it's ending as beautifully as it existed
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| Sun, 03-06-2005 - 8:23am |
but i still miss him.
i dated xmm for two years. His W knew the whole time. *he* can barely get himself to call it an A, becuase to him, it was a real R. And that's fair. We were out in the open since W knew. The whole time he and i struggled on and off with would he leave her. i did want to end up with him. He wasn't sure he could. He was married 20 years four days after we met.
He helped me through a bitter seperation and D and he was truly in a R with me. He met my family, we spent part of Xmas morning together. i met his family (though cleverly disguised as a "friend" LOL). Btw, his dad thought i went to high school with their kid. That made for a good laugh.
We have ended the dating portion of our R beautifully and we have saved this wonderful friendship i am very proud of. But i still miss the rest, and it still makes me sad, and on these long weekends without him, or when my mind starts to play with me, well, i wanted to post somewhere. Everyone here alwyas seems so sad (sorry). i am sad, but not in that same gut-wrenching kinda way.
See, we knew we couldn't go on forever. i want to find a full time man, and he can't keep short changing his M. We had to make a decision to bring peace to our lives where it was starting to crumble. And so we/he did. For a few days i was silent, and he only sent a email once in awhile to make sure i was alive. He sent a mean one, but i knew he was angry and lashing out becaus of hurt, and i was right. We have had a few wonderful heart to hearts, about how pieces of us will always be with the other and we both feel we were meant to experience each other. It's great. Our friendship is so comfortable and warm. It's wonderful knowing someone has your back.
We used to spend every saturday night together, from 5pm to 3 or 4am and yesterday was real tough for me. We chatted for aobut an hour and that was it.
The key to this friendship is two things for me. 1- complete acceptance what we had is in the past. That was then, this is now, and he killed what we had then when he chose to stay with his W. No more sex, no more i love you's. Those are in the past only. We can chose what kind of future we have, but we can't go back. Simply end of the story. And 2- Both of us know it has to be this way, we kind of reached this place together, so neither one of us is trying to pull the other back in. Instead we are working on a new friendship and concsiously not trying to make the other one feel in love or miss the old times...we limit our contact and watch our words to make sure we are building a friendship, not anything else.
i am hoping i can post this hear without being bashed or lectured. i lurk here sometimes but most people go straight NC and that will not be our case. i considered it, but once i realized i was capable of being his friend without loving him, i decided i'd do it. See in my mind, once it was over, it didn't matter. He could have never seen me again...he could have been my friend. Not cuz i didn't care, but cuz it didn't matter.....whatever we had would be new and NOT what we had before, and not even close to what i wanted, so it didn't matter. i put no stock or importance into this firendship in the beginning. Now that i have it, well, it is kinda nice. But even if it ended tomorrow i would remind myself of the things that have kept me strong 1-bottom line, he chose her not me, lives with her not me. we've been through his choosing twice so THIS is what he wants...and nothing will cahnge that. i will not hang around "in love" to be rejected over and over and 2-what we had is over and done, he killed it, so whatever we have in the future may be 'nice' but is fairly unimportant to my heart.
His W is supportive of our new friendship, although she has been weirdly okay with the whole thing. i don't know why but i figure it's her perogative to act that way if she choeses. i think it's weird. But what do i know.
i thank you for letting me write such a long post and i am very curious if anyone else here has a nice friendship w/ mm after a long term A.
jen

~Jen~
I have a working friendship (if you can even call it that) after ending our affair 9 months ago. But during those 9 months I went through a plethora of emotions, from hating to acceptance for what we had done,
What you have now is exactly what I wanted with my XMM. And we tried that for a few months, and while it was working with him, I think I was kidding myself that it would work for me. I didn't want to lose him from my life completely, so we maintained minimal contact (occassional online chats, emails), but his personal life (not his marriage) has always been a source of discomfort for me. I've come to terms recently that the only way for me not to be concerned about what he's doing is to get out of his life completely.
I am angry at something he's done right now, and found it easier to keep NC if I stay mad.
But oh how I wish I could be stronger like you, and let go of the anger. For the reasons that 1) he can SEE that I don't need him to be happy, and 2) so I can move past the anger that is still strangling my heart.
i am glad to hear yoru working R is working out. i think that's the only thing that saves he and i. Neither one of us is trying to get the other to change their mind. We're just working together and giving the friendship an honest chance.
pup, i understand most people probably aren't in this place and i can tell you my situation is weird. We live for now, right down the street from each other, we were best friends and out in the open for 2 years. This wasn't a "normal" A if there is such a thing. If that anger is what helps you through than that is what you need to do. For now the friendship works and if it ever ends i'll greive that too, but move on. It's hard, leaving the old R behind, but i'm doing it. Evenutally you realize, it's the only option.
hugs to all
jen
I don't work with XMM, but me and H are friends with XMM and his W. So that's part of the reason I was trying to maintain a friendship out of this. But the last time the 4 of us got together, we were left alone for a few minutes and were in each others arms within seconds. So it's very clear to me that I can't be around him, or at least not left alone with him.
When you have special circumstances such as working together, or having been friends before the A, it definately creates a new dimension to breaking off the A. I hope your friendship works out for you, because in my opinion, that's harder to lose then the love affair.
oh sorry, i meant, we were working together to be friends, not literally working together LOL. sorry. We weren't freinds before either, our A just isn't normal. We were incredibly open with everything from the get go. i always knew if he thought he was leaving her or not. We always knew i deserved more and so did he and his W, that this just had to end, and we both seemed to know, the time is now. make sense? Hm, maybe it's even easier for us we weren't friends before...our friendship is somethign new have to work on to create.
If you had a friendhip you are trying to perserve from before, i would imagine that dose change things.
i understand you are not at the point to be alone. xmm and i can be becuase we hug and it's a friend hug. We don't do other stuff but that we do. All i can say is, and trust me, if you two were to decide "this is too hard, we can't go one like this" and you both decided a NEW friendship had to be born, you could. But i feel if he were trying to "win be back" i wouldn't be able to do this.
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Back a few months ago, as I was trying to find a way to deal with this without completely losing him, I thought maybe I could re-define our relationship into a real friendship. But now, I just don't see that happening anymore. This is the first time I've gotten to this point where I don't even think I could look at him without an anger surfacing. I had always hoped that once we reached the end of our A, that there woundn't be anger or hatred between us. But the love I had for him now looks too ugly to even be there as a friend for him now. Maybe in time, who knows.