Emotional Affair

[lizzy-bet]

I've been married for almost 5 years to my husband who I met while both of us were active duty Marines. Like many military relationships, we rushed into it after only dating for 6 months and with him coming right out of a tumultuous year long relationship with his ex-fiance. I was the unfortunate recipient of a lot of his baggage, including numerous late night phone conversations with his ex, many e-mail exchanges behind my back, and lots of rude and condescending crap from her for about 3 years into our relationship. A LOT of people asked me why I stayed, and why I put up with something so hurtful for so long, and to be honest he is my first real relationship, and we got together when I was 19 and married when I was 20. I was definitely young and naive, but also dedicated to making our relationship work. When I was released from active duty, I moved in with my Mom for awhile to think things over and decide if I could really forgive him for treating me like a side relationship for the first 3 years of our time together, and while staying with her I got a job that I really loved, met my bff, acquired some new hobbies and basically healed. I stayed for about a year, and as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. I really think I have forgiven him for everything, and he has completely changed. He works so hard to maintain our relationship now, and treats me like a princess. He had a surgery almost 2 years ago (about 6 months after I left) on his left testicle to remove 4 benign cysts, and so I went home for 2 months to take care of him while he was bed ridden and do everything for him. After that, I got news that my college application to a private university had been accepted, and that with my scholarships and my GI Bill I would be able to go to school for free. I was already 23 when this happened, and my husband told me to go and do it, because this was my chance to get my degree and to do something with my life.

So now I am a full time student, and I'm a Junior in college with a bunch of students who are younger than me and hard to relate to. I have one guy friend however, who I really like a lot, but our relationship has crossed the boundaries that I put up for myself when it comes to my marriage. In fact, there are many things I would rather talk to him about than to my own husband, for the simple fact that my husband's communication style doesn't match mine. Most of the time he listens with zero feedback at all, or just goes off talking about his own stuff. With my friend however, we can have a relaxed, flowing, amazing conversation about anything and he never judges me. However, I do not find him sexually attractive or romantically attractive, but I do feel for him more than what a person feels for a friend. But at the same time, I would not pursue a relationship with him if I were single. I don't really know if that makes sense, but genuinely that's how I feel.

I think because of the length of my separation from my husband, I have started looking for alternatives to help me feel not so alone. My husband is getting medically retired from the military this spring, thanks to the surgery he had 2 years ago, and my friend is graduating in the spring and who knows when I'll see him again, if anytime at all in the near future. I think I'm just posting because I feel really horrible. I feel like a bad friend to this guy for using him as my emotional stepping stone, I feel bad for my husband because I shouldn't feel anything for any other man, and I feel like a bad person for being so weak. Is there anything I can do to get over this guy completely besides never see him again? I don't really know what to do, I've been home with my husband for the last couple of weeks and already I feel much better, but I still have to brave another semester without him. All of this makes me doubt that I'm even in the right relationship to begin with. I have a man that is perfect by most standards, and that I really love a lot, but I'm not sure if I have completely forgiven him or if I'm using others to fill in the holes of our relationship. Any advice would be amazing.

[girl68]

nope cut contact, which you should have done a long long time ago. Remember that committment to your marriage? Yeah that.

[lizzy-bet]

Yea, that's basically what I've been doing slowly but surely. I have a lot of mutual friends, and of course classes with him that I have to take. It just sucks, it feels like I've lost complete touch with myself and what I want in life, none-the-less a relationship. I would like to keep him as a friend, at least in the sense of still being able to talk to him until the semester is over and he moves on to Grad school.

[girl68]

you know that's a terrible idea. CUT him out! before you really fall hard.

[wellami]

Got to agree with girl68 on this one.

The fact that you are using this friend to highlight your husband's shortcomings - for example, you directly compare the two by saying things like he is so much eaiser to communicate with - to me just says that you have some issues you need to work through with your husband rather than finding a replacement for those shortcomings elsewhere. Finding a friend like this just means you end up putting emotional energy into a different relationship that will continually shines a light on the problems with your husband. That can only possibly be damaging to your marriage in the long run. It also gives you an excuse to keep running away from facing the issues.

