A
female
age
51-59,
anonymous
writes:Been having a relationship with a married man for 11 years, I have asked him on numerous ocassions for me and him to be a proper couple.....but even though he says he wants to in the future he can't right now because of the impact it will have on his son and daughter who are now 17 and 19....he's worried that they will hate him for it if he just walked out on their mother....so I asked him when will there be a right time? And he said he didn't know? I guess when they won't be relying on him for everything.... I think personally it's for financial reasons too, as he wiy I'd have to find a place to live....probably sell the house etc.....what shall I do?
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female
reader, aunt honesty  +, writes (10 March 2017):
 He is not going to leave her, he has never had any intentions. You are just a bit on the side, but it is her that he married, her he had children with, and her who he wants the family unit with. You are a bit off fun and he uses words just to keep you sweet. I am sorry but you are not going to be the home wrecker here, you are going to be the one that ends up lonely and heart broken while he has his family.
A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (2 March 2017): "what shall I do?"
Accept the reality that he will never offer you anything more because you have nothing more to offer him; he's getting everything he wants from you so why would he ever consider giving up his cushy life when he stands nothing to gain?
I'm sure that after eleven years his wife is aware and chooses to look the other way in order to maintain HER cushy life; she might even be relieved that she's no longer obligated to have sex with him.
That's what you should do. What will you do? Ignore the good advice you've received and post again in a few weeks hoping to get answers you want hear.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (2 March 2017): For the last 11 years your actions have shown him that he doesn't need to commit to you for you to stay in his life.
He probably thinks you're a great woman! Amazing in fact! However he's doesn't view you as valuable as you are because you have valued yourself through your commitment to him as being of no more value that the mistress, you might be better than his wife in every single way possible but she hasn't settled for a lower status than shes worth.
It's easier said than done but I would throw this relationship in the bin and go find another man because there's a possibility that he will never leave her...
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A
female
reader, Andie's Thoughts +, writes (2 March 2017):
 Nothing anybody says will change your mind because you've stayed for roughly 1/4 of your whole life.You're here to have somebody tell you it's okay, he'll leave his wife, but he won't. Even if he did, you can't trust him because he cheated with you and has dragged it on for over a decade.OP, you need to find yourself a therapist and learn to let go of someone who doesn't want to commit to you and doesn't think you're worth it. You're worth someone loving you and wanting a life with you, but not while you're "stealing" someone else's husband.Take a long look at your life. Why have you tried to take someone else's husband? Why have you held on for 11 years to a man who could never be yours?Honestly, you deserve better.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (2 March 2017): I have the same issue. They don't leave their wives. Too much to lose. And they do not want to change their comfortable lives, especially if they have been married many years. Leaving a wife has far reaching ramifications and repercussions. Even if he DOES love you, he will stay most cases.Obviously you love him. I believe that to be with you for 11 years he must love you too or at least have strong feelings for you. There is no way it is just sexual.However, even so, he won't leave her. You are always going to be setting yourself up for failure. Hanging onto hope. Because that is what you want to believe. That someday love will conquer all. But only in fairy tales. Your knight in shining armour is married to someone else. He cannot rescue you. He comes for you when it is convenient but he is not there for you with his wife. Sometimes the men do love the other woman but will still stay with their wives. It is too much to give up for another woman. Love is irrelevant in this picture. Even if it exists, it changes nothing in full time to meet all the needs you have as a woman. It is very painful to keep thinking you are not worthy of his love. Constantly having to compete for his attention. Feeling so happy in his presence and then completely and utterly lonely when he is with his family and you are forgotten about.He is your Heaven and your hell all in one person. There does come a point where you are in hell much more often than Heaven. And that is likely the moment you will reach your own epiphany. We all must reach this moment of clarity in our own time and then decide to act on it.You are not there yet, not even after 11 years.You want to keep believing him. Hanging on to him. Because you love him. And hope someday he will be yours. But you are only hurting yourself by not seeing reality.Have you had many sleepless nights feeling discarded? Days where you cried all night or all day and wanted to lay in bed unable to face the world? Worrying if he would leave you? Start up with someone else? Feeling unloved? Worthless? Empty? It takes a toll on your self esteem and emotional health. It is emotional abuse what he is doing to you. Loving you and having sex with you and treating you like a wife but all the while withholding his love and commitment from you - keeping you a secret - because he does not want his life to change. Married men can love and paradoxically withhold their love from you. This is what hurts so much. That in one moment they love you and lavish you with attention and the next, you feel forgotten and unimportant. It can be a vicious, repetitive cycle which brings you to your knees. And you tell yourself you are going to leave, but his touch, his smile, another loving word or exciting romp in the bedroom, and you are back to where you started. He is good at manipulating you. But you are manipulating yourself.I suggest you either stay and accept the situation for what it is - realize it will never change - or leave him and find a man who can meet all your needs for a full time, committed relationship. I know, not easy. I am still struggling to do the same thing. But it really is a dead end. No future. You have already been with him for 11 years and nothing has changed. He is going to keep you hanging on for as long as you let him. His wife is meeting his needs and you are meeting the needs she is missing. So he has the perfect woman in two people, keeping him happy. But the question is: ARE YOU HAPPY? Can you live like this? I suspect the answer is NO and this is why you are seeking help.I can tell you no amount of advice is going to change a thing. The clarity you are seeking needs to come from within. And when you are ready, you will find it.Wish you well.
