End of a good friendship (or was it more?)

[pambie]

Hello, this is my first post. I have never had to come to a place like this.

 

I am a married woman. But I had a friend--a male, not a boyfriend, not an affair--though some might have called it an emotional affair--and now it's over. I did not end it. I don't know why it's over. It ended abruptly and without warning. Just gone, no explanation. Three months ago we were e-mailing daily and conversing and meeting and my husband was perfectly okay with this and knew there was nothing sexual going on, But this man lit up my life. And I know I brought him joy; he told me so over and over again, as we met for coffee or drinks, or to take a walk, for two years. We know we were attracted to each other but discussed it openly and decided that is not the path we want to take because we are decent people and that's not what decent people do. But we still could be friends.

 

Now, he has this girlfriend. She is extremely jealous. I went out of my way to befriend her, to reassure her, to make her comfortable that I wasn't sleeping with her man. I just enjoyed his company. He told me so many times that he didn't want to marry her, because they had nothing in common, nothing to talk about, had no common interests, but he didn't want to let her go, either. It was at an impasse. In late November, he went to Germany by himself (he's from there) and told me that part of the reason he was going was to get away from her. She was constantly threatening to move out, constantly harassing him about marrying her and he just didn't want to.

 

Then one day, without warning, she showed up with an engagement ring on her finger. Since that time he has been very cold to me. I never said anything negative about this woman, in fact, I encouraged him to make a decision for her sake, because he wasn't being fair, stringing her along. Either take the plunge or get off the diving board. He was always very close with me and honest about his feelings. For awhile he insisted we were still friends, but suddenly he had no time to meet with me any more, his e-mails became curt and business related, and now he won't even respond to any question that isn't directly related to the school board in which we are both involved.

 

I realize that he has chosen to go with her, which is fine by me, but I never knew that choosing to marry her would mean the end of our friendship. And now I ache, I cry, I feel the loss as acutely as if he had died. I want to start the day by writing an email, as I have every day for two years, I want to see his lovely face and hear his softly accented voice.

 

I married at 25, and never had my heart broken before. I have no coping skills for this. I have nowhere to turn, and no one to talk to. Can someone here talk with me? Help me?

[moimeme]

But this man lit up my life. And I know I brought him joy

 

Unfortunately, what you had was an emotional affair. The fellow is quite right in ending that if he's going to be married, though honestly he should have ended it long before. It sounds as though the feelings you shared were the sorts of feelings that properly belong within the primary relationship.

 

It is very unfortunate that you have lost someone that you cared about, but in the end it will be best for you both and for your marriages. He should, of course, have explained all this to you, but people are often real bad at being honest and this fellow seems to be, too.

 

Eventually, you'll get over him. It will be bad for a while, it's true, but you will recover.

[brashgal]

What has helped me since my husband left is getting more involved with the friends I have, making new friends and keeping busy. You'll just have to direct your morning email elsewhere. How about your husband? He might enjoy getting more mail...

 

Seriously, I know it hurts but it heals with time.

[1151]

I'm not sure if I can help you, but in an indirect way, you helped me. My marriage is currently suffering because my wife has started a relationship similiar to the one that you described that you were in. It was comforting to hear that two people can be friends for an extended period of time without having to be intimate. I hope my situation turns out to be the same. I can only quess that the pain and heartache of losing someone so close to you, whether it is a spouse or a friend,

must feel the same. Then sudden break up of your relationship, as painfull as it sounds, may be the only way that he could consciencely bring himself to marriage.

I'm sure that he will treasure what you had forever...just as you should. If someone was giving my wife this advise, I would want them to tell her to find that relationship with her husband. It must be there somewhere.

 

Good Luck and thanks for sharing your story

[uriel]

I'm so sorry you're feeling this pain. I've been there. I've been completely out of my emotional affair (which lasted 15 months) for three years.

