Yeah, I hear you. The proximity can be the worst curse (it leads to wishful thinking) and maybe a hell of a blessing.

But it's been going on for more than 6 months now. The blessings are slow to mature.

See, the OM was born a long time ago, and lives in a galaxy far, far away, so the W hasn't been in much "physical" contact with this joker for at least one or two good reasons. I would not want to see her cellphone bill, and she's also told me of "thousands" of e-mails, but for the most part this has been a long-distance sort of thing.

But a thing nonetheless.

I think that she's used me as a kind of pillow while all this was going on, so I don't think the "friend" thing was developing too fast. She's been too busy trying to handle her own crap to recognize much "friendliness" on my part. Hard to be "friends' with a security blanket.

OK, she DID acknowledge that I:

...am the only one she trusts
...finally am listening to her
...etc.

But that hasn't kept her from chasing after fulfillment with an never-married dude who is just about exactly the age of her dear ol' dad and who complains about how much he is still hurt by his octegenarian parents when he isn't hiding under his bed or something.

See, here's the problem as I see it: She thinks she loves the OM. Maybe she does. People fall for POSs all the time. He makes her feel "safe," "at home," etc.

She knows he's a problem too, so she's held off moving away to be with this cretin. As she's termed it more than once, that would "ruin her life".

So she's in a quandry about the OM.

She's in a quandry about me too. She doesn't want to be married to me. But she doesn't want me out of her life.

It's a four-way draw on her, and it shows. She's in lousy shape emotionally and physically. I've been afraid more than once that she'll end up in the hospital.

So when I go to the gym to lift weights and check out the girls in their yoga pants, I have all this in the back of my mind. Very difficult to feel all warm an fuzzy about my self-improvement and/or enjoyment when the woman I love is going through at least two variations of hell as we speak.

And I know that it still sounds like I'm dodging the issue.