Emotional affair w younger man, can we be friends?

[Minnie]

[font=century gothic][/font]

 

A few words of kind advice needed. !!

 

I fell in love with a younger man I had hired as a director for our children's music program. So I guess he was an employee - coworker. He also concurrently was my child's teacher. It was a mutual rewarding and funl emotional affair in each others life and I felt loved and needed I helped more and more until he became very well respected strong on his own. I, happily married and he a single alpha male 13 years younger. Ah well.

 

He left the job. I was in tears and sent in all I had to the national office and sure enough he won an award for all his work - our work. So proud of him. He is a great success and a fun kind person besides. I know he is thankful and we both have great memories.

 

6 months down the road .... Drifting back....here we are now in the same little town and he is now my teen's teacher now in year number 5 and I am still in love with him and seem to fall right back into helping and being there in any time of need. Even when not called or notified I seem to find a way back to his side - kids know they can come to me if he ever needs anything so they do. They all love him too.

 

Old patterns and yet he seems so ill at ease. He really does not need me. but i seem to parent anyway. In the end something comes up at school and I step back in to write the letter or rally the support or become his best ally again. Familiar role and all I want is to be there for him. He is a performance director and needs to rally the parents anyway. Needs all the help he can get. It is always me . He hears form me about once a week.

 

It seems we both are acting like we did something wrong and know each other too well. Actually every event seems like a reencounter with an ex spouse. I know him too well and love him completely but cannot show it. He never calls or emails. I seem to need to contact him just to regain some sense that I am ok. That I am still needed and a part of his life. Pathetic but addicted.

 

How in the world will I transition from this close bond we have?? Can we keep the bond ? the bond will always exist and I feel like the ex wife or the aunt or the last lover. Painful but not wanting it to stop. My spouse is aware and feels I am too attached. But if I back off I will be forgotten I am sure.

 

So there it is. I see him about once a month at these venues and make every excuse to call or email and be there just to hear Hi or Thanks or I need you or I appreciate you. Good grief what has happened to me> ? And how do I fix it in a reasonable way?.

 

Any advice appreciated. My daughter deserves a coach and partner and he is it for her I think but if I step in out of self interest it only seems to make us both uncomfortable and if I step away it is as if I am defeated and I lose him forever. I miss him so much. He was a soul mate and in many ways still is. I want to dance at his wedding and to hold his babies and go to his funeral and cry real tears. I do not want to feel like I am rejected and overly attached but I want to be friends again. I miss him in my life. I cannot undo how close we were.

 

Any advice appreciated sincerely. I miss him so and do not know how to not keep a respectful tender friendship alive. Maybe only peers can be friends yet I want so much to be a part of his life and him in ours. We have years ahead . I feel blessed, wary and at the same time very confused.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I

[bluechocolate]

It seems we both are acting like we did something wrong

 

YOU did indeed do something wrong. You speak of this man as if he were your lover and yet you're married with children. An emotional attachment like this is tantamount to cheating on your husband, yet you say you are happily married. I have a hard time making sense of that.

 

It sounds to me that he may realise that your attachment to him is wrong. He may be trying to distance himself from you so as not to get involved in an adulterous affair (which I think you may have already committed).

 

Why do you need contact with this man to feel that you are OK? Why should he call and email you? You have a husband and he is the man who should be your soul mate.

 

You say that you want to keep him in your life, dance at his wedding etc. but people do not speak of their friends in the way that you have in this post.

 

You ask how to fix this in a reasonable way but then go on to say that you have years left together in each other lives. I would say that you have to stop contacting this man entirely and try examining your relationship with your husband to ascertain why you need to find emotional fulfilment of the kind you've described outside of your marriage.

[Butterfly_Queen]

Hi, I completely understand where you're coming from and how you feel. However, I 100% agree with bluechocolate. I can relate because I was in the same position a few years ago. It will be hard no doubt but you have to cut all ties. I once found myself doing what you were by calling doing the email thing, making excuses to see him etc. After I would have contact with him, I would feel miserable! Why do what I am doing? I would ask myself. First of all its wrong I was married, second of all it was a man I could not have, So everytime I was with him or talk to him I would feel empty, and it made me mad. Why punish yourself for something you can't have and why punish your husband and kids for something they haven't done. Sounds like you must have a good husband or he wouldn't be so understanding as to why you feel the attachment you have with another man.

 

 

The person I was attatched too also distanced himself. I think he was thinking of me and cared for me in a good way or he wouldn't have done that. He did it for us both. He was the stronger of the two of us. It hurt yes, but I see why he did it. it was never a sexual thing either. Affairs don't have to be. To me emotional affairs are the worst because of the emotional attatchment. I drifted because of what I wasn't getting at home and it had nothing to do with sex. My husband and I went to counseling and are working on things. Stop this now before it gets out of hand. For yourself and for your family. I wish you luck.