How to move on?

[OnwardWeGo]

I was the OW for 8 mos, broke up officially at start of September though saw it coming last half of August. We are on a one month NC, then checking in. Her husband officially knew (affair was with a woman), but she didn't tell him the full extent of it and though he officially had given her permission, both were uneasy about it. As a result, she was very hot and cold with me. The hot was hot though, both in terms of passion and also we had a very intimate, loving relationship. I fell in love with her and she fell in love with me.

 

Breaking point was guilt was getting to her, and the more intense and deep our thing got the more torn she felt. It was bad for her and it was bad for me because the hot and cold from her were both getting more extreme.

 

I feel heartbroken right now and really messed up from the hot and cold stuff. Cried a lot last half of August, now having good days and bad days. Felt really good the last several days but then today I felt full of grief. What got me was the 'we were supposed to' do xyz together thoughts.

 

Also it is possible that it's not over, as I told her that what I need is for her to have a real talk with her husband so that she is not lying and is not feeling guilty. None of this he kind of knows but she is not comfortable with him fully knowing so she lies or understates and feels badly about it. I need the hot and cold to stop, and she needs the guilt and lying to stop. I don't need her to leave him, but I think what I asked of her she cannot really do. And I have been so so very heartbroken by this latest episode that I won't go back to the same pattern. So really logically I know it's over, but not knowing with absolute certainty allows for a glimmer of hope that I think is making things harder.

 

I have been reading on these forums and I know I will get people saying we should be NC full stop, but I have texted with this woman throughout every day and late into the night every single night for 8 months, and saw her regularly until I moved two months ago. The move is what has shifted things as she used to just fit me in the cracks of her life, which I didn't like but it had a finite end as I was moving. Now there can be no fitting - I live far enough away that we would need to plan to see each other. We planned, then she cancelled (guilt), then uncancelled, then re-cancelled. Horrible merry go round. A month of space given the every day communication is a big step.

 

I guess my questions are is it normal to go back and forth, to start to feel normal again and then miss her horribly, and I do want to be friends with her. At what point can I do this? I have become friends with exes in the past. I won't do it though until I know I am over her. 'Friends' would make it too easy to slip back into the love affair thing, or a love affair via text only, which is horrible. Also validation and commiseration, I so need both of those.

 

Ugh. This part is so painful. I have talked to my dearest friends about it, but really I can only talk to a few friends because being an affair it was secretive. Also I think there is a unique pain to the end of an affair, or at least in the circumstance I'm in, because the good part was so so good, we have so much intimacy and intensity and though my mind knows she is conflicted and unreliable, my heart attaches to her, and then she is gone and it's nothing that has happened directly between us and nothing that I have done or can control. I have found that so hard and actually damaging. Right before I moved we spent the most intense night together. Then I moved and she messaged how much she missed me and loved me and was longing for me. I went to see her and she was weird, because she had lied to her husband to get out of the house to meet me (I said don't lie, just tell him the truth, but she didnt). Then texting throughout the summer, she has been warm but has not been texting me like a lover, though she has been texting like more than a friend, so it's this weird weird area. Then the plans and cancelling uncancelling cancelling thing. I feel so messed up from it all.

 

Please empathic responses only. This thing has had enough natural consequences. I will not do something like this again. God this is rambly, I'm sorry.

[AngeliqueC]

((Hugs))

 

Affairs are hard enough without additional complications like distance - and I'm sure same sex relationships have unique issues when one partner is also in a hetero relationship.

 

Best I can offer you is to just focus on your life, on settling into your new home, exploring the area you're in, and meeting your neighbors, new colleagues, etc. Let her decide if and when she is coming to you. No pressure from you, if you can manage it.

 

Again, ((hugs))

[OnwardWeGo]

Thank you Angelique, I so appreciate your reply.

 

What you say echoes my own instinct - work on settling in, meeting people, going on with life. I did this the last few days so well, organized my apartment, figured out what interesting social things are happening, arranged to go to some of them. Then today I couldn't stop crying. I guess that's just how it will be, until it's not like that anymore.

 

I agree too about no pressure from me. Today I felt so tempted to write her, had all these things to say, but she is the one who has backed off really, I just said I can't deal with the on again off again, so it has to be her move, if there is a move to be made.

 

The hard days are so hard, and it's difficult when it has been a secretive relationship and really the depth of feeling has built up through sex and conversation. Can't talk to many people about it and there are not many things to point to to explain what has transpired, without it very quickly becoming TMI. So this big thing has happened, I have loved and lost this woman, I have moved, and I need to act all perky and not heartbroken when most people in my life ask me how I'm doing. I am sure this is something many are familiar with in this forum.

