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This message has been edited. Last edited by: relk1,

Well, let's start with the basics, shall we? They're fairly simple, after all.

Hi! Welcome to SYMC, relk1. I am really sorry for the turmoil in your life, and am really glad you went looking for answers now rather than a year from now.

You're in a fascinating position. Right on the edge of utter chaos, being drawn toward it (do you have the strength to stop, even now?), recognizing some of the downside, but still being drawn by the intoxicating chemicals that lead you on.

The trouble is that it's hard to reach someone in your position. That intoxicating chemical mix makes perfectly reasonable things sound crazy, and perfectly crazy stuff sound reasonable.

So how can I help? Tough to. The first advice is the hardest. The hardest is this: End all contact with this other woman, please. Want to make sure it ends? Sit down with her husband -- the man who made vows of honor and integrity to be with her -- and tell him that you're seriously considering an intimate affair with his wife. Let him know what your intentions are.

Yes, I am saying that that quiet sadness is more important an emotion to feel than almost any other you have ever experienced. I know it's a tough one. Create it. Embrace it with all of you. It's the simple and profound emotion of honor taking its truest course.

And then there is your dear wife. Someone you love? Perhaps. But then again, someone who you are using as a shield to avoid facing your own sence of horrific guilt and inadequacy over something that happened seven years ago. That isn't actually love, you know. That's, uhm, sort of like emotional terrorism of the heart, where you use your wife as a human shield against your own deepest emotions. It's sort of effective, as you've found over the years, and yet also profoundly distressing. Those darned feelings have a hard time actually going away, you know?

So what would I do there? I would tell her, too, about your attraction to this other woman. Why? Because your choices now are agony for everyone -- and utter torture for everyone. Choose the cleaner pain of honesty, here, and you again have chosen a path of integrity -- and of an emotional honesty that you have avoided for quite some time.

You say you're missing the genuine risk of losing something dear and essential. I think you're just avoiding noticing how close you are to losing something even more essential than danger. You're risking losing your honor and integrity. Sound dead to you? No. What's dead is your current emotional state and your current state of understanding of yourself. You want risk? Danger? The real chance of losing it all?

Okay. I triple-dog-dare you to sit down with your wife and tell her everything you posted here -- and all the rest of it, whatever "it" is that's impossible to write in a short post on the Internet to strangers.

There's risk for ya. In spades!

So, as I said, welcome to SYMC. You'll find as you read on this site that I don't do the easy simple stuff, and I'm very low on the empathy scale. Still, as you say, you're 32 and growing up. Welcome to it. It's wonderful and one heck of a lot of work, too.

Hmmm. I feel the need to tell you a story. I went to an event a few weeks ago where I spoke to a couple who is much older than I am -- they're both over 70, thought still quite active. They were laughing and joking with each other in a quite intimatae way.

I know a little of their history, enough to know that they went through some very tough times when they were younger. Don't think that what you're going through is unusual. It's not. It's part of a grand and painful cycle, as I am sure you're aware, of growing intimate with someone you live with every single day, who rubs off all the easy stuff and then rubs off all the place where you -really- need to grow, too.

It's hard. And it's worth it. Even when it looks like death to go through it.

Hi relk
What a difficult place you are in.
Welcome to SYMC.
And everything justj said. She is sometimes.

quote:

What's missing is...adventure, glory, conquest, the genuine risk of losing something

Dopamine, adrenaline, etc, I could go on. And it wouldn't help anything.
There's so much more I feel like saying except I also know it wouldn't help anything.
I guess the main thing I wanted to say, though, is that there are times in my life that the world was grey and devoid of colour. And having a chemical-inducing person in it painted it technicolour. And whitewashed over the fact that really, I needed to create that colour in it myself, for it to last. Which is hard when you are at the 'responsibility' stage of life when it's all work work work - I have a 6mo and another one coming in Feb. I'm 32 this year. Not a lot of time for painting. Enough time to feel you should be doing something special with your life, and you aren't.
Once in my life only, that technicolour came from a person I was friends with, valued and loved, rather than from aimless crushes. That time I acted on it. And that's the way to lose everything - the friend, the spouse, the kids, the life with potential for better, with potential for colour...
Grey is better than black. Grey can still be coloured in.

First, end the relationship with the other woman. It makes everything easier. (Yes, I know, it doesn't seem that way.) It will also clarify many of your other choices, though neither of us can yet see what those clearer choices will look like.

Oh, and where is your sense of humor? It seems to be missing from your evaluation of these things.

Ya know Relk... I went thru a time in my 22 yr marriage that was just plain he[[.

the truth of it is.. some of it was of my own making.

Right now when I read your post I see a young man... with much potential no matter what you choose.

But before you 'choose' your future... lets look at what you 'chose' in your past. And I want you to know that we all rewrite our history to some degree. Usually depending on our emotional landscape at the present time.

You chose your wife. You chose to marry her even with all those reservations. You chose to keep going back to her all those times.

why? (and not the stuff you've already mentioned about her being nice and the sex is great).. what are some of the other whys?

And you know that all the things you're talking about wanting for yourself? You can have them in a marriage and you can have them not in a marriage. Those things like adventure and glory can be achieved no matter what the situation. Unless those are more of an amorphous nature.. or do you have specific dreams that you are discussing?

You know.. when I was 40... I pretty much dropped my basket. I went thru a depression deeper than the grand canyon and did some dangerously awful things.. I understand you don't 'want' to tell your wife, especially now with the way things are with the OW.. my question is..if you don't talk to her now about how you have been feeling and what happened with this woman, what happens down the road apiece if another such person appears. Or the same one comes back?

You know...the truth of things are... no matter the circumstances of 'why' you married and how things have been, everything before you with your children and your wife is an empty book in which you get to choose how the pages are written.

You can choose as much glory and as much adventure within your marriage as you can without. What you aren't doing right now is choosing to be honest with her and with yourself.

Like J said... the toughest thing, the most courageous things are usually the most painful. But usually are the things with the most integrity and honesty involved.

Loui

quote:

It's a tough discussion to have with one's spouse:"Sorry dear, I never really loved you more than anyone else, and I married you out of a sense of responsibility. Furthermore, our marriage is based on the fact the I thought, and still think, that you are a wonderful mother. But, I really don't need anything more from you. While this, my feelings, your feelings, and our situation may change in the future, this is how it was, and is. Pass the salt, please."

Mmmm ...yessss ..... very awkward.

And. Incredibly honest and risky. And ... omg ... think of the space it would create for real intimacy. An icy cold blast of reality that might actuall blow away illusions and rip aside the veil. What then might come?

Welcome to symc - love your writing. Do you write professionally? If not, you should.

P

How are you doing?

P