Guest, you are in deep, but you aren't going to get out of it until you do some self-reflection about what is missing in your life that your LO seems to provide. Staying in a marriage for the sake of your kids is not enough. If it were, you wouldn't be having an LE with another woman. Figure out what it is you need, and begin finding other ways to satisfy your needs that are empowering.

My LE experience was a lot like yours, except it was mostly one-sided (I know now) and there was no PA. I completely agree that LEs can be awakening! I used to say my LO unlocked a door inside of me that opened my world, but I've learned that I don't need him to hold that door open. Instead, I've finally made progress in healing some childhood wounds and have become the person I am supposed to be through my efforts to get over my LE, especially once I let go of the fantasy of remaining friends with my LO.

I hope you recognize that as awful as LEs are, you can grow and become happier without your LO in your life than you are with her in it.

Hi Guest - thanks for the update. Sounds like you were making progress. I’m sorry you’re feeling like you’ve failed. Focus on how you felt on your holiday.

I’m trying to end it with my LO but I just can’t seem to do it. I’m clinging on to the hope that one day we’ll be together. Mixed messages from him fuel this. I would give anything for him to be direct with me and maybe your LO feels the same?

You could try posting here what you would like to say to your LO, it sometimes helps me to write down how I’m feeling.

Update. I failed, miserably.

I was overseas for work and vacation the last two weeks of August. I prepared a speech to give to her before I left, but chickened out and decided that the passive approach was worth another try. Travel is the perfect excuse for no contact, right? That's what the adultery forum suggested - the proverbial slow fade (nice).

I managed to go two weeks without contacting her or responding to any emails or texts, which is a record. Towards the end of my time away, I was feeling pretty good, actually. The intensity of my infatuation diminished, although I still thought about her a lot.

I came back determined not to fuck up my progress. She reached out to catch up on work. She starts asking about my work trip, and I am gray rocking the shit out of this conversation (another tip from the adultery board). Then, slowly, but surely, she starts chipping away at my armour. And before you know it, were laughing and chatting, dopamine is flooding my veins. Fuck.

Back to square one, people. Back to square fucking one.

I need to end this somehow in a direct way. Why do I always struggle to ask for what I need? Why do I always put others before myself?

Sounds like ending it with LO is the only option for you.

Do it soon and remember there’s lots of support here.

I've thought about asking my wife for an open relationship. But I don't think she'd go for it, and me asking would likely make things difficult at home. We get along well, and that's good for the kids. The kids are happy and that's the most important thing to me.

I wish I could just appreciate what I have. A great family and my relationship with my LO (mostly EA, some PA). But my feelings are consuming. I feel possessive and jealous because I am stuck in this NRE state with her. The distance makes it worse. Maybe in time my feelings will fade? I hope for this.

So really there is no point in divorcing. My kids are my main priority. I'm not unhappy in my marriage, but I'm also not happy, if that makes sense. But maybe life is just hard and happiness is fleeting? A mirage.

Also, it just couldn't work with my LO (at least not at this stage of our lives, which sucks). And if I can't have her, there is no point. I would be alone half the time and see my kids only three or four days a week? No way.

It won’t necessarily pass. My view has always been that if you’re at the point where you’re having affairs, physical or emotional it’s time to seriously question whether you should remain married.

I would rather have an honest conversation with my husband, (he might and probably does feel the same). You don’t have to tell about the affair, just how unhappy you’ve become. You may decide to work together and save what you have or split with an element of friendship in tact, your reputation and most importantly the respect of your family.

The alternative is to keep having affairs, get found out which will eventually happen- whether this time or next. You will lose all of the above anyway.

Just my thoughts. I’m not as good as expressing myself as some others here, but please keep posting.

Good luck!

Keep us posted and good luck.

My guess is your wife is miserable too (it generally works both ways), could you encourage your wife to have an affair? Find her euphoria?

[quote=Guest post_id=61058 time=1566329467]

I hate to admit this, but I've even tried to hurt her, on purpose - just so I wouldn't have to have "the" conversation. You know, so she'd reject me first. How childish, right? I've drooled over other women when we are out, just to piss her off, when I could care less about anyone else but her. Just to make her jealous or something, or test her love for me? I don't even know.

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Thank you for being honest & sharing this. I have also given and received these same type of mixed messages. Even though I am well aware that I play games like this, I never suspect that others are!! It’s all so confusing.

[quote=Guest post_id=61042 time=1566320781]
Wow, thanks for the wake-up call.

I mean nothing to my LO, is what you're saying. Everything she said to me was fake. We've know each other and worked together for almost ten years. I guess it's all fake.

She won't be devasted, or hurt, when I say I need to stop contact. She'll be fine with it. She doesn't care about me as much as I care about her. She probably never did.

I guess it's just impossible to have real feelings outside of one's marriage. I guess I will continue on in my loveless marriage.
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I don’t think this is true or what anyone is saying. Sure, she could be a total narc who is using you for attention & doest care & has been lying this entire time. OR she could feel about you exactly like you do about her (or some variation of what you feel - genuine feelings). The point is that regardless, it is not real. Assuming she genuinely feels for you, you guys are both just projecting onto each other. You’re “in love” with a fantasy, you want an escape, the broken parts of you are attracted to the broken pats of her....wound mates. She is meeting some deep-seated need you have & possibly likewise.

So how I (we, these strangers on the internet) know that this is projecting/not real love? Because obsessive love or limerence, what you are feeling, is NOT healthy love. The fact that you are obsessed means that this has to do with YOU and NOT HER. It could be literally anyone that came into your life at the right time, she is not special, you are not special. This is fantasy.

Real love is not obsessed. Now, there’s often period of infatuation at the beginning of new love that feels & can be obsessive but the key is that it eventually ends or settles into a more secure state. Living in a perpetual infatuated state indicates that this is NOT real/healthy love.

My SO knows something us up, but I'm just blaming it on a mid-life crisis. What a dumb term. More like mid-life "awakening." Or mid-life "I'm tired of living this way." Everything I've read says it will pass. So, I'll rely on the collective wisdom. Not like I have a choice.