A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:Can someone please give me some advice? I desperately need it.I want you to give me your honest opinions of what you think of the situation and what you would do if you were in my position.I've had this guy in my life for eight years. We've cared very deeply for each other and for each of us, we are our first loves.We started out as best friends, but over the first year, it quickly led to more and we've been inseperable ever since.Despite us always having spent nearly every waking moment together, we never moved in together. There was always an issue.. maybe we were going to travel so there was no point.. or maybe we'd build a house.. it just never seemed to eventuate.We've always been thick as thieves, best friends in love really.. but the sexual side of the relationship was never fully functional. Whenever we tried to have sex, I was in immense pain.. and no matter how many times we tried.. it just wouldn't happen. With me, being an anxiety sufferer, I assumed it was just that we didn't have enough privacy, or that I had things on my mind.. and so we kept trying.. but it seemed impossible.It wasn't until a couple of years ago, that I found out I have a birth defect that went undetected and I require a minor operation.Unfortunately though, not being able to have sex in a normal monogamous relationship does cause problems. It made us both confused about the situation we were in I think. We couldn't share that closeness... and after all the times we'd tried and failed, my boyfriend had lost all interest in intimacy with me.. maybe he was afraid of starting something he couldn't finish. So for years, we'd remained in this close close friendship, where we hug and kiss, take holidays and cuddle each other while we sleep and spend all our time doing all the things we love together.. without the sexual side. I hope you can understand, when you love someone so much but you can't be with them, but you don't want to leave them.. the feelings stay there.. and the emotional intimacy.. but there's sort of confusion as well.. about what you are.I know this doesn't sound relevant and I'm going off on a tangent, but I have to tell you all this so you can get the full idea of the nature of our relationship.So there were factors in why we weren't a normal functioning couple. But the love and devotion was there, stronger than ever. We've always been there for each other through everything. He's my best friend in the world.. and everyday for the entire eight years, I would wake up excited to call him or go see him. He was my soulmate.Well last year, while I was very busy studying fulltime, something happened with him and another girl that he's remained friends with for 10 years.I never liked it when they caught up together. She lives in another city and would contact him WHENEVER she was back here to see her family for Christmas. I had 100% trust in my boyfriend, so I always said it was fine for him to catch up while she was back.. but I never ever liked it. I had met this girl a few times, and she stared at him like he was Brad Pitt.. I knew she was head over heels in love with him.Over the years they met up a few times.. once a year or whatever.. but last year their friendship became closer, while I was busy with my study. He was away on business trips and now I find out that he would go and catch up with her there but not tell me about it.. because he knew it would upset me. Throughout last year, I was busy working through the days and nights studying.. and had no idea of the distance that had grown between us. It's no excuse for what's happened.. but without the sexual intimacy and not even seeing each other everyday, I look back now and realise it would be easy for him to feel like we'd evolved into just friends. I found out about what was going on when I was driving past his house late one night and saw him getting into a car, which I found out through my own detective work, was hers. It was late.. and I could only assume the worst. Last year he had completely shut down emotionally.. he was like a robot when he was around me.. and I would only see him for short periods of time at night before he would leave my house early. He seemed like he just didn't want to be with me at all.When I saw him get into this car, I realised he'd been having an affair. I did some detective work and managed to get myself onto her social networking site, where she'd been talking about him and talking about their relationship together.. I absolutely felt sick to my stomach and went into some kind of shock. When I found out, I emailed him and told him I never wanted him to come near me again.. and he disappeared for the next week, without an explanation of what happened. I assumed he'd just been waiting to end things with me and be with her.. I mean, who wouldn't assume that???When I'd emailed her (under a FAKE ID) and asked her about how long they'd been together, she said it had been ongoing for 10 years. I absolutely thought I was going to lose my mind.After five weeks of absolute emotional hell, I find out through friends of ours that he wants to make contact with me desperately and is really hurting. I agree to meet up with him to discuss what the hell has happened. I just wanted to hear him be honest about what had happened and I was ready for closure. I desperately wanted to know the 10 year thing had to be a fabrication, as the thought of everything we'd shared being a lie was too painful to bare. Well, things didn't go the way I had thought.After five weeks of just a couple of emails between each other, I had no idea of what he was going to tell me and I was prepared to hear he was moving to be with her, or he was engaged to her.. or the affair had been going on the whole time....Well, when I got out of my car to meet him, I've never seen him look at me the way he did that night. It was the way you'd want your groom to look at you walking down the aisle on your wedding day. He saw me and his eyes welled up with tears. He said he feels like it's been forever since he's seen me. I told him what I'd found out and he was absolutely shocked. He couldn't believe this girl had said they were together for 10 years.. he said they had been seeing each other AS CLOSE FRIENDS for less than a year.. during the time he'd been going through hell in his job.He told me the times he visited her and that they just hung out, or when she would come here to see him and they'd catch up a couple of times and go for drives together to talk. He said all it was was the same friendship they always had, only they grew closer, because he started talking about what was happening in his life, how there had been distance between him and me.. and talking about her previous relationships. They found some kind of mutual ground and it grew into a close friendship. Here I had been thinking they had been sleeping together for 10 years.. but according to a four hour heart-to-heart with him, they hadn't slept together at all.. they had kissed.. once. He had been severely depressed over the past couple of years and that's why I wanted to meet up with him, because I knew he was in a bad place emotionally, and his job had turned