I am in love with two men

[LaylaSings]

I wonder if because I screwed up and cheated on my husband that means I don't or shouldn't have the right to talk to anyone about it. Just let the feelings rot. Seems like that.

I am not stupid. I know right from wrong and am not here trying to convince anyone that affairs are the right way to live your life, so although I appreciate that you are all knowing and monogamous that really doesn't have a whole lot to do with what I was talking about. Thank you for your concern though.

[Snipercatt]

With all due respect, what would you like to talk about?

[whichwayisup]

I hope with the help of counseling you figure it out and to speak up. Staying in a marriage and staying quiet passively when you've been abused and also having an A is not a healthy choice or good for anybody. I am sorry if any of my replies have come off harshly, not meant to. Just was hoping for you to see a few more angles of your situation, take a step back...But, you're not ready or willing to see anybody else's point of view but your own.

 

My husband has a long history of being very verbally abusive and neglectful of me and my kids. I have anger towards him he doesn't even know I have. He has been in counselling since November and I am trying to be supportive of that and I'm holding out hope we can salvage something. I don't know yet.

[tired girl]

Layla,

 

Right now you are feeling hopeless about your situation because you see no good solution. There is a solution, and you are not powerless here,you have just chosen temporarily to give all of your power away. You have done this by holding resentment in with your husband, that needs to stop. He has to know how you feel about everything.

 

You have built a fantasy land with this OM that doesn't really exist, and you escape there when the pressure gets to be too much in real life. Problem is, what you have with the OM doesn't really exist either. That isn't real life.

 

Take your power back. Be authentic. Tell your husband everything you need to say, and if he can't handle it, then get out and figure out who you are as a person. Someday you can be with a man that is good. Not what the two of these guys are offering you. But to do that, you have to take back what you have chosen to give away.

[Confusion_Reigns]

Hi, I’m pretty much in the same place. I’m pretty confused right now. I never thought I’d ever be capable of this type of behavior and am pretty…ashamed?... of my actions. But then again I’m not ashamed at all. I love my friend and then again I don’t love him. I love my husband but then again I don’t love him. I’m selfish as sin…and yet I’ve never chosen me in all my life it’s never been ME…but none of this justifies my actions. None of it.

 

I knowingly and willingly walked into this with my eyes wide open. I know it could all blow up in an instant and that scares me…but not enough to stop what I’m doing. I tell myself every day when I wake up that I won’t contact him…and some days I win that battle…I feel victorious…and then he contacts me and I’m swept away again….in a whirlwind of emotions, desire….he knows me in a way that no one else has ever known me…no one else has ever cared to know me…it’s strange and exciting and liberating in ways I don't really understand.

 

As I’m getting to know him better and understand him better I’m seeing him better, more clearly. He’s not all that AND a bag of chips…he’s great, wonderful, amazing…and yet, he’s dark, selfish…and there’s something else that I can’t quite define yet…but it has something to do with this being secret. Idk, I’m trying to figure this all out in my head.

 

At the moment this keeps coming into my mind “better the devil you know than the one you don’t” and I wonder if my experience has tainted me, jaded me, in such a way as to see the devil in all men. Which is sad, heartbreaking really...what I want in the center of my heart is for my husband to be the man I want and need him to be….the reality is that he is who he is….and the bottom line is that as long as I maintain contact with my friend I am not working on anything of significance with regards to my marriage.

 

I’m going to go to counseling soon, I need to talk to someone who has not ulterior motive for talking to me…someone who doesn’t want anything from me (except my payment, lol). Maybe that would help you too? Seeing an impartial, unbiased third party?

 

Good luck to you! I wish you all the best

[LaylaSings]

I don't really know what I'm looking for. I guess I just feel very alone with my thoughts sometimes and don't know how to get myself to a place where a am not consumed by thinking of these things. I have been doing ok I think. I started a new job after Christmas. Nothing was wrong with my old position other than it left me with a lot more free time to either talk to or dream about OM. Sounds so pathetic. I know.

I've been trying to focus on myself and my kids and my husband and my husband has went to a few counselling sessions because a couple months ago we seriously discussed separation and he asked if doing that would change my mind on that idea. So I'm trying really hard to accept what he's doing and let go of all my anger from the last but it's not easy.

He's already making jokes and comments about it being stupid.

We don't have the money or the I insurance for both of us to go talk to someone. I've been in and out of sessions over the last couple years, I've talked about the affair at length with the one woman who strongly recommends me forgetting that guy and working on my marriage.

Which I want to do for my kids. It's a lot easier said than done.

