The Vine: January 21, 2015
I know I’m in for a drubbing, but I want to hear from you and your readers.
I’m a single mom of one, having a long-distance affair with a married man, G.
G has two kids at home — one in middle school, the other a sophomore in high school. I know. I know.
Backstory: we met over 20 years ago, back in university. We lived four hours apart by bus or train. We had a brief, intense, long-distance relationship, in the days of paper letters with stamps in the mail and $200 long-distance landline bills on student incomes. We had mind-blowingly good sex and called each other soulmates. (In my defense, I was 23, and I’d never loved anyone so much and had it returned before.) Still, three or four months in, he ended our LDR to go back to the tumultuous relationship with his volatile, on-again, off-again girlfriend who lived in the same city; let’s call her B. She needed him, he said, and he couldn’t take the long distance between us any longer. I was heartbroken. In time, he married B.
About five years later, toward the end of my first common-law marriage, G and I started chatting online, which turned to flirting and “cybersex” (it was the ’90s, sorry) and phone sex. Once I was single again (and let’s face it, although I managed to keep it a secret, the emotional affair contributed to that breakup), it wasn’t long before G and I were having a full-blown affair. Again intense, again long-distance, again just for a few months. I ended the affair when I moved back in with my parents. I then stopped all communication with G after I moved in with my second common-law husband. A couple years into that relationship, I Googled G and learned he’d conceived a son with his wife during the affair. I was horrified at myself, and livid at G for not telling me. I recommitted myself to my marriage, but still I carried a tiny completely irrational torch for G.
Then maybe eight years after we’d last talked, I got a Facebook message from G, out of the blue, wishing me happy new year. He was posted to a war zone. I was pregnant. I responded tersely, cordially, inviting no further contact, and got none besides a note of congratulations. Inside, though, I was a swirl of emotion and curiosity. Some months later, trying to eradicate G from my brain so I could get on with my marriage and impending motherhood, I dumped my entire folder of our paper correspondence, all those old love letters in the recycling bin. (A word of advice to the readers: Don’t do this. I regret it so much. I’ll never get those handwritten letters back. And it didn’t even work.)
I had my kid. Within months, my second common-law marriage, which had been challenging at the best of times, ended. The split was amicable, but I was a mess. After a while, I wrote back to G on Facebook, two years after his original message. He was still married, of course, by his account unhappily, staying for his two beloved children. Friendly banter turned to flirting turned to sexting turned to me on a train visiting him in his city. The sex was as amazing as ever.
That was four years ago. G travels (legit) a lot for work, which has allowed me to see him a few times a year since then for stolen weekends. We text daily. I changed jobs. My work is stressful. Single motherhood is hard. Financially I’m a disaster. I’m overweight. I moved to the same suburb as my ex to facilitate joint custody of our son. I miss my friends and my old neighbourhood. This affair is both one of the worst and one of the best things in my life.
G sleeps alone in a separate room from his wife; he and B tell the kids it’s because he snores. He tells me B insists they keep the household together until the kids are launched because her own parents divorced when she was a teen and it was horrible. Even though she won’t have sex with him (he says — I can’t prove this, of course), she (apparently) refuses to consider an open marriage. (I’d be satisfied with that option for now if it were on offer right now, I really would.)
It’s my belief that living honestly would be better for the kids than this charade. Kids aren’t stupid. They know when things aren’t right between their parents. But I also believe the charade is better for the kids than a nasty, brutish, and drawn-out divorce would be, as his wife would reportedly sue for sole custody if the affair came to light. (She is allegedly jealous, and vindictive.) As a mom myself, I really, truly understand, and share, G’s instinct to protect the children. There are even days, when the financial pressure, lack of backup, and occasional sheer drudgery of single parenting are getting me down, or conversely, when I miss my little dude so fiercely because he’s with his dad and I’m alone, that I wonder whether divorce was really the right choice for my ex and me (it was).
