A
female
age
41-50,
*el7
writes:This could be a long post but I have to lay it all out.I am a married woman and have been with my husband for 13 years. He was my first serious relationship (I met him when I was 20). About 6 years ago I had an affair and told him I was leaving. He had a nervous breakdown and all his family (who are also my family as I have none) were deeply upset and it affected them badly. After a while I worked out that I didn’t want to be with the man I had met and my husband took me back. I promised him at the time that I would never leave him. Our marriage slowly came back together because I worked really hard at it to make sure it did. Our sex life never came back at all but people tell me that is normal. We agreed, eventually, to start a family and planned to do that around now.All good so far. Until I met a man six months ago who absolutely turned my life upside down. We started off just talking as friends but it progressed into the deepest, strongest love I have ever felt. I feel entirely secure in his arms, I can say anything to him, I trust him completely, I love him in a way that scares me. There is also a huge physical attraction and although full sex came very late in our relationship I now feel, for the first time in my life, that I know the difference between making love and shagging.I just want to be married to this guy and have babies with him. I am still with my husband and I shrink from physical contact and have avoided sex for a while but I know he is going to expect it soon, although not very often. I know that when it happens I will just lie there and think of the other guy and the actual ex will be as bad as it was before.The other guy feels the same way as me and has separated from his wife. Not to be with me but because he feels he loves me more and can’t look his wife in the eye and tell her he loves her.I just cannot get out of my head how hurt my husband will be. It will destroy him if I leave him again and it will destroy his family. I feel so guilty about this that I believe if I leave my guilt will destroy my relationship with the new guy. So I have told the new guy that I love him more and I want to be with him but I can’t leave my husband. He is completely understanding of this. I want him as my friend. I can’t bear the thought of him not being in my life but he says that will never work because of how we feel with each other. We have agreed not to contact each other for a while to see where it goes but I am terrified he will disappear from my life and I won’t even have him as a friend.Should I follow my heart that says I should spend my life with him or should I stay with my husband and work really hard at making my marriage work and start the family I promised him. I promised him I would never leave him and I know it would destroy him and his family. I have told a couple of people in his family that I have met another man and they have told me already how much pain it caused them just hearing that.Help!
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (27 September 2009): seems like dishonesty is the order of the day for you. you will not change, only your lovers will. you have a tendency to demean those valuable and dear to you. one man will never be enough for you, whether it be your hb or your married lover. this thing that you describe with your married man is not love- lust and forbidden fruit, and all the negative connotations associated with an affair. you have not learn anything from your past affair. and i don't think you will in the future as well.you have not only messed up your marriage but your married lovers as well. does he know that you have a tendancy to have affairs, to lie and that your word is not your honour? is this his first affair? if he has to compare his wife to you (leave out the sex bit) how do you compare or is there really no comparison since you will always be second best in the morality section. the transition from lover to wife is a hard one therefore most affairs just frizzle out and no meaningful relationship survives when the starcrossed(??)lovers move from the affair stage to the committed relationship stage. your married lover needs to realise just what he has given up with his wife. maybe he needs to re think his seperation since your association with him will only be short lived. after all maybe he is used to stability, you not. regading your hb- although i feel that he needs his head read to actually believe you are his soul mate, each to his own. what he sees in you no one knows, not even you. well, you just have to suck it up and live with your betrayal. your hb does not deserve to be put through this torture again. although you are not worth it as his wife, seems like two two made a pact after your first affair. so in essence the decsion is made. you will have to just close your legs to all other men and well persevere in this marriage. for better or worse and also in sickness and in health. your history speaks volumes. you know you are what is considered a serial cheater. you will not change. i hope your married man realise this as well. in the end he will be cheated on, his marriage would have ended for what?? a temporary situation with someone who is not monogamous. one good thing will come from this. at least your married mans wife can be free to move on and meet a decent faithful man (unlike her husband). i am assuming your married man also has kids, well he can expect another faithful man to help his wife to bring up his kids. what your married man doesn't realise is this- good decent women are highly sought after - his wife will be snapped up in an instant. now that both you and your married lover can be guaranteed. so therefore him leaving his wife for you actually works in her favour. i am assuming she is also young and well, at least now she can look forward to meeting an honourable man, unlike her cheating husband. as for her husband , watch his world crumble and he will be facing life ALONE. why? beacuse he will soon realise that you are just not worth it. sorry if i am harsh, but your words depict a person who is morally corrupt and someone who does not value marriage and committment. in the end, if you continue in this destructive behaviour you will be ALONE, with friends and family. you will have no support structure (although currently it is your hb's family who act as yours as well). you will only learn when it is too late. and then sadly you will have only yourself to blame. actions have consequences. this goes for both your married lover and yourself.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (26 September 2009): pls be kind to your husband and leave him. you will never really work at your marriage else you would not have had another affair.
