Affair with Friends husband

[rae_lana]

You have mentioned several times that you might be a sociopath or bi polar. You might be.

 

Why do you want to figure that out?

 

If therapy is out..what difference is a diagnosis?

 

Wouldn't you want to know, if it was you? Of course I want to know.

 

 

I've always been kind if obsessed with human nature. I want to know where I fit.

[It-is-what-it-is.]

Wouldn't you want to know, if it was you? Of course I want to know.

 

 

I've always been kind if obsessed with human nature. I want to know where I fit.

 

Sure I would like to know...but not merely as an academic exercise.

 

If it were me I would be trying to stop hurting people. Stop being self destructive. Stop the game.

 

But you are not...trying that is..trying to stop.

 

So it's almost a game...is it a game for you? To see how long you can pull the wool over their eyes?

 

Is it a game for you to smile and be friends withe the OM BS? To smile and gossip and give her marital advise while you destroy her marriage?

 

To collect OM and steal him away?

 

Is it a game to see how close to getting caught you can be? Clandestine meetings, and texts and longing looks, because nobody is as clever as you? You can't possibly be caught because you are so TALENTED a liar. So convincing a deceiver? So goooooood at lying..

 

Is it entertainment? You obviously enjoy it. Do you get a thrill everytime you deceive?

 

So what are you? What is your self diagnoisis? Sociopath? psychopath? NPD? Some other PD? Or just a vanilla cheater?

[Trimmer]

Wouldn't you want to know, if it was you? Of course I want to know.

...but not enough to go and tell a therapist the whole truth, in order to really find out.

 

When I was seeing a therapist, I made it my #1 priority to make the therapy useful. So I supressed my tendency to want to hide things and I was truthful and open with her - even to the point of offering embarrassing truths about myself that I wouldn't reveal to anyone else - because it was all in the service of making the therapy work for me.

 

It sounds like you have a built-in #1 priority to hold back and guard your truth, so if you went to therapy, that priority would take precedence and you wouldn't be able to lay it all out there truthfully. Without being able to do that, or at least being motivated to try - in therapy, in your marriage, even to yourself - you may indeed be stalled.

 

If somebody else told me is exact story I would be disgusted and feel horrible for my husband for my friend I would think I was an awful person. But it's not like that.. I am not disgusted with myself.. I feel almost numb like Im watching a movie about this happening..

No, it is exactly like that, only you are experiencing denial. Your mind has powerful defenses, and I think I asserted earlier that denial is one of the most effective ones.

 

You would be disgusted and disapproving of this situation were it anyone else, but your mind can't handle the dissonance that would come of acknowledging the full, emotional truth to yourself that you are someone perpetrating a horrible betrayal and fraud on those who are supposedly closest to you. So your mind works overtime making you believe that you are somehow different. In reality, you're not, but that's the only story that makes it all work, so your mind forces it to fit the situation.

 

Or failing that, it just renders you numb, so you can avoid dealing with it at all. That's where that numb feeling comes from.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Trimmer

[Pierre]

We are assuming IC is the answer, but sadly many counselors are people that also have serious issues and are not qualified to treat despite the diplomas on the wall.

 

I am always surprised to find posters that have been in IC for a lifetime with nothing to show for it.

[rae_lana]

Sure I would like to know...but not merely as an academic exercise.

 

If it were me I would be trying to stop hurting people. Stop being self destructive. Stop the game.

 

But you are not...trying that is..trying to stop.

 

So it's almost a game...is it a game for you? To see how long you can pull the wool over their eyes?

 

Is it a game for you to smile and be friends withe the OM BS? To smile and gossip and give her marital advise while you destroy her marriage?

 

To collect OM and steal him away?

 

Is it a game to see how close to getting caught you can be? Clandestine meetings, and texts and longing looks, because nobody is as clever as you? You can't possibly be caught because you are so TALENTED a liar. So convincing a deceiver? So goooooood at lying..

 

Is it entertainment? You obviously enjoy it. Do you get a thrill everytime you deceive?

