Why do you stay?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-06-2004
Why do you stay?
7
Sat, 03-06-2004 - 11:04am
Why do you continue in a relationship with a MM? I guess there are thousands of answers...I guess the next part of the question is why do you stay if you have doubts that it is what you want or if it is good for you or that there will ever be more. How do you accept it for what it is and not hope for more?

I am a SW having an A with a MM I work with. An hour or two a week is about all the time we have alone or can talk. When we are together I light up inside but the other time, most of the time, I question why.

How does it work for you?

Avatar for jennlynnk
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Sat, 03-06-2004 - 2:03pm
Well, i am single woman with a MM also. My reasons are too many and too detailed to ever articulate.....i left my H, his W knows about me, i have recently changed my whole life and lost my best girlfriend, my MM is really my only and closest friend, we love each other, he will accept it when i start to date (that's it in a nutshell LOL). My only advice is to go out and date if you are ready, try hard to involve yourself in other things. If you can enjoy your time with him and keep it in perspective you'll be fine. We all get sad once in awhile, but i think the bottom line is: the positive outweighs the negative. When it no longer does, you go. It's difficult at times, there's no arguing that!

jen

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-17-2004
Sat, 03-06-2004 - 2:59pm
From one another to other (LOL), there are whole lot of reasons we stay in the A we do as many the reasons we are in an marriage. For me my OM bring out a side of me that I have never seen before with my H. Some days I will be here craving for his touch and nobody else will do, even if there is some Don Juan/Fabio type is standing next to me... LOL.

Emotionally I am able to say things and express myslef with him that I never did with H and it doesn't mean I don't love my H. We been together for 25 years and I love him like a friend whom you have spent a lot of years with, but with OM its a little more intangible than that - that instant connection, love and being so much alike - it can be scary.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2003
Sat, 03-06-2004 - 9:39pm
Here's a different perspective...

I'm a MW having an A with a DM. OM loves me, wants me, has made it clear he wants to get married. Why do I stay with my H? That's the big question that I ask myself! H and I have problems, little contact, no sex. You know what keeps us together? Inertia. Comfort. Laziness. My fear of hurting him. His denial of our marital problems. Knowing that the devil I live with may just be better than the devil I might trade up for.

OM is a wonderful, loving, sincere, sexually satisfying man. But I don't want to be with him permanently. I love him. He has given me warmth, intense sex, a great ego boost. But even if I leave H, he will not be my next H. I am tired of being M. The R I have with OM is not enough to make me want to marry him. Heck, I'm not even out of my M with H... Why would I want to get all tied up again???

Sorry if I'm being blunt and thank you for letting me vent.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-10-2004
Sat, 03-06-2004 - 9:45pm

I, too, am a SW, well, divorced. It's hard. I have been in this LDA

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-23-2003
Sun, 03-07-2004 - 1:02pm
I have to agree with all. I am a MW involved with a MM. What i get from him is something i never get from H. He talks to me like a normal person, my H cant talk to me w/o being smart. He makes me feel great about myself, something that i need right now. But I will be leaving my M soon, but he wont be leaving his, which is fine with me. The time i spend with him is mine alone, all i can do is think of him, but when i leave i have to go back to real life. Which really sucks. lol. I luv everything about him, but i dont "love" him. He is my best friend, i trust him with my life and he says he trusts me, something he says he hasnt done in a long time. I have so many reasons why i stay, but the main one is i just really like him. and for me at this stage in my life thats all i really need.


Hot

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-20-2004
Sun, 03-07-2004 - 1:35pm
anotherother, I don't have the answers either. I guess we love them is all. I know what my relationship with my MM caused in my life. I have been married for 26 yrs, not happily. I met MM and I fell completely in love. My H knows and Dec 23 he beat me until I was pathetic, I had bleeding in my skull, not on the brain. I managesd to lose a son because he took sides with his dad (son is 26).My H threatened me that he'd turn the kids to his side and he did 1 of them, he says it was coincedental but BS it happened. I got to see my grandchild up until the day my H beat me and I haven't seen him since, my son won't let me. This makes me hate H. I may have been wrong to get involved with OM but my H knew right where to gewt me too, right in my heart. All of my children are special in their own ways to me but H went after my heart, the son that was special to me. I will never forgive either of them. Try being in my shoes, this son lives next door and I hear the grandbaby outside playing all the time, that hurts. I am currently going through a divorce, H wants me to come back but noway. I will not love another man and be with H. We have lived apart in the same house for 9 months prior to Dec 23. I had left him last May but this is my house and I came back in and told him if anybody left it would be him. I told H I didn't love him but never told him of the OM. He only had suspisions. Well my OM is still with his W. Thats fine but I won't take H back either. I wonder sometimes if it was all worth it. I gave up one life for another. We all make mistakes in life, I love OM but in reality it wasn't worth it. I am still involved with him and I have got to stop someway. Ladies think before you get to deep that you drown. I did. But I love OM but maybe I can cut loose, we'll see. Good luck
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-24-2003
Sun, 03-07-2004 - 7:33pm
My SO is not, technically, a MM, but he does live with his g/f, so same rules apply. Why do I do it? Well, the obvious answer is because he's worth it. I was watching a movie last night and there was a line in it where the guy says to the girl...you make me want to be a better man. The light bulb went on over my head and I said, HELL YES - THAT'S IT!!!!! - that's true of SO. So very, very true. I share many of his ideals, but he puts them into practice. And when I sell my self short, or when I'm at risk of selling myself out, or when I flat out am not trying hard enough to live up to my own ideas of what I am or of what is right or wrong, then he calls me on it and very lovingly challenges me to do better. He will say, that was wrong. But then tell me where I did right, too, and how I can do better. God, he's so good at that. And where we disagree as to whether I am right or wrong on a particular stance, for instance, he seems to at least respect that this is an ideal I hold strongly and I've done my research on. This is a person I could hang with for a long, long time.

As for your other questions....no, I have no doubts that this is what I want. I have no doubts that this is good for me. I do have doubts - quite a damn lot of them, actually - about whether there will ever be 'more' than what I have now. Things are in flux right now in my life though, so 'more' isn't really an option anyhow. But when the time comes, what then? Then I have to ask myself, what is the more that I want? He already does more for me financially and materially that he should or that I ever expected. He does more for me intellectually than I expected (I always knew he was an intelligent man, but damn he's quite brilliant, actually). He helps to make sure that I can take care of myh kids. He helps me with things I can't do around the house, *and* I've caught him folding my laundry twice, now, lol, so he's very domestic, too. So what is it I want? I want nights with him. I want to go away for the weekend with him. I want to live with him. Well, the thing I keep in mind is that with all the working together we do, I really do see him a LOT more than his g/f does. And we are able to get away 3-5 times a week for sex, too. So in that respect, I'm a whole lot better off than most women in affairs.

But it can't be denied that I do want more when the time is right in my life, and I just don't know how that will shake out. The last thing I will do is force a choice; that's hardly fair to the guy. Besides, if I were honest with myself, I'd know deep down that I'd lose that bet anyway. So - I'm learning how to sleep by myself for the first time in almost 20 years. Before long, it won't be so bad, I think. What we have really is wonderful and I would never have traded this opportunity for the world.

Lucky