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A
male
reader, softtouchmale2003  +, writes (25 September 2009):
 Though many people responding to your question might judge you harshly (after all who wants a cheater?), I have to say that you have put in a great deal of effort for a man who you tried to help, namely your husband.
I do agree with what K c100 had to say. But I think this is an issue you know the real answer to. But I'll take things as they're written and work from there.
First of all forget about your husband for the moment and his family.
You need to look deep inside your heart and know what it is you truly want for yourself in this life. You are not living your life for anyone but yourself, and inasmuch as you would like to devote your heart to others, and apparently have done so for so many people (and for the wrong reasons), you have to focus on your own personal happiness.
You have to love yourself and like yourself and know what makes you happy absent others in your life. If you can't be confident in who you are and what it is you enjoy out of life, then you can't love anyone else.
Second, you have to sit down with your husband and tell him you just can't love him the way he wants you to. And you have to be kind, gentle and caring with him. Simply put he has to know that its unfair to keep the two of you in a marriage where neither one of you is happy.
More to the point its unfair to him to expect you to give him a family when the love that's necessary to make a family thrive, just isn't there.
Perhaps on some level you love him, but its not the same kind of committed, lifelong "in love" love that you need, and frankly, he's been suffering for years.
Even though it may hurt him now, and no matter what he says to you, he has to know that it isn't working out and you want a divorce.
Its as simple as that. I know you made a promise, but if keeping your promise is going to create more unhappiness and resentment, then its not worth following through.
Third, having children with your husband now would be a terrible mistake. If you're prone to affairs, it will distract you from your newborn child and it will make you even more miserable.
Fourth, another man has destroyed his marriage to be with you. And though you finally think you've found true love, you both have agreed to distance yourselves for a reason. You both want it to be real. And apparently you both want this new relationship to endure.
If that is what you truly want, then you and the new man in your life will have to make the transition over time. The reasons why are manifold. Namely, though you feel close and emotionally connected, there are going to be issues of guilt; particularly on your part.
In order to maintain this new relationship, you're going to have to work on it much harder than a marriage, before you can take that final step towards a new marriage and a family with him.
It may not work out. Or, if he truly is so deeply in love with you, he will patiently wait for you to get your own issues worked out.
Finally, I feel terrible for your husband. An emotional breakdown from the first affair seems over the top. He may have known of your insecurities from the beginning, and hoping that love would conquer all, deceived himself into believing you would always be there for him. And that is the root cause of his breakdown. He perhaps ignored some warning signs that even you never realized. And this is one of the things you may end up repeating with your new man.
I don't recommend extramarital affairs. The only exceptions are in the most extreme circumstances such as a spouse is in a coma, or severely disabled or simply disappeared. This is so because its literally an act of desperation. You apparently are at that point, and because of this, you need to be careful with the new man and avoid the mistakes of the past with him.
If a man is honest enough to leave his wife for you because he loves you more, then you have to be careful.
I say all of this because I am concerned that you're using the men in your life to fix something that is personal and can only be fixed by you.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (25 September 2009): seems to me your ladybits are much more important to you than your husband.. Leave him & let him meet someone who will love him & care for him, like he does to u, U sound very selfish, which is fine but just don't go commiting yourself to anyone then no one gets hurt!
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A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (25 September 2009): By proof of your own words you are a dishonest person so you will never really know lasting love. You seem better suited to being someone (many someones) girlfriend not lifemate.
My advice; Date, everyone isn't cut out to honestly share their life with another, leave marriage to other people.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (25 September 2009): Your first affair was the indication to leave your husband and of course you tried. However I think, for the wrong reasons, you went back to him - guilt, blind loyalty, duty? It was only going to be a matter of time before you fell for someone else because your marriage is fundamentally wrong - and you know this. You are using your marriage like a safety net in a way - something to have in case the affair or another man does not work out. This is human nature but its not actually helping you work through your feelings its just keeping you in this holding position. Thing is thats a trap because neither relationship can work under these circumstances. You have done the right thing to have space from your lover - but now its decision time. Staying with a man because you think him and his family will fall apart is absolutely not going to work and if his sense of self and his family is that fragile then there is a problem. You will resent him for ever more. Having been in similar shoes to yourself my best advice is to make a clean break from your husband, get a place on your own and be without either man for a couple of months at least. Your heart will tell you what the next step is after that - and that is the one to take. Life is too short to be unhappy.
