a question

[imperfectsituation]

Do affairs always involve feelings of extreme neediness and moments when you've discovered that the constant low-level emotional pain gradually aggregates into a huge bundle of agony because the only person you can turn to is your affair partner, especially when something happens to disturb the transient peace you've established, but maybe she needs space to feel healthier, so then you feel even guiltier for demanding so much of her when really you both just want to be positive factors in each others' lives?

 

And is this partly because the kinds of people who maintain an affair tend to be clingy and needy and easily confused to begin with, or they'd actually take time to figure out their lives in the right ways?

[spice4life]

I think it depends upon the circumstance of how you got involved. I'm not needy or clingy, but falling in love with a married person has brought that out in me sometimes. There is no easy answer when it comes to love in these situations. Why not take some space for yourself to figure it all out? It will help clear the fog and then you can look at it from a more objective view point.

 

The build up cycles you are referring to did happen to me because being in a plan B position went against the very grain of who I am. That's not me, so settling for that made me end up feeling bad about myself...I would always end up feeling like I wasn't good enough. It definitely created a lot of conflict within me. I don't like feeling that way about myself and I also didn't want to create that kind of conflict for him. Not really sure if there is any way around it and believe me I've tried to find one!

 

It's tough and complicated situation, for sure and wish I had answers too. I don't though so maybe some time and space will make it all clearer for you. Good luck!

[Mimolicious]

Do affairs always involve feelings of extreme neediness and moments when you've discovered that the constant low-level emotional pain gradually aggregates into a huge bundle of agony because the only person you can turn to is your affair partner, especially when something happens to disturb the transient peace you've established, but maybe she needs space to feel healthier, so then you feel even guiltier for demanding so much of her when really you both just want to be positive factors in each others' lives?

 

And is this partly because the kinds of people who maintain an affair tend to be clingy and needy and easily confused to begin with, or they'd actually take time to figure out their lives in the right ways?

 

 

And the award for the "longest question on LS" goes to... *drum roll*... Imperfectsituation!

 

Anyway, what's really the question?

[MissBee]

And the award for the "longest question on LS" goes to... *drum roll*... Imperfectsituation!

 

Anyway, what's really the question?

 

 

 

I thought the same thing.

 

 

In short...no that is not always the case, but it can often times be the case and just reading LS you'll see a lot of people in As exhibiting overly needy or codependent behaviors. Is that unique to As only, no.

 

But yea, perhaps breaking up the questions into parts would help people to contribute more.

[Heart On]

It's normal for an EMR,but not nearly as normal for a Committed,loving exclusive,loyal, relationship with someone who is available in all ways to you and you to them.

 

It's much healthier to just be with someone who is single if you ask me!

ALOT less confusion,longgg questions,self-doubt,waiting for your "turn" and more resolutions and answers to problems.

 

I was left feeling as though I didn't matter or exist in those moments and began to realize just how truly limited loving a MM/MW was and had to end it for my sanities sake.

 

Bottom line,the MM/MW starts to feel like I drug you can't live without.

You also begin to realize that they aren't going anywhere but home and everytime it happens you take it personally and it lowers your self esteem to the point that the only person who can make you feel any better anymore,is the very person who is making you feel like you are a needy,clingy loser.

 

That is the last way a healthy realtionship should look

 

IMO...it's a Codependant Love addiction,not love.

[MissBee]

It's normal for an EMR,but not nearly as normal for a Committed,loving exclusive,loyal, relationship with someone who is available in all ways to you and you to them.

 

It's much healthier to just be with someone who is single if you ask me!

ALOT less confusion,longgg questions,self-doubt,waiting for your "turn" and more resolutions and answers to problems.

 

I was left feeling as though I didn't matter or exist in those moments and began to realize just how truly limited loving a MM/MW was and had to end it for my sanities sake.

 

Bottom line,the MM/MW starts to feel like I drug you can't live without.

