I don't know why I am posting this--maybe because it has bothered me and I'm hoping something will be helpful. I have been watching a good friend of mine have an affair with a married man for the past 6 months. She just broke it off today and is devastated.
At the beginning she told me they were just going to be "friends with benefits". I told her nothing good could come from it. The agreed they were just friends and would sleep together a couple times a week. Their mutual friends told her how he and his wife didn't get along, they hardly speak, she's mean to him, they sleep in separate rooms blah, blah, blah. All the stuff we hear about on this board all the time. I asked how she knew this to be true--well because the friends say so. I tried so hard not to be judgemental but sometimes I had to say something. She has been the one cheated on twice before and she knows how devastating it can be but she decided to be selfish and "have a good time", besides he and his w don't get along anyway--she probably doesn't even care--not!
Before you know it he's at her house every morning early before work and they spend an hour or two together and off he goes. He calls during the day and in the evening. He brings coffee in the morning and sometimes they just sit and talk and hug. She talks about him as if she is a teenager in love (she's 56, he's about the same age).
I can see in the past month she is starting to resent that they don't see each other any other time but in the morning. They can't go out together and he is not going to leave his wife and upset his daughters and grandchildren, nor is he going to lose a bunch of money in a divorce.
He tells her how special she is and she loves it. She knows she will be hurt eventually but she doesn't care right now. She says she will stick with him until someone else comes along. But everyone else she meets has something wrong with them--too short, boring, etc.
Her friends want her to come to the ocean for New Years for a week. He says he might come too. She thinks this is going to be great, they can finally spend time together, spend the night together. Then he says he probaby better not go, his granddaughter would miss him on New Years Eve.
She gets pretty angry at this--I remind her this was just supposed to be "friends with benefits". She has no reason to be angry. She has no right to be angry. She has no right to be spending time with him at all!
This is what finally pushes her to break it off with him. She knows he isn't going to leave his wife. His life hasn't changed at all except for his morning visits and she thinks of him in everything she does. For the holidays he will be with his family just as he always would. She would be with hers too, but she probably wouldn't even get a gift from him. They can't go out in public, he doesn't even try to find time to get away with her.
He showed up this morning and she told him she couldn't do it anymore--she knew it wasn't going anywhere and she needed more. He told her he understood and he wasn't being fair to her--he couldn't help himself, it just felt good to be hugged by her and to talk to her. He cried, she cried. He asked if he could call sometime or come over for coffee--she said no. Now her heart is broken. They didn't really even have a relationship--they never went out together or did any real life stuff. It was all a fantasy for a couple hours in the morning.
If people would just take the time and energy to look for the good feelings in their own marriage. What if he brought his wife coffee and told her he loved her hugs--I bet he'd get more of them.
Still not sure why I needed to post this. It was all really kinda hard for me to watch since I have been through the A with my H. I knew how it was going to turn out and I was a little disappointed that she would get involved in something that could have hurt so many more people. I don't know if his W knows or even cares, but that isn't the point.
I know I will continue to let my H know how special and important he is to me--never take him for granted again. He will never have a good reason to look somewhere else, so if he does, it's not going to be because of me.
I have a friend who's been married some 37 years... unhappily, she says. She's had a few affairs over the years, and they always end as you described; she's not going to leave her husband, that's her home and has family and all that jazz, so, notwithstanding the understanding they have from the get-go, eventually her paramours want more, don't get more - and it ends. She doesn't work things out with her husband, as it takes two to make the relationship work, and he's not working on it as well, lord knows why. According to her, there was even one lover she had for 5 years that was "perfect" for her, and she still didn't divorce her husband and move on. Her lover left instead, and doesn't want to know her anymore.
Wow, Mollie, thanks for sharing this. I find it very insightful, and it helps me to understand some of the things that are so puzzling.... really pathetic situations, arent they?