into a disaster so I knew there were lots of factors in why this could've happened.He described what they had as a relationship, because they were emotionally intimate as me and him are, but not to the same deep level he said. But when he could see she was wanting it to turn into a relationship, he contacted her and told her it wasn't going to happen. She drove six hours from where she lives to convince him otherwise, and that's when they kissed.That was around the time I saw him get into her car that night. He told me that night she had been violently upset and called him (as she had many other nights) picked him up so they could go for a drive and talk together. He said he spent so much time comforting her and trying to calm her down so she wouldn't drive off a cliff or something. He told me not to blame her for what's happened, that it was his fault because he initiated a lot of the contact and he says he knows he's lost me and will have to live with this for the rest of his life.Telling me about it, he cried for four hours. Previously, a guy that showed very little emotion in the last couple of years, as he had emotionally shut down.Don't get me wrong, the trust was shattered, because he had lied to me about not catching up with her on business trips and that that wasn't him getting into her car that night.. and the fact this had all happened without my knowledge has shattered any trust in him I had. Part of me felt his story was genuine, part of me thought he was just a really good lier and I'd never realised it. So the next night I met up with him again and he cried while opening up about it and we talked about it for seven more hours.. seven hours.. until he lost his voice. Nothing more came out that he hadn't already told me, but I felt like I was closer to believing what had happened.I asked him how he felt when he kissed her and he said he does care for her and feel something for her, but he thinks it was the vulnerable state he was in at the time with what he had been going through emotionally. He said as soon as he found out what was going on and that she was thinking of this as a relationship.. he wanted to just "fix it".. "get rid of it".. he wanted to get back to me. I asked him what went through his head over that time and he said all he could think of was me.. our history.. our memories.. and he was so so cut up about having lied to me those times.He said he was just worried about me the whole time and realised that even though we weren't in a normal monogamous relationship and the boundaries were unclear, that he was deeply in love with me.. and had lost weight and been through emotional hell knowing I'd left his life. I had wondered why, if they were together, he had remained here for the past five weeks and was alone. I couldn't peice together what SHE had said on her page and the fact that he was still living here.. how could they be in a relationship?I'm so glad I got all the clarity, but there's so much damage done to us. We still love each other so deeply, we realise that over talking and catching up over the past few days.. but things will never be the same. I feel so scared all the time.. and everytime he looks at me, his eyes well up with tears because he remembers what he did. He said he can't get back together with me, because he thinks I deserve so much better than him.. and he will live with this forever and always remember what he did to me. Of course, finding out what REALLY happened compared with the false conclusions I'd come to...... I feel immense relief as well.Over the 10 years, I knew she'd had a fiance, another relationship and a 4 year old CHILD during that time.. hence why I was doubtful of believing her. He actually laughed about the 10 year thing, because it was so rediculous, but when he saw that I actually believed it all that time.. he said he could then understand why I closed him out of my life completely.Every situation is individual, that's what I've learnt. There's no black and white.. just grey. The thing is, he admits to this being an affair.. an emotional affair.. he says he feels he's cheated on me... but we weren't sleeping together.. according to him THEY weren't even sleeping together. HE ended things with her for me.. he says all he can think about is me.. and it snapped him out of his disconnected emotional state and made him realise he'd lost the best thing in his life.Where to from here? All I know is, with what's happened and the unique situation.. I can't lose him from my life as a friend. I think we'd be more miserable closing each other out completely, after all our memories and everything we've been through.Part of me thinks I'll never forgive him for deceiving me.. that he's not telling me the full story.. that I can never trust him.....But the other part of me tells me it took guts to open up about EVERYTHING the way he did.. that he's been there for me through everything in my life.. that he loves me cares so deeply for me.. I realised that after talking to him for a total of 14 hours over the last couple of days.. and I keep telling myself, jeez.. we're human.. we all make mistakes.. it's not as if we were married and he SLEPT with someone else.I know looking at this from the outside, you're all going to say, "Well you weren't having sex.." but please understand that we were still deeply in love.. but we were both at fault for letting the relationship stagnate and not work on getting things sorted out. This has made us both step outside the situation and look in on where we were.. and now we're both in a place where we can talk openly and frankly about how we were and what was wrong with us.Look forward to hearing what you've got to say.
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affair, best friend, cheated on me, christmas, depressed, engaged, fiance, get back together, moved in, period, soulmate, violent, wedding Reply to this Question
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (7 March 2010): POSTER ANSWER:
My operation is scheduled for within the next six months. I just have to wait to hear from them.
The absence of sex wasn't a factor in why the affair happened, but it was what contributed to the change in the nature of our relationship.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (7 March 2010): You can't always not have sex. Have you got your operation yet - the minor one that you say you require? Do that first and then go about being normal. Nice as it is that you are both in love, there is no reason not to have a more fulfilling relationship.
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A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (7 March 2010): Sex or not, what you've got with him sounds like the real deal to me.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (7 March 2010): I believe you should try and give him another chance. For a man to open up like that is amazing...maybe both of your frustrations in the relationship got the best of him. But, for him to come and explain means he truly cares for you. You both need to take this lesson and try working things out and grow into a better more oprn relationship! Good Luck...
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