I’m a man in my late twenties. Never had a girlfriend in real life, from a very conservative society and has been having a slew of personal problems. I’m writing this post as a confession. I’ve been a really bad man and I’m feeling extremely guilty of it. I can’t stop hating myself for it.
There was a time in my life a couple years ago when there were many financial, health and social issues in my family. I was deeply stressed and was desperately seeking a relief. People suffering from stress usually turned towards ill habits like smoking, drinking, drugs or sex. I wasn’t interested in any of it and coming from a very conservative background, found those to be ‘wrong’ acts to be avoided.
But I’m human plagued by temptations. Lust was one thing I tried to suppress (though I’m not a sex addict. Don’t worry, I am here admitting all my bad without inhibitions, so I won’t lie about anything in this article.) Though I didn’t want to engage in one night stands and was not ready or serious relationships, I still had my urges as all humans would. Male or female, a majority of people do masturbate and watch porn (in its various forms or at least one form or the other.) But I needed something more than just porn and yet not as much as real life sex.
So virtual sex seemed like a safe option. I spent a little time on online chat rooms, met a few people and used it as a stress relief. For me this didn’t seem bad for there was no touching of human beings.
I didn’t think it was morally wrong (now I do…). I had met a few people and became friends. I stumbled upon one particular girl from a latin American country. She was gorgeous, very kind and MARRIED! I should have stopped flirting or making a move online when I came to know she was married. But I was stupid enough to keep chatting, thinking she must be there for fun as well. It wasn’t an adults only chatroom, meaning a room for just sex stuff, but a chatroom where all sorts of people came.
We chatter, I flirted, she didn’t resist much. She said she was married, but she didn’t like her husband and was thinking hard about separating from him. This only made me think less bad about flirting with her (again I know now I was wrong. I didn’t back then.)
We chatted a few times more, nothing sexual yet, flirted a lot, discussed about ourselves and got to know each other. Eventually we got close and even ventured into sexual chats and seeing each other on cams often. She lamented more and more about how her husband wasn’t good enough to her and her mom was constantly demeaning her.
I kept saying about my own problems and she comforted me, as I had comforted her. We became really good friends, shared music, movies, books, discussed about our dreams, fantasies.
I was really nice to her, for she was a kind and compassionate woman. I didn’t force her to do anything, but did ask her to do stuff on cam which we both enjoyed. But the sex stuff was done for a very short time compared to other normal friendly stuff we did, like share about our problems, encourage each other, watch movies, share music and books, so on.
We didn’t ever fight, but we did fantasize a lot, talked sexual scenarios so on. One such scenario was we meeting together crossing continents and having some fun time together. The problem is that I saw this as a fantasy scenario said in a horny mood, while she took it very seriously. I was fine with us meeting together some day as friends. I thought she would have a distinction between friendship and the sex stuff.
She didn’t think anything bad of the virtual sex stuff (as its not like we were touching each other. 95% of the time it was just she on cam and me giving her scenarios.)
It was all fine till one day, she confessed that she was ‘falling’ for me and that no one else had treated her as good as me. I was shocked and it was only then I had realized what sort of an impact my talking has had on her.
I have never told her I would love her or marry her. But I did in one of the fantasy sessions asked her to be ‘my’ girl. All these had greatly impacted her and made her feel that I love her.
I told her that I wasn’t in love with her and all I had for her was great respect, affection and care. She is a good friend no doubt and has helped me get through a whole lot of issues like my parents’ sickness, my own ill health, my career problems so on. She got angry and asked if I didn’t develop anything for her over the course of a year and half and everything was just a game? I didn’t know what to say and seeing her cry made me realize what sort of an awful and dumb man I had been.
I had also helped her many a time, when it came to her relationship issues with her husband, her health issues and her issues with her mom. It’s not like I had ‘used’ her and ‘threw’ her as she thinks.
Also I forgot to mention that over the course of the time I came to know that her husband also does love her and though he had said a whole lot of bad stuff about her to her face (which made her hate him), he cares for her and cried for her a lot when she got sick.
It took my dumb head a whole lot of time to actually understand what I have become a part of and it eats my inside. I am so disgusted of myself and I don’t know how to fix this. I apologized to her, told her I would never again talk sexual stuff with her and haven’t talked about such matters in over 7 months. I have respected her as a friend and I have tried to give her moral support during her difficult times. But she expects more.
She says that she does not want to marry me or prevent me from having a real life girlfriend. But she wants me to keep continuing to talk to her and treat her as special as I had before (again she does not mean about sex.)
I was able to talk close before because I took that she saw me as a close friend. But now that I know she has some romantic interest in me, I couldn’t talk to her the same way. She kept asking me the reason why I am not romantically interested in her after saying everything that I did. I couldn’t say to her face that its because she is another man’s wife and a mother of two children. She would ask (and rightly so) that didn’t I know that when we were fooling around sex chatting. I have no answer for this.
She keeps asking me if everything was just a game for me. Again I have no answer to this. I’m also afraid I would get too attached to her. Fooling around sexting is bad enough, but anything more than that is just wrong. I don’t want to be a cheater (I know I have been thus far) but I don’t want to be anymore. I said what we were doing thus far was wrong and I apologized to it, but she says she doesn’t regret anything and is only pissed that I don’t care for her as much as she cares for me.
She is already married, has kids, has experienced life. I haven’t. I am close to seven years younger than her. She says that she is not against me meeting girls in real life, but she gets jealous if I say anything about any girl. I can tell she is in ‘love’ with me, but I am not. I repeatedly convey to her that I’m sorry for whatever wrong I had done.
But she uses my own guilt against me. I do have other issues in life like work, anxiety disorder, stress, family health issues and I’m trying to tackle all that. I had time for her before as I was doing one job that too from home. Now I’m doing several jobs and the sole earner for the family and I couldn’t spend as much time with her as before.
She thinks that I ‘used’ her and ‘threw’ her. She has a history of childhood abuse, trust issues and is very emotional. I’m very afraid to abruptly end talks with her or block her as that would scar her for life. At the same time I couldn’t continue talking with her as my guilt (which I hadn’t really felt till she said she was falling for me) is tormenting me.
In real life, I have no bad name in society. I haven’t even dated or slept with people or done anything that people my age do. I am from a sexually repressed community where people look down upon you if you even mention the word sex.
This is causing me a lot of mental drain and my life in the past six months have been hellish. I can only offer her my friendship and nothing more. But if every two or three days she is going to point out something I had said in the past or done, it triggers my guilt, increases my anxiety and I end up being depressed for days. But she doesn’t understand. I feel so restricted and confined.
Yes I have made a mistake. I realize it now. I am no saint. I can only ask for forgiveness which I have. I have repented before God. I am confessing here. But my guilt is tormenting me and I can’t get away from her. I don’t want to come between the husband and wife anymore. I have done enough sin already. I just want to set things right. This is killing me slowly. All my restraint for 26 years of my life now seems to be for nothing. I have learned my lesson. Never again will I mess with the feelings of a woman. I can’t forgive myself nor know how to fix this.
I fear if I abruptly end conversations, she will become suicidal or lose faith in humanity. I mean she has shared her thoughts and feelings with me more than she has had with her husband or mother. If I bail out on her, then she would be shattered. At the same time its killing me. I can’t move on! Help…please…please guide me…I’m sorry, sorry, sorry…