 

So what are you? What is your self diagnoisis? Sociopath? psychopath? NPD? Some other PD? Or just a vanilla cheater?

 

No. It's not like that at all. I'm not sitting here like a super villain rubbing my palms together ..

 

I would say living life as a game is something I've thought was normal since I was pretty young. I'm not getting some big joyous kick out of it though.

[rae_lana]

Sure I would like to know...but not merely as an academic exercise.

 

If it were me I would be trying to stop hurting people. Stop being self destructive. Stop the game.

 

But you are not...trying that is..trying to stop.

 

So it's almost a game...is it a game for you? To see how long you can pull the wool over their eyes?

 

Is it a game for you to smile and be friends withe the OM BS? To smile and gossip and give her marital advise while you destroy her marriage?

 

To collect OM and steal him away?

 

Is it a game to see how close to getting caught you can be? Clandestine meetings, and texts and longing looks, because nobody is as clever as you? You can't possibly be caught because you are so TALENTED a liar. So convincing a deceiver? So goooooood at lying..

 

Is it entertainment? You obviously enjoy it. Do you get a thrill everytime you deceive?

 

So what are you? What is your self diagnoisis? Sociopath? psychopath? NPD? Some other PD? Or just a vanilla cheater?

 

I Wouldn't be able to say I'm a vanilla cheater though.. I've never cheated before and don't think it ever would have happened with anyone other than this specific guy.

[stillafool]

If you love your husband and best friend so much, why haven't you told them the truth about what you have done to them? I thought OM wanted the two of you to leave your spouses and go off together, what happened to that?

[2sunny]

I Wouldn't be able to say I'm a vanilla cheater though.. I've never cheated before and don't think it ever would have happened with anyone other than this specific guy.

 

I can't believe that's what you responded - with that long, involved prior post.

 

You admit you have a problem - and it MAY be stemming form your mental issues.

 

In order to get past your issues it takes being 100% willingness and honesty from YOU ---> to your NEW counselor - to address your issues. To invoke change on your part.

 

Omissions and half truths won't help YOU. You can grow if you get honest and accept help.

 

Can you see a new counselor? Get honest? Follow their plan to invoke changes into your life that may help you BECOME an authentic person? Live an authentic life?

 

Living every day pretending to be someone other than who you are is exhausting! Learn who YOU are! Learn new thoughts and behaviors that are in line with who you intend to become (authentic self).

 

It takes uncovering what hasn't been working for YOU and learning a NEW way that does portray the REAL version of yourself.

 

But it means never lying or pretending again.

 

Can you start with that?

[rae_lana]

...but not enough to go and tell a therapist the whole truth, in order to really find out.

 

When I was seeing a therapist, I made it my #1 priority to make the therapy useful. So I supressed my tendency to want to hide things and I was truthful and open with her - even to the point of offering embarrassing truths about myself that I wouldn't reveal to anyone else - because it was all in the service of making the therapy work for me.

 

It sounds like you have a built-in #1 priority to hold back and guard your truth, so if you went to therapy, that priority would take precedence and you wouldn't be able to lay it all out there truthfully. Without being able to do that, or at least being motivated to try - in therapy, in your marriage, even to yourself - you may indeed be stalled.

 

 

No, it is exactly like that, only you are experiencing denial. Your mind has powerful defenses, and I think I asserted earlier that denial is one of the most effective ones.

 

You would be disgusted and disapproving of this situation were it anyone else, but your mind can't handle the dissonance that would come of acknowledging the full, emotional truth to yourself that you are someone perpetrating a horrible betrayal and fraud on those who are supposedly closest to you. So your mind works overtime making you believe that you are somehow different. In reality, you're not, but that's the only story that makes it all work, so your mind forces it to fit the situation.

 

Or failing that, it just renders you numb, so you can avoid dealing with it at all. That's where that numb feeling comes from.

 

I don't want it to be like that but it is. I do think I'm different .. But not in a way that makes it ok. I don't really understand how I don't feel worse.

[rae_lana]

If you love your husband and best friend so much, why haven't you told them the truth about what you have done to them? I thought OM wanted the two of you to leave your spouses and go off together, what happened to that?

