Strength to break away

[Abetterme]

Hello all - I have been reading this forum for months and want to first thank so many of you for your honesty about your situations and incredible empathy and wise words. Through reading so many of your stories, I have come to realize that my A was not unique or magical and it has helped me to step out of a place of total delusion.

 

I am a MW having an A with a MM. EA for nearly 3 years and a PA for 2.5. We were colleagues, though not in the same city. When our friendship started he was a few months away from getting married. At the time my daughter was 2 yo and I felt I was happily married. Unlike what IÂ’ve seen many times on this forum, we never discussed neg aspects of our relationships and were just supportive on career challenges we were experiencing in our role. Before long, our correspondence went on all day, every day. He got married and I genuinely had no feelings about it other than happiness for him, but very shortly after we attended a conference together and I felt a shift in our dynamic. He started making it clear that he had feelings and I made the terrible choice to not stop it. It turned physical a few months after his marriage and continued to build in intensity for the next year.

 

I knew he wanted children and tried to pull out of the relationship when they began trying, but he continued to pursue me aggressively and I was addicted so I made an even poorer decision to stay. I struggled tremendously with the anticipation of them having a child and the guilt of what I was doing to his family and mine. We finally broke contact about 2 years in and were NC for 3 months. We no longer worked together but I had a work commitment in his city and was getting together with mutual friends. He found out and “ambushed” me by showing up at this gathering. Full of remorse and apology. I was in such pain during our months of NC trying to put my focus on my family and my marriage, but seeing him erased it all and we resumed almost where we left off. That was 5 months ago and it has not been physical since that meeting.

 

There has been a lot of push and pull in the ensuing months with guilt on both sides, me dreading the birth of his child, just a tremendous amount of highs and lows leading up the birth. He continued to say he wanted to continue the relationship after and I was stupid enough to agree. We have had relatively LC since. The dynamic changed pretty much overnight and I completely understand why. When we do talk he is loving and tells me his feelings havenÂ’t changed but I know actions speak louder than words and he is silent for days on end.

 

I desperately want to be myself again before I ever knew he existed. A place where I saw only my husband and daughter and let him focus on his family. I donÂ’t know whatÂ’s wrong with me and i canÂ’t just tell him goodbye. I having been reading everything I can on A and trying to better understand how i got to this place. I was in IC for several months during our NC but quit out of pure shame to say that Id fallen back into the A.

 

It has been educational reading your stories and seeing his behaviors leading up to the A were VERY textbook. I have trouble thinking of him as the bad guy because what does that make me? Equally terrible. I think I focus so heavily on the fear of losing him because it keeps me from fully embracing what IÂ’ve done to my family which makes me feel even worse. I was a BS in my former marriage and I never in a million years thought I could do this to my husband or another wife. I donÂ’t think there is enough self-loathing in the universe to cover how this feels.

 

Thank you for listening. I will end this, I am closer every day.

[Ravensglen]

I’m a MW who had an EA with a MM. i have 2 kids (3 and 9 months). I do not come from a place of judgement, I am here to help. I know how difficult it is to be emotionally entangled with another person and how difficult it is to sever the relationship.

 

That said, you have to commit to ending it. Your feelings may change from day to day, but you must commit to stopping all contact. I talked to my AP for about 8 months, went NC for a year, he contacted me again and I went right back to the way things were. I ended it again and went NC... I’ve been NC for about 5 months. It feel like an addiction. It is excruciating at times to cut it off, but I decided that I didn’t want to feel the shame of acting so contrary to my morals and values. I know it’s very hard but I think you need support and should resume counseling... you do not have to go back to the same counselor if the thought of telling them you resumed the A is too much. You need support and you need a place to talk to someone about this and work through your feelings. There is so much that goes on beneath the surface and unless you get to the root of things you may go back to the A again. You know this relationship with him is going nowhere.... and it is not worth your integrity. I know it is hard, believe me. You can delete your social media accounts if the temptation is too much, block his number, etc. it’s not enough to “want” NC you have to commit to doing it and protecting yourself FROM yourself if you have a moment of weakness in the future. Block his number, delete your social media accounts... get rid of any way that you may be tempted in the future.

