Is ending an A worse than ending a regular relationship?

[Masoshi]

I hadn't told anyone about my five year long affair with my (former) married co-worker, but I finally confessed it to my best friend when I began NC and the pain was unbearable. I needed someone to listen to me that wasn't him. I needed not to feel so isolated. That was Monday, and it's only Friday, and MM and I have already faltered with this whole NC thing a few times. Without a doubt, this is the most pain I've ever experienced in my life. Emotionally, I'm an utter wreck. I'm sure most of you out there know how I feel, as you've been there, or are currently going through it too.

 

But I have to ask, do you think the pain from an affair is worse than the pain from a normal "break up" of a regular relationship? I try to explain to my friend sometimes why I feel this is so, but I have a hard time figuring out why it is and why the pain is so much worse. Maybe I'm not the right person to make a comparison, as my A was my 2nd "real" relationship (and many will disagree an affair is ever "real", but anyway) after my M which ended two years ago.

 

While I felt a lot of sadness and regret and emotions over the end of my marriage, I was the one who ended it, I was through. I knew the relationship had run its course, and frankly, I wasn't so distraught. It was almost a 10 year relationship that ended, but I walked away more startled that I'd actually gone through with it than feeling any immense pain it ended at all. With the A, I also initiated this "end" or whatever you can call it, by saying I didn't think I could continue on like this, with no real commitments from him. But I've never stopped loving him, I've never felt that passion wane. All I do is sit here and think of all the things we'll never get to do and all the things we'll never do together again, and I'm heartbroken. Everything reminds me of him, I still stare at my phone expecting a text from him I won't get. I find one of his hairs in my house and I burst into tears. I feel weak, all the time.

 

I'm frustrated with my friend too, to some extent. I know she is trying to help me as best she can but I feel her comments that an A isn't "real" are diminishing the very real feelings I had and continue to have. I hear her tell me that breakups are hard and people can end up feeling depressed because of them, but what it ends up sounding like to me is just, "ok, so you broke up, now it's time to move on". How can I just move on like the last five years never happened? I still love this man.

 

I suppose I am mostly rambling, but tell me, would any of you agree that the end of an A is worse than the end of a normal relationship, and if so, why?

[Jane Deaux]

I personally don't feel the end of an A is any different than the end of a normal relationship. I think it's all in the way you feel when the relationship is ending. No matter what kind of relationship it is. If you are still in love with a person, and for whatever reason you have to cut them out of your life, then it is going to hurt tremendously. People would argue, who are in a normal relationship, and get their hearts broken, that they feel just as strongly as you do. And they prob. do. It doesn't matter who ends it and for what reason. If you are in love, and it ends, it hurts.

 

Now, if you are ending an affair because you aren't in love, and you are just tired of the drama, or you are ending a relationship because you have fallen out of love, then sure, there is pain, but nothing like ending it with someone you still have consuming love for.

 

Affair, marriage, 10 year relationship, 6 month relationship, doesn't matter when you are in deep love.

[TurboGirl]

Yes for me it was/is. You can't discuss your feelings and what is happening with anyone because it was a "secret." Now I am in the place where I am super pissed at myself, for allowing myself to go down that road because I was so d*** lonely - my hubby travels and is away for extended periods of time. 3 years ago our relationship was pretty bad, but in the last 6 months it is 1000 times better... and I had started to withdraw from the xMM because believe it or not, I was feeling guilty and wanted to focus on my H, even though he was away constantly.

 

I was supposed to meet with my xMM back in Feb., and that was when I would have "the talk" but I was less than my usual sweet self via a text message one day and "questioned" him. He dumped me via text after 2.5 years. He's a serial cheater and I'm sure found another stupid woman to spend time with.

 

I think it is the pain of realizing that I was such an idiot, and I look at how I would have ruined my life it I kept on. The pain of being treated like a piece of garbage by the xMM too... and I was always so nice to him.

 

This site has literally kept me from going mad. I see that I am not the only one who made mistakes, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to be the best wife I possibly can.

[East7]

From a personal perspective, YES it hurts more !

 

The differences with a normal R is that :

 

- There is a romantic image of the whole relationship because it is an "impossible Love". The feelings and attachement are supposed to be mutual. No one is going because falling out of love.

 

- Compared to a normal relationship, the pain is chronic, it is a roller-coaster filled with happy moments - pain- longing, waiting, hoping. When it ends it hurts like hell because the waiting/longing didn't finish in happy ending.

 

- The ending is followed with "what if-s". A normal relationship gets consumed, an A is always filled with passion from the beginning to the end.

 

- The end hurts more than a normal R because there is a feeling of betrayal - MP picks the spouse over the AP. In a normal R the other person just leaves to be single again (not always but often).

