Can you end an affair if you love him?
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Can you end an affair if you love him?
| Fri, 12-26-2003 - 12:24pm |
Is it possible to end an affair with someone you love, someone you yearn to be with? If you realize that the affair can never bring you the relationship with the person that you want, if you realize that the affair is destroying the relationship that you HAD with this person, can you end it even if you love and want to be with this person???
Has anyone ever done this?

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My EMA lasted 12 years and just recently ended, totally ended less than 4 weeks ago. His W found his cell phone bill with the help of a PI the affair was discovered in Oct. We are both married and I have been for 23 yrs and MM for 37 yrs. I know I was not the 1st affair MM had, I wasn't even the 10th or 20th...(heck I don’t know, probably not the 40th) but I do know I was the last person and I feel that our love was real, our pain in ending the relationship was real, but the relationship itself was totally a fantasy. The relationship was real to him, as I found out, so as long as his W did not know about it.
I cannot tell you the lost, the anger, the sadness, the hopelessness, the fear, the pain, the joy, the love, the happiness...etc.... I have felt toward this man in the past several weeks.
If only I would have listened to my gut long ago, that this MM would never be mine. If only I would have listened to him, as he told me of all of his past affairs, starting at just 6 months after his marriage. He told me of his affairs that was going on through the first four years we were together this past year. He was actually sleeping with his W, his hairdresser, and me at the same time, plus a numerous other women. He was sleeping with his hairdresser every time he got his hair cut, which was every 2-3 weeks for 14 + years.
How ignorant I was to believe him when he said he was trying to be honest with me after all this time because he loved me. I just happened to ask during dinner one weekend we were away together this past spring, "Had he ever been with another woman since we had first been together 12 years prior." Talk about honesty...I thought I would throw up. But I continued to be with him because I loved him and felt he loved me.
Love does not mean anything if it is not pure, open and honest. People who are In-Love or who Love each other are able to share their love with anyone who ask about it. Love is not meant to be hidden in emails, kept secret during phone calls, getaway weekends that no can know about but the two of you, a few hours stowed away somewhere, making love...only to leave in different directions and never know when the next secret meeting will be. Love is something you can talk about openly with anyone.
A relationship between two married people is not about staying for the sake of your children, it is about staying for the sake of your love, your hopes, your dreams and your future, your safety and your security. No matter what MM say - they stay because they want too.
I don't know if your MM has had other affairs, maybe not.... but I guarantee you that he is not innocent, nor will he be if you were to decide to not be apart of his life now. He will find someone to take your place should you decide you don't want to wait until his children are 'out of the house'.
Having an affair does not mean your deeply In-Love...it means you are deeply desperate for something you are missing in your primary relationship, even if the relationship is with yourself.
Barbhart, you are in for the longest, most painful journey of your life with this MM. You deserve better. You deserve to have someone who respects you, loves only you and is willing to spend the rest of their lifes with you.
Take care,
Lillsilly
I want to end this but I have tried already three times. First time after 2 years, then again after 3 years, and more recently one year ago. Each time I feel stronger, but it's still so hard. I love him very much and have for a long time. He now says he loves me too. The holidays have been very difficult without seeing him.
I would like to know if you make it. I had NC (physical) with my MM for 8 months last time, and we still got back together this past Feb. During that time the calls were few and far between.
He says the same as your MM. He is afraid of what other people will think of him, his friends, his children, etc. I wish he could see that people who love you will love you no matter what.
When I read the last post just now I almost cried. I can't believe that someone could be together for 12 years in a situation like this. I know I won't be able to hold out that long.
Thanks for listening.
i thought the same thing when reading the post about the 12 year relationship......when my affair was fairly new, maybe only 4 months old, i was already devastated because we were so in love and yet he was saying he could never get a divorce....at that time, someone told me about a woman they knew who was unhappily married and having an affair with an unhappily married man for TWENTY YEARS.......i remember so VERY VIVIDLY saying to a friend that i COULD NEVER EVEN DO THIS FOR ONE YEAR....i would never make it.....NEVER!!!....i said tolerating this pain and unhappiness and the emotional rollercoaster for an entire year would be insane!!!......before i turned around, it was four years last july.....i still cannot believe how those years passed......and i looked around and realized that before i knew it, it would be ten years, and i could understand how it can even be twenty.......i thought to myself....oh my god.....can you imagine me a 55 or 60 year old woman, still sneaking around, still not having anyone to share holidays with, still worrying what he was doing with his wife, still being upset because he was going on a vacation without me.....at that age.......and yet, i could imagine the time just going and going on like this if no one put an end to it.......the insanity of it all.......and my MM, at that point being about 65 years old, never growing up and finally doing what HE wants with his life, and still needing the approval of his parents, family members, friends, and community members.......the thought of the years passing and finding myself in this situation at that age just scared me into this recent attempt at NC.......i'm choosing life and living, and my MM, admittedly so, is choosing death over life.......