[darkbloom]

No judgement from here either. He’s your drug of choice—the withdrawals hurt like hell.

 

Think of how much time you’ve wasted thinking and worrying about him. Now imagine that time in another five years. If there is no future you’ve got to commit to letting him go. Take that compulsion to contact him and funnel it into something else.

[Amethyst68]

Sorry but yeah some judgement here. You say you were a BS in your previous marriage. How do you think your MM's wife would feel knowing there's been a third party in their marriage the whole time. Oh it may not have been physical until after the wedding but your post makes it clear there was an EA before then. His poor wife, and then for her to be pregnant too?

 

Not to mention your own BH, are you planning on telling him? 3 years is a long time, don't you think he should be given the option of deciding what his future looks like? Were you given this opportunity in the past?

[Abetterme]

Thank you all for responding. I appreciate the compassion and also know I deserve all the judgement I get.

@ravensglen & @darkbloom - I am sorry for what you’ve been going through and continue to go through. I cried reading your posts because it is exactly as you said - my mind changes every hour with wanting to be rid of it and sadness about losing a friendship most of all. I have fear that when I break off that I will be wallowing in the hope that he’ll return. That’s all I did during our last NC. Maybe because it was more him driving it, but I know if I’m being honest with myself I was hoping he’d reach back out. How do you manage those feelings yourselves? He has no social media so we are not at risk of contact there. It’s truly me getting up the guts to just block the line. This going nowhere, I know that. Why can’t I just get my head and heart to match up?

 

@amethyst - Worthy of the harsh words. I guess maybe that’s what I need too. To be smacked into reality. To answer your questions, I don’t believe it was an affair at all prior to their marriage. Or at least maybe I was too naive to see that a friendship with a man was inappropriate period, but there was no flirting, we talked work, our families, politics, sports. I’ve always had male friends, but the point is I later learned he has poor intentions from the start, but i didn’t see it at the time. I tried to pull away after our first physical encounter and he lovebombed me back into pure lunacy. At some point I was just so addicted I was able to completely carry on as if she didn’t exist, it is completely shameful.

 

As for my husband, I think constantly about telling him. Of course this terrifies me. I have dreams about it. Perhaps that’s the only way for me to really remove myself from this AP and face all the consequences.

 

In my past marriage we had a D day. Had many false reconciliations and he continued his relationship. I later learned there were many relationships, before our marriage and all through. My counselor and I were both concerned by the similarities in the two men and the scenario in general. I agree I need to get back into counseling. I am nothing but mortified that I have hurt so many. I can’t put all of the blame on him but looking back and still I see he is an extremely aggressive person and was extremely hard to withdraw from early in when i tried due to our work situation.

[Amethyst68]

Thanks for your response.

 

 

You say you don't think of your relationship before the wedding as an affair but as a friendship. I take it your husband was fully aware of it then? Both the person and amount of communication, after all you've said you were in contact all day every day? Your communications were not carried out in secret and available to him st all times? Friendships are not carried out in secret so if the answer is not yes then just stop fooling yourself right note.

 

 

You need to own your decisions and actions. You managed to get yourself out of infidelity, and now for your IC to blame your actions on your MM being like your WS makes you to easily into the victim. IMO you at least need to tell your husband the truth, TBH I also think his wife needs to know (she is pregnant, who knows who else he has been having sex with, she needs to be tested STIs - no insult to you intended, as I said you may not be the only OW).

[stillafool]

I think if you've been cheating for 3 years you need to ask your husband for a divorce. Your child will be happier with parents who are happy with their lives. To much lying and cheating going on here.

[Abetterme]

@amethyst - Points taken. It was communication via work, but I hadn’t looked at it that way. I wasn’t intending to keep a secret friendship but ultimately it was and shouldn’t have been.