Still, I tell G to stay under the same roof as his kids for as long as he can, so that he doesn’t have to miss them like I do mine. One of my good friends, who divorced a few years ago and whose kids are now the same age as G’s, tells me that if he were still married now, he doesn’t think he could put his kids through a divorce in their tweens/teens either. All this to say that there are good reasons for G to remain married for now. (And that I’m really good at rationalization.) In any case, the decision is G’s to make. I’d never push him to leave before the kids are out of the house, I’d never contact his wife or kids, nothing like that. I make sure I never intrude on his time with his children, nor do we chat while I am engaged with my own kid. And he’s careful, so very, very careful.
But one slip-up…one unlocked phone, one email or chat window inadvertently left open, one friend of his wife’s seeing us together somewhere…and poof, we’re toast.
I’ve tried breaking it off with G a few times over these four years, Sars, I’ve really tried — out of guilt, out of terror over this potentially explosive situation, out of exhaustion. Of course being a secret and being “on the side” sucks. I tell myself I deserve better. I date others, with G’s blessing — I don’t sit around on my free nights just waiting for his texts. But it’s not the same. I love him. I believe it’s true love, and that’s so fucking rare. I loved him 20+ years ago and as hard as I tried to move on — TWO common-law marriages! A kid! — I never got over him. The sex was, and remains, the best I’ve ever had. He was, and still is, a brilliant writer; words have fueled our passion since we first met, and continue to do so today, which has sustained us through all these long-distance situations. The times when we are together…I’m happy. He’s my best friend. I can breathe. I am fully myself with him. He knows and “gets” and accepts me, all of me, as I am. He’s good to me, kind, compassionate. I wish I knew how to quit him. (I know, barf.)
We’re just two ordinary people, trying our best to snatch a few moments of joy in this vale of tears, you know? He’s a lonely, introverted man without a lot of friends he can talk to. I want to believe that I actually am doing him some good by being a friend he can confide in. He says having me in his life is what makes the sexlessness of his marriage tolerable. He’s told me that he’s a better dad and a more patient partner to his wife because I give him an outlet for his sexual frustration. He claims I’m worth the risk and that I’m the only one he would do this for, that he has never carried on like this with anyone else and never would.
Life is short. I watched my father die of cancer when he was just 62. I had a miscarriage. G went to war and some of his colleagues didn’t come back. We’re middle-aged and either one of us could get hit by a bus or drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow. We tell ourselves we’re seizing the day. Just a few more years, we tell ourselves, and then we can be together. But I’ve been reading advice columns for over 30 years, and I know the odds of us ending up together, and happy, are slim at best, and that as much as I do believe what he tells me, he could very well be lying about any number of things and I’d never know. (My gut tells me he isn’t lying to me but I’m sure that’s what every other woman in my situation says too. He lies to his wife and kids. And he lied by omission to me all those years ago, not telling me about his son.)
So…I’m looking for your take on my situation, Sars, and that of your readers, beyond the facile “If he’ll cheat with you, he’ll cheat on you.” Assuming G is being truthful with me (big assumption, I know), is he a horrible human being? Am I? Has anyone been in my shoes? Or his? Or his kids’? (As a kid, would you have preferred your parents end their sham marriage earlier? Or were stability and an intact childhood home better, regardless of their unhappiness? Did their waiting to break up until you’d left home actually hurt you more, somehow?) Have you been in his wife’s shoes? (If you are, where you’re completely uninterested in sex but also insistent on fidelity and on staying “married” until the kids leave the nest, please explain to me why discovering his infidelity would automatically mean a messy divorce? What’s wrong with a civil, totally discreet open marriage if you have no interest in meeting his needs yourself?) What would you do if you were me? Is there any hope at all that this can end well, one day, or am I just fooling myself? Am I doomed to be Ellen Olenska, or Anna Karenina, or [insert literary mistress-turned-second-wife who is reviled by his children]?
Lay it on me, Tomato Nation. I need your brutal honesty and I need your insights.
