Worst nightmare

[Guest]

This is long, but I really need somewhere to talk about this.

This goes back over a decade. I wrote about this here once before. The love of my life and I were at two different places in life (both in college, in different states), and we were having trouble working things out for various reasons. At one point, he asked me to come back to him, but I was seeing someone else at the time and had felt incapable of being with him. I always loved him though. He and I always were soul mates of sorts…

A month later, I realized how foolish I was being and asked him to come back to me (again, we were only 21, thought we had all the time in the world). He told me he was dating someone new, and that even though he truly believed he and I would be married someday, he had to stay with this new person for now because it was “fun.” Well, a week later our worlds turned upside down when she found out she was pregnant. I can ‘t even tell you how devastating it was to me at the time. He married the woman he’d been dating all of a couple of months and had the baby (a lot of issues from his own bad childhood led him to feel this was the right decision). I never contacted him again for a year. Imagine how it must have felt for me knowing he had told me that aside of his mother, I was the person he loved more than anyone in this world….that he was going to marry me someday…all a week before the pregnancy turned my world upside down. He completely devastated me by it all, and I was determined to move on somehow.

A year later, he saw me out at a bar one night, approached me, and talked to me for hours, telling me he still was in love with me and wasn’t sure he’d made the right decision to marry her…he felt like he had done what was expected of him, but he wasn’t sure it was the right move. He told me if he ever got a divorce, he would find me, no matter how long it had been.

Over the years, he and I were in contact sporadically, and he would tell me the same things again and again, but that he was afraid to leave. I never gave up hope he'd come back. Yet, at the same time, he went on and had 2 more kids with her. I’ll never understand why, but he’s tried to explain it as he just figured this was his life that he had to live and that there was nothing he could do about it. So he wanted to make the best of it.

A year ago, he formally got in touch with me, started emailing me. At first, we kept it somewhat casual. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish. I sensed he was unhappy with his life, but frankly, I had too many emotions surrounding him. I tried to turn him away. I did not want to get involved with a married man. At least 3 times I attempted to cut off contact, but he kept coming back telling me he missed me. I finally told him the truth—that I have always loved him, that I couldn’t bear to just be his friend, that I needed to be away from him if I couldn’t have him. And I told him that I would never want him to leave his wife for me, that if he left it should be for his own reasons, for his marriage failing. I would never want him that way. I genuinely meant that at the time.

He finally called me one day in October and told me he still loved me. Then he started telling me how much he’d missed me, how he wanted to change his life, that he wasn’t happy with his wife, that he was never in love with her. He said he stayed with her because it was his “sacrifice” (HIS word) for his kids’ sake. He told me he had never gotten over me, gave me years’ worth of memories from our youth that he’d clung on to, convinced me that I was not the only one who was hurt when he had to walk away and marry her.

I urged him to see me, and he agreed, so we spent an hour in a park one day in early November. He said after that he knew his marriage was over, he had to tell her he was leaving. The day he told her he wanted a divorce in November, he was so sure that she would agree it was for the best. He actually thought perhaps they would go out to lunch together and hammer out the details of the divorce. I knew better, that she would be devastated, but he was so utterly sure she felt the same. He didn’t realize how badly he would hurt her. So once he saw her pain, he told me to give him a little more time because he couldn’t leave her in such a state of mind caring for the kids.

As November and December went on, we spent many stolen moments together, spent a lot of time planning the future. He finally said he had to tell her again he was leaving, that he couldn’t bear to be without me anymore, so he tried New Years. Again, her devastated reaction made him rethink it, because he was afraid she would have a nervous breakdown and destroy his kids with her mental state. I told him we were over, that I wanted nothing to do with him, and he came to my house and begged me to hold on, told me he wanted to marry me and have children with me.

He told me he had spent the bulk of his marriage thinking of me, never letting go of our bond. He spent a lot of time thinking over the fall, was trying to reconcile years of mistakes and figure out how he’d regretted so many actions he’d made over the past 13 years. He said he’d realized at some point that he wanted to change his life, and that he couldn’t bear the thought of a life without me, that I was his soul mate and that he wanted to make a life with me, marry me, and make it all work out. He promised me we would be married once his divorce was final, and that we would have children and build our own family. This spring, he sent me house listings of all the places we would be able to afford together, sent me vacation listings for this summer so we could go away together. Kept planning for the future, telling me all about his kids and how we’d integrate them into our lives, all the things he wanted to do with me.