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A
female
reader, k_c100 +, writes (25 September 2009):
 I dont want to sound harsh here but I think you have some pretty serious issues with commitment, relationships and men. I really think you need to see a therapist who specialises in that sort of area and maybe you can figure out what you are lacking in your life that you are so desperately seeking in men.
With this new guy - you said that you started off by talking and you have a strong physical attraction. So that attraction will have been there from the moment you set eyes on him - but you made the decision to talk to him and begin a friendship which clearly led to more. As a married woman who is committed to her husband, there would be no way on earth you would have ever spoken to this man because of that attraction. If you were serious about making your marriage work then you would have realised that you were attracted to this man and you would want something more from him, therefore you would have stayed away. But for whatever reason you didnt stay away therefore this marriage is dead - it was dead as soon as you left him the first time and there is no way he should have taken you back.
I'm also sure that this new guy will end up being like that other man you had an affair with the first time - you will eventually realise he is not what you want and you will leave, maybe even going back to your poor old husband. You dont feel guilty about what you are doing to your husband - real guilt would kick in as soon as you even looked at this man and thought "wow he is gorgeous". You would have felt guilty for even looking at him in that way, so if you can happily lay in another man's arms then you dont feel any guilt towards your husband. What you are feeling is regret that you are with the wrong person, regret that you made the wrong decision by marrying your husband.....etc.
It seems to me that you are searching for something (what that is I dont know and will require a therapist to identify it) that you are missing in your life and you are seeking it in a man. Hence why you have had 2 affairs - clearly you want that something more and are trying to find it in another man.
What I am going to suggest is something which I reckon you will completely ignore with the reasoning that you have found "true love" so I am wrong, but at the end of the day it is as simple as this......you cannot be alone, without a man in your life. You are addicted to the feelings you experience in a new relationship and desire to feel like that all the time. You are unable to be happy without a man in your life, you have no idea who you are as a person and you have spent too long in relationships to know what you really want from life.
Therefore the only option for you to ever be happy and stop this cycle of using men and hurting people will be for you to be single, completely alone, for at least 6 months. So you would end your affair - cut off all contact - he is not going to make you happy, just as your husband cant make you happy. Divorce your husband - as the other posters have said you are not responsible for his mental health and you cannot sacrifice your own life through fear of what might happen to another person.
Then you would have to spend a good 6 months completely away from men and relationships. Any man that approaches you, you would just have to tell them you are not interested. I think in these 6 months you would go through a variety of emotions - you would be lonely, afraid, you would feel free, liberated, scared, angry...it would be the hardest 6 months of your life. But when you have only ever functioned as part of a couple, functioning alone is very difficult.
But the importance of doing this would be a number of things:
1. You can never expect a man to meet your expectations if you cannot meet your own expectations of yourself.
2. A man cannot make you happy - you must be happy yourself before a man can come along and make life just that little bit better
3. You have too many confusing emotions left over from past relationships and these need to be dealt with before you can seriously expect to start a new relationship and for it to be successful.
You need to re-focus: what do you want from life? What makes you happy? What do you love doing? You cannot answer with things you do as part of a couple or can only achieve as part of a couple. You need to start looking at individual goals, personal dreams, hobbies you might have given up years ago....all these things that you lose when you become half of a couple.
I used to be sort of like you - I was in and out of relationships, always cheating and then going back to the ex. But I eventually realised that I had no idea how to function outside of a relationship, so I was single for 8 months. In that time I missed out on being with some really really great guys, men I could have loved and had wonderful relationships with. But I came to realise that I had to sort myself out before I could look for a new relationship. Now I have met the most wonderful man, I am happier than I can ever remember and my head is in a great place. I learned to enjoy being alone, I liked my own company in the end and I spent a lot of time doing some serious soul searching. I cried a lot, often not knowing what for. But I think it was just the mess of the last 8 years of my life coming out, after I had spent so long trying to cover up any sadness with new relationships with men. I found that love is not the answer, no-one can bring you the happiness you crave. only you can make yourself happy, and love is just like the icing on the cake.
This has probably been a waste of time for me because I know that right now you believe this man you are seeing is the one, that you want to marry and have babies with so there is no way you will believe that actually he is just the same as the other guy you had an affair with. He is just lust, passion and unfulfilled desires rolled up into one attractive package. Like the other guy, he is just filling a gap in your life, its like putting a plaster over a wound that needs stitching, yes it might close the gap slightly and stop the bleeding for now but eventually it will come open again.
