What is your "what the hell was I thinking" relationship story?

[Anonymous]

Have you ever made a decision or engaged in some sort of self-delusion that subsequently makes you hit your forehead and say, "What the hell was I thinking?" Please share!

Here's mine. I recently have been obsessed with starting an affair with a much older man. I can tell my feelings for him are mutual. Doing this would sabotage my beautiful family and my career. Nothing has happened physically, but the attraction is there.

Somehow I woke up this weekend and realized how crazy I have been. If nothing else, this man is not attractive and he has treated me really badly over the years on a professional and personal level. The man has incessantly teased me, in public, in front of my peers. He's also criticized me on a more serious and personal level (saying I am emotional, anxious, and overly sensitive) to my face and to others at my workplace. On the other hand, my sweet husband has always fully accepted me just as the imperfect human being that I am.

Thanks goodness I woke up to this craziness over the weekend. WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING? I almost risked my family and marriage and career for someone who isn't even that nice to me!! I have other stories like this, but just thought I'd get the ball rolling here.

[Anonymous]

Are you high?

[Anonymous]

I've got one. In college, I had a thing with this guy who was a competitive bike racer. He shaved his entire body to be faster. When we hooked up, he would oil up his bare chest and rub it against my own chest in this weird dry-humping way. It was absolutely bizarre. Can't believe I ever did it more than once.

[Anonymous]

OP is the perfect example of how women seek excitement and the nice, loving guy is borrrrrimg and waiting to be treated like a doormat.

[Anonymous]

For me it was I dated a smoker. I am a former smoker and have not touched a cigarette since I was 23. a
I dated a guy and actually felt quite serious about him and he was a smoker. Man I'm so glad we did not get married. 15 years later he still smokes and I married a wonderful non-smoker and I have two lovely children.

[Anonymous]

Eh, mine was the typical young and stupid thing. I turned down a great, dream job my senior year of college because the dude I was dating asked me to get a job in a different city. He wanted us to live in a place we could both find jobs so I took a job in a completely different field, really changing my career path.

We broke up (well, I got dumped_ about 3 months after graduation which everyone, EVERYONE, else saw coming but I was blindsided by it. So I made a life altering decision for a dude that was gone less than a year later. What can I say, 22 year old me was not a great decision maker.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Eh, mine was the typical young and stupid thing. I turned down a great, dream job my senior year of college because the dude I was dating asked me to get a job in a different city. He wanted us to live in a place we could both find jobs so I took a job in a completely different field, really changing my career path.

We broke up (well, I got dumped_ about 3 months after graduation which everyone, EVERYONE, else saw coming but I was blindsided by it. So I made a life altering decision for a dude that was gone less than a year later. What can I say, 22 year old me was not a great decision maker.

Are you happy with your career now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP is the perfect example of how women seek excitement and the nice, loving guy is borrrrrimg and waiting to be treated like a doormat.

No this is an example of immature women or possibly someone with unresolved emotional issues. Healthy women do not want to be treated with disrespect and are not attracted to men who treat them that way.

[Anonymous]

My wife knows and is fine with it. We're in the process of getting a divorce. It's just a matter of filing on the paperwork. If I can be duped, so can anyone.

[Anonymous]

I had my first real relationship in college so I was pretty inexperienced and the guy was like 13 years older than me. So gross looking back.

We dated for a couple years until he broke up with me, and in retrospect it was clearly because even he knew it was a weird dynamic. I was like, head over heels and he was a mid-30s bartender renting in a pretty gross group rowhouse in DC. I don't know what I was thinking.

We also decided to 'be friends' so I spend the next year like, hanging around him all the time, coming up with excuses to see him like bringing baked goods or hanging out in his favorite places. Ugh it like, makes me so ashamed. It finally ended when we did it one night and afterwards he looked at me and was like, 'are you happy now?' And was super cold. It was horrible.

Although in some ways I am grateful because he did at least cut me loose and I learned everything I did NOT want out of a relationship. Now married to a pretty stellar DH IMO.

[Anonymous]

Yes - I have one. I was in my first Real Job after grad school, feeling pretty good about myself. I was living in a new city and I hooked up with this super athletic "fit guy" who was skilled physically, but in no. other. way. in. life. It was a lot of fun at first - but then he started running/cycling/skiiing BEHIND me, instead of beSIDE me, coaching me, goading me, criticizing me. I soon realized (in a dream actually - a bad one!) he looked a lot like my father and not long after that I was out of there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh, mine was the typical young and stupid thing. I turned down a great, dream job my senior year of college because the dude I was dating asked me to get a job in a different city. He wanted us to live in a place we could both find jobs so I took a job in a completely different field, really changing my career path.

We broke up (well, I got dumped_ about 3 months after graduation which everyone, EVERYONE, else saw coming but I was blindsided by it. So I made a life altering decision for a dude that was gone less than a year later. What can I say, 22 year old me was not a great decision maker.

Are you happy with your career now?

It's fine. Nothing stellar but it's fine. That, however, has more to do with the fact that I've chosen stability over advancement since then, not necessarily because I picked the "wrong" field or anything.

[Anonymous]

Yes- in grad school I dated a guy for a year who, in every way possible, (criticisms, lack of romantic gestures, commenting on the hotness of other women) was trying to tell me that "he was not that into me!"

I was dogged- imagining I was in love, and he just kept backing off but was too immature to end it. Finally, he dumped me right after he finished presenting his thesis and two days (!) before mine was due. I was such a wreck- I was lucky to graduate.

It was the first time I had felt unreciprocated love- my previous relationships were positive and affirming. I think I needed the experience to grow up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My wife knows and is fine with it. We're in the process of getting a divorce. It's just a matter of filing on the paperwork. If I can be duped, so can anyone.

What?

[Anonymous]

Got separated - had been planning to leave for a few years. Slightly crazy hot girl at work knows this, and pretty much pounces right off the bat...she left her husband like two weeks after I'd separated. We started a thing...she completely blinded me to her nuttiness with the best sex I'd ever had.

Took like 3 years of roller-coaster emotional abuse to snap out of the fog...after a while, no amount of amazing sex (any and every fantasy indulged) could make up for the emotional roller coaster. What finally snapped me out was remembering how much easier my not-good-enough-to-stay marriage was. What was I thinking indeed!