Why is nothing ever easy?
OK, so there I am on Saturday messing around with my iphone only to find a blocked call from xAP (more or labels in a minute). Then on Sunday I discover I can actually listen to the message. And then I unblocked her number and found a text from earlier in the week. Well, so much for blocking.
She's angry with me for deactivating Facebook, blocking her, etc. After all, she's the victim here, why am I cutting off contact?
This lead to text and e-mail exchanges on Monday. I'm half inclined to just put them all here and have you all jump over her and me and leave it at that. But instead I'm going to reflect a bit.
First things first, she's head over heels in love with the new BF, and that's unlikely to change, at least any time soon. Yes, I'm jealous. Yes, it hurts. Badly.
But after I told her about my posting here and talking to other people, she made the very correct, and I think insightful, observation that I had only posted about my lost love, not our lost friendship. She went on to say that I was, and could be again, her best friend, the only person that she could sing for, cry to, dance with, etc. She misses me. Her kids miss me. But we're at different places in our lives. She even made the observation that in the time between BFs our relationship was great because she was just her. A mom, no other entanglements, etc. But, as noted, we are at different stages in our lives. When, at 58 I look at years of loneliness, that's one thing. When at 33 she looks at the same thing, the picutre is very different.
Well, these exchanges made me rethink things a bit, or maybe just take a different look. Were we having an EA? Well, maybe I was. But since we together agreed that my W shouldn't know about it, maybe we were both in on the EA, though maybe for different reasons. And even now, when I suggest that I should tell my W that we spend time together as friends, she says no. Probably correctly, but that alone strongly suggests that this is something different from friendship with the proverbial BFF.
Whatever. One thing she brought up, though, was the most important thing. Our friendship. She and I both saw our relationship - whatever you want to call it - as something that would last years. Our attraction to each other is intense. And in her own way, it is love. In mine, I'm head over heels, and she knows that. No question about how I feel. But I have to respect our differences as well and accept, if I choose to go that route, that we will be friends only, for now, and maybe forever (those last few words were hers). She also knows that if my wife were to die, it would take me only about an hour to ask her to marry me (that's how far away she lives from me).
So the question is whether I go back to looking at this like an A and return to NC, or do I look at it is a friendship that we both need, and find a way to make that happen? Yes, I know, in practical terms, if d-day ever comes, the end result is the same.
Some things she says still hurt me, and I'm pretty sure she's aware of it. Maybe she thinks of it as tough love. She doesn't trust me. (Last night, for example, I called her after work, she had to cut the call short because she was picking up her kid from her ex-s house, and then she never returned the call. So while she might not trust me, I'm also a bit uncertain where things stand.) She doesn't believe that I care about her relationship with her BF, and she won't share much about it because she believes that if she's going through a rough patch, I'll be rooting for me, not her and him. She's right to be skeptical, but the pain it causes me that my best friend can't trust me is as devastating as our 10-day NC.
On the positive side, I started therapy yesterday, and I'm optimistic. And, for the first time in more than 10 years, I've now started sleeping in the same bed as my W. I doubt there will be sex any time soon and that'll be an old/new issue we need to deal with.
So, as I said last night, I gave some thought to disappearing from this forum, with all you writing me off as one of the lost causes. But maybe this helps.
She's angry with me for deactivating Facebook, blocking her, etc. After all, she's the victim here, why am I cutting off contact?
This lead to text and e-mail exchanges on Monday. I'm half inclined to just put them all here and have you all jump over her and me and leave it at that. But instead I'm going to reflect a bit.
First things first, she's head over heels in love with the new BF, and that's unlikely to change, at least any time soon. Yes, I'm jealous. Yes, it hurts. Badly.
But after I told her about my posting here and talking to other people, she made the very correct, and I think insightful, observation that I had only posted about my lost love, not our lost friendship. She went on to say that I was, and could be again, her best friend, the only person that she could sing for, cry to, dance with, etc. She misses me. Her kids miss me. But we're at different places in our lives. She even made the observation that in the time between BFs our relationship was great because she was just her. A mom, no other entanglements, etc. But, as noted, we are at different stages in our lives. When, at 58 I look at years of loneliness, that's one thing. When at 33 she looks at the same thing, the picutre is very different.
Well, these exchanges made me rethink things a bit, or maybe just take a different look. Were we having an EA? Well, maybe I was. But since we together agreed that my W shouldn't know about it, maybe we were both in on the EA, though maybe for different reasons. And even now, when I suggest that I should tell my W that we spend time together as friends, she says no. Probably correctly, but that alone strongly suggests that this is something different from friendship with the proverbial BFF.
Whatever. One thing she brought up, though, was the most important thing. Our friendship. She and I both saw our relationship - whatever you want to call it - as something that would last years. Our attraction to each other is intense. And in her own way, it is love. In mine, I'm head over heels, and she knows that. No question about how I feel. But I have to respect our differences as well and accept, if I choose to go that route, that we will be friends only, for now, and maybe forever (those last few words were hers). She also knows that if my wife were to die, it would take me only about an hour to ask her to marry me (that's how far away she lives from me).
So the question is whether I go back to looking at this like an A and return to NC, or do I look at it is a friendship that we both need, and find a way to make that happen? Yes, I know, in practical terms, if d-day ever comes, the end result is the same.
Some things she says still hurt me, and I'm pretty sure she's aware of it. Maybe she thinks of it as tough love. She doesn't trust me. (Last night, for example, I called her after work, she had to cut the call short because she was picking up her kid from her ex-s house, and then she never returned the call. So while she might not trust me, I'm also a bit uncertain where things stand.) She doesn't believe that I care about her relationship with her BF, and she won't share much about it because she believes that if she's going through a rough patch, I'll be rooting for me, not her and him. She's right to be skeptical, but the pain it causes me that my best friend can't trust me is as devastating as our 10-day NC.
On the positive side, I started therapy yesterday, and I'm optimistic. And, for the first time in more than 10 years, I've now started sleeping in the same bed as my W. I doubt there will be sex any time soon and that'll be an old/new issue we need to deal with.
So, as I said last night, I gave some thought to disappearing from this forum, with all you writing me off as one of the lost causes. But maybe this helps.
Replies
Despair I\'m so sorry you are hurting.
I did notice that you changed your emoticon from horrible to bad. That by itself is a good thing.
I wish there was some advice that I could give you where EVERYONE will be a winner. You know that it would be impossible to for me to do so.
The only advice I can give you is STICK AROUND HERE. ALL OF US HERE ARE IN VIRTUALLY THE SAME SITUATION.
I will say there are some differences between your situation and ours.
Here is where your situation is IDENTICAL to ours.
1) You have dug yourself a huge hole.
2) There is going to be no easy way out of this hole. Whatever you do end doing you will damned if you do and damned if you don\'t.
3) You are head over heels ADDICTED to this girl.
4) In the eyes of your wife and family you are just a guilty as all of here because you INTENDED to cheat.
My only advice to you is to STICK AROUND, YOU WILL BENEFIT FROM OUR INSIGHT.
Hope that helped.
One day at a time. Big hugs.
I forgot to mention that if you do decide to go NC with you AP, the fact that she will never want anything romantic with will you be HUGE BONUS.
Edit.
.............she will never want anything romantic with YOU will be a HUGE BONUS.