Ruby Tuesday
Dear Ruby,
There’s a lot of rationalizing and self-justifying here that I won’t bother hammering on you for; the sheer volume makes the point for me, I’d say, and I think you know that it’s mostly horseshit, on his side and yours. And that point isn’t even the point, which is: he’s never chosen you. Not one time. Not. One. Time. He’s let you choose him; he’s split the difference on his marriage vows for you, which he’s happy to cast as a sacrifice and which you’re happy to see as one but which is really the opposite of that, since he doesn’t have to give anything up or make a hard choice; he hasn’t chosen you. And he won’t. Yeah yeah, “once his kids” etc. etc. it’s not happening.
And part of you, maybe most of you, likes it that way. Part of you doesn’t want him around full-time, all yours, 24/7, or enjoys the overheated drama of sneaking around and us against the world blah blah, or likes the power, or wants for whatever cobwebby-corner-of-the-subconscious reason to come in second and feel rejected and alone. Maybe it’s a combination. It doesn’t really matter.
I won’t jump up your ass for contributing to the breakup of his marriage, because I don’t believe in blaming the third party for a married person’s failure to hold up his or her end. (With the understanding that the readers tend to disagree rather strenuously with me on that point.) I won’t tell you it’s baaaaad and you have to staaahhhhhp, either; I guess it is, you probably should, you know that, you haven’t, what else can I really say there. I can’t speak to the teens-with-divorcing-parents question, but while I have literally never heard a friend with divorced parents say they wished their parents had stayed together longer, it’s not your place to advocate anything to do with his kids whether or not it aligns with your self-interest.
But I will say this: maybe he would do it to you if he did it for you — but 1) he’s doing “it” for himself, first and foremost, always; and 2) you’ll never find out in the second place. He’s not going to leave B, not if it presents even a hint of difficulty or privation for him personally, which it always will. He’s not going to pick you, and here’s how you can tell: he hasn’t.
The Age Of Innocence is very tempting to turn to for wisdom and comfort in times of love thwarted, but the message isn’t just how sad it is that Archer and Ellen loved each other, truly, purely, but society crushed their joined heart beneath its form-obsessed kid heel. It’s that love simply isn’t enough sometimes. It can’t conquer all. It hasn’t conquered this mess, and it’s had two decades to try.
You have the answers to all your questions. You don’t like most of them, but that doesn’t change them, or the situation.
Tags: boys (and girls) the fam
I agree with what Sars said. What jumped out at me from your letter is how the way he talks about you – from what you included here – clarifies the function you serve for him: to put it bluntly, sex. And only sex.
“He says having me in his life is what makes the sexlessness of his marriage tolerable. He’s told me that he’s a better dad and a more patient partner to his wife because I give him an outlet for his sexual frustration. He claims I’m worth the risk and that I’m the only one he would do this for, that he has never carried on like this with anyone else and never would.”
Nothing about how you’re HIS best friend, that talking to you and spending time to you makes him a better husband and partner to his wife. Just that you have sex with him, and she doesn’t.
Maybe he does say those other things. But you didn’t include them here, and perhaps that’s telling. Perhaps, underneath the excuses and the rationalizing and the “we’re just two people against the world” stuff, you really know what your value to him is. It’s not that you “can’t” break up with him – of course you can. But you need to want to, and for that, you need to take heed Sars’ words: he’s never chosen you.
I started holding my head in my hand and wailing “girrrrrrlllllllll” about 1/3 of the way through this and it didn’t get better. I don’t have anything to add to what Sars said but I want to amplify something with the weight of my own experience behind it, which is this part: “And that point isn’t even the point, which is: he’s never chosen you. Not one time. Not. One. Time.”
The end. That’s the answer. It’s a sad answer, but it’s all the answer you have. Take it to therapy to figure out why it’s an answer you’re ignoring.
Sars, I emailed you a follow-up asking you not to run this letter, as I ended the affair… Ack!