You need to step back and work out whether you want to be with your husband first and whether you are prepared to work to sort out the problems that are there. If so, you need to drop all contact with this friend until you have sorted it out. If not, then leave your husband before starting something else. Either way, this half way house of being with your husband but having an emotional affair with someone else is never going to end well. And even if this friend moves on, if you don't sort out the underlying problems you'll just find another friend. I do believe that you can have a friendship with somebody like this, but it has to be a supplement to a solid relationship, not a replacement or support for a weak one.

And this might be a little bit self indulgent, so I apologise in advance if it comes across the wrong way, but trust me: emotional affairs hurt. I'm fairly certain my girlfriend is having an emotional affair with an ex and I'm going through seven kinds of hell over it. They are every bit as painful as a physical affair, and in some ways more difficult to deal with. They are certainly every bit as damaging.

In short my advice would be put a complete stop to the friendship and sort out your feelings about your marriage first.

[lizzy-bet]

I completely agree with you wellami, I know exactly how much it hurts when your significant other has feelings for ex's, as that's exactly what happened during the first 3 years of my relationship with my husband. He even told her on a drunken night that he still loved her, and there were multiple times where she would e-mail me and tell me things I had told him that he repeated to her. I think what hurt the most is that my husband never had any regard for the fact that I would cry myself to sleep over it, he told me I couldn't ask him to hate her. It took me a long time to get over this, and everything is completely better as far as I can tell. But, we also don't live with each other, and we haven't since February of 2008. I don't know how to fix problems with a long distance relationship. He will finally be medically retired in 2011 sometime, but then he's going to have no job and be trying to find a job in northern California somewhere while I finish school. He is dealing with leaving the Marine Corps which he loves to no end, and has been active duty sine 2001. He and I have talked about this in depth about a month ago, where I told him exactly what was going on and he completely blames himself and won't have any kind of constructive conversation about it at all. He is so absorbed in getting all his paper work situated, and getting out of our house, and school, and trying to find a job and fix the fact that everything in our lives is uncertain, that it's really hard to concentrate on any part of our relationship.

[wellami]

Lizzy-bet, I can really feel for you in this situation. I hope my response didn't come over as critical as it wasn't intended that way. Those first three years must have been extremely difficult for you. I'm probably in the situation you were in for those first years, where I love someone but they still have rather complex feelings for someone else. And the real pain is I can sort of understand why. But that's my problem and I don't want to hijack this thread! The only reason I'm mentioning it at all is that it doesn't actually sound as if you ever really got over it. It may now be done and your husband may have put his feelings and his past behind him, but it doesn't seem that you have. And I understand that entirely. It's a tough thing to get over.

Your relationship seems to have a lot of things going against it - the living apart, changes in your husband's life etc. At the end of the day though, and I'm sorry if this sounds unfeeling, they are all practical problems that can be solved, or in some cases time will simply solve them for you. Without meaning to sound blunt, my question first of all would be do you want to fix them? You sound to me (and I know it's real easy to misread these things in a post) still hurt by your past, confused about your feelings and somewhat critical of your husband for not being able to talk to you about things. The point I was trying to make is essentially turning to another man isn't going to help that situation. It still sounds as if you need to first of all sort your feelings out, and then either end it or work on fixing it. I'm also going to observe that the one thing you don't talk about in your post are your feelings for your husband.To put it bluntly, do you still love him? That's got to be the first thing you decide before you start planning on how to solve all of these other problems.

If the answer is yes then you can both plan for the future even if you can't fix the problems yet, and that in itself will help. You also need to tackle the communication problem. If he won't talk directly to you about this and is turning these feelings of blame inwards, do you think the pair of you could go for some kind of relationship counselling? I know it is a lot to ask on top of everything else that is going on in your lives, but it could genuinely help.