David, Mark and Helen
Thank you for your opinions which I have thought about over the last few days and it has helped me immensely. Thank you, Mark for sharing your past. It seems clear to me from what you said and from my experiences that when we find any relationship which provides us with new levels of intimacy it becomes a new benchmark for our other relationships which we then judge against this new one. That makes sense as for nine and a half years I told nobody about my relationship with my friend because of the guilt and shame I felt, but I finally opened up to two girl friends six months ago, and was overwhelmed by their compassion, concern and love for me. This has brought these two relationships to a new level and they will now remain significantly important in my life whatever happens in the future. Obviously where relationships don’t have the potential to measure up to the new levels of intimacy it causes disappointment and disillusionment.
David, I have always been an idealist and a perfectionist (a pretty dangerous combination it seems!) and struggled continuously with feelings of guilt and shame without (most of the time) feeling remorse and this caused a lot of internal conflict. I can see truth in the fact that this can destroy our self esteem and I don’t think I realised how bad this had become. My friend was always incredibly good at encouraging me when I was feeling low or insecure which at the time was great, but I can see how this can then perpetuate a circle of low self esteem and reliance on someone else, and perhaps this happened to both of us.
Helen, I agree with you that I need time and space to work on myself before I make any decisions and thank you for reminding me that people come, go and change but the only thing that remains constant is our own company. I used to live by that rule but without noticing I had forgotten it!
I now know what I need to do, and feel I can look forward to the future with optimism again. Thank you! 🙂

Thankyou Macintosh and Mark for your opinions which I value greatly. I think it would be very hard now to confess to my husband as to be honest I do not feel at the moment particularly remorseful because of the fact that I learnt so much about myself and got so much positivity from the affair – even though it is causing me such sadness now I cannot in all honesty say I regret it happening. My husband did have an idea that the relationship was possibly overstepping the mark but that’s just it. He is under the impression that I came to rely too greatly on my friend’s friendship but is unaware of the huge depth of my feelings or the duration of the relationship. Sad as it may seem the relationship obviously replaced what was missing at home even though at the start of it I can genuinely say I didn’t believe anything was missing!
Interestingly for the first time today I feel angry to my friend for taking his friendship away whereas before I felt overwhelming sadness and grief. I can only hope that this might be the very beginnings of some kind of healing process though I know the road ahead is incredibly long and bumpy.
Mark can you explain to me what you mean by “Eat, Pray, Love or a Vision Quest”? I suspect it might be useful for me in the future though perhaps too early now. I have started meditating to try and get a clearer picture of what direction I should be taking and all roads at the moment seem to lead to a future life with my friend. As I mentioned there has been talk of possibly getting together in the future when our family circumstances change but I suspect it would be unhealthy for me to try and hold on to this ideal as obviously there are no guarantees.

Hello Helen
Thankyou for your reply and your compassion. Yes, you are right that I need to allow myself time to heal in order to look at my marriage objectively and to be able to decide what to do, but your comment about whether my husband knows the true me resonates with me because obviously for years I have been aware that my friend is the only person who knows the true me – not just because of the affair but because I was able to express my feelings to him in a way that I was unable to do with my husband.
You asked if I ever wanted to reveal the friendship to my husband. The answer is I did at times but chose not to. Though I had my selfish reasons for doing this (I had the best of both worlds – security and a great person to confide in and who was understanding in a way that my husband wasn’t), I also was fearful of the shock waves and damage revealing it could cause as this friend is within my immediate community and at the time it would have been impossible to avoid him and his family. I misguidedly believed I could deal with my emotions and keep everything under control.
Yes my conscience nagged me continuously and both of us were continually fearful of being found out. So why would we continue? The answer is that we both felt inexplicably drawn to the the relationship. I have always been very idealistic about marriage for life and to experience such a strong attraction was almost shocking to me. I completely felt at ease with this man and at times felt my reactions to him were difficult to understand but also felt almost out of my control. I have supported him through his daughter’s serious illness, he has supported me through my husband’s life changing illness and many aspects of our lives. I am not a particularly spiritual person but I had an overwhelming feeling that we had met for a reason (I still feel this way) and I guess rightly or wrongly this justified my actions. I don’t know if some people might think of this as naive. He referred to me as the best friend he didn’t know he had never had and said that he didn’t feel the level of guilt I did because he felt we were meant to be together and he had just met me at the wrong time. We have brought emotions out in each other that we have never experienced before (some good and some bad).
My question now is this. Can you met someone at the age of 20 and that person be perfect for you at that time but not be the right person 25 years down the line? My husband was exactly the person I needed when I was young – he was calm, stable, confident and he has always been a good father to my children. By contrast my friend is passionate about life, has energy and enthusiasm and is not afraid to show emotion. I am a different person to the one I was at 20 and I want to get out and enjoy life with a confidence I didn’t have when I was younger. We talked about how we would share and enjoy life in a way that I cannot imagine doing with my husband. Sure, there is some common ground in interests that I have with my husband but over the years we have grown apart and enjoy doing different things. Though my relationship with my friend has finished it seems that we have both acknowledged that there may be an opportunity in the future to be together. I am finding myself holding on to this idea a little too tightly, and am concerned that it is going to prevent my healing process and therefore my ability to properly evaluate whether my husband and I still have enough to work on to be able to stay together.