In a rough place - thoughts appreciated

[BaileyB]

She is manipulative and creates a crisis every time she wants attention.

 

Maybe that’s because her husband is distant and not attentive. Perhaps, he is otherwise engaged with work and his “work wife” when she and her child need his attention... her methods are perhaps not the best, but maybe she has tried for years to deal with the situation and she doesn’t know what to do anymore. Have you considered that the problem may not actually lay with her.

Edited June 3, 2019 by BaileyB

[finna]

That’s what makes this challenging, doesn’t it? That MM and I chose to engage in an affair with the knowledge that both of our marriages were unraveling. That I went home and ended mine and he needed to wait six months to end his. That we developed extremely strong feelings for each other that made him decide he wanted to be with me. That he has seemingly changed his mind. Yet all the feelings are still there, and nearly all the bad issues and good reasons that brought us together in the first place still exist.

 

As far as his wife is concerned - she doesn’t deserve any of it. I would much rather he make a clean break and he knows that but felt he needed to do it this way for their best interests (financial etc that I’ve mentioned before). It may be a moot point now if he truly decides to focus on his family.

 

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t want him - I do - the paradigm shift has been too recent for me not to still love and be in love with this guy. It’s messy and ultimately I hope we get it sorted out so that everyone finds happiness - whatever that might look like.

 

 

I can’t imagine being around this man and his family in the event that this affair ends. If you are able to continue working with this man, you are a stronger person than me...

 

As to your major concerns about breaking up the family, that is exactly what you are hoping and praying will happen. Sure, you can package it nicely by saying that they are incompatible, his wife is a manipulative woman, he will make the decision for himself, etc... Those are the “mental gymnastics” that OW engage in to make this situation more acceptable to all (including themselves). It doesn’t change the fact that you will welcome him into your bed the night he leaves his wife and happily go about putting the plans you have made together into place.

 

Say what you will, I’m sure she is far from perfect but I have much respect for the woman who manages his home and raises his child while her husband travels the world and works 18 hours a day. That must be a lonely thing for her, and I don’t know that she deserves to have her husband playing house with another woman while he is away on business...

[finna]

Maybe that’s because her husband is distant and not attentive. Perhaps, he is otherwise engaged with work and his “work wife” when she and her child need his attention... her methods are perhaps not the best, but maybe she has tried for years to deal with the situation and she doesn’t know what to do anymore. Have you considered that the problem may not actually lay with her.

 

Absolutely - he is not innocent and by no means perfect. I recognize those weaknesses and can only say that he and I have been able to manage some of those issues in a different way. For example, I will straight up tell him it’s time to be done working and he will comply and go do something fun 90% of the time. I will plan fun things to do based on our common interests that he will prioritize over work (once the “normal” workday is over). We also have always been good at communicating so have been understanding with each other since the beginning. I tell him that him setting aside time for us and our friends is a huge deposit for me. I encourage him to go spend time with his son, and he does.

[Timshel]

Well, up until three weeks ago we had many plans in place for he and I to do activities with our sons together... a whole bucket list of big and small things to do with the kids.

 

In my opinion this is crossing one line too many. You are a mother OP, to do this to a bs/mom is about as self serving and callous as an ow can get.

[elaine567]

He has/had it made here, he will not want to change a thing if he can help it.

He is/was in clover.

 

Lovely wife at home doing the single mother bit to bring up his child, whilst he gets to play the doting wonderful father who swoops in every now and again...

 

Sexy coworker who loves him, is always there to kiss him all better, who understands his workaholic ways and who he can jet set all around the world with.

 

He had the best of both worlds.

Now, the "mistress" wants "more".

"Oh dear, not so good... That could spoil everything..."

 

I am of the opinion men like this want two women. They do not really want one who ticks all the boxes. They want one at home and one outwith the home.

[finna]

Out of curiosity, what do you think it is that doesn’t add up about the situation. What do you think I am missing?

 

Btw, if his wife is as unstable and manipulative as you would like us ( and yourself too) to believe, then why, why, WHY is he away from home so much? Seems to me that something stinks about this situation and you are either seeing what you want to see or he's lying to you.

Edited June 4, 2019 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
quote edited

[finna]

In my opinion this is crossing one line too many. You are a mother OP, to do this to a bs/mom is about as self serving and callous as an ow can get.

 

Can you tell me more about why you think that? There are many kinds of activities that MM enjoyed as a kid that BS has no interest in doing - camping, etc. Up until three weeks ago he was preparing to get divorced and proceed with us in a legitimate relationship and was looking forwards to doing all the things that he has not been able to do in his current situation.