 

I won't pretend that I don't miss him or that the whole end of the affair wasn't incredibly painful. However, I've accepted that I am better off without him -- the confused feelings, the way my relationship with him took away from my connection with my husband, the jealous pangs of him being with other women. It's taken a long time to realize the full implications of why he was in my life and what I had to do to heal myself when he was out of it. That healing went far beyond him. I had to address the unmet needs he was meeting -- the ones I thought I, and my relationship with my husband, couldn't. I'm happy again, finally, because I know we can -- and are.

 

Honestly, I don't think you're being entirely realistic about the nature of your relationship with this man. He was your lover in all but the physical sense. If your husband allowed that, it was either because he was grateful someone was there to give you the attention he doesn't want to or because he was worried enough about losing you that he put up with it or because he'd like the same extramarital opportunities. Don't kid yourself about his being so evolved that he's not jealous of you or his approval of the thing making it emotionally right or respectful.

 

Your special friend's new fiancee is a wise woman. She's not asking him not to have friends who are female. But, she's aware that you are not simply friends. You've a level of emotional connection, attraction, intimacy that goes beyond that. Unless she's willing to have a truly open relationship with him (in the swinging sense of the term -- and even swingers usually reserve that for physical couplings), then she has a right to ask that he save that connection for the two of them. If he loves her and is serious about marrying her, he'll cut off all contact with you and honor the bond with her and their promise of a future together.

 

Their committed relationship is new. He's still exploring what excitement and possibility that can hold with her, albeit mixed with some regret and loss of having to let go of you. You're surprised that he's committed to his girlfriend because he wasn't sharing all the details about their daily life and closeness with you -- I guarantee it. He told you only what he wanted to.

 

Your relationship with your husband is old. You've achieved a level of comfort and a degree of social cement you were willing to undo, but are not satisfied there and are looking around for something outside of that. Because of this difference, the experience of separating is different from you than for your friend. You're going to mourn not only this man but also your feeling that that's all there is. You're stuck with what you already had, which isn't giving you what you really need. To heal from this, you're going to have to address that. Change yourself, your life, and the relationship you have with your husband.

 

Again, this isn't about losing just a friend. It's about losing your surrogate lover. What were you using him to compensate for? Either leave your husband and ask him to leave his fiancee to be together or cut off all contact and do the healing work you need to get on with (or eventually get out of ) your married life. It's the only way.

 

-- uriel

[pambie]

Thank you for your responses, and I hope to hear more from other people who have had this experience. I had never even heard of an emotional affair. I'm sure he hasn't, either.

 

I never felt there was anything missing in my marraige, I was not unhappy. All of my friends have always been male my entire life, and I've found them to be some of the most loyal people ever. My husband knows this, and has never had a problem with this or any of my male friends. This other man was a good friend to me. We could walk and talk about our lives and come away feeling renewed. We e-mailed every day and saw each other a couple of times a month. The four of us went out sometimes, too. My husband liked both of them, and he was fully aware of my friendship with him.

 

Strangely, when I congratulated his fiancee on their engagement, suddenly and unexpectedly SHE poured her heart out to me about how she is not sure she wants to marry him, that they have nothing in common and don't like the same things. I had had heard this all before...from him.

 

One thing that someone wrote that isn't true: that she isn't banning all his female friends. Yes, she is. Just as all of my friends have always been male, all of his friends have always been female. And she has cut out all of his friends, completely isolating him. She is so jealous that she once got upset because he had a picture of a woman in his wallet--which turned out to be postage stamps. He knows it, he's said as much. He swore he wouldn't let her do that to me...but he did. And strangely, I never have felt even the tiniest tinge of jealousy towards her. I would not want a full-time romantic relationship with him, just a friendship. That's all I ever intended.

 

I am not interested in anything illicit. All I want is my friend back. And it probably isn't happening, so I have come here--for support from people who understand, who have been there, who can tell me I haven't done anything wrong-I don't think I have--and maybe make some new friends.