Yes to everything Sars says. The problem isn’t his wife, it’s that while you have carried that torch for 20 years he has kept you in his back pocket. He says he won’t leave until the kids are out… The once the kids are out it’ll be that he can’t afford the alimony so he can’t leave quite yet… Then if she leaves it will be that he needs to be on his own and “sort things out” for a bit. There will always be SOMETHING because there always HAS been something.
I’m sure he does care for you, but he doesn’t care enough. It sucks, but sometimes that’s how it goes. Also, there is literally zero reason for him to ever rock the boat on this- he gets to have his cake and eat it too with zero repercussions. He gets the respectable family, plus a hot little affair to keep things interesting and so far absolutely nothing bad has come from it. Why would he try to change that?
I’m also sure you care for him, but I also agree with Sars that maybe you’re drawn to the drama of the situation just as much (or more) than you’re drawn to him. I also think that maybe, especially given how you talk about your previous relationships, that you are also drawn to the relative safety of the situation. You get to pine, and have the passion and the fun and all that but without the day-to-day drudgery and bickering over bills and whatnot. Plus, if it does fall apart you are safe in blaming the wife. It couldn’t be you, it will always be ultimately because of her.
I’m not going to tell you what to do either. It probably isn’t the healthiest situation for you, but it is your choice. I would suggest breaking it off and letting yourself be really single for a while, just sitting in that place and getting to know what you really want without distraction. If when the last kid is out of school the answer is still him you know where to find him. If you meet someone great who’s single, fabulous. If you don’t, but find that you don’t want loverboy back either, that’s fine too. But I would just say watch out for yourself here. It’s what he is doing (100%, he’s looking out for himself, guaranteed) so you need to be totally looking out for you, however you decide to proceed.
I swear this isn’t meant to sound Scarlet-Letterish. I SWEAR. But something else jumped out at me: The common-law stuff. There seems, to me, to be a rich vein of refusal to commit fully on
your part, and in turn that leads me to conclude that even IF G totally pulled a romcom ending and left his wife, you’d somehow suddenly find the thrill MIA. I could totally be misreading that; maybe I am. But this relationship reads (IMHO) as about twelve kinds of messed-up.
What Sars said, in re: Infidelity, even though I do contend that while the third party doesn’t get ALL the blame, he/she has to shoulder some, because the married cheater has to cheat with somebody, or it’s just masturbation. No, Ruby didn’t say vows to B. But here’s the thing: Their marriage. THEIRS. For them to work out, separate bunks and all. Not for anyone else to pick apart, especially not someone with a vested interest in doing so. You don’t get to decide that B’s not gonna eat that and grab it off her plate. It’s her plate.
One day, I’d like to hear a dude having an affair use a different line than “my marriage is sexless”. (I mean, it’s not, we all know it’s not.) They all use it; it always works. I don’t know why women are so quick to believe that particular banal falsehood. If a line works, it’ll get used, so why would a fellow need a different line?
Still: one hopes for originality to liven up a hoary old story.
Ruby gets to be the star of her tragic star-crossed movie without ever having to do his laundry, so that’s something…
Have you ever read Dear Sugar, a collection of columns Cheryl Strayed did for The Ruphius website? One is entitled The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us, and it’s basically about all those life choices we didn’t make. It’s the life we don’t have.
You’re not living your life. The one you think you chose but aren’t committed to. You’re in a lifeboat, rowing frantically after your ghost ship. Trying to catch glimpses of it through the fog, sometimes pulling alongside, mostly just scanning the waters for a hint of its wake. You’re convinced it’s got something you need that will “complete” you or finish you or just let you let go of the nagging fear that you’ve made a horrible mistake.
It doesn’t have it. It’s a ghost. A form without substance that lures and entices but cannot, because of its nature, fulfill. It’s the cast of decisions you made, ones you let others make, the shadow of the regrets that come with being a flesh and blood human.
At the end of your life, what do you want to look back on? The things you did? Or the thing you chased?
@Ruby: Did I answer? If so, I don’t know why I didn’t delete it from the queue right then; if not, I didn’t receive the request. My apologies!
