Many years ago I was in a completely satisfying relationship with a man I loved with all of my heart. However, I was afraid of our future together and in order to avoid pain, I chose to end the relationship. He did everything he could to bring us back together but I would not change my mind. I eventually married another man whom I also love. However, for at least the last 15 years (we have been together 25), our relationship has had some very dark moments and through therapy have finally come to accept I am in a verbally abusive relationship with someone who most likely has narcissistic personality disorder. I have “managed” to deal with it but at a great cost to my emotional and physical health. Also during this time I started think more and more about the first man and questioned my decision to end it.

Through a series of circumstances, I recently re-connected with the man whom I broke up with over 30 years ago. He lives quite a distance away but I have knowingly embarked on an emotional affair with him. Both of us have lived our lives apart but we are communicating as if we have never been away from each other. He has been divorced for some time and has been very honest with me that if he had a choice we would be together again. The emotional and physical attraction I felt for him then has returned tenfold for me now. We were able to re-establish the same emotional intimacy we had so many years ago.

I finally got up the courage to speak with my husband about how I have been feeling (I have tried on many other occasions to let him know I was not happy and even went so far as to pack my bags 3 or 4 times over the years but gave in to his pleas to stay mainly because our children were still young). While I only mentioned that I had “reconnected” with someone who was very helpful to me emotionally, he said he “knew it all along” that I was a cheater. He also said my therapist has been poisoning my mind and that she drove me to this. I remained very calm through the discussion (I actually had written out my talking points so I would be very clear in what I was saying) and while he did not scream at me, he clearly was very threatened by everything I was saying. He immediately went into forgiveness-mode, with flowers and suddenly doing things I had been asking him to do for years. I asked him to please not try to have a quick fix to this- because there is not one.

He has agreed to go to individual counseling, although I understand therapy can be very challenging with someone who has NPD. I told him that I would also attend marriage counseling after his individual counseling is underway. While I will try to go through this with an open mind, my concern is that I really, really want to move on and hopefully have a chance with the person who re-entered my life. It is what he wants too and has said I can take as much time as I need to sort through the issues in the marriage, the risks and repercussions, and is not putting any pressure on me whatsoever.

My challenge is my ability to separate out “Duty” from “Love”. My children are older, but not yet independent. One is in college, the other is almost done with high school. However, they have had to come to my rescue on several occasions to tell my husband to stop yelling at me and treating me so poorly. He claims he will do “whatever it takes” to change and does not want the marriage to end. I am not so sure I want to stay in the marriage any longer. I have given him a timeline- until June 2015- that I believe is more than adequate to see where this can or cannot go. But, my heart really is not in it. One of the main reasons I am open to delaying this is the other person had already made arrangements to be out of the country for about 6 months for business reasons. So, that does buy me more time.

When does love trump duty?