It's over

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2010
It's over
31
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 5:18am

So I've been in an affair for over a year. High school girlfriend, hadn't seen her in over 20 years. She left for another married him eventually. I always wanted to contact her over the years, was scared of rejection. One day I just had to do it. Found her and emailed. We sent emails for a while and then met up at a neutral city. BOOM, life changed for good. More emails, huge intensity, hours of phone calls. 'We can't be doing this its all wrong'. 'Can't stop'. Endless letters 5-10 pages each. More meetings, SC, strange, wonderful, amazing. Marriage? Divorce? What about our children, what about our spouses? Agony months and months of agony. Panic attacks and depression - therapy and anti-depressants. I couldn't leave, focus on kids was the only way I could pull myself back to any sense of reality. The only thing I knew I could do that was in anyway right. She was my dream, the only woman I ever wanted. I told her, she was angry, hurt disapointed. She felt used and taken advantage of. She wasn't, we both played our part. We've spent months pulling away after that. Now reached a sort of place of quiet with each other. We won't talk again there will be no electronic communication but there will be old fashioned letters on special occasions. I'm anticipating a flood of grief. At the moment I'm numb, It'll come. I do love her I always will, I have dreamt about her for many years. I don't even know if I was wrong. I wont start another relationship with her unless I'm prepared to go all the way. It may never happen. I wont forget or stop loving her.


So that's the testimony of a MM, XAP, cake-eater! I'm not sure men are welcome on this board. I've found EAS helpful throughout all this. We had to find our own way to

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-20-2009
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 6:07am
from just another woman - you are very welcome on this board. I hope that you'll continue to post and read. Your perspective as a man will be very helpful and I hope that the board contines to be helpful for you, too.
Cheers,
Dee
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-07-2009
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 6:12am

Just~


Of course you are welcomed here. Our doors are open to anyone needing support when they have ended an affair, so hugs and welcome. It sounds like you have been reading here for a while and that tells me you are in pain just as much as any woman that comes here. Also understand, the term cake-eater applies to women just as much as it does to men and many gals have fessed up to it as well, once the fog has cleared.


When old flames

   ~Iddy~ 


iVillage Member
Registered: 12-07-2009
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 6:22am

Just,


Here is the article I was talking about. I had to go back and search for it but it was under the Single OW/OM section. I hope it will help you to understand the pull your A had on you.


**********************************


Old flames, New fire
Rekindled romances have special powers, researcher discovers


By Kim Lamb Gregory, kgregory@VenturaCountyStar.com
August 13, 2006


If her boyfriend's back, you could really be in trouble.


Or his girlfriend.


Research from a psychology professor at California State University, Sacramento, suggests that high school or college romances rekindled years later have a unique power that could be magical for available singles, but devastating for marriages.


"It is completely different from a regular romance," said Nancy Kalish, Ph.D., who has been researching lost loves since 1993.


"First of all, you grew up together," Kalish said. "You formed your identities together. At the heart of it all, these are friendships. It doesn't matter if you had sex. It's not about that."


Kalish began researching the phenomenon of lost lovers after experiencing a powerful connection of her own with a former college flame 13 years ago. Her reconnection didn't last, but she was struck with the force of emotions that swept over her, and decided to look into the psychology behind such reunions. When she realized there was almost no research on the subject, she decided to launch her Lost Love Project.


Kalish's Lost Love Project began in 1993 when she surveyed 1,001 participants, from all 50 states, ranging in age from 18 to 89. The average age of the participants was 35 and each person reconnected with a lost love after at least five years.


What stood out for Kalish when she analyzed the data in 1997 was the success rate of marriages that bloomed from these lost love reunions. Among rekindled lovers who first connected at age 17 or younger, 78 percent of the participants were still together when she analyzed her data in 1997. Of those who first dated when they were 17 or older, 72 percent remained together.


Kalish's investigation theorizes that adolescent lovers literally "imprint" on each other, much as an infant or toddler attaches to its mother.


"People are starting to believe there is another attachment window around puberty when every other species pairs up and has offspring," Kalish said. "What I'm thinking — and this is just speculation — is that we now have a very high divorce rate; as the average age of marriage goes up, we're that much further from that imprinting."