You also begin to realize that they aren't going anywhere but home and everytime it happens you take it personally and it lowers your self esteem to the point that the only person who can make you feel any better anymore,is the very person who is making you feel like you are a needy,clingy loser.

That is the last way a healthy realtionship should look

 

IMO...it's a Codependant Love addiction,not love.

 

Omg...yesss....I can definitely relate to that!

 

This same type of thing happened when I was involved with an emotionally unavailable man, who was also often physically unavailable because of his job and his own non-prioritization of me in his life. He was single but still unavailable for a healthy, loving, commitment so I still ended up feeling that longing, feeling like I was waiting my turn for him to be done with his other obligations, there was still uncertainty about where things were going or where we stood and I ended up feigning for the times he would seem to dedicate to me, knowing they were few and far between...smh. I've said and will continue to say, that As resemble other forms of unavailable or questionable relationships, and lots of the feelings, behaviors, results mimic the "single" relationships that are still more destructive or unfruitful than they are good.

[Heart On]

Do affairs always involve feelings of extreme neediness and moments when you've discovered that the constant low-level emotional pain gradually aggregates into a huge bundle of agony because the only person you can turn to is your affair partner, especially when something happens to disturb the transient peace you've established, but maybe she needs space to feel healthier, so then you feel even guiltier for demanding so much of her when really you both just want to be positive factors in each others' lives?

 

And is this partly because the kinds of people who maintain an affair tend to be clingy and needy and easily confused to begin with, or they'd actually take time to figure out their lives in the right ways?

 

You are obviously a smart man.

Have you ever wondered why you are

attracted to this form of self abuse?

 

I found why I allowed myself to be strung along and deal with the "huge bundle of agony" and the guilt of my needs even though I only wanted to be a positive factor in his wife while I competed with his allegedly awful wife was because of a few reasons.

 

This struck a cord with me from the moment I read it and I just wanted to share it with you.

 

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

 

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

[MissBee]

You are obviously a smart man.

Have you ever wondered why you are

attracted to this form of self abuse?

 

I found why I allowed myself to be strung along and deal with the "huge bundle of agony" and the guilt of my needs even though I only wanted to be a positive factor in his wife while I competed with his allegedly awful wife was because of a few reasons.

 

This struck a cord with me from the moment I read it and I just wanted to share it with you.

 

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

 

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

 

Ohh Lord

 

Recovering abandoholic here....

[imperfectsituation]

i disagree that romantic feelings are necessarily more intense in an affair than in a relationship, but i'm starting to think that they're equal in intensity to those experienced at the beginning of a relationship, since this relationship is never allowed to stabilize.

 

i'm struggling with certain presumptions about affairs, such as the fact that people often feel like they're soulmates, simply because -- despite her flaws, she's on no pedestal -- if i were building a companion in a lab she would be exactly what i built. we're different people, but we feel each other so completely, and we've known each other for years. are we soulmates in a simpler universe? i like to think so.

 

yesterday i had a complete meltdown, and i was honest with her for the first time about how much pain i was experiencing, and about how -- while i'd never kill myself, ever, it had crossed my mind in the middle of the night because i couldn't figure out how to make the pain stop -- and, while she's been my trusted best friend and lover and confidant and artistic collaborator and counselor and everything amazing for so long, it frightened her. and we're wounded.

 

lately i've been thinking about ending our involvement, not denying the feelings but ending the involvement, so that the damage can maybe stop accruing. not under these terms, though. but maybe these are the only terms possible, because if we're not feeling like we have to step back from each others' lives, we'll be drawn back to each other so easily.

 

i wanted to know if these feelings of need and hurt that led to this crisis were normal or if i was just crazy. maybe both.

[imperfectsituation]

You are obviously a smart man.

Have you ever wondered why you are

attracted to this form of self abuse?

 

I don't think I am. I really think it's the person in this case. Again, despite being flawed like all humans, she's really amazing and adds so much to my life, in some ways more than anyone in any relationship I've ever been in. (In some unfortunate but situational ways a lot less.)

