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?

I say I want to get out of the situation and I tell myself that but I don't feel it. I have promised myself that I will get to that point.

I worry that I'm the problem. That I'm a bit f*ed up. I was very independent and happy growing up. Had an absolute darling of a boyfriend at 17, split up because of uni and me just wanting to get on with my life, strike out in the world but it was a great start to relationships for me. He treated me in a very loving way and we had a great spark and lots of fun together. When at uni I got myself into a relationship with a lovely bloke but it was more about two people out of their depth (went to posh uni from quite humble background as did he) depending on each other for comfort and support. He was great, massively bright (top of his year medical degree), but had a very difficult childhood, issues I'd never had to deal with or think about. I don't think I got the pain he was in as a result. He committed suicide while I was on my third year of my degree studying abroad. I don't think I'll ever get over it.

I don't know why I've put that or why it's relevant except it changed me. I carried (still do) this massive burden of guilt that I didn't understand how bad hings were for him and wonder if it is my fault. I should have protected him. I wonder if as a result, I can't deliver difficult messages to anybody close to me for fear that they do something stupid. At the moment - this means I can't end my marriage and nor can I break contact completely with OM. I am frightened for him that he will be feeling so low right now away from familiar surroundings. He tells me that he's strong and not to worry about him and the break up was happening and had to happen - but this connection between us gives him comfort I know that and I feel too cruel to take it away and besides I feel unable to.

hello again howdi!

That's good that you're starting to think about how you got to where you are today. Sorry to hear about your boyfriend, that must have been horribly tough. Strangely enough I've got too friends that the same thing happened too. Both of them were the one's to find them too :-( have you ever had any bereavement counselling? I know one of my friends did and she said it helped. Personally I think you would really really from some kind of counselling, especially if you've no real life support. Just someone to talk to in actuality about all this. I've done it a couple of times at crisis points inky life and it has helped. Maybe look into it?

But here's the harsh bit. the tragedies in our lifes don't give us excuses to make the wrong choices, they maybe just sometimes explain why we do. You do need to break contact with this man. You do need to end your marriage. You may hurt them in the shirt term, but if you delay you will hurt them more.

Your OM will be fine. He was fine before you knew him. He will have to find other ways to comfort himself and may even start putting his life back together a little. You are not his salvation nor is he your responsibilty. Are you still talking to him today?

And how is your husband and daughter today?

Take care lass X

And I keep meaning to apologise for typos . Typing on iPhone with spell check second guessing me!

Again, you're right nothing excuses the behaviour. I'm not trying to justify it I know what I've been doing/am doing is wrong.

Me and his best friend found him after he went to the toilet on an all day drinknig session with a group of us and didn't come back. We went back to the flat after looking for him for a couple of hours and found him. Not that that makes any difference to this. I had PTSD for a long time and even now I know have after effects - it is common in people that have witnessed something extremely traumatic. It has coloured my dealings with others but it is more like living on high adrenalin at all times - fearful. I refused bereavement counselling after two sessions. I found it too raw and I wasn't ready to revisit what had happened. I look back and don't know if it was grief or a breakdown but I lived in a dark hole for a long time.

I felt guilty when I met DH about moving on from what had happened but equally I really felt I needed the comfort of somebody close. I did and do love DH deeply and feel that especially in the early days he took on a somewhat damaged person. There was rareley a night in the first years together where I did not wake crying, struggling and gasping fro breath from my sleep. I suffered horrendous nightmares for years after and still tend to have episodes of that around the anniversary.

Anyway I'm sorry to go on. It is strangely cathartic to type some of this out.

I feel as though I have experienced rock bottom and understand what it is to feel utterly without hope and like the landscape is entirely bleak. My marriage in the last 2 years brought me nearly to the same point of bleak unhappiness. Not the searing pain of bereavement but rather the eventual emotional numbness of utter hopelessness.

My daughter has been the light in all of this. I felt myself when I was on mat leave - not always with my head elsewhere stressing about work. But DH basically gave up and left me to pick up the financial and domestic duties. I felt hard done by and massively guilty to go back to work FT. I feel so sad and regretful at missing out on my daughter's milestones. I just don't know how to come back from that and fix it. I don't respect DH fo doing that to me. I started to hate him in some ways.