Kalish said she believes there are two windows of opportunity for adolescent imprinting: at ages 17 and younger and ages 18 to 22. Therefore, loves formed in these time frames can be as compelling as an addictive drug if they resurface 10, 20, even 50 years later. "Once these emotions come to the surface, it's an obsessiveness they have," Kalish said. "It's biologically a part of them."


Kalish has discussed her ongoing research on "ABC News," "The NBC Nightly News," "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Maury Povich," "20/20," CNN and National Public Radio. Her work has been reported in USA Today, Men's Health and Self and in this month's edition of Psychology Today.


One troubling trend resurfaced when Kalish conducted a second study in 2004 and 2005, with 1,300 different participants: The number of extramarital affairs that resulted from these rekindled romances had risen from 30 percent in her earlier study to 62 percent. Kalish attributes the increase to the World Wide Web, which makes it much easier for people to contact lost loves through class reunion sites or simply by Googling them.


"I used to have a happy topic," said Kalish, who is the official consultant for reunion.com. "But when people who are married write old classmates and then decide very innocently to send them an e-mail, they don't expect the old feelings to come back and they do."


Because of the force of these feelings, even people in good marriages can crumble under the pressure of a rekindled romance, Kalish said.


"Most of these people are in very happy marriages and all of a sudden this thing comes out of the blue," Kalish said. "People need to get the message that this is physiologically based. They shouldn't touch it if they're married."


But if both partners are single — as Tom Ohmer and Marsha Dunfee were when they reconnected after 28 years — it can be the best thing that ever happened to them. . . .


"It's a different kind of romance," she said. "It's an interrupted love that never got settled, that never really emotionally ended."


Kalish said she believes it would behoove therapists to understand the phenomenon of the rekindled romance, especially when it involves a client who is having an affair with an old flame.


"I am so mad at the therapists," Kalish said. "After these people go to therapists, the average therapist is treating this like an ordinary affair. They are saying, 'Find in your marriage what you found in your lost lover' or 'This is just nostalgia' or 'You don't really know this person.'"


If a rekindled lover having an affair wants to remain in his or her marriage, Kalish said she believes the healing process needs to be treated differently than the average extramarital affair. Both parties need to recognize that the feelings for this old flame may never completely go away; they are part of a person's biochemical hard-wiring, she said.


"You can't get rid of it; just recognize it for what it is," she said. "These are old biochemical things that pop up and you don't have to act on them."


Thousand Oaks therapist Laura Thomas, Ph.D., agrees that rekindled love affairs need to be treated differently, but she said she believes an extramarital affair of any kind usually indicates something missing in a marriage.


"It is my belief that, were the marriages vital and truly alive, one would not look, wander, be curious," Thomas wrote in an e-mail. "They have life right in front of them with their partner."


That said, Thomas said she would never dismiss any person's heartbreak — affair or otherwise — as a midlife crisis, as the human psyche is much more complex — especially the psyche of a person in midlife who may be completely blown from his or her moorings by a rekindled love.


"I treat 'hearts blown open' a little different," Thomas wrote. "In midlife somewhere, people can love with their whole heart — particularly if they have settled into convenient relationships as so many do, so as not to risk the hurt of the heart they may have experienced in a first love in years past. The heart wants to open. That's its nature."


Oftentimes a life milestone such as a retirement or a child leaving home will cause a person to look up an old love, but sometimes the reason is nothing more than a dream the person had about the old lover.


Married people who worry about their spouses running into old loves at high school or college reunions have more reason to worry about their computers. Kalish said more old lovers are reunited over the Internet than through reunions.


Despite the success of marriages of rekindled lovers, people like Sandy Westbrook, 57, of Oxnard urge caution when approaching an old flame. She got burned when she married her high school prom date in 1998, one year after reconnecting with him at her 30-year high school reunion.


"I name this disease 'reunionitis,'" she said. "You get all whipped up and you're excited and feeling good and looking good and if you're not married, it's, 'Hey! These are my peers and they know me and I know them!' But how good do you really know them?"


She and her rekindled lover divorced after three years. He wasn't the same guy, she said.

