bitterbug Posted July 20, 2005 Share Posted July 20, 2005 I have been married for only 2 years, and I am involved in an online affair right now. My husband has no idea I have been talking to this other guy out of state for more than 7 months now. I am not happy in my marriage, and feel that I married too young. Problems started arising when my husband's job got more demanding of him. We went so many days and nights without talking to one another. He put his job first and foremost in his life. He worked 12 hour shifts which started from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. He also worked another side job as well. He claimed he had to work extra hard as I was finishing up school and we needed the money since his was the only income we were living off of. His attitude started changing towards me as well. He no longer wanted to hold me, give me attention or be affectionate with me. We even went months without any sexual contact. We almost divorced twice already, but thought we'd give counseling a shot. Counseling seemed to work, but now that I am out of school and have a job, myself, my husband still can't seem to stay away from working. It's tearing me apart to see that our marriage is falling apart again. I'm not happy, and even though he says he is happy, I find it hard to believe him. When he comes home at night, he is more affectionate and is as sweet as can be, but I feel like I'm not my self anymore with him, and a lot of this has to do with the fact I am having an online affair. My online "friend" has put so much excitement back into my life. We have so many things in common, and when we speak, we finish each others' sentences. I think about him very often when I'm at work, and just the teensiest thought of him brings a warming smile to my face. I feel so much for this "friend." My online "friend" knows that I'm married, but thinks that I'm pursuing a divorce. At the time we started talking, my husband and I were going to go through with the divorce. I just feel really mixed up, confused, hurt, and like I'm doing the worst thing on the face of the earth to my husband and to my friend, but I can't stop! I need help! My "friend" and I are even talking about meeting up sometime within the next 3 months. I never thought I'd be in this situation as I am in today. It's sad. I'm not sure if I wanna keep pursuing this magical relationship with my "friend" or save my marriage. What should I do? I've never told anyone about this before-- ever. I sometimes think I'm losing my mind. It just feels really good to vent and get this off of my chest. Even if no one replies, it sure as hell felt good to type this and "tell" someone. I feel like the biggest piece of s**t on the face of this earth. Link to post Share on other sites
LoveNoLoss Posted July 20, 2005 Share Posted July 20, 2005 First of all, you are not losing your mind. Other wise there are alot of people losing their minds. I will be honest with you. If you pursue this and meet him, things will only get worse. I understand your confusion. I had an affair which allowed me to find out that my husband was a serial cheater thoughout our marriage. He had seven affairs. The last year ha s been the worst of my life. My husband and I are seperated. If your husband finds out he will be devastated beyond belief. You will rock his whole world and the pain will be almost insurmountable. You are in the throws of an affair. ALL RELATIONSHIPS start out exciting but soon real life kicks in. I bet you had this phase with your husband too. If you want your marriage to work out, you will BOTH need to work at it. I understand feeling neglected. My husband travelled most weekends of the month in a band for 7 years. I always felt the band came first before me and in alot of ways it did. Having someone listen to you when you feel alone is intoxicating. All I am saying is this is heading for a great disaster. If you left your husband tomorrow to be with this guy, you may not have the same problems you have now in your marriage but you will have issues. No relationship is perfect but I bet he seems pretty close to that right now huh? That's because it's a fantasy land relationship online. Please sweetie, either end it now and try to work things out with your husband or let him go to move on before he gets hurt finding something out about what is going on. The fact is, HE WILL find out eventually. Link to post Share on other sites
ReluctantRomeo Posted July 20, 2005 Share Posted July 20, 2005 Originally posted by LoveNoLoss The fact is, HE WILL find out eventually. Yup. Better to confess than be caught. Stop the online affair now - tell the OM you cannot be in contact anymore. Check out marriage counselling. Link to post Share on other sites
jmargel Posted July 20, 2005 Share Posted July 20, 2005 All you have with this friend is infactuation. You can NEVER, EVER have a successful marriage or work on a troubled marriage when there is a third party involved. You have a responsiblity towards your husband to stop ALL contact with this OM. You also have a responsibility to your husband to tell him you have been cheating. Yes, it's cheating even though you didn't meet. Emotional cheating is just as bad if not worse as physical. Personally I could get over my wife have a ONS with some stranger than having an emotional affair with some OM. Of course your husband is not going to be energetic, he works 12 hours a day to help you get through school! Instead of spending all your time on a computer while you were attending school, how come you weren't working a part time job? Basically it comes down to, stop acting like a teenager and start acting like a real woman. Your 'online' friend is just telling you things you want to hear. It's easy to type words on a screen, I'm sure he says the same things to about 5 to 10 other women as well. When I use to chat alot of married women would try to PM me and to tell you the truth they all basically said the same thing. However there are 3 sides to every story. His, Hers and the truth. Either end if with this 'friend' or your husband. Having your cake and eating it too doesn't work. Continue to goto counseling and work on your problems. Be HONEST with your husband. The only way you two can get back what you lost is by stop being so deceiving. Nothing he has done deserves what you are doing to him, Period. Link to post Share on other sites