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A
female
reader, mystiquek  + ♥, writes (1 March 2017):
 The kindest thing I can say to you is to leave him and move on with your life. Start a whole new life. Obviously that won't be easy but you are doing yourself a great disservice by staying with a man who isn't going to leave his wife. He doesn't want to leave her, the security of his home. Most married men do not leave their wives for their mistress. You are his excitement, his side dish but he doesn't care enough to leave you and start over. Wake up! He will lose at least 1/2 of everything if he leaves her and most men don't want to start completely fresh. His answers to you are nonsense and meant to keep you at bay, keep you quiet. If he wanted to leave he would have done so a loooooong time ago.
You are living in some kind of a fantasy world if you think you will ever have him to yourself. Do you think so little of yourself that you don't think you deserve a man that is free to give himself completely to you? Don't you get tired of waiting around for him to sneak in time to be with you?? My friend was a mistress for 7 years. He gave her every excuse under the sun and she ate them all up..hook, line and sinker. She kept waiting and waiting..watching all her friends get married, have kids...none of that for her. She even accidentally got pregnant..he gave her money for the abortion. That is what finally did it for her. She couldn't deny any longer that she would never be first in his life.
You are hurting yourself, and hurting innocent people. Not cool. End it. Find yourself. I wish you luck. I hope you'll take off the rose colored glasses and see things for as they really are, not how you want them to be.
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A
male
reader, ihelpyou +, writes (1 March 2017):
Nor should you expect him to! As someone who has seen married women, I would never ask them to ruin their kids lives to be with me full time. As a side piece, I accept what I am to them and don't expect more.
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A
female
reader, celtic_tiger +, writes (1 March 2017):
 What shall you do?
Stop being so selfish.
You have been his mistress for 11 years, yet you still fail to see that it is not just you and him who are affected by your deceit.
There are three other people involved in your relationship, and two of those are children. THEY are the ones who will suffer the most from any divorce/shit hitting the fan.
I disagree with WiseOwl about the kids not being affected - at 17 and 19 they will appreciate far more the lies, and the decitefulness of what you have been doing.
As your relationship has been going on for 11 years - that is over half their lifetimes, the relationship with their father will crumble, because the man they know, everything they have believed in that time will be lies. Everything they think he is now - will forever be tarnished by the fact he was seeing you and lying about it.
All those times he may not have been there for them, and made excuses about working, perhaps he was seeing you? Truth or not, it will make them look back at their childhoods and wonder what was real and what was just a cover up.
The financial thing will also hit them hard. As one is over 18, and the other nearly so, child maintainence will be a pittance, and the likelyhood is that the family home will have to be sold to split the assets. As the children are adult, they will not get taken into consideration.
SO, in order for you to be his main woman, he will have to do the dirty on his wife (not an issue seeing as he has been cheating on her for a decade) but also make his children effectively homeless.
Depending on the value of the property they may not be able to afford to buy a new home.
You seem to have absolutely NO FEELINGS for what those kids might face, its just matter of fact as long as you get what you want.
If a divorce court found out he had been cheating with you for 11 years, and you were named in the divorce papers, then his wife would have every reason to take him to the cleaners.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (1 March 2017): You have the power in this situation. You can just dump him and go for someone else. Give him an ultimatum, if he doesn't give you what you want, tell him you're dumping him!
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A
female
reader, Honeypie + ♥, writes (1 March 2017):
 He isn't going to leave her. He hasn't in 11 years. There will ALWAYS be an excuse. It will NEVER be the "right" time.
He knows you will probably wait around and stick around for as long as he can DRAG you around with empty promises of "we will be together"...
He ISN'T free to offer you commitment. HE is married.
YOU knew that 11 years ago, and you stuck around.
YOU made the choice to be second fiddle to his marriage, wife, and family. He has had his cake and gotten to eat it too for 11 years, why on Earth should he change things now?