[imperfectsituation]

IMO...it's a Codependant Love addiction,not love.

 

Can it be both? Can there be a deep core of love and of wanting the other person to be happy, and then a layer of codependence? But yeah, the part about them always going back home. That's so spot-on. I just have to think of the kids and how important they are to her.

Edited August 18, 2011 by imperfectsituation

[geejayess]

"i'm struggling with certain presumptions about affairs, such as the fact that people often feel like they're soulmates, simply because -- despite her flaws, she's on no pedestal -- if i were building a companion in a lab she would be exactly what i built. we're different people, but we feel each other so completely, and we've known each other for years. are we soulmates in a simpler universe? i like to think so."

 

 

reading this with tears rolling down my face. I know some of what you are feeling. I hope we both get things resolved. SOON

[SidLyon]

...I only wanted to be a positive factor in his wife while I competed with his allegedly awful wife was because of a few reasons.

 

 

Wow what a Freudian slip.

 

Sorry I couldn't resist.

[SoMovinOn]

No and no.

[Lostinlife4now]

It's normal for an EMR,but not nearly as normal for a Committed,loving exclusive,loyal, relationship with someone who is available in all ways to you and you to them.

 

It's much healthier to just be with someone who is single if you ask me!

ALOT less confusion,longgg questions,self-doubt,waiting for your "turn" and more resolutions and answers to problems.

 

I was left feeling as though I didn't matter or exist in those moments and began to realize just how truly limited loving a MM/MW was and had to end it for my sanities sake.

 

Bottom line,the MM/MW starts to feel like I drug you can't live without.

You also begin to realize that they aren't going anywhere but home and everytime it happens you take it personally and it lowers your self esteem to the point that the only person who can make you feel any better anymore,is the very person who is making you feel like you are a needy,clingy loser.

 

That is the last way a healthy realtionship should look

 

IMO...it's a Codependant Love addiction,not love.

 

So agree with your statement!!!!!!

 

I started looking at xMM like a "little man" for what he was doing for HIMSELF and what he was doing to HIS FAMILY...Selfish f...! He did become a drug to me for a longgggggg time.....and my self-esteem was down around my toes....BUT NOT ANYMORE...I told him to Recommit to his W and marriage SINCE YOU ARE STAYING!!!!! He needs to make a go of it....and I advised him NOT TO GO OUT AND FIND SOMEONE ELSE...it is a very lonely thing to do and keep on cheating........I think he is ten times more clingy and needy than I am....Now he has to live with his decision to stay in a M that is SOOOOOOO dysfunctional (oh he is staying for the kids) and I can remain SINGLE......and happy....:bunny::bunny::bunny:

[spice4life]

So agree with your statement!!!!!!

 

I started looking at xMM like a "little man" for what he was doing for HIMSELF and what he was doing to HIS FAMILY...Selfish f...! He did become a drug to me for a longgggggg time.....and my self-esteem was down around my toes....BUT NOT ANYMORE...I told him to Recommit to his W and marriage SINCE YOU ARE STAYING!!!!! He needs to make a go of it....and I advised him NOT TO GO OUT AND FIND SOMEONE ELSE...it is a very lonely thing to do and keep on cheating........I think he is ten times more clingy and needy than I am....Now he has to live with his decision to stay in a M that is SOOOOOOO dysfunctional (oh he is staying for the kids) and I can remain SINGLE......and happy....:bunny::bunny::bunny:

 

Not discounting this and normally I would agree, but the more the fog lifts the more I think he was nothing more than a simple "cake eater". Now I think he is "just a man" who likes his things, his family, his pillar of the community status and his cake too. I no longer for one moment think he is in a dysfunctional marriage. That was MY excuse for staying, not his. It was my own rationalization to make staying in the A more palpable.

 

I did tell him to find an MW but now I see it wasn't even my place to say that. If he has conscience then he would put a full effort into his marriage.