[uriel]

Don't worry -- I don't think people in a forum like this are focused on what's morally right or wrong. They're sharing their experiences with you about what's been healthy or unhealthy for them and others they care about.

 

In my post, I was suggesting that you reassess the situation to consider that it is likely more than you were characterizing, or even perhaps understanding, it as.

 

Do you have the same intensity and degree of regular contact with your other friends, male and female? If one of them were to reduce contact, say to move away, would you react to the degree that you did? In my "friendship," I often stopped to consider questions like this. We wouldn't admit it was more, but we were both much more involved with one another than we really were or would have been with others who were "just friends."

 

Could it be that his fiancee has asked him to distance himself from female friends because she believes she can't trust him? She may have some basis for this, if he became increasingly serious with her while maintaining such an intimate relationship with you.

 

I understand that you've come here to share your experience with others who will understand. I do -- and I'm very sorry for you. I just don't know that sympathy in itself is healing. It's comforting. Those aren't quite the same thing.

 

-- uriel

[moimeme]

You said he 'lit up your life' and that you 'brought him joy'. These are much stronger feelings than one generally feels from 'just friendship'. An emotional affair is an affair in every sense but sex; people exchange confidences with each other and feel joy in each other's company.

[pinkroses]

Back in the mid 90's I was married and after being home with my baby for the first year of his life I needed to go back to work. I started out with a part time job at a coffee shop at a mall, hoping it would work into full time. While I was there I met someone. For several days we were the ones working the day shifts and sometimes we were the only two employees in the store. I am real shy so he was the one who always pulled conversation out of me. He was the one who began asking personal questions and he could tell I was unhappy in my marriage. He was a lot younger than me but he was extremely mature for his age. I was about 30 at the time. I was attracted to him, physically and emotionally, but I had every intention of just being friends. And that's all we ever were the many months we worked together, although we did talk on the phone and I did go see him at work several times. We were both writers too so I would let him read my stuff, which only made us get closer. We did meet for coffee a couple of times and he kissed me a few times. Although nothing ever went further than that, I knew that I would have gone further and I was in love with this person, so I felt guilty of being in an affair, regardless of the level of involvement.

 

Our relationship ended with him suddenly moving away. My husband did find out about him and he thought more was going on, but it only brought out the worst sides in him and made me realize how much I didn't, actually never really loved him. There were many abusive qualities in my marriage too. I did go ahead and get divorced, regardless of whether or not I'd ever see "Jonathan" again, because I had experienced a love with someone I knew I'd never find with my husband.

 

So that's my story.

[Mollyanna]

Maybe it is because of his attraction and love for you that he is distancing himself from you now. Sounds like he has decided to make this relationship work with her and in order to give himself fully to her - he has to let go of the part of his heart that is attached to you. I went through this with a guy for 2 years myself. I worked with him and we couldn't be together because he was my supervisor. But every day we emailed all day and we practically lived at each other's desks. We worked different schedules, so the 1 day a week he was there that I wasn't, we would spend all day emailing still AND talking on the phone. The same went for the day he was at home and I was at work. But we both loved our jobs and decided it was best not to pursue anything romantically. Instead he became my best friend. A year ago, he started dating someone else we worked with who I used to be friends with as well. Now I have lost them both. I started working for a different department and she left the company, so I never see them. I tried to keep in contact with them, but they both cut me off. The reasons I gave you above are the ones that he eventually gave to me. She means so much to him that he would do anything for her - and that meant cutting me out of his life. And after she found out about us, she became uncomfortable with me as well and only rarely do I get an email response from her. I still initiate contact with them, but he only answers business related concerns or helps me professionally if I need something, and she is always too busy to get together or to write. They have each other now and I became too much of a complication. I was coming between them.

 

Heck yeah it hurts! It has taken me a lot of time to cope. But I see that sacrifices have to be made in life and as unfair as it sounds to you, it seems like he has had to sacrifice you. Maybe it is only temporary though. That is all I can hope too.