[Amethyst68]

It's easy because it's not real. You were married you must know that in day to day life you can't just say stop and then go do something fun. In real life you've got your child, chores, bills, just day to day life. You're currently living in a fantasy. You know the weekends for most people aren't spent at the beach (unless they live next to it), or going adventures, visiting new hotels or restaurants, no it's humdrum grocery shopping, DIY, taking the kids to play dates etc. I think your career and all the travelling has given you a warped idea of what to expect in a relationship.

[Timshel]

At the time you were planning to play happy family with this woman's child, did she know about you?

You are making plans to be step mom to a child before his wife is even aware that her marriage has ended...a bit premature, don't you think?

 

So your idea was that he would go home, announce divorce and immediately include his son into your still adulterous affair.

Divorce is a lengthy process and she would still be reeling from only just being informed yet expected to be on board with her young child off with activities with you?

 

You are in love with a married man. Like it or not, his responsibilities will not be so quickly swept aside to suit your fantasies. You are not being at all realistic and quite frankly are showing a rather cold-hearted ambitiousness toward your own desires at the peril of children, no less.

 

I guess this type of magical thinking is common with OW.

[finna]

What’s the point of life if you often can’t go do something fun? We both live in areas where outdoor recreation is plentiful and it is typical to go on a hike or to the beach. We enjoy the “chores” part of things with each other just as much... there have been lots of grocery shopping trips or other errands, making dinner together, working on one of our cars, shopping for the kids, etc. it’s one of the things I am going to miss most if/when we are finished - we truly enjoy spending time together in almost any capacity.

 

 

 

It's easy because it's not real. You were married you must know that in day to day life you can't just say stop and then go do something fun. In real life you've got your child, chores, bills, just day to day life. You're currently living in a fantasy. You know the weekends for most people aren't spent at the beach (unless they live next to it), or going adventures, visiting new hotels or restaurants, no it's humdrum grocery shopping, DIY, taking the kids to play dates etc. I think your career and all the travelling has given you a warped idea of what to expect in a relationship.

[finna]

Where I live divorce often takes less than 30 days, start to finish. For the ex and I it took less than a week. No- we did not expect that everything would immediately gel and be smooth - far from it. But having a list of dreams to accomplish over the next few years did not seem particularly unrealistic.

 

 

At the time you were planning to play happy family with this woman's child, did she know about you?

You are making plans to be step mom to a child before his wife is even aware that her marriage has ended...a bit premature, don't you think?

 

So your idea was that he would go home, announce divorce and immediately include his son into your still adulterous affair.

Divorce is a lengthy process and she would still be reeling from only just being informed yet expected to be on board with her young child off with activities with you?

 

You are in love with a married man. Like it or not, his responsibilities will not be so quickly swept aside to suit your fantasies. You are not being at all realistic and quite frankly are showing a rather cold-hearted ambitiousness toward your own desires at the peril of children, no less.

 

I guess this type of magical thinking is common with OW.

[DKT3]

I believe that the reality of your situation is you started a exist affair and he got some sex on the side.

 

I have said this many times here, if your married man would have said, I'm married, our sexlife is great I love my wife and have absolutely no intention on changing my situation, would you still have had sex with him? Unlikely.

 

Unfortunately, as young we men learn to tell girls what they want to hear in order to get what we want.

 

You dont see it because you dont want to but that is the case here. Go back and read your posts, you are all over the place and constantly contradicting yourself. Example, in one reply you say I went home and ended my marriage within hours and expected him to do the same in a short period. In another you say I didn't expect him to end his marriage for me, nor do I want him to. In yet another you state, you put pressure on him to end his marriage.

 

This isnt a sudden shift, you have been fighting this battle the entire time, you simply refuse to acknowledge it.

[BaileyB]

Absolutely - he is not innocent and by no means perfect. I recognize those weaknesses and can only say that he and I have been able to manage some of those issues in a different way. I will plan fun things to do based on our common interests that he will prioritize over work (once the “normal” workday is over). We also have always been good at communicating so have been understanding with each other since the beginning.

 

With respect, you are still very much in the “honeymoon” phase of this relationship... even more so because you are traveling together - having adventures without many of the pressures and monotony of day to day life.

[Jhm42]

Absolutely - he is not innocent and by no means perfect. I recognize those weaknesses and can only say that he and I have been able to manage some of those issues in a different way. For example, I will straight up tell him it’s time to be done working and he will comply and go do something fun 90% of the time. I will plan fun things to do based on our common interests that he will prioritize over work (once the “normal” workday is over). We also have always been good at communicating so have been understanding with each other since the beginning. I tell him that him setting aside time for us and our friends is a huge deposit for me. I encourage him to go spend time with his son, and he does.

