Quote: So, overall what I got from her was a continued comittment to therapy, to discover the things that made our relationship fail. She doesn't ever see us together again, those days are gone forever in her mind. She sees a relationship with OM coming, but isn't sure about it really happening. My gut feeling is that while she believes she WANTS it to happen I think she sees that it SHOULDN'T happen. He is too messed up and she is still MARRIED. That's my gut talking and I am pretty intuitive. Her words say "I am done and moving on", her feelings say "I want to keep you around because I do love you".
After thinking about this I'm feeling that the feelings she has are "I want to keep the feelings of love I have for you, and you have for me but I don't want to be romantically involved with you ever again".
When she talks she is not upset or confused. She has thought a lot of this out and thinks she knows what she wants. There is some confusion with her about OM and what to do with a relationship with him but she will do it if the situations allow it to happen.
Some more info. OM says he will move out west in less than a year, sooner if his business with his friends isn't successful. He says something about starting a massage business with her to help her to 'achieve her dream' of working with someone she loves.
She's been asking him questions lately. She says it's so she can "get to know the man I love". She asked him what it was he loved about his ex wives. This is interesting because this is a question our counselor said we should be able to answer when we are divorced, because we should remember why we honor the mother or father of our children and because we DID love them and in any new relationship we have that person deserves to understand how it is we love someone.
I was surprised to hear that he had more than one wife, and was now finishing up with a girlfriend he has just dumped after 3 years. In some ways that's a good thing because it shows another weakness he has in relationships.
She asked him what he envisioned their relationship to be like if he moves out here. I haven't seen his response but it probably doesn't matter. It seems clear he is a needy person and will want to get into a real relationship with her.
I don't know why it isn't obvious to her that underneath it all he is needy. Probably because the 'in love' feeling masks that and also they haven't really spent any 'real world' time together under stress. It's so far a perfect relationship, no problems. It will be interesting to see how his ex-wife stories affect her. I don't need to hear them but she has GOT to be wondering how it is he has multiple ex wives, and problems with his recent GF.
So far he is saying the right things. He knows what her dreams are and is hooking himself into them. She is 'in love' so it all looks good to her.
Maybe she is the woman he really needs and he is the guy for her because of what they could share in their careers and spiritual lives. Maybe I have outlived my time with her and we need to move on. I feel that way right now but I think mostly it's because of her pursuit of OM and his pursuit of her.
If I listen to her friends who met him in Hawaii, they say that spiritually he is dark energy and feeds off others positives. He is basically a negative person but hides it under his 'player' personality.
When this all began our counselor told me that we had an 80% chance of working it out UNLESS a person with dark or light energy came into the picture. i.e. someone bad for her or someone good for her would interfere with our connection. I only see him as dark, but he is working her so well that she is falling more and more into this emotionally.
It's interesting that one of th ebooks I have on affairs says this abut Emotional affairs:
Quote: The person who was driven to find “that loving feeling” usually experiences a high degree of guilt and conflict. He/she is often married to a “good” person and the desire to “find that loving feeling” seems selfish (which it is) and immature (which it is). Intuitively (and this person usually has a great deal of intuition and sensitivity) it is known at another level that he/she is not on the right path.
A lot of these things seem to be true. I believe she does have some conflict as to whether or not she is doing the right things. She did say she felt 'guilty' and that some of her friends do not approve of or support her actions. And she knows I am a good person in spite of the bad things we went through. She knows she is hurting me a lot too. Yet she continues to pursue it, because of the 'loving feelings' which as we know are like a drug. His neediness will continue to drive him to pull on her, which she will take as him being totally in love with her.
This is from an article that describes the type of person the WAS will choose to 'fall in love' with
Quote: An affair with someone grossly inappropriate--someone younger or decades older, someone dependent or dominating, someone with problems even bigger than your own--is so crazily stimulating that it's like a drug that can lift you out of your depression and enable you to feel things again. Of course, between moments of ecstasy, you are more depressed, increasingly alone and alienated in your life, and increasingly hooked on the affair partner. Ideal romance partners are damsels or "dumsels" in distress, people without a life but with a lot of problems, people with bad reality testing and little concern with understanding reality better.
So much of this seems to be true for her. Up until the past week she was depressed because she couldn't talk to him all the time or see him or anything. I could see it in her and when I asked her about it she told me it was true. And D15 said she was disconnected from the family which fits the description too. And now given the things I have learned about him, he does seem to be someone with problems bigger than hers.
So I still see the 'textbook' type of affair it is. I am going to stop fighting it and be her supportive, nurturing friend.
