I was married for 18 years.  16 years in, I was so frustrated by the lack of physical intimacy (once a week, scheduled, after 10pm on Sundays) that I didn’t know what to do anymore.  We had been on a regimented sexual cycle from our 15th year.  Other than the lack of physical intimacy, our marriage and the joy of raising our 4 kids was great…….but I was in a place that made what came next a huge temptation.

So, someone I worked with and I had built up a friendship and she was intelligent, beautiful, and I could tell she desired me.  For almost a year, starting after my 16th anniversary, we had the most exciting, and deep, affair that I could have known.  It was the first time in my life I had felt a woman desire me deeply.  I knew it was wrong, but I loved being sought after and desired.  And, this woman was a very sweet woman.  The relationship was way more to both of us than just a going.  Just before my 17th anniversary, my wife saw an old text that was flirty with this woman, and I confessed.

We were in counseling and tried to make things work, but I was told that my wife just didn’t have that type of desire for me.  She loved me, but couldn’t build up that type of desire.  I just needed her to initiate once in a while and to tell me she wanted to make love to me, rather than feeling like she would do it because I wanted to.  We were well respected and had the ‘perfect family’ otherwise.

Over the few months of counseling, neither the other woman or I could completely cut things off.  The feeling of being desired a d physically wanted was something I wanted from my wife all along, but I didn’ think I could go the rest of my life without.  I was only 39.  My affair partner was by my side through the affair, steps back some during counseling, and was back FT when my wife asked me to move out 6 month after the discovery.  She was by my side when I was served divorce papers 2 months later.  She and I continued our passionate relationship when I moved our for good a year after the discovery……and was there as I went through a very difficult divorce.

During the whole time, she felt a lot of guilt and never told anyone about me…..not one friend…..not one family member.  “Once the divorce is final, we can move forward together in public.”  That happened in September of last year, and she is still unable to tell anyone about me.  So, I spent Christmas mostly alone for the first time in my life of 40 years.  I come from a large family and have 4 kids.  So, now that we can be together in public, she still cannot say anything.  This has caused a lot of fighting over the past year.  She cannot tell people about me, but she is still so connected to her parents (she is close to 30), that she can’t even go away with me for the weekend because she is afraid of what her parents will say if she is gone for a few days.  She has a good job and lives on her own, but still can’t just do her own thing.

So, I am now over 2 1/2 years into a relationship with a woman that for me has completely turned my life upside down, and she still cannot take me out in public and meet up with friends.  We haven’t been away for a weekend together, ever.  We had a relationship mainly inside the walls of her apartment, yet we would see each other almost evey day I wasn’ with my kids.  It is absolutely killing me that she makes commitments and cannot live up to them.  She says we’ll go out of town, but can never follow through.  She says she will tell people, but can’t.  She says she still loves me, but I am a secret in her life still.  I feel like I have jeopardized everything for someone who will jeopardize nothing for me.  She used to say that when we were together she felt like she was Rose from Titanic and I made her feel alive.  Well now, I feel like I am imprisoned below deck while she has jumped into a lifeboat with her Mom.

The feeling of guilt and disappointment in me is so overpowering that I don’t even k ow what to do.  Normally in a story like ours, the man kicks the affair partner to the curb and grovel back.  In our relationship, I am pursuing her completely and she is the one who chased me when unavailable and now that she has me can’t step up to the plate.  We used to talk about what an amazing love story we had, but now it is just emptiness.

I know we started as an affair, so I am not the hero in this story.  What I did was wrong, there is no way around this.  I had only ever been with one woman before this started.  For my affair partner, I was her first.  As messed up as this was, and as wrong as it was, it was truly a passionate love story for a time.  Now, I am miserable, and facing the potential end of beautiful relationships with the only two women I have ever loved in my life into the same 12 month period.  From bliss……..to misery.