 

Do you not see that you’ve managed his issues in a different way than his wife in part because you’re asking for fundamentally different things? It sounds like what she’s trying to say to him, albeit badly, is that she needs him to make significant changes to his life in order to be around more. You’re asking him to go to the beach. As soon as you needed something deeper from him, you started thinking about how to manipulate the situation to make sure you didn’t mess it up. Something about him makes straightforward discussion about hard things difficult, and I don’t think you’re as immune to that dynamic with him as you’d like to believe.

 

What do you think he would say if you did wind up together and a few years down the line, you end up with a devastating illness? Let’s say you have cancer or, I don’t know, late onset of a mental illness like his wife’s. Suddenly you really need your partner to be around more. Do you think he’d give up his dream job and travels to be your caretaker, or even just to make the emotional side of it easier while he works a local 9-to-5? Would you be able to ask him to do that? How do you think the conversation would go? You know him. I don’t. But from what you’ve written, it sounds like you’re confusing niceness with kindness and people-pleasing with selflessness. It doesn’t sound like he knows how to make a real sacrifice because it’s the right thing to do.

[finna]

I can see where you would see a discrepancy- some of that likely has to do with the context of what I was responding to and in other cases with what I was most feeling as I wrote the post.

 

In the case of ending my marriage and him ending his:

-I did within hours

-I wished he would have then as true exit affair as it was for me (all the right reasons) but he soon gave me a six month timeline for his wife to finish vocational retraining and restart her career

-I never wanted him to end it “for me” but once he said he was going to for him we did start making a lot of plans

-A month ago when the travel restrictions hit I did put more pressure on him as far as a timeline was concerned - not the reasons for doing it

 

So in pieces that does look quite inconsistent - taken as a whole it’s the progression of what occurred...

 

 

I believe that the reality of your situation is you started a exist affair and he got some sex on the side.

 

I have said this many times here, if your married man would have said, I'm married, our sexlife is great I love my wife and have absolutely no intention on changing my situation, would you still have had sex with him? Unlikely.

 

Unfortunately, as young we men learn to tell girls what they want to hear in order to get what we want.

 

You dont see it because you dont want to but that is the case here. Go back and read your posts, you are all over the place and constantly contradicting yourself. Example, in one reply you say I went home and ended my marriage within hours and expected him to do the same in a short period. In another you say I didn't expect him to end his marriage for me, nor do I want him to. In yet another you state, you put pressure on him to end his marriage.

 

This isnt a sudden shift, you have been fighting this battle the entire time, you simply refuse to acknowledge it.

[finna]

Good questions all...

 

Getting manipulative was my mistake and I would certainly not do it that way again... it was based on fear and I don’t like to operate that way. Straightforward communication serves me far better and that is what I have used before and since.

 

Regarding the caretaker questions - one can never know with complete certainty but I am confident that if we were in a committed relationship he would take care of me in whatever way he needed to... he wouldn’t enjoy giving up his freedom and the care would not necessarily be him around 100/% of the time - but he would make sure I was taken care of and he would be around as much as he could - which potentially might be all the time... it’s just hard to say in that hypothetical because if I had any say in the matter I would tell him to still go unless things were really dire.

 

 

 

 

Do you not see that you’ve managed his issues in a different way than his wife in part because you’re asking for fundamentally different things? It sounds like what she’s trying to say to him, albeit badly, is that she needs him to make significant changes to his life in order to be around more. You’re asking him to go to the beach. As soon as you needed something deeper from him, you started thinking about how to manipulate the situation to make sure you didn’t mess it up. Something about him makes straightforward discussion about hard things difficult, and I don’t think you’re as immune to that dynamic with him as you’d like to believe.

 

What do you think he would say if you did wind up together and a few years down the line, you end up with a devastating illness? Let’s say you have cancer or, I don’t know, late onset of a mental illness like his wife’s. Suddenly you really need your partner to be around more. Do you think he’d give up his dream job and travels to be your caretaker, or even just to make the emotional side of it easier while he works a local 9-to-5? Would you be able to ask him to do that? How do you think the conversation would go? You know him. I don’t. But from what you’ve written, it sounds like you’re confusing niceness with kindness and people-pleasing with selflessness. It doesn’t sound like he knows how to make a real sacrifice because it’s the right thing to do.