[optomistic_nonsense]

I really like how Sadintexas explained it. That "what if" aspect is what leads the pain train I think. I'm going through this right now too. My MM and his wife just had their first child, and we're sort of in limbo right now, but we've tried "breaking up" once before and it lasted less than 48 hrs, we were both equally a mess. The other thing that I think hurts is that the married person has someone to fall back on, they have someone to physically go home to you know? We don't, in most cases. At least I don't. I try to get angry over the situaion in order to ease the pain. I try to think of things like "What an @$$...his wife just had a baby and he's still thinking of me" or "He's stringing me along, he's stringing me along..." (even though deep down I don't feel that way).

 

I think these types of relationships hurt much more than "normal" relationships

[Carrot2000]

I think it's definitely harder. When you end a "regular" relationship, you get sympathy and support from those closest to you. Your friends take you out, listen to you, hug you when you cry. You may not get as much support when you end an affair because the prevailing thought is that it was a situation you shouldn't have been in in the first place. People are sympathetic, but only to a point.

[20Seconds]

Relationships I have had in the past (including my marriage) have ended one of two ways:

 

I ended it because I didn;t love them or I did love them to begin with but had somehow fallen out of love.

 

The OP ended it because of the above.

 

If you are the "dumpee", it is hard but the hurt is finite. Generally after a period of time you heal and move on. There is closure.

 

I've never had to end a relationship with someone I am still in love with because he is married to someone else and doesn't want to leave her.

 

Far, far more difficult. The hurt seems to go on and on because you have to create the closure for yourself when you still feel emotionally attached to the other person and they still appear to be to you.

 

You have to learn to have feelings but not act on them.

[fooled once]

I hadn't told anyone about my five year long affair with my (former) married co-worker, but I finally confessed it to my best friend when I began NC and the pain was unbearable. I needed someone to listen to me that wasn't him. I needed not to feel so isolated. That was Monday, and it's only Friday, and MM and I have already faltered with this whole NC thing a few times. Without a doubt, this is the most pain I've ever experienced in my life. Emotionally, I'm an utter wreck. I'm sure most of you out there know how I feel, as you've been there, or are currently going through it too.

 

But I have to ask, do you think the pain from an affair is worse than the pain from a normal "break up" of a regular relationship? I try to explain to my friend sometimes why I feel this is so, but I have a hard time figuring out why it is and why the pain is so much worse. Maybe I'm not the right person to make a comparison, as my A was my 2nd "real" relationship (and many will disagree an affair is ever "real", but anyway) after my M which ended two years ago.

 

While I felt a lot of sadness and regret and emotions over the end of my marriage, I was the one who ended it, I was through. I knew the relationship had run its course, and frankly, I wasn't so distraught. It was almost a 10 year relationship that ended, but I walked away more startled that I'd actually gone through with it than feeling any immense pain it ended at all. With the A, I also initiated this "end" or whatever you can call it, by saying I didn't think I could continue on like this, with no real commitments from him. But I've never stopped loving him, I've never felt that passion wane. All I do is sit here and think of all the things we'll never get to do and all the things we'll never do together again, and I'm heartbroken. Everything reminds me of him, I still stare at my phone expecting a text from him I won't get. I find one of his hairs in my house and I burst into tears. I feel weak, all the time.

 

I'm frustrated with my friend too, to some extent. I know she is trying to help me as best she can but I feel her comments that an A isn't "real" are diminishing the very real feelings I had and continue to have. I hear her tell me that breakups are hard and people can end up feeling depressed because of them, but what it ends up sounding like to me is just, "ok, so you broke up, now it's time to move on". How can I just move on like the last five years never happened? I still love this man.

 

I suppose I am mostly rambling, but tell me, would any of you agree that the end of an A is worse than the end of a normal relationship, and if so, why?

 

I think the pain of ending a marriage is more 'hurtful' than an affair. To ME, a marriage is more full of hopes, dreams, planning, etc. An affair is a secret relationship - full of dishonesty, sneaky behavior and not a lot of respect.

 

Marriage - FOR ME - is the ending of a 'dream', a partnership - and many times children are caught up in the hurt. Nothing worse for a parent to know they have caused hurt in their child. No affair break up will ever, IMHO, compare to that.

[Silly_Girl]

Having had a marriage end, and a long-term relationship end, and an affair end, for me the hardest - in terms of processing my emotions, understanding what was really going on, and moving on again - was the affair.

[Heart On]

Having had a marriage end, and a long-term relationship end, and an affair end, for me the hardest - in terms of processing my emotions, understanding what was really going on, and moving on again - was the affair.

