Old Shcool Friend

[Redtime]

I am male, 30 and have been married for 8 years. An old female school friend contacted me about a year ago. She was my best friend when we were about 10 years old. I hadn't heard or seen her in 20 years as her parents moved State. I then got an email out of the blue about a year ago. We spent the last year chatting on and off by email about what we had done in the 20 years we had been apart - nothing romantic but lots of mutual understanding and humour. She never suggested any romantic interest in me at all even though she is single. She then invited my wife and I to stay with her (she lives hundreds of miles away). My wife was busy at the last moment and so I went alone, not wanting to cancel on my old school buddy. Unfortunately we got on really well finding lots in common, had a madly passionate weekend and ended up sleeping together. My old school friend has admitted she has always had a crush on me and is madly in love with me. I am also hugely attracted to my old friend in a way that I just cannot understand - I feel like I owe some irrational debt of love and loyalty to my old friend, to be with her. Because I love my wife (but less passionatley as we have been married 8 years), I have cut contact with my old school friend completely but this has made me very depressed and this is affecting my marriage and my job badly. I hoped I would get over this feeling after a few weeks but it's been months now and if anything I feel even worse. I dare not re-establish contact with my old school friend but it may be the only way for me to move on. Every day is agony. Any one else fallen for old school friends as adults? Is recovery possible? Why do I feel such a strong attraction to someone who was not even part of my life a year ago? Someone said I might be suffering from Separation Anxiety Disorder, what is that?

[Tony T]

First, I think your friends watch too much TV. Don't let amateurs diagnose your problems for you. There are qualified doctors and counsellors to do that.

 

YOU WRITE: "I feel like I owe some irrational debt of love and loyalty to my old friend, to be with her."

 

You have a rather inflated opinion of yourself...that somehow your old friend just can't live without your love and loyalty. But I guess that's better than having low self esteem.

 

Both you and your old friend will be just fine. It's your marriage I am seriously worried about. If you can go this crazy over some woman you haven't seen in years and fall in love so radically overnight, you're a time bomb waiting to explode. You have issues with hair on them. There is a lot of stuff you aren't getting from your marriage.

 

You are a VERY young man with many many years left on this planet. You got married at a fairly early age for these days. I think you need to do whatever you can go reinject some passion, romance and interest into your marriage. The two of you should see a counsellor to help you devise ways of doing this.

 

I think as long as your marriage is dull to you, you will be looking desperately on the outside for stimulation, whether it be an old school chum, someone at work, someone you meet at the lunch counter or wherever...it's going to happen again and again.

 

Forget everything and everybody else right now and concentrate on straightening out your marriage. It could be very well that you may decide to leave your spouse. An emotionally flat marriage can be hell. There are many men who get married for the FIRST time in their mid 30's.

 

I hope you spend some serious time working through your marriage problems. Your extracurricular love interests are only symptoms of the real problem and perhaps a strategy to keep from facing the actual issue, YOUR MARRIAGE, head on. Stop avoiding it and jumpstart your life again.

 

Also, you are very right to cease all contact with this old school friend until you get to the bottom of your issues. Separation anxiety does not apply here...a problematic marriage does.

[Redtime]

Yes you have pin-pointed the underlying issue precisely. I am bored with being with the same person for years, also bored with my job even though it pays well, and getting together with my old school friend was extremely exciting and made me feel alive and flattered. No I really don't have a big ego about this, the whole situation is really terrible and I wish I had never been contacted by my old school friend, but I can't change history and I didn't go looking in the first place. It's my old school friend who keeps writing saying that she will always be waiting for me to leave my wife and if don't leave my wife I will be depriving my old friend of marriage and children. (Yes emotional blackmail but it puts pressure on my marriage none the less). But the way I see it is this. I have been engaged/married for over ten years to my wife, how can ANYONE say they wouldn't get bored with the sames person day-in and day-out? How on earth can you avoid it? Am I never to experience the wonder of feeling in passionate love again? (Okay I have so guess that is a 'yes') I don't feel old enough to never to feel that way, but there is no way I want to have lots of affairs to get my kicks. Still I have told my wife what occured and how deeply (and irrationally) I feel about my old friend as I could not keep it a secret. At first she freaked and shouted and threw things. It's a few days later and she has now calmed down and is acting a lot more passionate than I have known her for years. Perhaps a bit of jealosy is helping? She is now calling my old school friend my 'lover' in a sort of jokey way. I have also got her agreement to have a three way meeting of girlfriend, wife and myself just to help patch things up all round. I am going to see if I can turm my old friend back into a platonic friend although I would guess this will be very hard to do but I feel it is worth a shot as she is such a great person to know even if I took away my passionate feelings for her and would be a great friend for my wife. However you are right that this may happen time and again. In an effort to distract myself from these things I joined a paragliding club looking to meet new friends (male preferably) but I have now met another great girl who has the personality of my old school friend almost exactly. This new female friend is wanting to travel the world with me (her suggestion and she knows I am married) and paraglide in all the worlds greatest scenary (my wife is scared of heights and doesn't really like to travel). I can tell from the look in her eyes there is going to be trouble, but what a great thing to suggest, how can I refuse? My wife seems to be okay with me having female friends and going away with them as long as I do not get too passionate with them. She has also suggested that my old school friend could have my children (by artificial insemination) if she is so desperate and I feel the need to help my old friend out, which I thought was really caring of my wife. (See, why would I want to be married to anyone else?) At the end of the day I really feel that the world has gone crazy around me or maybe I have just been living a sheltered and dull life? Does this happen to every guy when they get to 30? Do women start chucking themselves at you because they want a husband, kids and you have a good job? I really feel that things have taken a turn for the surreal lately and reality isn't real and that feeling in particular worries me the most. It's like I am no longer connected to reality but at some point I'm gonna wake up in the street with no wife, no house and no job. Surviving...

