Spiraling down.

[LostintheMidwest]

I never thought I'd be here. I've never ever been an OW in the past. This will be the last!!!! And even during the time, I never really labeled myself as such but I figured the first step to recovery is not to live in denial anymore right???

 

This one is like most of them. Started out as friends, became an EA, and then full blown PA for about a year. (I won't bore you with the whole reasoning about how we are soulmates in my eyes, although I do think this... it's probably not healthy to continue to think this way).

 

Several times we have mutually ended it agreeing that we can't go own like this but we always end up in the same place as before.

 

Funny thing is that during all the times that we were physical... I was the one who always expressed to him that I felt awful and guilty. But something changed the last time we were together. Normally when we have sex it's very passionate but he never 'laid with me' or spooned or whatever you'd like to call it. Anyway... We had the most amazing sex (like always but got better each time) where we were holding hands and connecting like never before (almost felt like lovemaking and not just sex). Then we ended up laying together and spooning, and this is where he freaks out on me. Suddenly he tells me that NOW he feels guilty (about the whole spooning episode) and that I've done nothing wrong but that he feels really bad. Which in turn makes me feel bad.

 

After talking about it for awhile, we ended up (again) agreeing that this is wrong and we need to end it. But he still wants to be friends.... which sort have hurt my feelings because I feel like I don't want to be friends anymore. I mean how can someone be friends with someone they loved and lost?

 

I'm just trying to make sense of the whole 'freaking out' on me thing. I don't understand it. Why now?

 

I do want to move on but don't know how. This is so painful!

[YellowShark]

I never thought I'd be here. I've never ever been an OW in the past. This will be the last!!!!

 

That's a healthy way to think. Being the OW is unhealthy psychologically - yet some will disagree with me. I feel if you can be the OW with a MM then you may need to figure out why you can live with being second fiddle, and live a life of deception. Personally that would drive me nuts. I would prefer to be with someone emotionally who I could proudly walk in public with, and show our affection openly... rather than sneak around and have to be deceptive all the time.

 

Funny thing is that during all the times that we were physical... I was the one who always expressed to him that I felt awful and guilty.

 

That's because you two are really doing something that is socially frowned upon. And that's maybe why you feel guilty.

 

We had the most amazing sex (like always but got better each time) where we were holding hands and connecting like never before (almost felt like lovemaking and not just sex). Then we ended up laying together and spooning, and this is where he freaks out on me. Suddenly he tells me that NOW he feels guilty (about the whole spooning episode) and that I've done nothing wrong but that he feels really bad. Which in turn makes me feel bad.

 

So he's ok with banging you like a madman and not spooning with you? That's odd.

 

After talking about it for awhile, we ended up (again) agreeing that this is wrong and we need to end it. But he still wants to be friends.... which sort have hurt my feelings because I feel like I don't want to be friends anymore. I mean how can someone be friends with someone they loved and lost?

 

It is better if you both return to the life before the affair started so that both of you can resume your previous - less complicated - lives.

 

I do want to move on but don't know how. This is so painful!

 

Take this as a lesson learned, and concentrate on single men. There are a lot of great ones out there that can "rock your world" like this man did. Plus they do not bring all the extra uncertainty and painful baggage associated in an affair with a married man.

 

Best of luck.

[Fieldsofgold]

Welcome to LS. I'm sorry for the hurt you're going through. It IS painful, but being here, writing about it, getting input, and reading others' stories, will help you understand and have different perspectives about it - who knows, maybe you will see it in a different light. There will be plenty of others who have experience and wisdom, and can advise you well.

 

I assume the two of you having an exclusive relationship is out of the question, since you never mention that as an option. Are both of you married?

 

You have made a good start by ending the relationship. I don't know how you could "be friends," either. At least not until the hurt heals. I couldn't.

 

As for him freaking out on you, I would guess that he felt he/y'all-as-a-couple were getting too deep emotionally. Maybe it was more emotional connecting than he wanted. Maybe that scared him.