 

I felt the same way,but then again,I was dealing with a man who had all of these characteristics.

 

http://www.narcissisticabuse.com/characteristics.html

 

http://www.abandonment.net/profile_an_abandoner_fr.html

 

And I had all of these.

 

http://www.abandonment.net/abando.frame.html

 

He was the ying to my yang and we were both dysfunctional when it came to relationships.

 

It does get better as time goes on,but the questions really never end as to WHY BOTHER to start something you have no intention of following thru with.THAT about killed me to realize.I was just a means to an end.

 

No one likes to face that sort of reality.

[20Seconds]

I felt the same way,but then again,I was dealing with a man who had all of these characteristics.

 

http://www.narcissisticabuse.com/characteristics.html

 

http://www.abandonment.net/profile_an_abandoner_fr.html

 

And I had all of these.

 

http://www.abandonment.net/abando.frame.html

 

He was the ying to my yang and we were both dysfunctional when it came to relationships.

 

It does get better as time goes on,but the questions really never end as to WHY BOTHER to start something you have no intention of following thru with.THAT about killed me to realize.I was just a means to an end.

 

No one likes to face that sort of reality.

 

Wow Heart On I think you just described me & MM to a tee.

 

Including the bit about having no intention of following through.

 

I've never understood about the abandoning thing before but I think with MM it was absolutely that.

 

Ironically, it wasn;t until I went NC for the first time and he broke it, that I realized he didn;t hold all the cards. As soon as I stopped needing him, things changed.

 

This is a real eye opener for me, thank you.

 

Sorry for T/J!

[Heart On]

Wow Heart On I think you just described me & MM to a tee.

 

Including the bit about having no intention of following through.

 

I've never understood about the abandoning thing before but I think with MM it was absolutely that.

 

Ironically, it wasn;t until I went NC for the first time and he broke it, that I realized he didn;t hold all the cards. As soon as I stopped needing him, things changed.

 

This is a real eye opener for me, thank you.

 

Sorry for T/J!

 

 

Yeah...me too.Sorry OP.I hope something rings a bell for you too~

I know alot of what I know about myself doesn't apply to everyone.I just feel so compelled to offer insight that has changed my life for the better where ever I can.I have had years of therapy and done plenty of personal research and asked why ALOT and it just makes sense and helps with the self doubt these situations leave us with.

 

I'd like to add,people who have been abandoned learn to protect themselves by not committing to anything or anyone who may leave them,being attracted to unavailables,chasing validation,give up too much of themselves for fear they will be abandoned or don't attach at all and simply objectify people so they can justify using them.

 

It's all just differing versions of Love addiction.

 

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Peabody5.html

 

It's always fun to fit neatly into a textbook definition....lol

 

But hey,it's better than not know WTF is going on!

 

I think the ending is worse,because it triggers our own abandonment issues and leaves us feeling as though it was all a lie that we told ourselves.

 

I didn't fall in love with the man he was behind his mask.

I fell in love with the man he wanted me to think he was.

The reality of him was what left me aghast.

 

Hindsight is 20/20

[Gentlegirl]

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[Gentlegirl]

I have left an abusive marriage, my next husband died... then I had an affair and the wife found out.

 

He dumped me on my bottom, as they do.

 

By the way I am 64 so even at this great age, people can be caught up in an affair.

 

At least with my other relationships, I KNEW all the details . There was a conclusion to them. They weren't easy either. But I knew exactly what and why it had happened.

 

With an affair, you are suddenly cut loose from the person you love and has been the centre of your universe for so long.(3 Years) You believed he loved you. YOur most important relationship has ended and then what????

 

He said he loved you so where the hell is he???? Abandonment, loneliness,

feeling like you have been crucified and never cut down.

 

It's a mentally confusing, very emotional way to end a relationship. It took me a long time to get myself even half way rational. I guess it's more like a sudden death than a divorce.

 

Then there's the secrecy... who can you talk to, who can you tell? I would never tell my family or friends. Fortunately I had one friend that I trust and she was a treasure. It's very difficult to get support unless it's in counselling.

 

I was fortunate enough to discover this forum... it has given me a lot of insight and helped me a great deal. I have been able to recover and now have another SINGLE worthwhile man that I hope to pursue a relationship with.

 

There are many elements of an affair ending that make it a lot worse than a divorce or even a sudden death.

[skywriter]

Heart On said;

 

"I'd like to add,people who have been abandoned learn to protect themselves by not committing to anything or anyone who may leave them,being attracted to unavailables,chasing validation,give up too much of themselves for fear they will be abandoned or don't attach at all and simply objectify people so they can justify using them."

 

I tend to agree with this Heart On.