[Amethyst68]

How can you work on one of your cars? You say you have to fly out to meet him and then you say the trips are in another country/continent to justify him not going home at weekends to visit his son. Your posts are full of inconsistencies, more of them appearing with each justification of both your behaviours.

[anika99]

She is a good mother - that is not in question. Yes, I’ve given details about behavior that I have witnessed that illustrates the toxic nature of the relationship between her and MM- she is manipulative and creates a crisis every time she wants attention. He enables the behavior and thus reinforces- it’s not healthy by or for either of them.

 

Yes- he loves his job and prioritizes it for various reasons... when he is traveling he drops everything to make sure he video chats with his son for a pre-arranged time twice a day, and when he is home he spends several hours a day with him as well as full weekends. His son adores him.

 

Cheating he is guilty of - being a neglectful parent he is not.

 

Um, by your own words on this thread, he works 16 hour days and is away from home 250 nights a year. Sounds to me like his wife has to create a crisis to get any attention from him at all. It's not possible for anyone who travels that much and works that many hours to be a great parent. Of course his son adores him. He loves his dad and isn't old enough yet to realize he is being cheated. When I was little I had a grandparent that I adored. When she came to visit me she would shower me with attention and love. I was very fond of her but she was a visitor in my life, not a parent.

 

This MM has essentially emotionally abandoned his family. He's away from home more than 2/3 of the year and now he is cheating on his wife and gaslighting her to keep her in the dark. He's plotting with you behind her back the best way to ditch her so that he benefits the most, yet you call her manipulative and abusive. I don't think she's manipulative, I think she is reacting to the dismissive and manipulative way her husband treats her and her child.

 

You have this MM so high on a pedestal that you can't be objective. You also are trying to manipulate this situation to get the outcome you want.

[Amethyst68]

What makes you so certain he'd take care of you in a health crisis, he certainly doesn't seem to do so with his wife!

[heartwhole2]

I'll be honest, I didn't realize you were a mother when I was first responding. I mentioned how MM think that their affairs have no effect on their home life. I can't tell you how many times I've read an OW explaining that her MM is basically the best father in the world who goes above and beyond in what he does for the kids but still the horrible wife doesn't appreciate him. But it's a fallacy to think that spending time, money, and energy on a secret love affair doesn't take away from your other relationships. You can't make up for what you do in the dark by taking your kid on an outing.

 

That goes for you too. You have a child's well-being to worry about. Your child has recently had his parents divorce, and while I understand that this is not the topic of this post, you come across as hardly concerned about or focused on him. You're banging your head against a wall in frustration about your MM's lack of self-awareness, but this seems to again be a situation where you are frustrated at someone else doing what you are also doing.

 

So where we stand now, he's saying he won't leave and he's pulling away, right? I at least give him points for that. Many MM would simply add more excuses or offer another far-off date as the deadline. The honorable thing is to take him at his word and to put boundaries in place. Don't communicate about work on your secret app . . . use work email. Do what you can to stop traveling together.

 

When you pull away, he may very well chase you . . . but I mean chase you to keep the affair going, not chase you to be together out in the open. You will need to be prepared to see that for what it is . . . a reflex, not a conscious choice to make you his future.

 

You've admitted to being manipulative, and I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't thought of ways to expose the affair to his wife. I'm fairly certain my husband's OW face-timed him "accidentally on purpose" when she knew we'd be together to bring things to a head. She was tired of waiting, and she believed like so many that the issue was he simply lacked the courage he needed to be honest with his wife. If you have been thinking along these lines, I hope you will be honest with yourself.

[DKT3]

The only place any of this makes sense is in your head.

 

You clearly expected him to leave his marriage "for you " why cant you admit that?

 

This guy is clearly not a great father, if he were you wouldn't even be in the picture. You refuse to see that.

 

Lastly and more importantly to your situation, this guy isnt going to leave his wife, not because of his son but because it's where he wants to be.

 

In my personal life, I live for my children. The thought of not having them with me makes me physically sick. And guess what I did? I divorced my wife, I did so because I was all the things your MM claimed to be in my marriage. I took my clothes and left. I didn't fight over money, property, anything. Oh and there was no star crossed love of my life soulmate waiting.

 

I asked why are you posting because you are unwilling to allow anything to get in the way. If something doesn't fit, you simply change the narrative and adjust your story.

 

Unfortunately you are at the start of a long road of heartbreak and disappointment with full side shields on.

[Jhm42]

Good questions all...