Wow. I have to agree with Sars here. If he were going to choose you, he would have already.
I think that the best thing is for those teenagers of his to see a working relationship, or parents working toward having working relationships (whether that is together or with others). What the teens see now is a sham, with people sneaking around. That does them no favors in terms of showing them how they can build their own romantic relationships and confront difficulty (when the relationship isn’t working).
So for me, the excuse that they should stay together until the kids are launched is a convenience for him, and not a true reason not to end it with his wife.
I don’t believe that he isn’t having sex with his wife occasionally.
You feel like yourself with G, and that is an amazing thing. That would be hard to give up. But G isnt’ the only person in the world that you can be yourself with, and I think you would be happier in the long term if you love yourself enough to search for an emotionally-available powderkeg in the sack, who gets you, and can’t conceive of living without you.
There is someone out there who can’t conceive of spending even one night away from you. Find *him*. Easier said than done, but with match.com, meetup groups, etc., the hunt can be exciting and fun!
Good luck! I hope you do leave G. In any case, write back and let us know what you decide. You wrote to Sars because you are having doubts about your choices, so you are considering making a change.
Ruby, I just want to say CONGRATULATIONS for ending it! Good for you!
Broken up or not, GET THERAPY. Find out why you can’t commit, and if you’re serious about staying away from him, get help with doing that, too.
In addition to the other excellent points already here (“he didn’t choose you” pretty much cuts it to the core), I will add: Someone who truly loves and cares about you wouldn’t do this to you. They’d love you enough to insist that you be freed to have a real relationship with someone who can really give you what you want. The fact that he’s not doing that, that he’s content to let you whittle away years of this treatment, speaks volumes.
@Sars: Nope, didn’t get your reply… Oh well.
I have a good friend in a slightly similar situation – 18 years of on/off with a guy she feels she can’t cut off because of their “friendship,” sexual chemistry, and her hope that he will someday love her. She’s dated and been dumped twice by him without ever getting rid of him entirely, even when after the second breakup he married and then divorced another woman. He stays casually in contact with her ostensibly because they’re friends with a history, but also because she’s an available sexual backup when things don’t work out with someone he actively chooses (I’m not suggesting this is done consciously on his part). She knows this, and knows he’ll come around when he wants sex (even used the “my marriage is sexless” line), but a part of her still hopes he’ll grow up enough to make a serious go with her. While I don’t believe he ever slept with her while in a relationship, she has said some of the same things that appear in your letter – he’s her best friend, he “gets” her, he’s good to her, she’s happy when she’s with him, and so on. The problem is, he most likely only thinks of her fondly, when he thinks of her at all.
Good for you for ending it.
Thanks for the support, y’all… We’ve been broken up for going on 2 months now and so far I’ve been making it stick, following a rather metaphorically apt medical scare. (I ended up in the hospital with a GI bleed, took it as a sign, a wake-up call.) My best friend who’s struggling with booze and I have made a deal to talk to each other if she’s wanting to drink or I’m wanting to get back together with G. And I’m pursuing help for my underlying depression, so, y’know, there’s that. (The side effects of my SSRI seem to be subsiding, thank god, because the first few days were horridd.)
@Jen S 1.0, I HEART Dear Sugar. I still miss her column. I bought Tiny Beautiful Things and Wild. I love reading advice columns, I’ve just been really lousy at actually following the advice.
For what it’s worth, writing it all out just a couple weeks before I ended the affair really did help me clarify my thinking and strengthen my resolve. So even though I hadn’t intended for this letter to run, just writing it was really goood. You know?
Understanding it’s a moot point (good on you, Ruby!), I do want to address the question of when a divorce can happen, from a child’s perspective. Because my parents split up when I was 14 and my brother was 17 after my mom decided she had met the love of her life (“We locked eyes and just knew,” she said… so there was that.).