 

(((((hugs)))))

Edited August 22, 2010 by Fieldsofgold

[lilbunny]

So much of this makes perfect sense to me. My MM (current/former who knows!) has always said that it wasn't the sex that made him feel the most guilt, but the emotional side, the spending time together etc and he knew that was what would hurt his wife the most. Perhaps an emotional connection feels like more of a betrayal. I think it is easier to something write off as 'just sex'. Perhaps he felt he was becoming more involved than he intended to and has now backed off.

 

We have always maintained we would be friends no matter happened. I don't imagine it is easy to do and if you feel you can't do that be clear and take care of yourself. I too have done the whole stop and start cycle and it is a tough rollercoaster to be stuck on.

 

Think long and hard about what you want, be clear and stick to whatever it is. It isn't easy, but it is what keeps me sane at the moment.

[LostintheMidwest]

@Yellowshark, most of what you said is true. Thanks for your response.

 

@Fieldsofgold, Thanks for being kind. I think us being exclusive is out of the question because I always felt like it was unrealistic of me to think that he'd actually leave. So I never pressured him to do so. I'm not married.

 

Also, I thought the same thing about him getting scared because things got too emotional and that he got scared.

 

@lilbunny, You could be right. I mean that night, After I had to ask him what he was thinking about (from the look on his face), He told me that it was the whole being comfortable enough with eachother and the holding eachother and 'spooning'. Those are not his exact words but something to that effect. I was just so taken aback by how he acted and what he told me... I was just trying to wrap my mind around the whole thing. I mean I couldn't understand what changed so much that NOW he feels guilty. Shouldn't he have always felt guilty???

 

Anyway, I don't think I can continue to be his friend because I would feel like we are pretending... pretending that there wasn't something there... or pretending that we aren't attracted to one another.

[pureinheart]

I never thought I'd be here. I've never ever been an OW in the past. This will be the last!!!! And even during the time, I never really labeled myself as such but I figured the first step to recovery is not to live in denial anymore right???

 

This one is like most of them. Started out as friends, became an EA, and then full blown PA for about a year. (I won't bore you with the whole reasoning about how we are soulmates in my eyes, although I do think this... it's probably not healthy to continue to think this way).

 

Several times we have mutually ended it agreeing that we can't go own like this but we always end up in the same place as before.

 

Funny thing is that during all the times that we were physical... I was the one who always expressed to him that I felt awful and guilty. But something changed the last time we were together. Normally when we have sex it's very passionate but he never 'laid with me' or spooned or whatever you'd like to call it. Anyway... We had the most amazing sex (like always but got better each time) where we were holding hands and connecting like never before (almost felt like lovemaking and not just sex). Then we ended up laying together and spooning, and this is where he freaks out on me. Suddenly he tells me that NOW he feels guilty (about the whole spooning episode) and that I've done nothing wrong but that he feels really bad. Which in turn makes me feel bad.

 

After talking about it for awhile, we ended up (again) agreeing that this is wrong and we need to end it. But he still wants to be friends.... which sort have hurt my feelings because I feel like I don't want to be friends anymore. I mean how can someone be friends with someone they loved and lost?

 

I'm just trying to make sense of the whole 'freaking out' on me thing. I don't understand it. Why now?

 

I do want to move on but don't know how. This is so painful!

 

Hi LITMW...

 

In bold is a guilt response....I'm gonna be straight up with you because I went through this...even though exDM and me didnot have sex, he still displayed this guilt response if we were to communicate a closeness...I couldn't take it just like you can't...don't.

 

Please don't let yourself go through this...out of all the sitches I read on this forum, this is the one that hits home...he is severely confused...we just had a poster communicate this on a current thread.

 

This isn't about good sex, bad sex, or sex at all...it's about guilt brought on by confusion IMO.

 

How do you go about it...change your mind. Your mind got you into this so your mind can get you out....

 

As I am typing this to you am reminded to take my own words...I need to change my mind about a few things...hey let's go for it!!!!!!!!!! Life is too short...change your mind!

[pureinheart]

Welcome to LS. I'm sorry for the hurt you're going through. It IS painful, but being here, writing about it, getting input, and reading others' stories, will help you understand and have different perspectives about it - who knows, maybe you will see it in a different light. There will be plenty of others who have experience and wisdom, and can advise you well.

 

I assume the two of you having an exclusive relationship is out of the question, since you never mention that as an option. Are both of you married?