 

Even if we end out marriages I will never confess to anyone that this happened. No way. They would destroy the rest of their lives.. They would never be the same. I'm not doing that no matter how many people suggest it.

 

He said if I was in love with him we should end out marriages and be together, he said it because I said I thought I was falling for him. I think he meant it at the moment but we have no brought it up or discussed it again. I don't think it's going to happen.. I could not do that to his wife for sure.

[rae_lana]

I can't believe that's what you responded - with that long, involved prior post.

 

You admit you have a problem - and it MAY be stemming form your mental issues.

 

In order to get past your issues it takes being 100% willingness and honesty from YOU ---> to your NEW counselor - to address your issues. To invoke change on your part.

 

Omissions and half truths won't help YOU. You can grow if you get honest and accept help.

 

Can you see a new counselor? Get honest? Follow their plan to invoke changes into your life that may help you BECOME an authentic person? Live an authentic life?

 

Living every day pretending to be someone other than who you are is exhausting! Learn who YOU are! Learn new thoughts and behaviors that are in line with who you intend to become (authentic self).

 

It takes uncovering what hasn't been working for YOU and learning a NEW way that does portray the REAL version of yourself.

 

But it means never lying or pretending again.

 

Can you start with that?

 

I actually responded in two separate posts sorry.

 

I don't think I can. Even if I really wanted to.

 

I think I know who the real me is and I don't think I can let anyone else see that. I'm considering it very much..

[It-is-what-it-is.]

No. It's not like that at all. I'm not sitting here like a super villain rubbing my palms together ..

 

I would say living life as a game is something I've thought was normal since I was pretty young. I'm not getting some big joyous kick out of it though.

 

Oh I disagree, you are getting something from this. A rush, a high, some benefit or else you wouldn't do it, and keep doing it when you know it's wrong, and harmful to people you say you love, (but refuse to act loving towards). Even if, as you say you don't feel bad, you are feeling SOMETHING, getting something out of this.

 

I Wouldn't be able to say I'm a vanilla cheater though.. I've never cheated before and don't think it ever would have happened with anyone other than this specific guy.

 

Then you guys should leave your spouses and live authentic lives. And let everyone else do so too.

[Trimmer]

I don't want it to be like that but it is. I do think I'm different .. But not in a way that makes it ok. I don't really understand how I don't feel worse.

Being in denial about being in denial is part of being in denial.

 

I Wouldn't be able to say I'm a vanilla cheater though.. I've never cheated before and don't think it ever would have happened with anyone other than this specific guy.

Oh my gosh.... Please don't hear this in a hostile or mocking way, but 95% of people who cheat for the first time say something that sounds exactly like that line from the script. "This isn't like me, I just got caught up in this particular situation..." "I'm not this kind of person..." etc. I say this not out of a lack of respect, but to help you break through and see some amount of the truth here: it doesn't get any more vanilla than this.

 

Even if we end out marriages I will never confess to anyone that this happened. No way. They would destroy the rest of their lives.. They would never be the same. I'm not doing that no matter how many people suggest it.

They will already "never be the same". You seem to think the damage would be in telling them. I'll say it again: you've already done the damage, inflicted the wound, infected the organism. "Not telling" just allows the rot to continue, and defers (and likely increases) the eventual drama and fallout.

 

I could not do that to his wife for sure.

Rest assured, you've already done it, she just doesn't know it yet. Her marriage is being consumed from within by a cancer that she doesn't know about yet, and you have decided you are helping her by keeping that information from her.

 

And likewise with your own marriage. You say that everything will go back to normal, and then in the very next breath you speak of how you have become short and grumpy with your husband. The disease is in your marriage, too, but you husband doesn't know its true symptoms, or the infection that is at its root. So is this just a common cold or minor infection that will heal by itself, or is it a cancer that will continue its steady march, rotting out the insides, until ultimately the remaining, weakened shell collapses? I think I know what your answer would be to that, but I still think you're in denial.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Trimmer

[LivingWaterPlease]

I actually responded in two separate posts sorry.