[midori]

Oh my gosh, there are so many alarms going off here I don't even know where to begin.

 

Originally posted by Redtime

I have also got her agreement to have a three way meeting of girlfriend, wife and myself just to help patch things up all round. I am going to see if I can turm my old friend back into a platonic friend although I would guess this will be very hard to do but I feel it is worth a shot as she is such a great person to know even if I took away my passionate feelings for her and would be a great friend for my wife.

 

Massive, enormous mistake. You really do seem to have your head in the sand.

 

1. This "old friend" is not a friend. She was your friend when you were kids. She got in touch with you because she didn't have enough people in her real life so she reached out to someone she hadn't seen in 20 years who lived hundreds of miles away. Falling in love was not a coincidence, she was looking to connect with you emotionally, to fill the gap in her life. You did not cause that gap. Ten-year-olds' love is limited at best, it is not the kind of thing that healthy people carry around with them for twenty years. She's either got some genuine emotional problems for which she ought to seek treatment, OR she's done some nifty after-the-fact rationalizing to justify to herself and to you why she really got in touch with you and why you've assumed such significance in her life. Cos who wants to admit, "well, I'm kind of lonely and don't have many friends or opportunities to meet men, so I reached out to you. After all, we knew each other 20 years ago." She probably doesn't even want to admit that to herself. So instead she says, "I have always loved you and it's been eating me up for the last 20 years." Puh-lease!

 

2. I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that your wife is in NO WAY all right with what is going on. I can't believe you think that getting together with her and the other woman for a 3-way discussion is a good idea. What on earth is there to discuss?

 

I promise you that your wife envisions it as a thorough and harsh repudiation of the other woman, in which you tell her that you are completely in love with your wife, that you would never leave your wife for anyone or anything, least of all her, that hooking up was an enormous mistake, and that you would like to never hear from her again. Probably your wife is even hoping you'll throw in some quelling comments about the other woman's performance in bed.

 

3. Tony's earlier message is spot-on advice, and it's backed up by the fact that you've taken up with yet a third woman, by deliberately pursuing activities that you know your wife won't participate in. Your marriage is in serious trouble. If you have any hope of salvaging it you'll need to get into some serious marital counseling (and individual counseling would be a good idea too).

 

Your job is boring. Your life is boring. Your marriage is boring. Whose fault is that? In large part, yours. If you made career choices and life choices out of convenience, without thinking about whether or not you could live with them long term, you have no one to blame but yourself for the consequences. If your marriage is boring you share the blame equally with your wife. It is not soley her fault.

 

How incredibly cruel and selfish to try to inject more passion into your marriage by first committing, and then confessing to adultery. How incredibly dull-witted and short-sighted to think that a new woman or a hobby will give your life meaning because you chose a career that doesn't inspire you. If you're looking for significance, you have to do things that actually are significant. Paragliding is fun, but it doesn't make a bit of difference in the world. Same goes for travel. Adultery can be fun too, but it's destructive and usually comes at enormous cost -- to other people more than you. Can you justify that?

 

It sounds like you've got a lot of issues to sort out for yourself. If your wife has any sense, she'll leave you at least for the time being (and of course if she does that and then meets someone else, too bad for you). But if your wife is too loyal or too blinkered to take that step, the one good thing you could do immediately would be to leave her. Admit that you are currently incapable of being a good partner, and leave. Don't string her along, don't make her twist herself into a masochistic emotional pretzel in the hope of "winning you back." She didn't lose you. You've lost yourself. Don't insult her further by keeping her in limbo while you fly and f*ck your way around the world. It's up to you to find yourself again.