your husband and child.

i'm being harsh to you because I wish someone had been harsh to me. I should've left my partner years before i did and the hurt around me would have been so much less. My sense of self respect would have been intact and I would have had a much happier life.

FWIW I think in your position I would also be seeing the OM a final time. I would probably be more checking out his new setup and imagining whether me and my child could ever be a part of it, but even seeing him for closure is totally understandable.

I hope you manage to get that closure you need, that your pain starts to heal and then perhaps you're right, you can make your marriage work. Maybe you can and you have to be admired for trying everything. But I would also admire you for saying you'd tried everything and it wasn't the marriage it used to be and was no longer enough for you.

Don't let fear of frustrating people put you off posting and getting views on how things pan out. It can help so much posting on here especially if you can't tell RL friends.

I just want to try and do the right thing. DH doesn't deserve to be hurt like he will be if I break up the family. He hasn't done anything wrong. I have. But digggers I have to be honest, your last post makes my blood run cold because there is probably some truth in it. Fuckety fuck.

i'm not trying to upset you or tell you you are a bad person. If you were a bad person this situation wouldn't be hurting you so much. You don't have to feel like this. Be brave, get out. You might be risking being alone. But surely that has to be better than being in pain, guilt and fear of the future?

So we met. Had an amazing evening together saying goodbye. He cooked, candles, music, an inexpensive but sentimental gift. We talked, laughed, cried for a few hours, he didn't make a move (said he wanted to desperately but wouldn't given my situation), seemed very respectful of my decision to draw a line in the sand and concentrate on home. I cried all the drive home but felt a relief that there would be no more lies. He promised he would let me go but today - he says he can't, loves me and can't let me walk away, can't go 'cold turkey'. I love him but I know it's not right and I have to stop it while I try to save my marriage or even end my marriage. I don't know what I can say - I can't cope with it. I don't want to have no contact but I have to. I was so stupid to think it would bring closure.

As far as I can see its simple. Your marriage is over and luckily your dc is only young, my dc were 3 and 7 when my marriage ended, both are happy, well adjusted little people with good strong relationships with both me and my dp and my ex and his dp. It isn't easy, it is v painful (your thread about pouring over old photos struck a chord with me!) but as far as I can see you are only delaying the inevitable. It will be far easier for your dc if you split now, then in years to come. Happy Mama, happy child, the best advice I was ever given.
Incidentally, the man that blew me away and proved to be the beginning of the end for my marriage is now my dp. He too was in another relationship and we too tried to ignore what was going on. I personally think your 'om' sounds like a decent man, although I realise that might not be a well received comment on here! Good luck, I hope your ok? : )

Oh how awful you sound in such a sad place. I really feel for you as you are obviously in so much uncertainty about this. Did you tell your H you were meeting? Presume not. Have you talked to someone in your family to get some support? Given what you've said about your marriage and what you've said about OM, I don't know why you're not doing something more active. Even relate counselling on your own. Something to break this situation. On a plane about to close doors, sorry can't be more help, hope someone else comes along soon.

I'd STILL like to think I can rescue my marriage. How foolish am I? How can I have stood up in front of my family and friends and made vows that a mere few years down the track I'm going to break. I can't do it.

Yet, I feel unable to break away from OM - I am so drawn to him and him to me. And I do wonder if this is it - that chance in life to be happy. And when I think of him, I always picture us being in touch when we're really old. And even more strange, is that I thought that was quite a weird thing to think and kept it to myself - except he said exactly the same thing.

Bu then, it seems impossible, even if my marriage ended and I was free and he was free. It could never work. How could anybody have respect for a partnership that started in this way.