 

I think I know who the real me is and I don't think I can let anyone else see that..

 

 

rae_lana, you are more transparent to others than you realize....

 

it is yourself you are hiding from

 

do yourself a kindness and get into IC so that you can disrobe and deal with your psyche in layers where it's manageable rather than waiting for the **** to hit the fan

[rae_lana]

Oh I disagree, you are getting something from this. A rush, a high, some benefit or else you wouldn't do it, and keep doing it when you know it's wrong, and harmful to people you say you love, (but refuse to act loving towards). Even if, as you say you don't feel bad, you are feeling SOMETHING, getting something out of this.

 

 

 

Then you guys should leave your spouses and live authentic lives. And let everyone else do so too.

 

Absolutely. I'm getting a high from it.. Not from lying to his wife and my husband though.. The rush and high is from my interactions with him and its like I've completely separated it from my interactions with my husband and her.

[It-is-what-it-is.]

Absolutely. I'm getting a high from it.. Not from lying to his wife and my husband though.. The rush and high is from my interactions with him and its like I've completely separated it from my interactions with my husband and her.

 

Respectfully, I don't agree.

 

If the high had to do with him...you would leave to be with him...

 

But what you are doing is cruel...and everyone has told you it is, even if you have trouble seeing it...so you must be getting something from the deception.

 

You must have some kind of resentment or hatred of your H and MM BS. You must enjoy the lying, the deception, the game.

 

It must be, in of itself a reward of some kind.

 

You seem almost proud that you have pulled one over on your husband and OP BS and everyone else. And that nobody would know.

 

And honestly, I know that when this comes out. and it will come out someday.. What I just said is what she will think of you....

 

and that you will say that's all the reason to not tell, but not stop.

 

So you MUST enjoy it, there can be no other explanation.

[It-is-what-it-is.]

And Rae...I am not trying to be cruel...but your unwillingness to do anything to help yourself or the people around you defies logic.

 

To not try to stop the madness that is your life, or resolve the craziness that lies just under the veneer of normalcy, makes me wonder if you are enjoying the attention here too?

 

I don't know what you are trying to do, or why you are here, or why you post?

 

So yeah, I am poking at you...but you do not react as if you want to solve it. So you must enjoy it.

[The Way I Am]

Mad? Of course not. I appreciate everyone's opinions, everyone's being very respectful. I don't know. To write everything out just means there is a record of it and I honestly feel like I'd never tell any therapist the whole truth. I honestly feel like I'd lie. I hate that but I think I'm right.

 

I'm glad you're not mad. I'll give you props for that. Some people get angry when someone suggest things they don't want to hear after they've said they don't like the idea.

 

I don't usually recommend counseling unless I think the person is really lost and just doesn't have the tools or support structure to handle what they're going through. I just don't think you're equipped to deal with the situation you've gotten yourself into in a healthy way. To protect yourself from the reality of the situation, your brain is putting up these blocks to help you disconnect between caring about your friend and what you're doing to her. Probably the same for your husband.

 

But those blocks and the denial that your brain is doing to protect yourself are letting you continue actions that make it worse. (By staying friends with the woman and continuing to sleep with her husband, you increase the pain she'll feel if you're discovered. You also take her husband's time and affection from her. He's grumpy and treating her worse as a direct result of your relationship with you.)

 

I'm concerned for your friend and husband. But mostly, with all this denial you've built to cope with the situation, I'm worried that if you're confronted with the reality by your friend and/or husband, you won't be able to handle it.

[JustJoe]

Actually, I feel that this Op is so far into denial that it isn't helping to allow her to vent her martyr's act here on LS. She refuses to do anything for anyone except herself, then explains it as actually being "noble' for not revealing her actions to those she has wronged and is still wronging. She doesn't need counseling so much as a dose of true integrity, of which she has virtually none. I think this thread has very little value. Lana, try real hard and see if you cannot try to give your husband and the OM's wife even a little human respect, because right now you are giving them none. Sorry but your actions are not those of an honest , mature woman. And please don't start saying that you would never hurt your husband or your friend for anything int the world, because it simply isn't true. You don't tell because you are too selfish to face the results of your cheating. There is nothing "noble' about it so soothe your ego some other way.

