Despair or delusion, what is most productive

[Solitaire]

I think that it may do me good to talk about my situation, so here it goes.

I feel very strongly connected with a person that I have met 13 years ago. She may well have similar feelings towards me, but she is married. Our relationship wasn’t even a really personal one, though I once shared my feelings with her.

For 12 years now, it could be said that I am in love or that I’m obsessed, or both. The thing is, I always dream (wish) that I will be with her someday, but I don’t know if that will happen. But when I give up all hopes, I enter despair. So for me, it’s either delusion or despair. I thinks it’s better to live in delusion than to be emotionally disconnected from life.

I am commited to develop my life in any way that I can and to have a better life, a life in which I exist fully. It is a fact that I have never been very good at social relations. Either that, or I just didn’t get along with who I’ve met. I have never been in a love relationship, though many females have been attracted to me and I interested in them. The friends I had became distanced from me when I went to University. That’s when I met her, she was a teacher there. She is just three years older than me. I think there was an immediate attraction between us, but I didn’t really commit myself to knowing her personally. I would be unable to, anyway. Then I had her for another year and I started to think that she liked me, but I felt totally unable to be at her level. There was no social confidence in me, no social personality.

She may have not been married when I first met her, to think that is such a tremendous blow for me. I think now that she must have gotten married around that time, and had her child shortly after she stopped teaching our class.

So what is better? Delusion or despair? I could contact her and try to meet her, but I don’t want to try to breakup her marriage. If it does, it does. I know that she isn’t happy in it, but it’s up to her to decide what to do (or him).

I am 34, I live with my parents and I am unemployed. I know that when I start earning money and being able to do what I want, my life will change, I will feel better in it, I will know more people, and those are the things that make love possible in life.

I have traced the weaknesses in my personality to my parent’s relationship with me. I wasn’t really a person to them, and so I didn’t become one in many aspects. But I have recovered much; I have recovered my whole life through insights, after I left university. That was really my lowest point. I had as much life as a pocket calculator. But I built myself during several years, one insight at a time.

My professional situation is hanging on outside factors. The only thing that I can control right now is my thoughts. And regarding this love that I live with, this person that is always in me, I can either dream and think that it’s possible or I can lose hope and get into a certain state of despair that others can detect. Which one of these states is more conductive to building a better life for myself?

Should I just try to set a meeting with her and see how it goes? Just having a personal relationship with her would be valuable to me, but I don't know if that makes sense to her. I think that she at least would want more, but having an affair with a married woman is not really what I am after, even if given the chance I would not shy away from it...

[warriormaiden]

You definitely should not meet up with her. I don't think it would be healthy for you, at this point and time. If she's unhappy in her marriage she needs to make the choice to leave on her own, and not have any romantic influences from you.

It sounds like a bad situation all around, with nothing but pain in store for all.

[Solitaire]

Thanks for the advice. I also tend to think in that direction.

It’s nice being able to talk about this. I have suffered a lot.