I guess meeting OM who is strong and kind and thoughtful and really f*ing bright blew me away. But why would someone like that want me?

Yes we've talked again. I the stupid weak pathetic perosn I am emailed him at 2 in the morning like a crazy person. I can't seem to stop.

I think I'm quite drunk - sorry so incoherent.

Sweetheart, talk away. It's good to hear you thinking about what's going on and making connections and obversations. That's what a counseller would facilitate too I guess, although a counsellor wouldn't tell you what to do like I'm doing. I feel I need to keep reality checking you, as I've been there and I'm scared for you at what you're getting yourself into. A counseller would also allow you to talk more than the few snatched posts on here.

I still think you should look into it. It might of been last time you weren't quite ready for it, or maybe your counseller wasn't a great fit. Or maybe bereavement counselling is too specific when the crisis your facing just now has too many different facets.

The way you talk about losing your boyfriend though seems like the experience is a big part of you today. So sorry to read about how hurt you were. Seems to me, being an amateur cod pyschologist on the internet trying to help you (sorry, but you have to laugh really? How did it come to this indeed? :-D) that your husband rescued you from your depression after your boyfriend died, and that you're wanting your OM to rescue you from the depression you're feeling in your marriage. Maybe you need to learn to rescue yourself rather than falling into a pattern? Maybe you could leave your husband, work part time, spend time with your daughter again, be less stressed , be happier, more confident, have more self esteem and not need rescuing. Then welcome in love, knowing you deserve, be it from your OM or from another of the amazing kind, strong, funny men in the world?

How did you meet your OM?

Lovely to hear about your daughter though. How old is she? I've a son, he's coming upto 18 months and he's amazing. Xxx

keep talking here. Hopefully others will come and talk to you too, hope you haven't just got stuck with me!

How are the plans for going to your parents going?

Hi howdi - I'm still here to talk. I felt it best to duck out of your thread recently. After the songs went up, I had a sudden feeling of sadness - that if my H had felt a fraction of the pain you were going through, leaving his OW after an emotional affair, I just couldn't bear it. It made me feel so sad just at the possibility he had felt that bereft, that I felt it was best I stopped contributing to your thread.

I wasn't feeling bad at you, at all, just at this miserable situation of one person falling in love with another person they can't have.

But reading your last post howdi and those from digggers, I think your situation is so much more complex than infidelity. Maybe infidelity is never straightforward, but your situation is so raw and painful, with such deep wounds, that again I feel real empathy for what you are going through. You are not a bad person and I'm sure OM adores you for the person you are right now, and have the potential to be.

I always felt your pain had an element of punsihment about it - as though you felt so bad at yourself, you felt you deserved to go on feeling tortured. Maybe, if that is the case at all it is because of what happened with your boyfriend. I agree with digggers that you need to address that with someone and work through it. It may never really be something you deal with without professional support and you may not be able to leave it buried, but it might go on disrupting your relationships.

How are you today? How are things with your H? Are you managing to tick along with him without conflict? I can't imagine that is easy, you must be feeling churned up inside all the time. Do take care of yourself, you don't deserve this pain, but you do deserve to allow yourself to move on from the pain to a life that is happier and calmer for you.

Aw loves2walk, you deserve much live. Sweetheart, I'm sorry if I upset you. I read your thread and think you're very very kind and full of empathy.

Makes me wonder if you read these kind of threads because you're trying to understand how you're husband could do what he did? I find myself Reading threads about abusive fathers and wives who can't leave them as I think I'm trying to understand my parents. What a life eh? Us all bustling around loving and hurting, misunderstanding and trying to understand.

The more I live and learn the more I want tolive and learn. There's so much in people. Xx

Hope you're ok too. Bless you both being in so much pain . Thinking of the both and wishing you well. I think I'm personally in the best place I've ever been in just now, but have been thru dark times in the past thru the hands of others and situations of my own making. Ups and downs. Peaks and troughs. Hope you're both on the up very soon xx

Thanks digggers but don't want to accept sympathy fraudulently - my H has made great strides and we're so back on track. And the fallout from his EA led to me raising problems in our relationship that I couldn't raise before, and/or he didn't hear, so we are now closer than we've been for years.