i'm sure you never imagined that your A would last 5 years.......is there any indication that his comment on wanting to get a divorce is sincere?.......or is this something he's been saying for a while but has never acted upon?......even if you think it's sincere, the truth is if he takes no action in that direction, then they are only words......
if you truly want to end your affair, you will find the strength to do so.....as you said, you've been stronger each time you've tried to end it.......i can totally relate to that.....and it really does happen that way, or at least it did for me......only i tried to end it about 20 times in 4 years!!......but i think i've got it this time, because we both finally are on the same page, and think it's time to put an end to the sadness and misery.......maybe for you it will only take one more try.......think about what you want your life to be like in another year, 5 years, 10 years, and the sooner you begin to work towards those goals, the sooner they will become a reality........good luck and keep reading and posting.............
Do you see what I am getting at? If I had never allowed myself to get into the affair in the first place, I wouldn't be sitting here wanting a man to leave and basically devestate his wife. Doesn't matter that he says she is mean, abusive, not right for him, whatever. It is not for me to be the judge and jury of their marriage. The only one who can do that is the married couple!
Yet, here I am, advocating that he leave her, hoping that we can be together, at the expense of two marriages (mine and his), his wife's dreams and reasonable expectations, my husband's desire to have a complete and unbroken family and my chidlrens' desire to have both of their parents present. It all just seems wrong.
Just my thoughts. Not sure what to DO about it, but they are my thoughts....
I have tried to explain to my MM that this is a better way to go, than to be discovered. His family will be devastated if they find out about us.
I feel that when people start an A it's because there is something terribly wrong in their marriage. Most A's are not light, casual flings. Marriage is very difficult and many people work at it without including a third party (as in an A). The need for another person must be very strong in order to risk what we do when we start an A. The marriage is most likely over at this point anyway. It's like ada j said in the previous post. Her MM is now living a dead life. A life with no passion, no hope, no love. I did not want that for my life. I expect and deserve more.
Have a good day and don't be hard on yourself. A's take two people to begin them and to continue them, it's not just us. :-)
Yes, you can end an affair if you love him. I say it's a wonderful way to show your love -it's not being selfish, it's being selfless. I have always said -- even from the depths of depression in those first few months -- that I wouldn't want to leave FOR him -- or him to leave FOR me. If you go back to your marriage, if you have one, and honestly try to see if you can make it survive -- without the affair -- and it doesn't work, then you can move on and get involved in a new relationship. But to leave FOR someone would still not address why you were in an affair. It just masks the issues for a short while. But when the "in love" stage ends, and it always does, you are still faced with the issues that brought you to the point that we are all in.
I was in a 5 mo. affair with a man that I loved very much -- and he loved me as well. Both of us are married, he has 4 kids, I have 2. We live 500 miles away. We haven't seen each other since March and not had a conversation since April. I have emailed him a few times to our "secret" email address but he hasn't emailed back since June. I have had some incredibly difficult times -- depression, anger, missing him so much that I didn't think I'd get thru it. But you know what? Last week showed me what a blessing that ending it has been. Comparing this year to last year --- oh my God, I just can't tell you how much better it is to be out of an affair -- not to be hiding, lying, sneaking, missing him, wanting to be with him so much you can't stand it. Ending it was something I didn't think I'd get through but I'm so grateful that he had the strength to truly end it and not to keep ripping that scab off -- which is what we kept doing for several months, trying to delay the inevitable.
Do I still love him? Yes and I do miss him. I think of him every day -- but not in the painful, agonizing way it was for months. Do I cycle into a painful period? yes -- but it's not as often or as intense and lasts a day or two, not a constant state. For the first time in almost 10 months, I can live with the fact that I probably won't ever see him again -- never lay eyes on him and though I do miss him and will probably have a tinge of sadness in my heart for the rest of my life over missing him, I am at peace with knowing that it's really, really over. He isn't going to call me or email me and I probably won't ever run into him -- barring an unbelievable coincidence that would have to occur for that to happen -- but I can live with that now.
My marriage is on better footing; I'm in therapy trying to figure out why I let myself wander down that slippery slope into a full-blown affair.
I want him to have the same contentment that I feel like I have. And I think that's another way that I love him.
For several months, I didn't think I'd ever be at this stage of my life -- being alive again. I really thought the pain and misery would last forever and that I'd never be my old self again. That part is right...I won't ever be my old self again but I can live with the reality of what my life is now -- WHO I AM NOW. And it's a good place to be -- honestly it is.
Keep pushing through the pain. Focus on this moment, 5 minutes from now..and slowly allow yourself the luxury of looking at a few days, a few weeks, a few months down the road. But in the beginning, it's a moment to moment thing. But it does get better -- I promise.
B
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