Edited August 1, 2013 by JustJoe

[ComingInHot]

Rae,

It's my belief that you have become so Desensitized, either by past events, your nature or both that you Literally can NOT see past your "high" you get w/this A, to see what you are are REALLY doing to those you love and who love you.

I see from what you write that you have already decided what you are going to think and feel when this blows up in your face & in Your case, I tend to think your thought process won't change as others would because you truly are SO Desensitized, empathy, pain & loss would be only towards yourself and remorse will be short lived of at all because you contain zero empathy.

 

I'm Sooooo sorry for you... How much you miss that could fulfill you.*

[aliveagain]

If she is a sociopath why are we engaging her? You can't reason with a sociopath that won't get help, they are pathological liars and have no problem lying coolly. They see their self serving behavior as permissible and the end always justifies the means. Since they are not genuine neither are their promises. In the 1800's they called this condition "Moral Insanity." Your husband and friend will just become another victim on your quest for stimulation. If you are a sociopath the two things that will keep you on your destructive path are: you have no desire to change, and your inability to think about the consequences of your actions because you can't plan for the future. Oh ya, one other interesting trait, they are cowards and will never expose themselves. Just so you know, my ex and probably everyone one this site has an ex or soon to be ex that all thought they were being very cautious and would never get caught, but here we all are, 10's of thousands of us. There is nothing special about what your doing your just another delusional woman cheating on her husband.

[JustJoe]

If she is a sociopath why are we engaging her? You can't reason with a sociopath that won't get help, they are pathological liars and have no problem lying coolly. They see their self serving behavior as permissible and the end always justifies the means. Since they are not genuine neither are their promises. In the 1800's they called this condition "Moral Insanity." Your husband and friend will just become another victim on your quest for stimulation. If you are a sociopath the two things that will keep you on your destructive path are: you have no desire to change, and your inability to think about the consequences of your actions because you can't plan for the future. Oh ya, one other interesting trait, they are cowards and will never expose themselves. Just so you know, my ex and probably everyone one this site has an ex or soon to be ex that all thought they were being very cautious and would never get caught, but here we all are, 10's of thousands of us. There is nothing special about what your doing your just another delusional woman cheating on her husband.

It's almost funny how many cheaters come to LS, thinking their situation is unique. I was in an affair and when I came here it took all of 5 minutes for me to see that I wasn't anyone special.

[JustJoe]

Rae,

It's my belief that you have become so Desensitized, either by past events, your nature or both that you Literally can NOT see past your "high" you get w/this A, to see what you are are REALLY doing to those you love and who love you.

I see from what you write that you have already decided what you are going to think and feel when this blows up in your face & in Your case, I tend to think your thought process won't change as others would because you truly are SO Desensitized, empathy, pain & loss would be only towards yourself and remorse will be short lived of at all because you contain zero empathy.

 

I'm Sooooo sorry for you... How much you miss that could fulfill you.*

The OP isn't "desensitized" she is selfish. She has no problem complaining about her issues, does she?

[2sunny]

I will state the obvious:

 

Maybe it's possible you are simply the mean girl with no conscience.

 

In the end - IF you are UNWILLING to CHANGE YOURSELF - all you can expect throughout life is to cause MORE harm to yourself and the people you claim to love.

 

 

Ps - this is NOT what love looks like.

[rae_lana]

The point of the thread.. Like I've said before was that I have nobody to talk to about any of this and being able to talk about it has helped me deal a lot.. I feel much stronger and able to focus now that it's not just festering inside my head..

 

I don't necessarily want to change. I've never said for sure that I did. I don't know for sure what I want. I do definitely feel addicted to this man but I also have no problem calmly hanging out with them as a couple and I am not telling him things against her or otherwise and I really love our friendship, I know the physical affair should stop. I do know that and want to make that happen.. I just don't know how. And as for the emotional side.. I don't see how that can stop at all.. Not being around each other so much. It's mainly an unspoken thing ..