I'm just not ready to let go

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-20-2004
I'm just not ready to let go
3
Tue, 03-15-2005 - 12:28pm

Hello Everyone,
I found this board on my searching thru the internet looking for anything on extra marital affairs. I don't really participate in message boards so I don't know all of the shorthand verbage, but I have figured out most of it, so forgive me if I type long hand.
I started writing a few times, but stopped because I know what the answer is to my situation. I feel like I need someone to hit me over the head with a 2x4, to knock some sense into me, but I don't think at this point it will make a difference. So why am I writing, I just don't know. Maybe to get it on paper and look at it. I guess sometimes that helps. I'm just a mess.
I've been married for 24 years and have no children. I actually had an affair with my husband. I was single and he was married. He left his wife and children for me. He gave up everything he had to be with me. We definitely have had our ups and downs as most people do thru our marriage but it was more than normal because of how we got together in the first place. Most people thought it wouldn't last. He truly loves me but I'm not too sure that I deserve him.
Way before I met my husband, I had a short involment with a man. He actually is my cousin on my fathers side, he was adopted, so we aren't blood relatives. Things never developed between us. Actually it was 30 years ago that I saw him. I've thought about him thru the years. His name would come up in conversation with my other relatives so somehow he was always a thought. I guess when things would be on the down side with my husband, I'd think of him and in my twisted thoughts, have some fantasy about him. We did have a good time together and it made me feel better to have this fantasy.
Time went on and my husband and I weren't talking much and I got his email address from my other cousin when she sent me an email - he was an attachment, so I pondered emailing him for a few weeks, then I did. He emailed me back a couple of weeks later. I'm sure you know where our emails went to. I found out from him that he wanted to get a hold of me but because he knew I was married, he didn't want to persue it. Anyway, we both found out that we were still interested or curious in the other. He didn't tell me right away that he was living with someone, but by the time I found out, it didn't matter.
About 6 months into our emails, he was going on a business trip and asked if I wanted to join him. We live quite a distanct apart from each other, but his trip was going to be only an hour from my home. I agreed to see him and we spent 3 nights and 3 days together. It was like we knew each other and we really got along well.
We decided to see each other based on the knowledge that we wouldn't leave our current relationships. I thought I could handle it, but I had a hard time with it after he went back home.
We continued to email and I told him how I felt about him. He got all upset with me and said that this could never happen again and that we could only be friends. I told him I didnt' want to keep in touch with him anymore and then he got mad and made some dumb comment like "well if that makes you happy". So needless to say, I continued emailing him for a while, then I told him I couldn't do it anymore. That lasted 3 weeks. I broke down and emailed him again and asked if he wanted to be friends. He asked me what I wanted from him and said he didn't think I could be friends with him. At that time I told him I just wanted his friendship.
Since that point, we've been emailing each other 5 months. Trying to keep the conversation friendly... My husband got really sick last November and we ended up going to doctors and hospitals for 4 months - thinking it was cancer. I would write and tell him about that. In January he called me on the phone because I hadn't emailed for a couple of weeks. I was quite surprised to hear from him. He asked why I was surprised and I told him the last time I talked with him that he wasn't very friendly with me and I made the assumption that he didn't want to talk on the phone anymore. He wanted to know how my husband was. We talked for a while and it ended up where he said it was o.k. to call him once in a while.
I called him once about a couple of weeks later. I was asking him about his health. I guess his HDL was high, etc.. Anyway, he made a comment in a joking way that I was asking him all of these health questions because I wanted to be with him again. I said back to him that he was the one that stopped everything and he changed the subject.
During the 5 months of emails he would tell me he did for the weekend. He knows I like to do alot of the same things so he would tease me about not being upset with him because he was having "fun".. I emailed back and told him that I wasn't upset about anything since he doesn't want to do those things with me and that I can make my own fun. So he emailed me back and said I was being "snarly" and never said that he didn't want to see me again.
So now he is being distant. When he went to Hawaii, I asked him to send me something and he did. I know I'm playing him. I'm not too sure what he is up to. I know we both like the attention from the other. I know he liked the sex. That is probably all it was to him.

I know the answer. No contact anymore. Things between my husband and I are getting better. I have no intentions of leaving him. He is a good man and defintely deserves better of me. We got closer again when he was going thru his illness, but I'm living in a fantasty with this other guy and I know will destroy me.

I'm going to therapy and my therapist knows about the affair.
When I read this over, I look like a terrible person with no morals or consideration for other people's feelings. My husband doesn't know about the affair and I won't tell him. I already made this decision.

I'm not too sure what I'm looking for by posting this. I know I have to break it off with the other man. He just fills a void in me. I need to fill this void a different way. I'm just so selfish. I'm trying to justify this "friendly relationship" based on the fact that he is a relative. My other cousin knows I email him. She knows nothing of what is going on with him.

I read the replys from other people situations and I they make so much sense but I'm just not willing at this time to apply them to me. I'm not looking for a future with this other man. He's been married 3 times and is living with the 4th, and he tells me he is a mess with women.

Thanks for listening.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-01-2004
Tue, 03-15-2005 - 12:41pm

Keep coming here, keep reading..you WILL get to that point. You can get there now and minimize the pain to an a certain degree, or you can wait, keep putting up with this game you're both playing, and have it all come crumbling down at the end anyway.

I think many of us here wish we did the former, rather than keep putting ourselves through this craziness month after month, and for some like me, year after year.

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-28-2003
Tue, 03-15-2005 - 8:21pm

CD

Not to many people around this board look at it in terms of good or bad person, some times indeed often it is troubled person manifesting symptoms from some past nagative events in there life such as child or sex abuse etc...

Your in therapy working on your issues your drawing closer to your husband, sounds to me like your slowly heading in the right direction.

If you can't bring yourself to NO CONTACT right now then do limited contact, end all phone contact limit it to e-mail only contact and don't be to quick to answer every e-mail wait a couple of days or a week to respond.

Your not a bad person.

Free

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-03-2005
Tue, 03-15-2005 - 10:00pm

Cdedriver:

I know that this man is not related to you through blood, but he is your cousin nonetheless, and I guess the thing that strikes me about your post is not that you're involved in an affair, but that it doesn't seem to bother you in the least that he is family. Maybe I'm just uptight or something, but it just seems odd. Nonetheless, it sounds like your husband is a good man, and that this guy isn't as much, so maybe you need to think about that.