Hi kk,

Yes, no matter how many sparks and chemistry you may have with this man, he is cheating on his wife. He actually should not be flirting or be intimate or romantic with women on the internet, social media. It is not right in so many ways. Please don’t do this. It just creates problems. I have met many men online, and it ended up never working out. Many of the men I met were on Facebook or Google+. Many of these men have fake profiles, are not who they say they are, and a host of other problems.

I would concentrate on meeting a man face to face, because you never know who the person is online. There are alot of lonely men that say they are “single” when they are actually married, and many just live too far away. The fact that he met you in person is cheating big time on his wife. He did not state he has any plans of leaving the marriage. You do not want to fall for someone who is married. Put yourself in his wife’s shoes, would you want another woman e-mailing and meeting up with your husband especially when there are so many single available men out there? So the right thing, and please cut off all contact with him.

Dear KK:

You are welcome.

I understand welcoming a “breath of fresh air” into one’s life. I mean, when the air you breathed for a long time was unpleasant, smoke or smog filled (corresponds to disrespect in your marriage), polluted, fresh air (respect perhaps) feels good, magical, perfect.

You wrote that you want to “continue as friends”- but how is it possible if he expressed to you that you are ” better off letting go of each other”? Doesn’t “letting go of each other” mean having no contact? And being friends takes two, correct?

Regarding getting a “good closure” for your sanity, what could such a closure be?

anita

KK,

While the thrill of the hunt can be exciting to those who enjoy the hunt often times it is a temporary fix for something lacking no matter who it is that is running the deficit. As the saying goes, the devil’s in the details, and there really is no way for us to know the details sans any one of us being involved. The verb cheating is used here to describe the husbands behavior yet there are a number of variables not mentioned, such as why he is cheating, what are the factors within the marriage that is impetus to cheating? Is what he is doing a reaction to her cheating? That DOES happen. But for conversation sake, let us just say he is cheating because of his cheating personality. Is there an ongoing effort on the front lines to repair whatever it is that is causing the cheating, i.e. her not being easy to live with? Did he cheat with someone before he met his wife? Did she become his wife as a result of potential cheating? With this alleged cheating on his current wife, the odds are against you that he will cheat on you. Just some random thoughts of mine to help me understand this phenomenon that seems to have been weaved into the fabric of our society. I don’t get it. Anyway, I never was one who accepted the idea of cheating being a vehicle to resolve any home based conflict. What people seem to ignore is not only one person in a relationship doing the cheating, but it also involves the one who that person is cheating with. To me, if a married couple is having such great difficulty in their marriage to justify cheating by one of them, not that I am a supporter of it-I AM NOT-there is the outlier nurturing that cheating, that being the other one who the cheater is cheating with. On many fronts this is ugly. I’m going to put myself in a make believe scenario for a second and paint a picture of what I mean-Here I am, a guy, who may or may not be somehow familiar with a couple who is having difficulty in their marriage. At one point, me and the married woman meet for drinks after work, or wherever. She soon describes to me what troubles her and her husband are having. Perhaps it is the alcohol doing the talking but she describes the troubles being more than what they really are leaving out her contribution to the ongoing troubles. After all half of a 1,000 is 500. Through her talk it seems like she is seeking out being rescued. She is looking for a safe place that provides what is missing at home. Me, on the other hand, see this as an opportunity to take advantage of her weakness and in by doing so I offer her sympathy, a warm hug, and we get intimately involved. As a result, she has found what she has been looking for, that which she has been lacking in her marriage due to ongoing unresolved issues, and I find strength, however fake, in thinking I am the rescuer, the hero. Wheels on the bus go round and round…In the mean time the person being cheated on is left home, wondering if he’ll come back, wondering if maybe that if he were at home they would have found an answer to their troubles. Perhaps there are children involved. If so think of tis African proverb a wonderful friend shared with me, “When the elephants fight it is only the grass that suffers.” If there are children involved, do not be a part of the equation that, in the end, it is the children that suffer. I think Eliana said the same thing with such honesty, clarity, and sincerity.

In that scenario, I am just as much at being at fault at creating a division between the 2 combatants as the one who initiated the cheating. KK let them work through it in such a way that is best for them. that resolution may come in the form of reconciliation, temporary separation to sort things out, or divorce. In any event, let it be.

Dear KK:

You wrote: “Maybe I am just after a notion, an image, a perception of how I want it to be and in the process completely oblivious to certain facts.”

Regarding the first part of the sentence: what you want a relationship to be is what you stated earlier, an authentic relationship (one where you are not “questioning the authenticity of”), with a man who “never imposes or painted a different picture for me to think he is pretending”, and who is “always respectful of his boundaries and never imposes on me”.

This is not the relationship and marriage you had. Your marriage was “verbally abusive” and “loveless”. So, no wonder you felt that this more recent relationship was beautiful and magical, and a breath of fresh air.

Regarding the second part of the sentence: The facts you were oblivious to is that he is married to another woman.

It is hard to let go of the first part, I understand that.

anita