Dear Isabel:

To resolve your guilty feelings and the anxiety that goes with it, I suggest: (1) Don’t add to your guilt by telling your husband about what happened: that will hurt his feelings and harm the daughter you share. Instead, protect your husband from this information and be a better wife to him. By being a better wife, I don’t mean being passive, never bringing up anything that bothers you. I mean be kind to him and be assertive with him: remind him that you too bring money into the household, and that regardless, the two of you are equal members of one partnership/ a marriage, a team of two people. Talk to him about strategies to handle your differences in regard to spending money, so that both of you get enough of what you individually need, physically and emotionally,

(2) Kindly and assertively, tell your co-worker- friend that texting, meeting for lunch and communicating in any way that goes beyond being friendly co-workers in the context of the workplace is inappropriate and will not happen again.

anita

Dear Isabel:

You are welcome.  “I just have let myself down and gone against my moral compass“- there will be a time when your daughter will let herself (and you) down. I know that such time will come because we all let ourselves down from time to time, to one extent or another. And when that happens and your daughter feels badly about it, suffering for it, I am sure that you would not want her to forever-suffer over it. You would want her to feel badly for just the length of time it will take to learn from her experience, and make better choices as a result, am I correct?

“The only way I can justify it is that I need it at the time, but then I just feel selfish“- you are not a saint, Isabel, no one is. Learn from the experience, make better choices as a result and allow yourself to no longer suffer over it. Suffering further will only hurt you and your family. It is okay to let go of the guilt when it served its purpose.

anita

Hello Isabel. From what I’ve read, it sounds like you’re unhappy in your marriage. Cheating is never ok, and you should never make any justifications for it, but in this scenario, it seems like your husband was highly critical of you and wasn’t satisfied with the relationship, and neither are you. Usually, unhappy people under someone’s control usually try to undermine said control, even subconsciously. Now, you didn’t go as far as to sleep with your coworker, so you should absolve yourself physically at the very least. You are not perfect Isabel, no one is, and if you are truly not satisfied, then I suggest leaving the relationship. However, the fact that you have an 18 year old in attribution to your extensive marriage also might make this hard. You can explain to your husband that he should stop making you feel inadequate, and that you two are partners, not a parent and a child. Best wishes Isabel, StarSeed.

* Dear StarFlower: I read your original post in the thread you started, but it looks like you accidently reported your own thread for inappropriate content, so I cannot reply to it. If you want to repost your original post in a new thread, I will reply to you there. Otherwise, I will wait for the mistake to be corrected.

*Dear Ann: you mistakenly addressed your reply to me, instead of Isabel, the original poster.

anita

Dear Isabel:

You are welcome. I am sorry you still feel so badly. Considering how badly you feel when not much happened with your co-worker, and that what happened, happened a long time ago, I figure that your guilt and self-loathing are from way before you ever met your co-worker, and that what happened with your co-worker ignited guilt and self-loathing that existed earlier, maybe since you were a child (?)

Looking at the roots of your guilt can help put your guilt regarding your co-worker in perspective, so that you can see where the problem is, and where it is not. Does this make sense to you?

anita

Dear Isabel:

If you committed a crime and it would have benefited the victim/s of your crime, or society in general, if you confessed- then I would have suggested that you confess and suffer the consequences, but you did not commit a crime and it wasn’t a full-blown affair: there are no victims (other than you, for feeling so badly).

There are two possibilities as I see it: (1) As a child, you felt like a bad daughter, feeling that you made terrible mistakes that made any one of your parents’ lives difficult, and that guilt shifted to the not-quite an affair that you had, (2) You really want out of your marriage, but you don’t know how to make it happen, so you are tempted to confess to your husband, so that he will leave you.

Any of these possibilities, or both, true?

anita

Dear Isabel:

You are welcome. No 2 is a definite No, what about No 1?

I imagine that you don’t feel like going back to your childhood and that you are focused on your marriage. But going back to your long-gone childhood so to look for the roots of the current guilt and self-hate, and the unreasonable urge to confess, has the potential to help your mental health and your marriage in the present time.

anita

Dear Isabel:

Inspired by TeaK’s excellent analytical skills, and by one of her many well-developed, organized posts (right above), I went back and re-read your 5 posts on this thread, continuing my efforts to better understand you and your situation, based on the little information that you provided. At the end of this long post, I will quote from an online article that I think will be somewhat helpful to you.

“At the start of November, I started to get really bad anxiety and I put this down to the guilt I was feeling because of what I have just mentioned… I have been fine mentally this year, it has just kind of hit me in the last few weeks” (Dec 3, 2021). “I… managed to get through the whole summer feeling just fine” (Dec 9, 2021)-

– I didn’t pay attention earlier to the following: you shared that there was some physical/sexual crossing of the lines a couple of times back in April 2021 (and maybe in May as well), but no crossing of the lines since. For six months (May-November 2021), you didn’t feel anxiety, at least not elevated anxiety. Anxiety hit you Nov 2021, and you assumed (“put this down”) that your anxiety was about the guilt you’ve been feeling.

At first (in your original post), you shared that the crossing of the lines happened twice in April: “We did not sleep together but we did cross the line a couple of times and then I stopped it…we crossed the line back in April and then the relationship was just friendship”

But six days later, you shared: “I also stopped this back in April/ May“- I am now thinking that by stopping this, and by adding May to the timeline, maybe, you were referring to more than just two times of crossing the lines. It is quite common for a person to not remember details accurately, but it is also common to minimize one’s wrongdoings, or perceived wrongdoings (even on an anonymous public forum), rearranging times and details, so to appear less guilty and receive less negative judgment from readers. I am not saying that you did indeed minimize/ lie. I am saying that it is possible. This possibility leads credence to why you believe that your husband will never forgive you, being that possibly the crossing of the lines happened multiple times over a long time.

