back in the land of confusion...

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-26-2004
back in the land of confusion...
18
Sat, 10-23-2004 - 7:43am
Hello again. I dissappeared because I got sucked back in. Had a meeting with MM. Sat right across a conference table from him for 2 hours. I was FINE. I checked him out and decided that I don't want this man to leave his W and have a relationship with me. I think I now have that in my head.

After the meeting we went to lunch and right before we went back we went to a deserted parking lot and he gave me a kiss. Then he dropped me back to the office and he went back home (to refresh anyones memory he lives 3 hours away). We started emailing back and forth, first about work and then about us and we, of course, ended up having steamy sexual conversations on the IM going down memory lane reminiscing about our past IC sessions. Now all I do at work and home is check for his emails and if he doesn't email right away I get upset and if he doesn't email me at home I get upset or if he says something I can read anything into I get upset.

During lunch we talked about he and W going to counseling (which previously he said he was going to do to save his marriage) and guess what? He hasn't even made an appointment or started counseling! We don't talk about his relationship with W but doesn't sound like to me he is working on anything. He is content with the way things are.

To be honest, I don't know how real this thinking is, but I have dropped the whole runaway with me I love you more then the moon and stars attitude and have just been VERY interested in having IC with him...or thinking about it, since it is very hard for us to get together. I have my life here with my kids and I try and keep busy, but he is in my thoughts daily. I want so badly to be with him again. We are, once again, in the plotting stage. It starts out as joking and then ends up reality. Then we have IC and then he leaves to go home, all guilty.

I keep telling myself I am not the one cheating, he is. I don't have a spouse to answer to. I have never met nor talked to his W. I didn't make a commitment to her..he did. If he wants to break that commitment to be with me that is his problem.

I know it is wrong. I am confused. I have moments where I feel all tough and am like "bring it on, Baby! I can handle FWB," but on the other hand I sometimes feel messed up about the whole thing. The distance helps a lot. Us having access to each other at work does not. We chat innocently back and forth all day about work and throw in a few things only he and I would understand (just like little names we call each other). So anyway I go from elated to sassy to sad.

I want to stop

I don't want to stop

...why stop?: I hardly ever see him and he is fun to talk to...

I want to stop:...he is cheating, emotionally and physically...but isn't that HIS problem?

Has anyone ever been through this talking yourself into continuing because you aren't the cheater he is? I know some will say "but it is wrong regardless" and "why would I want to be with someone who could cheat on his W", but there are people on this board who are or have cheated on their spouses and they seem like good people, just confused. Is it okay as long as I no longer have fantasies of him leaving W for me? I am still keeping my eye out for men to date here and I am talking to someone right now, even, that seems interested.

This is all quite maddening. Anyone have any insight? Shake me? Please?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-11-2004
Sat, 10-23-2004 - 12:30pm
I certainly recognize your description of how you vascillate from elated to sassy to sad. And how at times you "know" you can handle it and then at times you feel upset by his lack of interest. I have lived through that vascillation for 1.5 yrs. and have just now decided to step out of it....mostly because I don't think it's healthy for me (also a single woman) to experience and practice loving this way. I don't want to get used to this pattern. I don't want to get used to having IC with a man who isn't there for me when I need him. I don't want to get used to loving a man who doesn't love me back in real ways. I don't want to get used to changing the big and vibrant and passionate love I feel into something that is small and contained and mechanical, which it needs to be in order to live through an affair. I don't want to practice feeling detached and indifferent when I know that I feel so much more. I don't think it's healthy for me and future relationships I hope I will have with men who can love me the way I want them to love me, and I want to be able to love them fully.

The MM has asked too much of me, whether he knows it or not; he has asked me to change myself, change my love, and change the way I live so that he can have access to me when it is convenient for him, so that he can escape the dulldrums of his life and touch something that is alive and free. These are things I treasure, and no one is worth those kinds of significant identity changes, which might change me permanently in ways that I don't want or admire. I don't want to kill the sassy side of me either that can handle compromise and uncertainty in love and relationships, but I don't think that will die by getting out of this relationship. I am a complicated woman who wants to remain complicated and not distorted and twisted like the A was making me.