 

My husband cheated on me before he was my husband, I know how horrible that feels, and right from the start it should have stopped me in my tracks from starting the Adair but it didn't.

I was pregnant and had two toddlers when the emotional affair started and leaving my marriage ga that time seemed impossible.

 

I don't know what to do.

[LaylaSings]

I know what I SHOULD do. I know the logical answers.

 

Life isn't that simple. Sometimes it's really hard to line up your emotions with what you know everyone else is saying is the right way to feel.

[Speakingofwhich]

Right now you have a choice as to what you'll do. What if you don't have a choice at some point in the future? Although you haven't experienced it yet, that could happen.

 

You say you don't know what to do but you know what you should do. Since you are waffling between two choices why not make the deciding factor as to what to do, doing the thing that you know is the right thing to do?

[Confusion_Reigns]

Life isn't that simple. Sometimes it's really hard to line up your emotions with what you know everyone else is saying is the right way to feel.

Life can be as simple or as difficult as we decide to make it. I really believe that. With our actions etc we decide how our life is going to be. Right now you and me both are making our lives way more complicated that we need to…or than we “should” make our lives be.

 

It’s all the “shoulds” that get to me. I should be a loving, devoted, faithful wife…and he should be a loving, devoted, faithful husband….but this isn’t real for us, it’s a nice picture that we present to the world. The reality is that we are barely hanging on and for what? Faded love? Idk, I really don’t know.

 

With my friend…it just feels so right all of it. He feels right to me…but I’m very very VERY cautious of this whole thing. I know men (or I think I do) and I know that many times it’s a game to them, a conquest to them…I don’t want to be his game or his conquest….i want friendship. The real deal. So, I’ve been talking to him for about a year now getting to know him understand him and he me…but I’m still cautious. I have to be.

 

As far as what everyone else thinks I should be doing/feeling…meh, whatever. They have every right to their opinions as do I. I will listen to what they have to say because it’s better for me to hear a wide variety of thoughts and ideas than for me to remain stuck in my own head with my own limited thoughts and ideas.

[Snipercatt]

Layla, I'm sorry that your husband is being uncooperative, to put it mildly.

 

It is hard to know why, but it sounds like he has significant work to do to be an emotionally mature husband. The work probably needs to be done in individual counseling. It would be immensely helpful if he were introspective, but it seems that he isn't. It thwarts the growth process.

 

Considering where you are at and the lack of resources available, all you have left is to tell your H that he isn't emotionally supportive (and perhaps borderline abusive from the sounds of things) and you simply will not abide that indefinitely and ask him what he is willing to do about it.

 

It boils down to fixing the marriage, tolerating it building resentment upon resentment, or leaving.

[Aspasia33]

I dont have anything to say..except big hugs(((((((Layla)))

I have been where you are, and often am. It has calmed somewhat due tot he length of my affair, and certain circumstances with my husband, but what you are going through does arise with me sometimes.

 

My affair started when my husband had gone through 2 years of a sever depression, and because of others things i wont mention here..actually my affair makes me a more loving person to him in some ways, as i am not hassling him to change anymore:)

 

There is a very good practice i often use, to resolve anger and other underlying resentments, Its called "the work" of Byron Katie. You can download it free of charge, and i found it invaluable for helping to heal my toxic relationship with my mother, and my anger and hurt at my husbands past actions.

 

Cheating is not going to magically help you get over your anger, no matter how guilty you think you should feel.

Again, big hugs layala, try and not analyse things too much. xxxx

 

I am in love with two people but I don't really have either of them.

 

I don't need any morality speeches, I've heard them all and said them over in my own head. I've asked myself if I've gone crazy, the reality is I was overwhelmed in my marriage and I let my walls down and fell in love with a friend. I've been in an emotional and physical affair since.

 

For a while I was very confused and let myself justify what I was doing by magnifying my husbands faults in my mind, I had so much built up resentment at the time.

He was very miserable to me during all of my pregnancies and I was riddled with health problems through all of them and he showed little to no compassion. I suffered pretty severe postpartum after my first baby and within less than six month was pregnant with my second.. Was treated for depression during that pregnancy and was doing pretty well, but was left to raise our two alone the vast majority of the time, while my husband got partying out of his system.

During the period of my third pregnancy I was going through a very traumatic event .. Murder/suicide of a close friend and family member. And begged my husband to just be there for me. He really wasn't. He left me to deal with my feelings and pregnancy alone.