 

Getting manipulative was my mistake and I would certainly not do it that way again... it was based on fear and I don’t like to operate that way. Straightforward communication serves me far better and that is what I have used before and since.

 

Regarding the caretaker questions - one can never know with complete certainty but I am confident that if we were in a committed relationship he would take care of me in whatever way he needed to... he wouldn’t enjoy giving up his freedom and the care would not necessarily be him around 100/% of the time - but he would make sure I was taken care of and he would be around as much as he could - which potentially might be all the time... it’s just hard to say in that hypothetical because if I had any say in the matter I would tell him to still go unless things were really dire.

 

But he’s not doing that with his wife, and he wasn’t even before your affair. She’s clearly not in a good place, she’s asking for his attention, and he’s making the choice to be away from home two thirds of the year. I mean, look at the two options here: either he leaves or he stays. Presumably he’s planning on continuing with his job regardless. If he stays, he keeps up with this dysfunctional dynamic in the name of not rocking the boat. That’s neither kind nor selfless. If he leaves, he’s predicting she’ll have a meltdown and be unable to care for their child. And he’s going to be... on another continent for weeks on end? Leaving his child with the grandparents? Also not a great move. If he really took his responsibilities seriously, he’d cut back on the travel for a while to stabilize his family, whether that looks like an improved relationship or a less disastrous divorce. But that would require him to give up something he values. Instead he gets points for kindness by planning outings for friends. That’s superficial compared to the deep unkindness he’s inflicting on his family.

 

To be clear, I don’t blame you for being manipulative. I think he’s probably hard to approach about anything that requires real courage from him. His choices say at least as much about his character as they do about his marriage, and what they say is that this is a man who avoids the discomfort that comes with making difficult decisions. Then he feels bad about his avoidance, so he does superficially nice things for other people to feel better. And buries himself in his work.

 

Again, I could be wrong. I’m just going on your words here. But think about the really good men you know, even if they’re not people you’d want to date. Think about what they would do in his situation. How does he measure up?

Edited June 3, 2019 by a LoveShack.org Moderator

[finna]

How can you work on one of your cars? You say you have to fly out to meet him and then you say the trips are in another country/continent to justify him not going home at weekends to visit his son. Your posts are full of inconsistencies, more of them appearing with each justification of both your behaviours.

 

It’s not that big of a mystery. We live in different countries but have business in my city as well as a city about five hours away from him. When we are in the city near him he does go home on weekends, and has his car during the week. My city is too far for him to fly home but we have access to my car. Other trips are global for both of us.

[pepperbird]

Yes- he loves his job and prioritizes it for various reasons... when he is traveling he drops everything to make sure he video chats with his son for a pre-arranged time twice a day, and when he is home he spends several hours a day with him as well as full weekends. His son adores him.

 

 

 

Just ask my brothers kids how much his video chats with them went towards making up for all the time he missed.

It didn't.

[heartwhole2]

I don't want to make this too much about me, but I can speak to the whole sick wife/caretaker thing.

 

When we got married I was a very independent and low-maintenance person. Then after we had kids I got really sick, one of these nebulous things that many doctors write off as anxiety. I only had a quarter of the energy I used to have and would often be too sick to take the kids to school or even get up off the couch.

 

I was blindsided and scared and my natural response was just to try harder. My husband saw me doing this and he thought, "Yeah, why aren't you trying harder?" He felt I was to blame for my own disability. He believed I was withdrawing from life voluntarily. I would tell him that I didn't feel well enough to do something we had planned to do and he would glare at me with such frustration and impatience. So I tried harder. But I also developed anxiety around falling ill when I needed to be somewhere because it wasn't safe for me to do so. That made the vicious cycle grow even worse. Push, crash, push, crash.

 

I did not marry a natural caretaker. And that was fine when we got married because we were well suited in that regard. But things changed. It took having an affair and being told by our MC that he was "self-absorbed and low on empathy" for him to get into IC and work to change. It took years of practice and growth for my husband to learn how to love and care when it wasn't easy.

 

So, no, I don't think your MM is going to treat you any differently than he treats his wife if you fall ill. He will think it is your fault, just like he thinks it's hers. He will contribute to vicious cycles because he's not a healthy person. That's why he's doing all the things he's doing to begin with.

 

So what if she's a little over the top? A little too needy? A little manipulative? What if he were understanding of how hard her life is? What if he gave her the benefit of the doubt? What if he supported her in her struggles? What would their marriage look like then? An unhealthy person thinks it's their circumstances which are making them unhappy. A healthy person realizes that circumstances cannot take away our joy, which is found in loving others and being the person we want to be.