I want a man, but he isn't mine. Since he decided to not live a double life — a predominantly time-spent and verbal and online play life — he doesn't play verbally or online. I rarely see him. He still calls me most — but no longer all — days.
Do I consider us friends? Yes, great friends. We know things about each other that few if any others know. We respect and support each other, even if it is now in very limited ways.
Do I consider us more than friends? Yes. He calls me most days. He tells me about his days and, if there is anything to tell, listens to what I tell him about mine. I leave stuff out now because he's a fixer and he cannot fix what he has no time for. I'm a listener and supporter and comforter, so he tells me virtually everything, including letting loose a few things about his wife or marriage that are hurting him.
Do I expect the situation to ever change again? I don't know. I hope so; I think the pain in his marriage would cause another person to leave. Sometimes one can be too committed. It's possible that I am being biased, but honestly I am probably too self-aware and too committed to truth and to other people's happiness or at least having what they want, even if it means I don't get what I need or want. I am fair with him, overly so if you ask my friends who know. Few do.
Do I still love him? Yes and I imagine I will for the rest of my days.
One of my friends thinks that being in love with a married man is my way of avoiding commitment. When I ask this friend what he considers all my previous relationships where I desperately wanted commitments, his opinion is that my disastrously poor choices and catastrophically bad relationships stem from the same fear to commit. It's an issue of contention between us, of course.
I have told a very few people about this relationship because I know most will judge me for it. It's about lying and cheating and it's wrong, right? Maybe ... not. I think that life is complicated and flexible. I have cheated. I have been cheated upon. I think that we all try to get what we need and I think that sometimes our partner can't, or even won't, give us what we need. And I think that sometimes a partner won't let us give them what they need and want. Thus the one who cheated most egregiously on me, was, to take his word, "not physical." Sometimes a partner wants out but doesn't want to be "the bad guy." This is why I've had to be the bad guy in numerous relationships because apparently I've got more balls than quite a few of the guys I've been involved with.
This is the man for me: he is virtually everything I want in a partner. He even matches virtually every one of the qualities I wrote in a list some time ago. All the important ones, at any rate.
Once a cheater, always a cheater? Not necessarily. Once you have what you want and need, most of us never look elsewhere again. There are as many reasons to look outside a relationship as there are people. I doubt that most people will do so, simply because they obey all the rules and there's nothing wrong with that at all. I admire that.
I'm lonely and have never had a longer-term relationship than three years. I don't know if there is something wrong with me, or with my taste, or with the Universe, but I have never gotten all of it: want, need, someone who wants to be with me forever.
I'm not looking, partly because i love this man and it would hardly be fair to date someone else when my heart is elsewhere. I'm used to being alone, as much as I hate it. I am built, from the very atoms of my being, for a relational life, for having a man to share my life with, for having children to love and mentor and support. The Universe laughs. My therapist understands why I feel the Universe hates me.
Life and love
are complicated and messy. Yes, I would hurt if my partner involved himself with someone else, but I would also strive to have the open, honest, giving relationship that I hope would lead him closer to me rather than farther away.
I love a man, but he's not mine. I hate it, but I'm okay with it. I just wish my mom could have met him.