 

All this being said he is a good man. He's charming and funny, good looking and hardworking He loves me to death and loves our kids, he still isn't as hands on with them as I wish and he has a very short temper. He changed a lot after our third child and I do love him very much.

Most of my resentment comes from my pregnancies. I think he wasn't ready for a family at that time and didn't know how to deal with all my needy feelings during depression and pregnancy and he just opted out. And when I was dealing with the deaths of my friends, he just couldn't deal with all the emotions. He chose to make jokes and suggest I was depressed again rather than be there for me as I grieved. I was newly pregnant when I got this news so emotional is maybe an understatement.

 

He wishes he could take those years back and do them over now, and so do I because they were precious years. But we can't and I struggle to regain the respect I lost for him then.

 

Especially trying to be logical in my mind about it lately because I've been cheating on him for over a year now, how can I still be angry that he never touched my belly to feel our second baby kick? Never attended a doctors appointment with me.. Called me horrible names .. But now I've slept with his friend in our bed, how can I still be angry for those names he called me? But I must be. Or I don't know how I could have..

 

I'm not using any of that as an excuse for cheating. But in the beginning of the affair.. When I was letting myself fall for a friend of my husbands, those are all the things I thought about. As this other guy was telling me how amazing I was, and seeing all the things in me that my husband didn't see during that time I needed him to most.. I was telling myself he really loved the real me, more than my husband did. My husband during the same period my OM was wooing me was trying his best to love me the way he knew how. I still needed more than he was willing to give or maybe I just closed myself off to accepting what he was offering.

 

He was stressed and angry all the time from work and I took it personally. I just kept being the good wife and mother, I keep a spotless house, cook three meals a day and work on top of it. I waited for him to show more appreciation for me but never saw it.

 

Then OM out of the blue told me how he felt.

 

That night changed everything in my heart, I felt entitled to a love story. It didn't happen over night. It was at least a year of longing looks, flirting and sexual tension. We were friends and I thought this was harmless, I knew he liked me, I could feel it. I let myself fantasize about him every night, I never ever intended to ever make any of it a reality or let him know I felt that way. I did not see fantasizing as bad. I liked his wife and was getting closer to her as time went on and my husband and him were getting closer too. And then he stated how he felt, my walls crashed down and I spilled to him I felt the same! The affair turned from emotional to physical very quickly.

 

..the only major flaws that I would say my husband still had in our marriage, is his short temper, and not appreciating the emotional side of my personality..

He often belittled my feelings and called me names. I also wish he was a more hands on parent.

 

My AP is very even tempered, he's a very positive person and sees the glass half full, and he's such a hands on father and amazing loving attentive daddy.

He has a lot of flaws too but surprisingly his flaws line up with mine almost exactly. So although he's not a better man than my husband I really convinced myself he was. I do think we would have been a better match in a different time and place.. But that wasn't the case. We are married to other people and we are friends with each other's spouses.

 

I know it's wrong.

 

I don't need to hear its wrong.

 

I love both of these men. The fog lifted months ago, and I realized I was lying to myself about my husband not really loving me, I know he loves me and would do anything to fix how he treated me in the past. He can still be verbally abusive but in the last year has tried hard to fix it, I see him trying. In the beginning I let myself believe he was only with me because he felt obligated to stay because we had kids. And I convinced myself OM was my soulmate even though until meeting him didn't even believe those existed and never in a million years saw myself cheating on my husband.

 

I let myself fall in love with OM and there is no taking it back though. I won't ever tell my husband and I understand that's selfish.

This other guy, he loves me but he loves his wife too and it's a lot easier for him to deal with separating it all. He says we can make this last forever if we are careful and don't meet too often.

 

We have had no direct contact in 2 weeks, we've still seen each other but have not talked about any of this, which is normal around the holidays, we keep very low key.

 

I think about him all the time though. All the time. In every situation I'm in.

 

I've been loving my husband as best I can but sometimes my heart hurts.

 

I love my husband, but feel like the moment I started fantasizing about OM, the very first time I let myself go there.. I lost part of my relationship with my him, that I'll never have back. I'm sad that I let it happen.

 

I love my OM so deeply, I want nothing but good things for him and his wife and their marriage but at the same time I want him with me, I want him to hold me while I fall to sleep and I want to say out loud to people that he's mine and hear him say the same. It will never happen and I've accepted that.

 

I think I love my OM a little more than my husband and I'm so sad to say that but believe it's true. I love both of them and don't really have either, because my deepest thoughts I have to keep to myself.