And… yeah, it sucked, but I don’t see how it sucked for us any more or any less than people whose parents split up when they were pre-adolescents, or when they were adults. I’d be really intrigued to hear from other readers if they have differing opinions on this, because to my mind, there’s no *good* time for your parents to divorce.
When my ‘rents divorced, there was literally one other kid in the whole school who had divorced parents (of a student pop of over 500). That is so not the case these days; every kid knows other kids from divorce. There are built in support systems for them. Bottom line, divorces happen every day. If somebody says “I can’t because Reasons”, it basically means “Don’t wanna.”
To all the future Rubys out there:
My parents divorced when I was 23, they should have done it when I was 13. After all was said and done, I was left feeling like my entire childhood was a lie.
So there you go. Lame excuse, don’t buy it.
I’m gonna throw a little anecdata on the burn pile regarding kids and divorce.
When I was around 10, my folks lived apart for a couple years, initially so my dad could attend a graduate program out of state. During that time, my mom had an affair with her best friend’s husband. Although I never saw anything, overheard anything, etc., on some level I knew. Because I was a kid, I saw all the numbers but didn’t do the math; it wasn’t until I was in college that I put it all together and said, “Holy crap! Mom was having an affair with ———-!”
My folks reconciled and are still together. My mom and I talked everything through when I was in my 20s; my dad still doesn’t know that I know, and probably never will.
I admire holy hell out of my parents for gluing their marriage back together. It was hard, brave work. Their history of love, betrayal, forgiveness, and reconciliation is an inspiration to me. But being a kid in the house with them while they were trying to put things back together and act normal–it was strange and uncomfortable, and I often wished they HAD divorced like other people’s parents did. It would’ve been cleaner and easier to watch. Children of divorce are supposed to have complicated feelings. They’re sent to therapy to talk about it. Kids whose parents do the work of making a fragile marriage strong again are just asked, “Aren’t you glad your parents are living together again?” and “Not really” isn’t an acceptable answer. I probably could’ve used some therapy, but no one ever suggested it.
I’m not sure what my point is. Maybe that there’s a whole continuum between staying married and getting divorced, and the points on that continuum are weird, too. Maybe that kids know a lot more about this stuff than their parents give them credit for, and all that knowledge does is undermine their belief that their parents are people of integrity. Maybe that no matter what parents do in their own love lives, their kids are going to grow up and move away and they’ll get over stuff, and the parents have to be grownups and make their own choices; not everything can be “for the children.”
I’m sure my parents’ reconciliation was, on some levels, “for the children.” But that was the wrong reason. It was a weird, confusing time for us, and not necessarily better than divorce would’ve been. (I’m married to a divorced man and know these things can be done in a healthy way.) I do think it was best for THEM, so I’m glad they made that choice, even though it added a little additional angst to my teen years.
In any case, good for you for extricating yourself from this unholy mess. I hope you can find peace and, eventually, love.
Ruby: Attagirl!!!!! Happy for you and hoping for you.
For the other Rubies out there: 1/3 of the way through this letter, I groaned and said, “He just keeps on leaving you. If he really wanted to stay, he would.”
Also apt here is that old maxim: Don’t let someone be your priority when you are just their option.
Re divorce: Like the poster upthread, my parents split when I was 23, when they probably should have split at least 10 years earlier. I would far, far, far, rather they had been happy apart than unhappy together. Furthermore, I knew they weren’t happy, and that made me unhappy to see. I seriously do not know who they thought they were fooling all that time.
@attica: There are sexless marriages. Doesn’t mean all of the claimed ones are, but I think they may be more common than people think. But if both partners are not satisfied with it, it would be better with some sort of agreement – but those are really hard to make, if the communication isn’t working.
@Ruby Tuesday: I’m glad your letter wasn’t deleted, because it’s interesting – and maybe useful – to read both that and the comments. Look at it this way: if your resolve wavers, you have this thread to come to. I do get the “he’s the one that really gets me”-feeling, I do. But if the few snatched moments are not enough for you (and if they had been, you wouldn’t have written this letter), it’s not enough. Sometimes the few moments make life fabulous. These apparently don’t.
