I can't imagen what it must be like for people who actually had a physical R for months (i've only chatted IM with the guy for a week and a half and I feel a knot in my stomach) and who made promises and plans, to just come up and say "you know, I've been lying to you and this is over". .................................................
I just never knew there were so many shades of grey. It all seemed so black and white like in the fairy tales and prime time sit-coms I grew up with.
To sift out right from wrong and set boundries based on what we know now... knowing we will know more later... it's painful but enlightening at the same time.
It was only by reading this site that I realized I actually had an EA. I didn't ever think of it as such. Never thought much about it at all because it was just harmless chat on the computer with someone miles away. Ha.
Another lifetime ago (OK, it was really only about 10 years ago it just seems like a different life), we got our first PC. Our youngest had just started first grade and I had the house to myself. H worked constantly, I was SAHM/self-employed bartender/entertainer part time nights. I was in the public all the time and never gave "real" men the time of day (or night).
I got myself an AOL account though and met all kinds of new friends. First it was groups. Then IMs. Then one guy emailed me about a comment I'd made on the message board that we "talked in public on".
I guess it was the respect he had for my opinion. He was a well respected poster on a male-dominated message board. We emailed. We im'd. It was a hoot.
We were both married. Were fans of two different sports teams and bantered about them back and forth. We flirted. He sent the pic first. I remember, now, as clearly as then, the thrill of opening those emails and playing without ever crossing the line. I even sent a pic. Not of my "real" face. It was in a kind of costume with a painted face.
I can't remember why we stopped emailing each other, but I think one-- or both of us got too close and/or reconnected at home and weren't as bored/felt funny. I just know that if I'm honest, now, it was crossing the line way before we stopped communicating. It also would have been so easy to slip into something more. I was "happily married". Go figure.
Until my H had an affair, I never even gave the incident another thought. Until you all helped me own up to my own part in why our marriage was nearly destroyed, I never looked at the part of me that thought I needed more than I was getting. The part of me that didn't know how to ask for it, and that didn't know I could find it for myself.
I never understood "HOW COULD HE DO THIS TO ME?!?!?"--- never picked up a "relationship" book in my life. Never even realized I was thisclose or faced that until becoming a part of this painful club.
Never knew I could forgive someone who could so easliy destroy our family and cast it all away. That I would fight for him. That I would come to understand how it can be hardest to do what, in our hearts we want to do the most.
Heh. Divorce Busting: Everything you never wanted to know about marriage and never thought to ask...
Cat, you are gutsy and honest and amazing and I hope his reply is reassuring and he respects you for being true to yourself.
