Reply to describe your emotional affair

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] who ends up hurt?  why did you do it?  what did it feel like?[/quote]

Look, everyone's love life is a personal story. Mine should have no impact on yours. I really think you would do better to search inside your own heart and soul rather than rummaging around in the aftermath of anonymous strangers' wanderings. But anyhow...

Who ends up hurt? As I said above, it depends on the choices that are made.
I eventually made the choice to tell my spouse, who naturally felt betrayed, angry, and distrustful and insisted that all communication cease. That in turn heightened my own feelings of pain and confusion. But when my spouse finally opted to give our marriage another chance, I was very grateful and wanted to do all I could to make amends and restore trust. The AP was cast aside and probably felt pain; that was the least of my concerns at that point. But due to circumstances surrounding the upheaval, one of my almost-grown children also found out and that caused additional pain and confusion, and I honestly don't know if it forever altered my child's perception of me. It made me realize (which of course I should have realized all along) that I was risking not just my marriage but the love and trust of my children. No affair, whether emotional or physical, could be worth that risk. And for my particular situation, given that I also had a considerably younger child who did not know about my missteps, I can only hope that that child will never find out, but my past could still bite me in the future. And it is not fair to ask one sibling to keep a secret forever from another. Will my secret come out perhaps even after I am gone? It's too awful to contemplate that one of my beloved children might have unresolved anger toward me at a point when I could do nothing to ease it. So I continue to torment myself with regret for my selfish folly.

So anyhow, lots of people ended up hurt and could still end up hurt. And I hurt inside because I've had to acknowledge that I put my selfish needs before the needs of my loved ones. Why did I do it? I was feeling a bit neglected in my marriage, and having someone else be more responsive to me made me feel more alive and bright inside. Maybe some people start out with the intention of having an emotional or physical affair, but others just take one tiny step and another tiny step until you find yourself in deeper than you ever meant to be. And then it's very hard to extricate.

Any relationship that is new tends to feel enlivening and rewarding. It's really not fair to compare a new relationship with a well-worn relationship. It's all too easy to gravitate toward the new relationship that is unencumbered by the drudgery of everyday life.

What did it feel like? Sometimes great. But the only way it can feel great is to compartmentalize, and that ends up eating away at one's insides... or else you end up so successfully compartmentalizing that parts of you start to feel dead inside. So that's another kind of pain, the inner damage that we do to ourselves when we try not to think about the wrongness and dangers of what we are doing.

And sometimes it felt not-so-great anyhow, particularly when the two realities began to collide inside or because the AP said or did something that felt intrusive to my primary relationship. Or when I'd find myself thinking about the AP while in the arms of my spouse, at times when I did *not* want such a mental/emotional intrusion but could not shut it down. I also realized I had created an enhanced, idealized version of the AP in my mind or heart. So when the AP would occasionally reveal a natural human "flaw" (such as having needs, too, instead of being all about me), I would feel disillusioned and I would realize that this emotional relationship wasn't even real - or not entirely genuine, at any rate - because some of what was fulfilling was just my own fantasy version of the relationship.

And if I was going to enhance a relationship with mental and emotional gymnastics, I might as well put my energy toward my own marriage rather than draining time and emotional energy away from my marriage... either that, or make a clean break if I truly couldn't get my needs met in my marriage and if my needs were so important to me that I would risk my family for them.

Being in an emotional affair is sort of like starring in your own movie that doesn't yet have an ending. It's thrilling and suspenseful and you feel special. But it's a movie that you'd be ashamed to share with anyone you know. And unlike an absorbing movie that you can step in and out of, as an actor or a member of the audience, and return to your "real life" ... an emotional affair eventually shreds the fabric of your "real life."

I'm sure for some people, the emotional affair is so "worth it" that they don't mourn the loss of the old life, and they just move on with the new adventure and try not to fret too much about the pain and turmoil they are bringing to others. Or they figure they can just keep it secret indefinitely, having their cake and eating it too... and maybe it doesn't eat away at their souls as it did mine, and maybe they think that keeping a dark secret from a spouse is a harmless thing to do. Maybe they can live a fictional life forever.

I couldn't.
[/quote]

PP, this is so insightful and helpful.  My situation is different due to years of emotional/verbal abuse and threats to divorce/take the kids/house/assets from me.  I had an awakening a month ago, stopped caring about losing those things and realized I could regain happiness.  I have decided to compartmentalize.  Sometimes when I wake up to go to the gym, I mourn for the loss of the connection I had with my spouse and worry about my kids future.  I have asked her to change/seek help but no dice.  I was inexperience when we got involved/married and my parents basically will support me but also have told me I told you so.

I have connected with someone who is an open relationship and the way talks to me with kindness and looks at me makes me feel alive again.  And now I am working towards a separation.  As of now, I am able to compartmentalize and realize that I need to make my own heaven or hell. 
[/quote]

Is that you, op?[/quote]

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