 

You have made a good start by ending the relationship. I don't know how you could "be friends," either. At least not until the hurt heals. I couldn't.

 

As for him freaking out on you, I would guess that he felt he/y'all-as-a-couple were getting too deep emotionally. Maybe it was more emotional connecting than he wanted. Maybe that scared him.

 

(((((hugs)))))

 

So true FOG...not to take away from this circumstance, although I see this with R's in general now....don't get too close...hogwash IMO, either step up to the plate and go for it or step back!

[MorningCoffee]

FWIW, here's a fOM's perspective. The spooning was the manifestation in the real world of an underlying truth -- that he and you were forming a deepening bond. It had just come to a point where in my view the deeply moving experience of spooning with you, the woman whom he loves, was just was more than he could bear in that moment. He could no longer take the stress and strain of being in an affair. What he said reflected that feeling.

 

My xMW/AP would listen to me say things like that, and then tell me she wasn't going to act on anything I had just said, that she would simpy hold onto it and quietly sit with it. This was her way of acknowledging the emotional roller-coaster that characterizes affairs -- at least for those whose hearts get involved -- and of saying without saying it, that I was likely to feel differently in a few hours or a few days. And she was always right!

 

So, this was perhaps a signal moment for your MM. But it is also worth exploring further to see what and where it leads.

 

Best wishes for a future of happiness.

[LostintheMidwest]

MorningCoffee, I apprectiate your persepective. It definently helps me understand more of what's going on in his head. To be quite honest, I had never seen him that way before. Atleast not in front of me. He tends to keep things bottled up inside. Which is why seeing him like this was cause for concern.

 

Pureinheart, I agree when you said it wasn't about the sex. He told me that when explaining it to me that it wasn't the sex part that made him feel guilty it was everything else afterward.

[fooled once]

Welcome to LS. I'm sorry for the hurt you're going through. It IS painful, but being here, writing about it, getting input, and reading others' stories, will help you understand and have different perspectives about it - who knows, maybe you will see it in a different light. There will be plenty of others who have experience and wisdom, and can advise you well.

 

I assume the two of you having an exclusive relationship is out of the question, since you never mention that as an option. Are both of you married?

 

You have made a good start by ending the relationship. I don't know how you could "be friends," either. At least not until the hurt heals. I couldn't.

 

As for him freaking out on you, I would guess that he felt he/y'all-as-a-couple were getting too deep emotionally. Maybe it was more emotional connecting than he wanted. Maybe that scared him.

 

(((((hugs)))))

 

 

Sorry you are hurting. FoG has good advice. I don't really think you can be "friends" anymore -- too much has passed and it is obvious you want more and that is just going to keep hurting you

[LostintheMidwest]

FooledOnce, yep. You are right. I don't feel like we can be friends. He feels like we can be friends, which hurts me that he says he can.

 

I think the problem here is that we have both tried to maintain the lie that we were 'just friends' for so long but then things would get emotional and then sex would get involved and it was just too much so we would end things but one of us would end up contacting the other. Usually him contacting me (not that I ever didn't want to hear from him).

 

I think we've been lying to ourselves all along about what was really going on here. Which is probably the reason why I said in the beginning that I never labeled myself as the OW. We never really considered this 'thing' that has been going on for so long as an affair.

 

Everytime we would have conversations about 'us' it was always agreed that we have a 'different kind of relationship'.

 

The last time I seen him, when we had the talk about him freaking out, I said "We'll what did you think was going to happen? It's not like we are just having sex. We actually like eachother. Did you think it wasn't going to eventually get complicated?" Of course I didn't say this in a rude manner but in a way of letting him know that he wasn't crazy for having feelings (whatever feelings he had since he just expressed that he felt guilty and bad for the spooning and cuddling thing.)

 

FooledOnce, I've always wanted more. But I was always rational enough where my logic would come in and tell me that it was not possible.

[2themoon&back]

yes it is very painful and there is no fast track to feel better... i know i have looked !! but do not let his guilt become your problem, you both made choices and you both where ok with them, he is not now so he needs to deal with that not you. the only thing you can do is be careful here and not loose site-- you are still a good person!! no matter how this turns out take care of you ... you will need your inner Strength!