 

I would welcome any kind words, my self esteem was destroyed over the last few years only to be built up at the beginning of the affair and crashing down again when I started to really be honest with myself. I could see my husband shines in areas my OM doesn't and my OM shines very brightly in the key areas where my husband has let me down in the past. I think that's part of why I let my boundaries down but now I'm in this weird place where I'm not sure where I'm headed.

 

I don't think I'm strong enough to end it with him because I'm still totally in love with him, and I don't want a divorce either but I can't keep doing what I'm doing to a man who works hard for our family and loves me.

 

I don't need advice telling me to confess or go no contact, because I'm not even close to being at a place where those are options. I do not get defensive easily, but kindness is appreciated I would really just like to talk to someone about any of this.

[Aspasia33]

Maybe layala does actually love her OM? and perhaps she would be happier with him?

 

Real love does not involve placing another happiness above your own, that is why half the people here are having affairs.

 

If Layla really loved herself(sorry to speak for you Layla) she would say perhaps, I'm not happy in this situation, I'm going to leave. However, she feels trapped by trying to be the "good" wife, perhaps with a man that isn't compatible?

 

You cannot force who you love. maybe her OM actually treats her with more love and respect?

 

I am a former Married-OM and BH. I'll share my perspective:

 

This is a temporary phase and years from now, you'll look back and wonder about what you were doing. Change your statement from 'I love two men' to 'I Love Myself and have two men to satisfy me'.

 

Real love involves caring for someone and placing their desires, happiness and well-being above yours. Real love involves being with someone because you want to make them happy, not because they make you happy with sex or providing a comfortable lifestyle.

 

 

 

.....

 

With all do respect you do not know my situation. I am not with with of them because of a comfy lifestyle or for sex. All I ever do is care for those around me. I take care of my husband and have been waiting and wishing for a marriage where how I take care of him will spill over into how he takes care of me but it is a work in progress.

I love both of them very much. I know what love is. I would take a bullet for them, I would do anything to make them happy.

 

I haven't once tried to say this affair isn't selfish but its the only thing on my life that could be considered so, don't waste your time trying to analyze my marriage when I have not given a lot of details on that. I do love my husband, but believe because of so much built up resentment my OM has a little more of my thoughts and heart lately.

[Aspasia33]

Just because you are having an affair, doesn't mean your husband has a free pass to treat you however he wants. Do not let your guilt color things so much it becomes ridiculous. You can change your life, to one that doesn't feel that you are lying all the time, it may or may not include the OM, and these changes do not happen overnight. I truly believe if there were not problems in your relationship you wouldn't have stepped out, and that is not blaming your husband either...unfortunately we all seem to just try and do whats right, and then it gets screwed up.

 

No matter what has been said on these forums, you are a good person Layla, and if you knew how to fix it, you would. Be at peace for a while, you dont need to make a decision either way immediately.

 

I wonder if because I screwed up and cheated on my husband that means I don't or shouldn't have the right to talk to anyone about it. Just let the feelings rot. Seems like that.

I am not stupid. I know right from wrong and am not here trying to convince anyone that affairs are the right way to live your life, so although I appreciate that you are all knowing and monogamous that really doesn't have a whole lot to do with what I was talking about. Thank you for your concern though.

[msoptimistic]

I have enjoyed reading this discussion as it is very similar to my own. I had a very good marriage for many years. However, I found myself beginning to resent my husband when we were in a social situation and for some reason I realized that what my friends and family had been telling me for a long time was true...he is a know it all! In fact, his first wife told me this many years ago but I chalked that up to hard feelings during a nasty divorce situation. The hard part is that now that I have realized it for myself, I cant "not' see it if that makes sense! He is well known in the community and in the public eye..not very many days go by that someone doesnt tell me how lucky I am to have him...those peopele, however, dont live with him or even spend time in his company...they are just recipients of some of his charity works and they think he hung the moon! He is financially secure, never drinks, always does what is right, etc. However, he doesnt like to socialize and it doesnt matter anyway as he has alienated most of our friends. He prefers to spend time with his animals or doing yardwork vs things I enjoy such as running and going out with my friends...I met my MM when I was really in a low spot with my H...and yes he is totally opposite...he doesnt hurt for money but is not as well off as H, he comes home from work and has a glass of wine and relaxes, he enjoys concerts and goingnout to eat with friends, etc. Unfortunately he is doing all these activities with his wife! I love everything about my MM but sometimes I think maybe I like his lifestyle and personality even more! So as crazy as it sounds, I do love my H in a comfortable kind of way but I often wonder if I walk away from MM and stay with H I'll be settling?