Value yourself more than you value him. Decide what makes you feel good about who you are, not what makes a little part of you that wants attention feel good.

Best of luck on your road to freedom.

---Golda
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-28-2003
Sat, 10-23-2004 - 2:25pm
N2bf

YOU are a CHEATER, your cheating your children out of a happy healthy mother and family, your no different them that CHEATING MARRIED MAN except for the fact that you don't have a spouse.

If you hand someone a gun they use to murder with under the law your as guilty as they are, so his wifes emotional blood is on your hands as well as his.

If you climb into the stall with a pig you end up stinking just like the pig does, to the nose there is no difference between you and the pig.


THE Bitch From Hell

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-11-2004
Sat, 10-23-2004 - 3:10pm
Wow, perhaps the bitch from hell should relax a little. We are not standing at the pearly gates, my dear, and I don't think you've been appointed the judge.
---Golda
Visitor (not verified)
anonymous user
Sat, 10-23-2004 - 4:17pm
Hiya Need2,

<<
I know it is wrong. I am confused.>>>

I indulged in all kinds of "depersonalization" and "objectification" and it involved a measure of a distorted sense of entitlement, too.

Big words aside, basically what it means is that you make it so you can see a person for less than a living, breathing human being. You make them an object rather than a person with feelings & emotions, likes & dislikes, hopes & dreams, desires & fears just like YOU. And you've been a good girl so you DESERVE this happiness, right?

We do this in order to justify all manner of unpleasantries, but those unpleasantries still belong to us.

We know it's not okay to hurt others and so we find a way to justify to ourselves & others why it's ok for us to be doing just that. `He made the vows not me, I owe her nothing, He chose to cheat etc' are all prime examples of this kind of depersonalisation. It's a deflection of responsibility for knowingly doing something we know full well will cause someone else pain.

The fact of the matter is that it takes a minimum of two to cheat and you therefore hold exactly one half of the responsibility for hurting his wife. He could not cheat with you if you did not permit him to do so, or enable him to do so, or encourage him to do so. By permitting, enabling and encouraging him, you own a full one-half share in his wife's betrayal.

This is all regardless of whether you know her or have any other personal obligation towards her. You always have a basic obligation to treat others with common courtesy & decency and this is not negated by whatever purely selfish needs we wish to have met.

Also examine why it is you believe you deserve happiness more than MM's wife does. Yes, you deserve happiness & fulfillment, Need2. Just remember that MM's wife is also a real live person with feelings & emotions and shares your right to the pursuit of happiness & fulfillment.

It's hard accepting & acknowleding this stuff, Need2, but the buck really does both begin and stop with you.

We're here while you get through this.

Wishing you strength & peace,

Posie

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-28-2003
Sat, 10-23-2004 - 5:04pm
Need is capable of speaking for herself, she asked for a shake and that is what she got, maybe a little whiplash to go with it.




Edited 10/23/2004 8:14 pm ET ET by mefreenow

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Sat, 10-23-2004 - 7:31pm

OK, I've read your post and my 2cents is that you describe deliberate actions on your part that leave me with the impression that you ARE continuing in your affair. I remember justifying my own affairs as "long term relationships". They weren't "affairs" because they went on for more than a year......


My point in this is that an addict will find any reason to rationalize continuing the addiction, even adultery participants.


IF you choose to continue to justify to yourself and anyone else that your clandestine relationship is OK, (as in any conversation or actions you wouldn't do in front of his wife), then please leave this board and go to the My Affair board. Ending an Affair board is intended for those people who have chosen to end their affair and are seeking help in ENDING the affair, not finding ways to continue it.


Mefreenow, I'm surprised at the vociferous and putitive retorts. I'll presume you're having a bad day today and leave it at that........this is a SUPPORT board, NOT an attack board.........


Are we clear here?


cl-nre


iVillage Member
Registered: 09-26-2004
Sat, 10-23-2004 - 10:33pm
Okay everybody, simmer down!

cl, I went to the My Affairs Board last week just to read some of the posts. Once was enough. I am really not interested in reading about where the best place to park with you lover is, thank you. Personally, I wanted to take a shower after reading some of it.