Think about it? Financially. A divorce would cost him. Maybe even his kids. He would have to split assets and maybe even support his wife still. It would be EXPENSIVE for him. MORE expensive than staying married and having one or more dalliances with women (like you) who are willing to settle for whatever crumbs they are given.
And then, of course, there is the relationship he has with his wife and kids and the REST of his family. He might LOSE all that too and for what? He has NO certainty that you and he would actually work out if you lived together. YOU might get bored and look for another married man or HE might look for someone else to chat with. After all you BOTH were OK with cheating. What IS certain, the wife is familiar, he gets the benefits of being a family man, and his kids might still look up to him instead of thinking of him as a lying, backstabbing, cheating bastard who has HURT their mom for 11 years.
He might not think what you two have is WORTH losing his family over.
I'm sorry OP you have chosen to be with someone who can't give you ANYTHING as he is ALREADY taken.
So what can you do? Well, you can either suck it up and accept that all you will EVER get from him is what you are getting now. OR, if you want more... realize and accept that THIS isn't the guy to GIVE you this.
Those are the cold hard facts.
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A
female
reader, Guardian wings  +, writes (1 March 2017):
Adding on to my previous comment, as wise owl says, the kids are too old to be the reason, they're an excuse. He's wasted a lot of your youth already. I don't know what you are waiting for.
As for 'real love' the way wise owl put it, I'd have to be honest with you. It isn't real love it's called addiction to chasing someone you can never fully have. Better late than never. Both you and his wife are fools here. You the bigger one because you are fully aware that he's two timing, you lost many years of your youth being the other woman, and aren't benefitted by the legal and social clauses of marriage. The man is making you believe that love is above all else with the intention of taking advantage.
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A
female
reader, Andie's Thoughts +, writes (1 March 2017):
You've allowed him to use you for 11 years, why would he leave? I'm sorry that you think so low of yourself that you'd take scraps. This should have ended 10½ years ago at the latest. I'm also very disappointed youve been trying to take another woman's husband.
Leave, OP. You'd pass away of old age before he'd leave his security with his wife for you.
If you don't leave, he has no reason to change anything.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (1 March 2017): As side-affairs often go, the mistress in the situation plays second-fiddle. The lady on the side doesn't get the full-commitment, that goes to the wife. She has the kids, the legal-papers, and spousal-rights. Unfortunately, she also gets one-half of the no-good cheating-husband in the deal.
The lady on the side gets sporadic visits, broken-promises, lies, missed birthdays, perhaps some gifts, some cash here and there; but primarily it's her job to do most of the giving. He's spread too thin to give too much else. He'll just pacify you with sweet-talk and promises. All he has to do is say "I love you;" and that will put things on hold for awhile.
The wife gets lies, and an unspectacular love-life; but she gets to cash-in when the divorce-settlement comes. She gets to turn the screws, and hopefully full-custody of the kids!
By the way, they're really too old to be too traumatized by a divorce. They'll act-out, but teenagers do that anyway.
He can at least offer you the promise of sex, in exchange for sharing him with his wife. While you give him even more. To include a safe-haven away from his family, and your adoration to boost his ego. The player always gets the bonus prize. Your heart, loyalty, youth, and your loss of better prospects. Then he gets to go home, and pretend you don't exist until he tires of his home-life.
The thanks you'll get out of this is a broken-heart and a lot of frustration. Somehow you've managed to make it work in spite of it all. If it takes forever, you'll wait. Now that's real love!
It has worked for the last 11 years. That's quite an accomplishment. In theory, the point is to continue being a part of a polygamous setup; and he'll stick around as long as you'll have him and agree to it. Your stick-to-it-ness is noteworthy. His wife is a saint or a fool. Maybe both. Nobody could be that naive!
Trust me, it's got little to do with the kids. Although he is probably waiting until at least one of them is 21. I doubt even then he'll leave his wife. Only time will tell.
How much time are you willing to wait? You're very patient.
Lucky for him!
Why should he leave his wife? He's got a tremendous deal. He has two for the price of one. He's the winner!
Sweetheart, you deserve so much better than this!
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A
female
reader, Guardian wings +, writes (1 March 2017):
I'm sorry hun, but it looks like he wants to have his piece of cake and eat it too. He's dragging it on with you on the side with zero intentions of leaving his wife. He said it- I don't know. Which means he will keep having the best of both worlds for as long as you put up with it and stay. He's not bothered about keeping you waiting or wasting your time. For how long do you want to be the 'other woman'?
You give him an ultimatum and stick to it. Make him choose.
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