Electronic Affairs: My Story
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| Wed, 07-21-2004 - 10:24am |
I've kind of avoided posting my "situation" because I don't want to re-live it. Here's a nutshell: I met him when I was 15 and it was absolutely love at first sight. We dated on and off but I always kept him at a distance because my feelings were absolutely too intense. I called him in October of 1986 because I was finally ready to give in to the intensity but he was engaged to be married. He got married in May of 1987 and I got married in June of 1987. So at that point I tucked my love for him away and continued my life.
I divorced in 1993 and re-married to a wonderful man.
In 1996 I was screwing around with "people search" on Yahoo (I was bored at work) and looked up this guy. I emailed him something like "Hey! Is this really you? What the heck are you up to?" At least a month passed and I totally forgot about it when I received an email from him. We started regularly emailing and it became evident to me that he was very unhappy in his marriage and was still in love with me. After about two months of this I ended it. (At that point it NEVER got romantic from my end, just his.) I encouraged him to go to marriage counseling and wished him luck. I guess my send-off email was kind of terse and shortly after I sent him a card apologizing and saying something like "maybe we can send Christmas Cards" or the like. I never heard from him.
Last December I received an email from him. I was pretty excited and eager to re-establish our friendship (foolishly - the thing is we never had HAD a friendship!) So we had intermittant emails. We then started reading a book together and decided we needed to discuss it over the phone. BIG MISTAKE! That medium REALLY escalated things. We then began text messaging and instant messaging and were talking almost every day.
All of the feelings I had bottled up over the years just flooded out! It was actually very freeing to be able to finally acknowledge them. His marriage hadn't improved much (despite counseling, etc.) and mine had gone through some rough spots and that just made it worse.
It became absolutely obsessive. I'm a very controlled person (HELLO!) and the obsession put me completely out of sorts (which is always how he made me feel from the first time I laid eyes on him). I should mention here that we live in different states but we'd tease about flying into each others' cities etc. I need to also state that it was all about love. We talked about this intense, unrealized love. Sex wasn't ever brought up (until close to the end but I'll broach that later). I saw that he was a very needy individual who wanted constant admiration and I filled that need better than anyone ever could!
We never discussed leaving our marriages. I'm in a good marriage which just had gone through some rough times but is completely salvageable. He has kids and that fact alone was enough for me to never even bring up "running away together."
It was my hope that we could just maintain this emotional affair because it was obviously something that we both needed and truthfully for the first time in my life I felt complete. For the first time in my life I wasn't running away from this love I felt for this man. Problem was, he couldn't handle it. He couldn't handle "not being able to act" on the things he was feeling for me. He wanted more.
One evening when I was out of town and he was working late we had a text message flirtation about what sex would be like. As usual I was completely honest and gave him some pretty erotic descriptions of what I'd like to do to him if we ever hooked up. Text message sex! LOL. After, he called me and we had a frank discussion. He asked me, "if we ever really got together would you really do all that stuff?" I told him "There is no way we're EVER going to get together in real life. So why even have this conversation? (But yes I'm quite confident in my abilities)." He then continued. "If we got together and I didn't get physical with you, would you be mad or disappointed?" I re-iterated what I said before. "there is NO WAY we're ever going to REALLY get together." then I turned it around on him and asked him the same question. Guess what he said? "Yes, I'd be mad and disappointed." SO LAME!
Anyway, that conversation was the beginning of the end. I think we could've maintained an emotional affair had we never brought up sex but I think it freaked him out. I'd like to point out that HE brought up sex, not me.
So when he "clumsily" ended it on July 2, as I've alluded to before, it made me SO angry! I mean, I knew it was coming, but everything was fine until he pushed it! We could have stayed in an emotional affair for a long time. Why do men always want more?
Well, I sent him some song lyrics and then I disappeared. I mean *poof* I was GONE. I erased his number from my phone, I erased all text messages, email messages and voice messages. I know about "no contact" and was following that path. Then HE emailed me. Then HE called me. Let's go back to being friends.
Can I do that? I don't know. I think he wants everything. He wants ME to love and adore him and fill his needs but he's not going to reciprocate because it makes him feel like he's cheating.
Let's talk about me. I feel like a volcano erupted from my soul and all of that stuff came shooting out. How can I get it back in? How can I stuff that crazy, insane, intense love I've felt for him since I was 15 back into my sub-conscience where it belongs? Truth be told, I do better when there is no contact. But for some sick and twisted reason I need to know that he still loves me (I know he does) and that he still wants me but has resigned himself to reality: He can't have me. LOL So he'll keep me in his life as a friend.
The thing is that it's not only HIS decision. It seems like we are all abiding by the decisions the MEN are making. Why don't WE take control? Is it because if each one of us had our choice we'd still be in the affair? Is it because we didn't have the courage to end the affairs ourselves even though we knew it was the best path to take? *sigh*
There's my story.
Much love and luck - Mislead