In your original post, you wrote: “At the start of November…  I told him that I wanted to stop completely“- stop what completely, is the question: the lunches together, the text messaging… or the ongoing crossing of the lines?

In my first reply to you, I suggested that you “tell your co-worker- friend that texting, meeting for lunch and communicating in any way that goes beyond being friendly co-workers in the context of the workplace is inappropriate and will not happen again”. In your next post, you did not respond to my suggestion. You did not say something like: I have already told him that, we completely stopped all contact outside the workplace.

And now, another possibility (this is far from being a certainty, it is only a possibility): you’ve been an unhappily married woman for a long, long time. You then had an affair or almost an affair with your co-worker, an older man, perhaps a married man, and you were hoping that he will exit his marriage and that you will do the same, and that the two of you will live together. In November, you realized that your co-worker will not leave his family for you (“My Coworker is a grandad and has many children and grandchildren and it would break his family apart“). Realizing this, your anxiety shot up, and you’ve been tempted ever since to make the crossing of the lines public so that he will leave his family, a temptation that causes you even more anxiety.

“I think this situation has made me realise that I do love my husband but perhaps there is some work to do in our marriage“- having lost the hope of exiting your marriage, you state that you “do love” your husband, suggesting in this wording that earlier, you believed that you did not love your husband. Stuck still in an unhappy marriage, with no hope for an exit, your anxiety shot up and you figure: maybe there is a way to work on your marriage and make your life a bit better.

Taking a break from possibilities, here is quite a certainty, in my mind: you are happy in the context of your job (“my job which I absolutely love“), but you are not happy in your marriage, and you haven’t been happy in it for a long time.

Here is a part of a psychology today article, titled 9 warning signs of a relationship that just can’t be saved“, that I think may be helpful to you, not necessarily for the purpose of leaving your marriage, but for the purpose of maybe saving it, as it addresses some of what you shared on your thread:

“If you’ve ever been in the position of deciding whether you should separate or divorce, you know the extraordinary stress and the flood of emotions that accompany the question. Humans are generally averse to change — we prefer the known, even if it makes us unhappy, to the unknown future… Obviously, if you have a lover-in-waiting, this part is slightly easier…” (in one study), “the top reasons for divorce were growing apart (55 percent), not able to talk together (53 percent), and how the spouse handles money (40 percent), with infidelity coming in at 37 percent…. Interestingly, the broader and softer issues — growing apart, not communicating, handling money — were negatively associated with a possibility of reconciliation, and the researchers surmised that people see these as indicative of a basic lack of compatibility… Couple counseling, it appears, is a mixed bag, because most people don’t go into therapy until things have gotten terrible; it’s not unlike seeking a doctor’s help after you’re no longer able to walk, having ignored the problem for ages. This last-minute kind of counseling also, alas, may not really be about trying to fix the relationship, but going so that you can reassure yourself that you’ve tried ‘everything.’ … So, what are the signs that a relationship has passed the point of no return? Here are nine, drawn from personal experience, interviews, and research.

“1. Discussion has become impossible. There’s a total breakdown in communication, and perhaps civility. The minute you open your mouth, he or she is on the defensive…  Alternatively, stonewalling has become the norm — and one of you simply walks away. Studies show that men are most likely to stonewall, but that doesn’t mean that women don’t do it…

“2. … a helpful distinction between complaint and criticism. Let’s say you are concerned about how much money your spouse is spending… A complaint focuses on the problem at hand and is very specific; a criticism takes aim and makes it personal. So, if you say, ‘I’m concerned about money, and I think we should cut back our spending a bit,’ you are registering a complaint; on the other hand, if you say, ‘You are spending way too much on stuff as usual, trying to keep up with Joneses. You are so damn irresponsible and selfish,’ you’re criticizing. If your marriage has devolved to the point that every misstep or mistake gets called out as an example of your larger flaws…  you are deep in negative territory…

“3. You walk on eggshells or duck contact (or your partner does)… Women (and men) who grew up in toxic households are much more likely to adopt an avoidant stance because they learned to quash their feelings and tiptoe in childhood… 4. His or her familiar ways of acting now irritate you (or worse)… There’s a subtle line at which criticism… becomes contempt or disgust… It could be his table manners… (that) now drives you nuts…5. Subtle and not-so-subtle verbal abuse…  6. Your spouse isn’t the person you turn to when you’re stressed…7. You spend most of your time thinking or functioning like someone who’s single… Do you rarely, if ever, think about what were once your mutual goals…? Do you fantasize about what life would be like if you weren’t married? 8. There’s no eye or physical contact between you…  Do you remember the last time you held hands or put your arms around him or her?… Do you avoid each other?…  9. You’re no longer acting like yourself… constant worry and anxiety… Feeling trapped or stuck can wreak havoc on your sense of self and really looking at the changes in you and your behavior may be another sign that perhaps this marriage shouldn’t be saved.

“Sometimes, we spend way too much time treading and staying afloat when we really should be getting out of the water. Do seek counsel if you’re miserable and totally stuck. Talking it through with a professional can be a game-changer”. End of Article.

anita