I have just read your thread and I feel so sad for you as the way you describe your marriage there is nothing to save,

I think your just afraid of taking the next step and the fall out of it, especially if it is going to be a shock to your friends/family that your marriage is on the rocks

I really think you need to be honest with yourself, how can you live with a man who you don't want to touch you,
the problem is you don't want to hurt his feelings,sounds like you love what you had but which is leaving you torn,
you would rather suffer, but I think something is going to happen with OM and you are going to hurt your dh(even if he dosen't show it) more than if you call it quits now

You sound so tortured. I have nothing useful to say never having been in your situation but I spent my whole flight home thinking of you. I do know that when I was close recently to ending my marriage, I was gutted about the impact on my H. I was scared at how low he would feel about not living with our boys. And I worried about what people would think. BUT you must break free from those worries. You are in danger of denying yourself happiness, your H the chance to meet someone who loves him and your child the chance to be raised with a couple who cuddle and kiss openly without tensing up or flinching.

A good friend of mine is now married to an OM - I was bridesmaid at her first wedding - I don't disregard her 2nd marriage because it was formed through infidelity. I knew she was needing more love in her life than H 1 could provide so was vulnerable. You sound equally vulnerable.

Why don't you identify all your barriers to moving forwards and try and address these barriers with the help of these wonderful MNers who have gone through splits and lived to tell the tale?

So raise your worries over childcare after a split, telling H, telling family and friends, coping with guilt etc and see how others have coped, what they've done, then it might feel less daunting.

I stand by my original advice. You won't be able to break contact with this man. There'll always be a one more time. You must end your marriage. you're kidding yourself with this talk of "breif emotional affair" and "closure". Your affair is in full swing. Your OM has left his wife and told you he loves you. You're having an affair. Strong marriages can come back from that, but it doesn't seem you're in a strong marriage. End your marriage asap, before this goes further and leaves you with no self esteem, no respect from others and no chance for an amicable seperation. You haven't slept with him yet, but you will and soon if you carry on how you're going.

Ok so you're too confused to know what to do. Ducked up messy head. So please seperate from your husband and break contact with your other man, give yourself a chance to think straight. Take holiday from work, book a holiday take your child and go away for as long as you can. Don't take your phone, Don't check email, nothing, don't be in contact with either of them. Give yourself some space to be alone and get some sanity back.

That sounds much better advice than I could manage diggers. You're right the OP is actually having an affair now so needs to shift thinking to deal with that. I hadn't thought of this behaviour as an actual affair but of course it is. Doesn't make you a bad person but you do need to stop the deceit one way or another.

Oh I just reread your post and it brought it all flooding back. The pain of being pulled in two ways, of the OM refusing to leave you alone. Of being terrified he will leave you alone, but notbeing able to cope with the guilt and pain and secrecy.

Truly , for your own sanity, stop it!! Please. Tell your OM that he will break you if he doesn'tleave you alone. Tell him that the only way there is any chance atall you two could have a future together is to give you the space to finish things properly without his influence. As much as he may be genuine in his love for you, and who knows, he may be your future dp, at the moment he is poison. Keep away from him please

You're right and that is why I told him, it had to stop, said if I came and said goodbye properly he wasn't to conact me. He said he is trying but he can't help himself. It's horrible because even if I feel strong and able to cut the cord, within a day I'm in pain at not hearing from him. I never ever knew that seombody could turn evrything upside down like this.

I'm under a lot of pressure finalising a major contract (a year's work) this week. But I have booked time next week and asked DH to give me and the little one some one to one mummy time. Taking her to my mum and dads house away from everything here. So perhaps I'm finding bits of sanity. Problem is I will have to take my blackberry - not got the kind of job where you're on holiday when you're on holiday and he can contact me on that by phone, text, email. It's all my fault.

Oh loves2walk, I feel so sorry for the OP. It's a horrible horrible place to be. Hope she can be brave and strong enough to break out of the situation and like herself enough again to be alone and sort her head out. Your words are lovely and supportive, I'm sure she needs them. I'm trying to be brutal with her to try and say something that'll cut thru the Walls of denial, fear and confusion around her and wake her up. Poor woman. Really really feel for her