What makes you want what you can’t get and not want what you have? Do you know Regina Spektor’s song Fidelity? “I never loved nobody fully.
Always one foot on the ground.” I identify strongly with that one: “And by protecting my heart truly I got lost in the sounds I hear in my mind”. Sometimes I listen to that and feel a strange sorrow.
Good for you for ending it, and for the love of Pete, please re-read your letter and the comments when the urge to reconnect happens. Because it will. Maybe he will actually divorce his wife and want to reconnect. Maybe his youngest will graduate high school and he’ll want to reconnect. But it will be on his terms, because he always got what he wanted before.
I tend to agree with Sars that YOU aren’t responsible for HIM cheating on his wife, but you also don’t get the luxury of pretending that his wife is awful, since all you know is what he told you. And your lover boy wants to continue the affair (ie continue lying to his wife and sleeping with you), so why on earth should he be honest to you about whatever actually keeps him married?
Marriage issues aside, you gave this relationship a try off and on for several decades. The relationship has not worked out and will not work out. Cut ties for good, permanently, for the sake of the children on both sides. They are the ones who have no say in this soap opera that directly impacts their lives, and that’s so unfair.
Ruby, congratulations on making a difficult choice that was right for as many reasons as it was difficult. Truly.
Take comfort in this: It’s more likely than you know, that someone out there who WILL make you a priority, who WILL truly love you, and will also “totally get” you. You don’t have to settle on some Big-Lots version of a relationship; you can have the real thing.
About my commitment issues: my habit of choosing men who don’t choose me is a deeply worn groove going back to my adolescence. I wanted to marry both my common-law husbands, but they didn’t want to marry me, and to add insult to injury, they then went on to commit to others after me. (Yeah, ouch.) So that’s a pattern I obviously need to break, but therapy’s been a bust so far (poor fit, no time, I’m broke, all the excuses). So for the time being, much as I’ve appreciated the well wishes for finding better, truer love in the future… we’ll see how the SSRI works out, but I think I’d best just remain *truly* single for now until I figure out my mommy issues (I actually had a pretty good relationship with my dad but my mother’s another story) and whatever other shit makes me continue to be drawn to men who don’t reeeeallllly want me back.
Another thing about this situation that I didn’t mention, in so many words anyway, is the sunk-costs mentality that sort of creeps in, like, “Well now I’m [whatever age] and it’s too late to start over, and it just can’t be true that this person with whom I’ve had this much primetime plot is not The Guy.” I so so get it, we all do. It can take a while to get to “not The Guy doesn’t mean A Total Waste,” but you will.
Ruby – kudos to you. This must be so horribly hard. It sounds like you’re doing really well in a shitty situation.
I am going through therapy at the mo and it is exhausting. I can totally understand needing it to be the right time – my therapist has asked whether it is for me twice, but now I’ve started I have to keep going. It’s scary but I have to keep going. Maybe give it another year or so and give it another try?
I’m glad the OP chimed back in and has ended the affair. My advice was going to be to break off the relationship and STAY SINGLE until she’s in a different place, mentally and emotionally. It’s cliche, but no one will love you unless you love yourself first and she is not loving herself. She is not treating herself with respect so why would anyone else? It could be a long road to get there, but it will be worth it, and also made shorter if she just focuses on herself and her child.
Good luck Ruby!
Sars — I am 99% sure that the sunk-costs mentality is why my parents haven’t divorced yet. They’ve been married for thirty-four years and I don’t remember them being happy with each other for at least the last twenty. Going through high school with them constantly in flux and moving in and out was excruciating.
Ruby Tuesday — Good luck with the SSRIs and getting therapy — it often takes a few tries to get good ones. I’ve found that it is very important to eat enough when taking the medication — if I’m sick, or skip meals, or just eat some junk food and not real food, then it doesn’t work. I don’t know if that applies to everyone or just my brain being extra screwed up, but I thought I’d mention it.