[MidnightBlue1980]

I don't need her to leave him, but I think what I asked of her she cannot really do.

 

I guess my questions are is it normal to go back and forth, to start to feel normal again and then miss her horribly, and I do want to be friends with her. At what point can I do this?

 

Hi there dear. I am sorry for your pain and suffering. Obviously the same sex issue adds an extra element, she is struggling with her sexuality. You may want to explore a site for that issue. Putting that aside, here is what I would say to anyone asking your questions -

 

What do you mean, you don't need her to leave him? I think you owe it to yourself to say, yes, I want her to leave him. Unless you want to be in an A indefinitely? Assuming you don't, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying, no I will not accept your kibble, scraps thrown at me to keep me around. I want the whole package or none at all. Don't you think you deserve that?

 

The second part is, you can never be friends. I will admit, I know enough about the gay community from friends that sometimes guys seems to be able to manage this, friends after a relationship ended, but you are neither a guy nor was this a normal relationship. You are pining for this woman and if you read the boards, the friends thing does not work - ever. It only prolongs the torture and agony. Here's why - you think, well, at least I have something of the person I love, it's better than nothing - she thinks, I am not such a bad person, my AP seems A-OK, and she feels fine. But you are not really fine at all. Its a knife in you....twisting slowly as you watch her live her life without you - only you have the pleasure of getting to hear about it. Ouch. I've tried this. It is not fun.

 

OR - since you have the same sex element, the A would be really difficult to end. You are off and on, off and on, off and on. She never leaves and you waste decades of your life. The friends thing is a cover, not really friends, but not really...anything.

 

As for you last question, it is very normal to go back and forth between love, hate, crying, depression, bargaining - your emotions are going to be all over the map.

[OnwardWeGo]

Thank you MidnightBlue.

 

I don't feel that I need her to leave him, no. Asking her to leave him would be like asking her to marry/commit to me, because she wouldn't leave him on her own. 8 mos of hot and cold feels way too soon for that. What I love with her is the emotional and physical intimacy. She doesn't do that with him; I am not jealous. They have kids, they parent them well together. Do I think their marriage is a good one? No, I don't, but whether they should end it is not my business. Eventually, if things were to continue well between us, maybe I could imagine a slow transition to she and I being together, with everyone amicable. I could see that, though it sounds strange probably - he is a very calm person, and I imagine he is as lonely as she is in that marriage. But for now, no I don't need her to leave him. I would need her to be able to fit her relationship with me into her mind so that she doesn't feel guilty or like it's a double life, and so that she is honest with him about it. I think that is not a likely eventuality, however, because it would mean they would need to admit to each other that they have no intimacy. But that is the only thing that I could imagine that would allow her to see me and not feel conflicted and act intermittently weird/removed with me.

 

She thinks maybe she is a lesbian. I think she might be, or she might be bisexual and just not in love with her husband/not attracted to men right now. Who knows.

 

As for friends with ex lovers, lesbians do this quite a bit. We are pretty famous for it. But the way my MW justified our affair at the start was that it was like we were friends with just some extracurricular activities. Then the sex and the relationship got really intense and she stopped saying that, but when she went all weird on me recently she was behaving in a grey zone between friends and lovers, where she wasn't saying 'I love you' but was texting me all the time (I don't do that with my friends) and oversharing things you don't say to friends. So I could see 'just friends' as a way to keep me on the hook on her end. I can't do just friends until I am definitely for sure over her. I have no idea what timeline to expect on that though. I would love to know when I am going to feel okay about all of this, if indeed it is done for real.

[DKT3]

Thank you MidnightBlue.

 

I don't feel that I need her to leave him, no. Asking her to leave him would be like asking her to marry/commit to me, because she wouldn't leave him on her own. 8 mos of hot and cold feels way too soon for that. What I love with her is the emotional and physical intimacy. She doesn't do that with him; I am not jealous. They have kids, they parent them well together. Do I think their marriage is a good one? No, I don't, but whether they should end it is not my business. Eventually, if things were to continue well between us, maybe I could imagine a slow transition to she and I being together, with everyone amicable. I could see that, though it sounds strange probably - he is a very calm person, and I imagine he is as lonely as she is in that marriage. But for now, no I don't need her to leave him. I would need her to be able to fit her relationship with me into her mind so that she doesn't feel guilty or like it's a double life, and so that she is honest with him about it. I think that is not a likely eventuality, however, because it would mean they would need to admit to each other that they have no intimacy. But that is the only thing that I could imagine that would allow her to see me and not feel conflicted and act intermittently weird/removed with me.

 

She thinks maybe she is a lesbian. I think she might be, or she might be bisexual and just not in love with her husband/not attracted to men right now. Who knows.