I think having given my H the news that I was so unhappy in marriage I was "considering a future without him" (useful line there from WWIFN!) and then him falling to pieces and accepting responsibility and offering to do anything to make it right- after being through all that, I felt angry on howdi's behalf that her H hadn't shown concern for their marriage and so left her feeling unloved and understandably open to affection from someone else.

I thought she was trying so hard to piece together something on her own. Anyway like you say digggers, we all muddle through somehow and MN is fantastic for reality checking and emotional support.

You didn't make me sad digggers- more that as soon as you love someone, or have that love re-energised, you're vulnerable all over again.

Thanks love2walk. Much respect to you x

Thanks to both of you for the continued messages. I appreciate that you don't need to do this. It made me incredibly sad/humbled to see your message loves2walk and I was glad to see your latest message that your DH is determined to make things work. That just shows that the love is in tact and strong in your marriage and he loves you very much.

I don't know what to say. I have no idea why you wouldn't just hate me for the situation I've got myself into. It restores my faith in people when I don't deserve it. Equally after the initial angry but dignified communication from OM's wife she contacted me again a couple of weeks later and I was amazed by how dignified and decent she was. I sincerely believe that in completely different circumstances we would like each other. She contacted me to verify a couple of things but said that before she left me alone she did want me to know that I had not spilt up a family and lots of other thinngs contributed to the break up. I do not think that I could ever be that selfless. I'm very much a woman's woman (if that makes any sense)and it meant a lot.

Today has been weird and at home we've tried and failed today to keep things without conflict. I went to b & q tonight (decorating at the moment) and a propos of nothing burst out crying in the paint aisle. Overwhelmed at the moment but heading home to mum and dad's tomorrow with the little one.

I hope you can share enough of your situation with your parents to get some support from them. But I'm sure the distance from your H and from OM will help give you more freedom to think about what you want and are going to do.

How open of the wife to say that to you! I'd say she's a womans woman too in that she chose to lessen your guilt by what she shared with you, rather than keeping that to herself and have you believe you were responsible. Brave of her and not an action of a woman who hates you. So in your darker moments, you need to tell yourself that.

I think some women, men I imagine too, have no regard for the feelings of others and go into affair situations without caring for the hurt and upset they cause partners and children. I would struggle to not hate such people and would struggle to communicate with them in a supportive way. You just aren't that sort of person and this has/is obviously causing you a lot of pain. I don't envy you the decisions that you have to make. Gather your strength while your with your folks and even if you can't confide in them, at least allow them to take care of you, if they can.

Thanks to both of you I am feeling strong and resolute and determined to start to take control of this situation instead of letting it happen. If OM contacts me today I won't respond and I will not initiate contact. I'm going to connect with the pain instead of seeking refuge from it and comfort from him. I can and must extricate myself from his life. Thank you for bearing with me. It means a lot.

Well done that woman!!!! Fantastic stuff. You can do it!

Remember that on the other side of the pain is the calm ability to be able to find out what you want and strive for it.

Xx

Shite

Setback. I don't know if I can do this. I can't bring myself to finish it completely, talk in absolutes. And every time that crack is left open, one of us caves in. And I can't just blame him. I cried myself to sleep at my mum and dad's thinking that it was over completely, having been on top of things for a few days. When I woke up he had sent me an email in the middle of the night. It just reflected back exactly how I felt and I don't know. I feel compelled to be near him. I worry I'm losing it - I'm not like this.

Few days breathing space hasn't changed anything other than giving me precious one to one time with my little one. The ache and the hurt is still debilitating. The only thing that became at all clearer is that I didn't miss home at all. Before I had chance to talk about stuff at home, my mum made it clear that although she was aware things were difficult in my marriage, her sympathies are with DH. Spent days listening to stuff along the lines of 'that's just how men are' 'cut him some slack', 'have you called DH? Tell him you'll be back soon to look after him'. It's clear that my folks would be deeply mortified and ashamed if I were to leave my marriage.