Author bitterbug Posted July 20, 2005 Author Share Posted July 20, 2005 Originally posted by jmargel All you have with this friend is infactuation. You can NEVER, EVER have a successful marriage or work on a troubled marriage when there is a third party involved. You have a responsiblity towards your husband to stop ALL contact with this OM. You also have a responsibility to your husband to tell him you have been cheating. Yes, it's cheating even though you didn't meet. Emotional cheating is just as bad if not worse as physical. Personally I could get over my wife have a ONS with some stranger than having an emotional affair with some OM. Of course your husband is not going to be energetic, he works 12 hours a day to help you get through school! Instead of spending all your time on a computer while you were attending school, how come you weren't working a part time job? Basically it comes down to, stop acting like a teenager and start acting like a real woman. . hi, thanks for your response. I wasn't working a part-time job because I was in school for 50 hours. I actually went BACK to school because I couldn't use my degree in this area. That's a long story in itself, too.................in a nutshell, my husband was asked to come back down to work for his family and put aside his degree. We both were planning on moving out of state when we graduated college, but that fell through. Then, I had the decision to make if I wanted to go through with the marriage and come back to this area to live, knowing I couldn't use my degree, knowing I wasn't gonna see my husband as much, etc. Things were promised from his family to us (no house payment, help with electric, no car payments, etc) if my husband would come back here to work for his family business. I made the decision to come back here with him because he meant everything in the world to me, and we were promised a lot of help knowing that I wouldn't have a job. Needless to say, all of those promises were meaningless and fell through. So, my husband found himself struggling with this job. He knows that if he doesn't work it, though, this business will no longer be in his name, and he'll have no part of it. My online fling didn't start until after I was almost done with school. I was online looking up some information about my new career, and met my online friend on a message board there. Ugh. I agree that what I am doing to my husband is not fair at all. I feel very guilty about it, and talked to my husband about going back to counseling, and my husband's like "why? we've already been, we know what to do and we're doing okay." I told my husband I want more time with him, and for him to just talk to me instead of us going straight to bed when we get home. I want so badly for us to get back to how we used to be. We dated for almost 5 years before we got married, and never in my life did I imagine our marriage would end up like this. My husband comes from a family of divorces, too. His parents aren't together, his uncle, his grandma and even his aunt......... all of these divorces stem from this family business. I appreciate all of you "listening" to me. I really just wanna wake the freak up and live a normal life-- whatever that may be. Link to post Share on other sites
Author bitterbug Posted July 20, 2005 Author Share Posted July 20, 2005 Originally posted by ReluctantRomeo Yup. Better to confess than be caught. Stop the online affair now - tell the OM you cannot be in contact anymore. Check out marriage counselling. thank you for listening and for your response Link to post Share on other sites
Author bitterbug Posted July 20, 2005 Author Share Posted July 20, 2005 Originally posted by LoveNoLoss First of all, you are not losing your mind. Other wise there are alot of people losing their minds. I will be honest with you. If you pursue this and meet him, things will only get worse. I understand your confusion. I had an affair which allowed me to find out that my husband was a serial cheater thoughout our marriage. He had seven affairs. The last year ha s been the worst of my life. My husband and I are seperated. If your husband finds out he will be devastated beyond belief. You will rock his whole world and the pain will be almost insurmountable. You are in the throws of an affair. ALL RELATIONSHIPS start out exciting but soon real life kicks in. I bet you had this phase with your husband too. If you want your marriage to work out, you will BOTH need to work at it. I understand feeling neglected. My husband travelled most weekends of the month in a band for 7 years. I always felt the band came first before me and in alot of ways it did. Having someone listen to you when you feel alone is intoxicating. All I am saying is this is heading for a great disaster. If you left your husband tomorrow to be with this guy, you may not have the same problems you have now in your marriage but you will have issues. No relationship is perfect but I bet he seems pretty close to that right now huh? That's because it's a fantasy land relationship online. Please sweetie, either end it now and try to work things out with your husband or let him go to move on before he gets hurt finding something out about what is going on. The fact is, HE WILL find out eventually. thank you so much for your response. Your words really pierced through me. I appreciate the advice. Link to post Share on other sites
StillHurtin Posted July 20, 2005 Share Posted July 20, 2005 I agree. Stop contacting this OM and try working on your M. It will only get worse if you continuing your "friendship" w/ this OM. Been there, done that and it's not worth it. You don't want to hurt your H in this way. An old BF of mine found me several years after we ended our relationship. We emailed, chatted and I felt so guilty I finally told H about it. He was very upset. I stopped contact w/ this guy. It took awhile for my H to come around and stop harping on me about it. Well, about 5 years later HE was the one that had an A. You have gotten some great advice, try hard to follow it. Continue w/ MC and have NC w/ this OM. GL! Link to post Share on other sites
ReluctantRomeo Posted July 22, 2005 Share Posted July 22, 2005 Originally posted by bitterbug thank you for listening and for your response Thanks for your polite reply to my rather abbreviated post Link to post Share on other sites
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