We had been in touch every day, multiple times a day…hours and hours of conversations while he was at work, on his way to work, on his way home, every time he left his house.

I was determined not to get into a physical affair (I knew it was bad enough of me to get into an emotional affair), but it just happened. The bond strengthened even more over time.

All this time, he was planning how to keep this a secret and let us go on and figure out a way to make this ok for his wife and kids. We did discuss several times the option of him telling her the truth, even as recently as a week before he told her he was leaving. He thought maybe she could then move on with concrete answers.He said he really believed that he has been so unhappy over the years in this marriage that he knew he could be a better father if he was happy again with me.

He had it all planned….how to go about this and never let anyone find out why he really left. I know it’s wrong to have a relationship that must be kept secret, but I went along with it because I thought it would be best to help protect his kids, and because I thought it would protect me, too. I didn’t want them to be hurt anymore than they would be when he left. I didn’t want the kids to have to deal with an affair on top of everything else. And of course, after he left and introduced me to them, I didn’t want them to feel they could never accept me or give me a chance. We were going to have additional kids; I thought it would be better for everything in our future, so I kept the secret going.

So 2 weeks ago he told her he was leaving, and this time she didn’t take it too badly. But he was terrified about talking to the kids. And for good reason—they reacted terribly and were understandably devastated. He moved out and was totally distraught over hurting the kids, and he pulled away from me, telling me he couldn’t talk about what he was going through. I spent a pretty lonely week wondering what was going on his head. I was terrified that the pain he endured from his kids' pain was going to make him think he had to go back, that it wasn't worth losing their love to gain mine. (Even though I really believed we could work it all out in time.)

He finally sent me a text message last weekend, telling me he had to go back, that it was too much pain. Here’s where it all gets tricky.

I freaked out—I mean, I thought he was ending all of this by a freakin’ text—and I typed back every angry, hurtful thing I could think of saying. I called him every name in the book. Then I took it one step farther—I told him he’d better tell her everything, because I would be doing so. And when he said to stop and think of the kids’ well being, I told him they were going to know what a disgrace he was. I knew I was going too far, that I would never have done that, but I wanted him to feel as afraid and hurt as I was. I thought he was going to leave me all alone—MY greatest fear—and get off scott free.

He told me 2 days later that he told her everything. He also told me that I made a huge mistake—he said the next part of the text he was sending (he said he ran out out of space on the first one) was that he was going back home that night, but that she was going to move out and he’d stay with the kids until they figured things out to make the transition ok for them. He said I was the one who caused all the problems and that he could never get over the fact that I threatened his kids’ well being. He said that I used his "kryptonite"--his kids--against him and that I couldn't possibly truly love him if I'd sink that low.

I don’t know if the part of that last text is true—for all I know, it’s a convenient excuse, but for some reason I believe him. He said he still loves me and always will, but that it’s over for good and I need to let him go. He said he simply can’t get past what I did. I begged him to reconsider, told him why I got to the crazy point I did, that I would never have carried through on that threat. But it doesn’t matter; the damage was done.

I even sent him a text days later, just saying I missed him terribly, pleaded with him to not give up on us after all we’d been through. I never got a response.

I know many of you will think I have to move on, and I should try to. Reading all this back, I know you will judge him harshly, and probably me. But I love this man…I had an entire future planned, I was going to get married and have babies with him and live the life I’d been waiting for over a decade to finally happen. I never got over him all those years, and I am SURE I never will, in spite of all that's happened. I keep telling myself that if he walks away, then he never really loved me the ways he said he did--all of us on this site have had to endure so many secrets and lies, and we continually ignore that part of our gut that tells us that we are totally seeing the situation wrong and we're total idiots for believing what the MM says. But I also keep blaming myself for getting so close to what I wanted and screwing up so bad in the end. He was going to give it all up to be with me. How could I say such awful things to the person I love the most? What does that say about ME? How can we have gotten so close to our goal and then have it all fall apart?

I just have nowhere else to turn. I need support so bad, because I am hurting so bad. I can’t go back, being in the present is so painful, and I can’t see a happy future without him. My worst nightmare has finally come true.