My intention is to stop the A, or I wouldn't be posting here, but as many of you are aware, it is very difficult and I, like many, are grappling with issues. If you read between the lines and as you pointed out cl, I am an addict trying to rationalize the next high. I have all sorts of questions and thoughts running through my head that I feel the need to voice on this SUPPORT board. If I didn't voice what I was thinking and feeling and kept it inside...how can I get any help?

BTW...Notice...I capitalized SUPPORT?

Free, I know you are there to shake me into a whiplashed state and I thank you. I was not hurt by your post but smiled and said, "That's Free!". I also looked back to see if I could find your story of how you became free and I was unable to find your beginnings. Please point me in the right direction. I would like to read about your past struggles because you sure are a light in the fog now!

Free's post wasn't near as brutal as yours, cl. I am more hurt by people suggesting that I go to the My Affair Board. That isn't supportive. That is kicking someone out... giving up on someone who needs help.

I also thank the insight of others who have said...been there...thought that, too. I am just expressing what I am going through to see if anyone felt the same thing. I am searching for answers to the bazillion questions fogging my mind.

I wish it were easy to do NC, we all do. I work with this guy. That is extremely difficult. I am reminded of him on a daily basis. He isn't just going to go away like some of your XMM's or OM's can do, or at least some of you are able to have total NC because he is not part of your 9-5. That is part of the nightmare I got myself into.

I did NC for 6 days and I think I made a big mistake by not telling him that I was going to do it. When we started talking again he didn't seem to be aware that I was even doing it. I guess this time I need to tell him what I am doing and why.

He said he wants to be "friends". I told him all I have heard is you can't go backwards. He said he thinks we can. After having this conversation we ended up making out in a parking lot. Believe me, we had been planning on doing a lot worse that day, so that is a start. Isn't it funny how A's turn you into 14 again? Parking lots? God.

Today he sent me a picture of a guy smoking a crack pipe and he said it reminded him of me. Funny? Offensive? Shouldn't it be offensive? I have been reduced to a crack ho, I guess. He also says he is in love with me but not the "get a divorce and leave my family kind of love." Oh, but he LOVES and he emphasised LOVES LOVES having IC with me...

When I say it all out loud the answer is all so clear, but as you see from my previous post that I am human and have times of irrationality, as do we all. Isn't it good to have these conversations out in the open so we can all look at them and see where we are and where we could be and how we can get out? We are merely comparing notes and learning on a daily basis. Now when I think along the lines I was when I started this post I will look back and go...remember when I thought this way previously and what the others said to me? Then I can go back and take a look and get rejuvinated.

People don't get kicked out of Weight Watchers for eating a box donuts, guys, the others say Yeah, I've done that, too, but I lived with the consequences and learned from my mistake...and there will be more mistakes. Of this I am sure.

Thank you to everyone who had taken the time to respond. I have a feeling you'll be seeing me around....and not on the My Affairs board, either...

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-28-2003
Sat, 10-23-2004 - 11:27pm
Need

You are were you need to be so don't worry about being kicked out, a kick in the A$$ maybe but not out the door.

I got to tell you NEED this guy is not laughing with you he is laughing at you, he is laughing at how easly he can manipulate you and enjoys the power he has over you, can you say narcissist.

He has not the slightest interest in FRIENDSHIP, that is just total B/S and love does not factor in one little bit either it is about power, thats what that pipe was about he is telling your hooked and there is not thing one you can do about it.

Time to start proving this jerk wrong once and for all.

One thing I have learned is when you get to the place were you really want it over it will end, you will end it and there is nothing he will be able to do to stop you , pain or pride will get you there sooner or later.

Your eyes will be open to the truth about how low this USER really is and your going to want to puke at the though that you ever let him touch you.

Maybe I should retire the Bitch before she gets me in anymore trouble. :o}

Free

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-02-2004
Sun, 10-24-2004 - 1:14am
<<<>>>>

AMEN, SISTAH!!!!!


Id

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Sun, 10-24-2004 - 1:20am

Thank you for the clarification....AND the most definitive post I've seen from you as to your determination to end the affair you're in.


No, you weren't "kicked out". And that wasn't my point. People who end their affairs speak of ending, not continuing the

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