Quote:
Originally Posted by MrsAnonymity  I have friends I talk to online, some more than others, and one in particular who I confide in quite a bit. We’ll call him M. I met him about 6 months ago (online). He is married, 2 kids (both teenagers), and a few weeks ago I realized that I’ve developed feelings for him, maybe just a crush, but it’s there; I did not (and have not) said anything to him about this. I didn’t expect it to happen, it just sort of did. We talk about all kinds of things from personal to just nothing at all, and we could talk (and have talked) for hours on the phone. I’ve never met M in person, just Skype video chat, typing, email and phone calls.
A few nights ago while we were discussing his triumph with a recipe I gave him (he rarely cooks and wanted to give it a whirl) he blurted out that he has feelings for me. I hung up on him and he called me back, he told me he has felt this way for a while now and that he isn’t sorry for his feelings. I feel bad though. I like him, a lot, and I realize now that I was having an emotional affair, but I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t want to hurt my husband, I love him very much, but I don’t feel like he loves me anymore. He won’t talk about it and I feel very cut off from him. I miss being touched. I miss being told that I’m loved. I miss all of it. |
This was me 6 months ago.
You must understand something right now!
You
are not in love with M, you are in love with a feeling. You are in love with the
IDEA of M.
The sooner you realize that the sooner you will be able to pull yourself out of this.
It is not a crush, don't dismiss it as such. It's a very real problem and it's very dangerous. From the sound of it, it looks like he is engaged in this EA full steam too.
You have to stop it now.
I was in the middle of the same situation and it takes WAY more strength than you think you have right now to pull out of it. But you can.
You have to find what it is about your H that attracted you to him in the first place. Hold on to that idea and start to push with all of your strength back in the other direction.
Right now you have the keys to the situation, you can turn it off and stop something horrible from happening. But you have to want to. And you have to face the fact that there is not going to be any comfort coming from your H to help you do it.
But you
can do it. It's not impossible and will take just a small amount of effort to begin. The real effort will be staying away from M. If he is anything like my AP, he will not make it easy for you to do that. It took me a full month of falling over and over again before I was able to convince myself that I needed to end this before it destroyed everything.
The best thing you can do is break off all contact and then find something, anything, to help you maintain that conviction. You have to be committed. Don't feel bad for M, he'll get over it same as you.
You're in this fight for yourself right now. You have to win back control of your emotions before you can hope to address the real problem in your marriage. I'm going to be posting about some of the things I learned in the last 2 months of NC. It is amazing what you will discover when the blindfold you've tied around your own eyes is ripped off.
Best of luck to you, I hope you are able to set yourself straight.