~ Iddy~

   ~Iddy~ 


iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2010
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 6:52am

Whew! Thank you both for replying so kindly. Iddy I have read Dr Kalish's research and it has been very helpful. I haven't heard of Dr. Thomas and I will look her up. I'm starting to think of applying for a Phd myself I've done so much research into the psychology, ethics and sociology of affairs. It is different, but yet its the same.


I have been in a position to have affairs with co-workers, neighbors etc. Never really wanted to, not enough to do it anyway. An adolecent ex is something different though. I felt as though my greatest fantasy was becoming real. My life was going to change and everything was going to magically be cured. That sounds like hyperbole but It's honestly how I felt. I'm not going permanent NC, years maybe decades from now I suppose it might happen. The affair is over though and so is any romance. We wont be friends. The reality is that we're not likely to be stangers either. Its pretty much a life time thing NC or not.


Thanks again. Where are all the other men? You women aren't having affairs on your own!

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-03-2007
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 7:35am

Not to blow up the wonderful EAS but i am surprised why no one gave you the advice to not contact her again?? Every time you contact her,you will not bring her any joy,rather grief.So stay away from your ex AP if you love her the way you proclaim to.
She is feeling used and taken advantage of, very truely but she needs peace of mind after you've eaten your cake and not committing any further.
If you love her so much,let her go and dont tie her down from finding someone who will love her the way she deserves and one with whom she doesnt feel taken advantage of and used.Since you have read a lot on the EAS,you are completely aware of the fact as to how 'traditional contacts' feel after a complete break up.You have to treat her as a stranger if you want good for her or commit to her the way she deserves.

She is not feeling good about how you treated her so why do you want to keep contacting her? To not let her move on??

Its pretty harsh but you are no novice once you are here and know the repurcursions of your making contact with your exAP.




Edited 1/20/2010 7:35 am ET by heissick
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2010
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 8:09am

Well we've agreed what we've agreed. She has another man and children. We're both hurt we've both 'eaten cake' I suppose. Affairs are not about men abusing women. Women are grown-ups too, capable of doing or not doing, she is anyway. The next contact will be hers, there may not be one.


iVillage Member
Registered: 10-03-2007
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 8:39am

Quite interesting response ! So your ex AP is 'capable' of cheating on her other man ,then why do you still proclaim to love her?huh? She is not faithful to her h ( or who ever the other man is).

Good luck !

P.S. Women here have had A's with men,no doubt but the men were typical cake -eaters and these women were used and taken advantage of :).Those men dont need boards to 'help' them through the grief because they very well knew what they were doing.Very few men who commit to their AP also dont need these boards as like said above,they took action of what was needed to be done.

Unfortunately, you may not be taken well with some posters here .

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2010
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 8:47am
I'm sorry you feel that way 'heissick'.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-20-2009
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 9:41am

oh, I have to disagree with your post. A lot of women on this board feel used and played but not all us - not me. I don't feel my JAM took advantage of me anymore than I took advantage of him. I am not bitter towards my X or any man and I think that men feel and mourn and need healing from an A just as much as a woman. They might not be posting here because men don't seem to handle their grief publicly, as woman do, or maybe they just don't feel welcome in a den of bitter, angry and (self)victimized women.

This poor gentleman is reaching out for healing the same as you are and he deserves the same love, respect and caring that you get. I hope to heck that if some women don't appreciate his insights and perspective that they keep it to themselves. I think he will be warmly welcomed by most.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-19-2008
Wed, 01-20-2010 - 9:45am

I am in EA for 22 years now.I am SM with Mw. I am not writing here for any debate or negative comments about my A but i dont have any control what people will say on message boards.
JM2C to you,justanotherman- "capable of doing or not doing, she is anyway. " this doesnt suite well if you still love this woman.This seems degrading her emotions of love towards you.Many people ( men and women) can fall in love outside marriage but it doesnt make them 'capable' of being given such a label.
my A is not with a woman from past but we met when i was divorced and she was/is still married.and if it didnt work out,i wouldnt say she is 'capable of doing it'.that is judgeing her character.it would be better if she never loved .

i wont go ahead anymore than i have as this is anti affair board but saying that your exAP was 'capable' ,puts her on a cheap stand-- a label for loving you.

well then,you too are capable of going around with another man's wife/gf etc. so that makes you untrustworthy as well.

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