 

As for friends with ex lovers, lesbians do this quite a bit. We are pretty famous for it. But the way my MW justified our affair at the start was that it was like we were friends with just some extracurricular activities. Then the sex and the relationship got really intense and she stopped saying that, but when she went all weird on me recently she was behaving in a grey zone between friends and lovers, where she wasn't saying 'I love you' but was texting me all the time (I don't do that with my friends) and oversharing things you don't say to friends. So I could see 'just friends' as a way to keep me on the hook on her end. I can't do just friends until I am definitely for sure over her. I have no idea what timeline to expect on that though. I would love to know when I am going to feel okay about all of this, if indeed it is done for real.

 

I think it's important for you to come to grips with the idea (most likely fact) that her husband isn't the only one getting half of the story. It pretty common that while involved in affairs, the wayward spouse overstates marriage issue, in part to justify what they are doing and in part because most often they understand it's what the AP needs to hear in order to maintain the affair.

 

You ask how to move on, the solution is simple, the execution is difficult. You move on by giving up the relationship, ending it in your heart and taking back control and your power.

[OnwardWeGo]

I don't think she is overstating the marriage issues - we were friends before, and she actually doesn't like talking about how their marriage sucks. She likes to maintain a perfect image and I think she finds it embarrassing.

 

I will say though that I don't know if she is just cold with him because she is gay/neither of them are in love with each other, and then goes cold on me because she is conflicted, as she claims, or if she is actually just like that, as her general way of being, and has been all lovey and passionate with me just because of the newness. Obviously with newness comes lots of passion, but I feel uneasy about how she would be with me once things settle down. This is a lot of why I don't feel in a hurry to get her to disrupt her life for our relationship - if she were to begin to be with me like how she is with him, that would be the end of that, and I can't tell right now.

 

So true that the difficulty with giving up the relationship is in the execution. The month NC thing is a complicating factor in my mind, but really I think that a month is not near enough time for things to change on her end in a meaningful way, and I so need to not be thrown about by her hot/cold with me anymore. I have been weak in the past about it but this time was too much.

 

I just read Gator's guide to NC and found it so helpful! I am bookmarking it. http://www.loveshack.org/forums/breaking-up-reconciliation-coping/breaks-breaking-up/265350-gator-s-guide-nc-second-chances

 

I definitely need to be strong. If we are meant to be together it needs to be on different terms than it has been, and if we are not meant to be together I need to not keep getting sucked back in.

 

I guess it's just maintain NC, expect to check in in a month but not with the expectation of a huge revelation or resumption of the relationship. It's possible she will want to resume, and I will need to be firm that I'm not resuming under the current circumstances, because it has become really awful for me to deal with her extremes. I don't have extremes, my end of things is not complicated, I just love her and enjoy spending time with her. So the full of love and passion one day, gone the next thing is really bad for my heart.

 

So maintain NC, know that the check in at the end of the month is really just a blip, feel sad when I feel sad (which was a whole lot today), take note that I'm not willing to do this mourning of her over and over again so this is all the more reason to be firm, and get out and meet people and do fun things? I think that is the plan?

 

It just sucked today after 2-3 days of feeling really good to suddenly be in a flood of tears.

[OnwardWeGo]

How do you 'end it in your heart'? I guess this is my question really with all this typing. How do you do that? I don't hate her. Maybe I will be angry? Sometimes I feel angry. Mostly I don't feel angry.

 

Just time?

 

The good stuff was so, so incredibly good. It's hard to just let that go.

[OnwardWeGo]

NC is hard tonight. I feel physically achy.

[aileD]

The good stuff wasn't real. It FELT real, but it wasn't. You were not living in reality.

 

Look up limerence.

 

Try to find out what was missing in you that she fulfilled and fulfill it yourself.

[Lobe]

You're the affair partner. That puts you on the outside. By that virtue alone you don't get to make requests or demands. You can't ask her to continue the affair or to leave her husband on spec because you're not ready to commit. Why would she leave if you're not sure you want to be with her? You're not thinking about this logically at all, if you stop and think about it... What you're suggesting only benefits you being able to have great NSA sex. So I guess while I understand that the hot cold hurts, you're the one playing with the proverbial faucet. Your best bet is exactly what you didn't want to hear - go NC. Your MW is nowhere near ready to leave her husband, for whatever reasons, and you need to respect and accept that. Set healthy boundaries for yourself or you will set yourself up for more heartache than you can even imagine. Read the stories of other OW here to get a taste of what push pull feels like after years... And maybe it'll give you the fortitude to avoid lessons learned the hard way. Good luck

[Lobe]

Also, let go of the outcome. NC is about building a wall of protection around yourself, not triggering a response from your MW...