 

I don’t think my IC was intending to help me play victim, and I certainly don’t see myself that way, but rather to help snap me out of the mindset that I was in. If you feel this way about ex’s behaviors you should have a similar reaction to MM and discard any positive associations. Coming out of the A fog, I do see these things.

 

@stillafool - Perhaps you are right. Lots of mistakes and while I didn’t see myself as unhappy prior to this situation, I certainly am now of my own making.

[BeenThereDoneThatttt]

Well, this is coming from someone who, sad to say, can relate to your H....

 

 

It's time to face the music.

 

 

 

First of all, if you truly are as regretful as you say you are, it is time for you to tell your H about your affair. You need to give him the option of him moving on with his life as painlessly as possible i.e., you leaving and giving him a divorce that is generous to his side both financially and w custody. You are not doing any favors in the meanwhile by keeping him in the dark and making him keep on living a lie. Especially since he is ALREADY suspecting something is up. And as he actually trusted that you are honoring your wedding vows, he has been blaming HIMSELF for the current state of your marriage. How in the world could he not notice that you have been this unhappy/distracted. I am wondering how your sex life w H was these past 3 years--were you into it, did you keep turning him down, ect.

 

 

The silver lining is that he will respect your coming forward yourself, instead of him finding out some other way--as he is quite likely to do. If you confess yourself, he will see that at least you were honest here when it came to something difficult. This will demonstrate some integrity, especially compared to H finding out some other way--and he may already be doing his own digging.

 

 

 

Secondly, as regretful and ashamed as you are, you are still clearly in confusion about a few things.

 

 

That OM was so aggressive was really, besides the point. When it came to being faithful to your H and family, you basically had ONE job and that one job precisely was shutting down aggressive men such as OM. You were supposed to handle OM just the same way you handled advances from men you weren't interested in when you were single. It is called protecting your marriage. You didn't do this though.

 

 

That you never set out to cheat in a million years and that you didn't shut down OM's first advances--supposedly when you had more control over your emotions--directly contradict each other. I mean, when OM first told you how he felt, you basically at that point DECIDED to get into an affair, and you knew at that point that this was what you were getting into! When you had more control over your emotions too. I mean, how else do affairs get started. Anyway, your therapist really should have pointed this out to you already.

 

 

Related to the above two points, when it comes to your marriage and temptation, the idea isn't that you are supposed to never be tempted, the idea is instead that you were supposed to walk away from that temptation instead of yielding to it.

 

 

 

I bring the above two things up because your H will call you out on both. Meanwhile I truly hope you are digging hard for your "whys". What was missing in you. What was the real state in your mind concerning your M at the time (without trying to rewrite marital history)., ect.

Edited October 15, 2018 by BeenThereDoneThatttt

[Abetterme]

@beentheredonethat - Thank you for your input. I can understand given your experience why you feel that way. As a former BS I suppose I would have preferred I not found out the way I did either, however after the disclosure it became quickly clear he had no intention of actually admitting the wrong or ending his relationship.

 

I am going to resume therapy and gain their insight on how best to approach this. I think the dynamics of every relationship are very different. You speak nothing but correctly in pointing out how I disregarded vows, etc. I am trying very hard to understand my “whys”. I am wrong on every level and nothing justifies the behavior. I proceeded and shouldn’t have.

 

As I’ve stated before, I didn’t believe myself to be unhappily married when this began. At the time our daughter was quite young and he was extremely busy with work and grad school. I imagine I was internalizing some loneliness or perhaps resentment about taking a lot of the home stuff by myself. Our sex life wasn’t perfect, our kid never sleeps often ending up in our bed. I lay none of the blame on him, I’m just answering what you’ve asked. I appear to be more concerned about wanting more physically than he was and have broached the subject and just a need for more connection many times during the course of this A as I tried to break off. The state of things improves for a short time, then he ultimately gets reimersed in the day to day. While my A has been physical, it was only on a handful or occasions so this is much more intensely and EA for me. Not that one is better than the other, I am doing a lot of reflecting on that as I move forward.