If you really want to do what is best for everyone then you need to get a divorce, leave the other man and be alone. You will be saving lots of people future heartache and you will be doing yourself the biggest favour possible.
I hope this helps!
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A
female
reader, DrPsych +, writes (25 September 2009):
 People make promises they cannot keep and in your case you made a promise that you shouldn't keep for the sake of your husband. I don't understand why you would contemplate having kids with a man you obviously don't want to be with in a marital relationship. He maybe emotionally fragile but it is more cruel to drag out this marriage while sneaking around with men behind his back. I don't think you should leave him because you have met another man but rather you should leave because your marriage is dead and you have cheated twice. Your husband needs to find a woman who loves and respects him for who he is and while he remains with you then that won't happen. It is unclear if your relationship with the new man will work out or not but I think that is irrelevant. Your marriage is over and you shouldn't be making babies to drag them into this whole mess.
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A
male
reader, Illithid +, writes (25 September 2009):
 You're not being honest with yourself. You're thinking the choice is between the husband you don't feel for, or the man you want to be with forever. That "forever" is a lie. Twice now, you've had long-term extramarital affairs. Even if you DID leave your husband and commit to this new man, you would almost certainly cheat on him as well. NO relationship stays passionate forever. NONE. You will come to notice the flaws in your lover and his annoying traits, and over time your infatuation for him will fade as it did for your husband and your last boyfriend. Then your eyes and heart will wander again and you'll be asking whether you stay with your second husband or your Boy du Jour.
I think what you need to ask yourself is whether you are capable of making any sort of commitment.
Love is NOT an endless passion and desire to never leave your man. Love is a promise that even when life sucks, even when the sex is bad, even when you are hurt or betrayed, even when you can't stand to look at him, you made a PROMISE to stay, to work through it, to talk about it. "In good times and BAD, through SICKNESS and health." You're looking for the greener grass over there, but it won't be greener forever, and then you'll want to leave again.
Honestly, I suggest counseling for you and your husband. Get a good therapist for the two of you and put in some time talking about this, all of it. Explain (with the counselor present) what your husband does that bugs you, what he doesn't do that he used to, what you wish he would do but he never did, and all the little things that made you distant. Then be ready to accept your part in this, and the hurt you've caused, and what you no longer do for him, and what he wants. Then work on it, together.
He's stayed by you even after your last affair. Now you are thinking of leaving HIM, as though this is all about how to make yourself happiest. I hate to be so blunt, but you're being very immature and selfish. If you leave him, then you were never good enough for him.
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A
female
reader, Honeypie + ♥, writes (25 September 2009):
 I think you need to take some time an figure out WHAT you really want.
I think the reason you keep stepping ( or have done so twice) out of your marriage is because you don't feel fulfilled in the marriage and maybe with yourself?
If you plan to stay with your husband you two need to figure out what you expect and want from the other - maybe do some marriage counseling. Sometimes the grass just isn't greener on the other side.
If you plan on divorcing him, then do it quickly. I'm sorry, but his mental health is his to take care of. You two wouldn't be the first couple to divorce, it really isn't the end of the world. I think for you to continue to cheat on him over and over is far more damaging for him, then a divorce would be.
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A
male
reader, baddogbj  +, writes (25 September 2009):
 Do you honestly think that you should spend the rest of your life with a man you don't love just because he had a breakdown last time and because his family might be upset? How many lives do you expect to have? Having children with a man you don't love will be a disaster.
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A
male
reader, OzBloke  +, writes (25 September 2009):
The first thing that came to my mind was, make your decision before you start a family!
To be honest, it would seem almost fruitless to stay with your husband if you truly love the new man. What could come of it? I see a long path of resentment. The list of things you could resent him for are too long for me to list, but I am sure well able to make a list yourself.
I am not saying to leave your husband for the new man. I am saying I think you need to really reflect on everything. Maybe weigh the pros & cons. It sounds to me from your post like you'd prefer to be with the new man.
To add my personal perspective: My ex-wife walked out on me two years ago. If I could step back to then, what I would tell her is that she did the right thing. I would have done anything to save my marriage at that time. Two years later we've both moved on and are both happy people.
I hope that is helpful in some way.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (25 September 2009): Sorry your cheating on your husband and to be quite frank Ive very little time for cheaters.
Heres my advice, do your husband a favour, no matter what he has to go through to be rid of you for once and for all then he should do that. And if he is ever asked by you again to take you back he should flat out refuse to even speak to you.
There you go. He deserves better and you know that.
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