Long time love cheating on fiancé with me. So confused.

[Eros82]

Guys, I would love your take on this. I have an ex who I dated on and off for 10 years. I kept dumping him time and time again because I never thought he loved me and I wanted someone who could return my love. Truth is, I never told him how I felt. I just always broke up with him ( I was 16-25 years old). Now, he has been seeing someone for a few years. He tells me, about a year into his new relationship that he loved me so much in our time past and that he always thought we would get married. But my career had me moving around and we hadn't lived in the same place in years. Ouch.

Fast forward and now we are living in the same city. I am married and he is engaged. He started messaging me every day as soon as I moved back. That messaging has turned into a sexual affair for the last 8 months. We talk everyday and see each other for about 30 minutes every 1-2 weeks.

I told him that I have been in love with him for these 15 years and that I would marry him tomorrow if wanted. His immediate response was that he loves his fiancé and he is marrying her.

Recently, he has asked if we can have sex the morning of his wedding.

Can someone please tell me what is going on? We are both jerks, I know. I have always been in love with him, but was too young and stupid to be able to talk about it with him until now. If he really loves this fiancé, why did he pursue me? Why does he initiate contact every day? Why cheat on the day you say vows and have plans to continue cheating for years after the wedding?

My heart is broken and confused. Please be kind, but honest.

[Kates David]

Yes, but you should already know, somewhere subliminally you do, (your instincts previously took you there), such is the clouding of perception caused of romantic love. You perhaps fancy him to bits, you are blinded by the occasion of him, but deep down somewhere you are surely still aware that he cannot match you in genuine love? Tell him to do one, and never speak of it with your husband. This is my first thought, but could be I`d shift with more information. Is it that, I`ll only have the benefit of your perception, you are attributed with the facet for truly genuine love, and that you are not therefore wholly in love with your husband. What`s happening/not happening here?

[Eros82]

Kates David, thank you so much for responding. Perhaps the back story here is that I always wanted to marry my young love (YL). I probably should've known that my YL wanted it too - he was a complete and utter wreck when I did end it with him those few times. But at the time, I never trusted depression after break up to be an indicator of love. A few years before I met my husband, my YL and I shared a weekend together. That weekend, he told me that he was no longer attracted to me or interested and we should be friends. So, I gave up the hope that we would ever be together, but remained completely in love with him when I met my husband.

About a year before we got engaged, I saw my YL at a party when I was visiting. We were flirty but nothing happened. I found out after I got married that he wanted to get back together but thought I was in love with someone else. And, before he got engaged, he would send the occasional hello and, "I would've taken you here if we ended up together."

I care for my husband, but I have never felt for him the way that I feel for YL (big love, soul mate, passion). Husband and I don't have anything in common, we are so different, and so I often wonder why he's so in love with me. He tells me that I make him better - but maybe if I liked our differences I could feel the same? I want to be in love with my husband. But it's hard to get a feeling that was never there.

[Kates David]

It is a little bit sad, okay, sorry then, really sad, but you are considerably more trusting of the genuine nature of your young love`s love than I likely could ever be, perhaps because he was your first experience of romantic love. Are you quite sure that this love which you claim to feel for him is n`t merely for the dream, that notion of him which you most need to perceive as being real. Genuine love moves outside the confines of finding a person sexually attractive, but as you have relayed, this is very definitely not somewhere where he can go. Would you swop your husband`s mature love for his adolescent love, love which would include other girls? Remember in this, love is only an emotion. Empathy and friendship are all. Even if only on the one side it is still gold. To see me simply google celebritydiscodave. Read the poetry, spiritual romantic, not sexual, genuine love, or at least, romantic love when taken the extra journey. For the next world record attempt I`m trying to get somebody to sit in a wheelchair for 12 hrs, for the wheelchair pushing record.

[melancholia]

News Flash: neither of you are in love with the other. You're just being selfish. You are married, he is engaged to be married. Are either of you planning on leaving your partner at all? You are telling yourself you are in love because it makes you feel better about what you're doing, like it's more valid to cheat on your husband and fiancée if you love the person you're having an affair with. I bet you your husband and his fiancée would not see it that way. Do you plan on telling your husband or are you going to keep it a secret and continue your affair? Clearly this guy isn't planning on leaving his fiancée if he still plans on marrying her.

Deal with your miserable marriage and your problems with that immediately. You are disrespecting your husband and your marriage by continuing to carry out this affair. Deal with your sh.it and start being honest about what you want and what your problems are in your relationship.

[Kates David]

I should imagine we all agree with the above, all three of us, and likely every last visitor, or at least do n`t entirely disagree with it, but do we seriously have to be both this judgemental, and patronising when dealing with adult issues. Are they going to still feel comfortable here after that, I would n`t, and I doubt many would. Then perhaps to rebel, and to take an extra dose of the same back in situation. She is quite surely already aware of public opinion. Nobody comes here to be judged, surely not. Are you entirely certain that this approach does it from actual experience.
I would suggest that you stop what you are doing but take very seriously telling your husband something which may both destroy him and your marriage, I suppose that I should say his marriage under such circumstances. Even this far you are finally on your own, because only you of us can be privy to the entire circumstances. I prefer to merely discuss, to suggest, but to leave decision making for you. I believe that this is the only road to any sustained change of circumstance.

[melancholia]

I'm not being judgmental so much as I'm not sugar coating my thoughts and advice. The OP isn't in love with her ex, she is infatuated with him and the idea of a "first-love" thing. She is disrespecting her marriage by carrying out an affair. I'm laying out the facts, not being judgmental. People who cheat are selfish and unwilling to look inward at their problems in their current relationship, so they choose to cheat to alleviate their misery. Those are also facts, not judgments. It's up to the OP to do whatever she wants, but when you come here for advice, you should expect a lot of different views on the situation. Unless she has an open relationship with her husband (which I highly doubt), then she is cheating and she needs to decide what to do about that before she continues her relationship with the ex.

[Eros82]

Thank you, to you both, for your honest perceptions and advice. I think I agree, at least a little, what you're both saying. I guess I've been focusing on the wrong things. I think I am in love with a man that doesn't exist. And the fact that we don't see each other all that often and when we do, time is a huge constraint, that I'm creating this perfect man and rewriting my memories a little bit (maybe even a lot). Surely, the man that I think I'm in love with would not be the man I ended up with (if we both left our partners).

To answer the question about the open marriage. My husband and I have talked about it. He has said that I can have sex with whomever I want, he just really doesn't want me to fall in love with anyone else. I've always justified it by thinking, "well, does it count if I was in love with this other man when I met my husband and every day after that?" Yes. I should've been forthright when we were dating. But here we are. Choices were made. I've also asked my husband for a divorce twice in the last year - but I keep giving in to his desire to work through it. Would it be easier to work through it if I weren't in love with someone else? Yes.

Your responses have surely been helpful and given me so much to think about. And for that, I am so grateful for your time. I know I'm an asshole in my marriage. And he's also a super jerk for marrying a woman he probably doesn't love. But I think the point is that, it's not a slippery slope and new choices can be made. Thanks for helping me not to focus so much on "does he love me or not?" and rather, "do I really love him - is he what I want - how can I improve my marriage?"

Thank you. Honestly.

[melancholia]

The only way you can fix your marriage is by improving your communication with your spouse. Talk to him about how you are feeling, regardless of what that feeling is. Running away and asking for a divorce will not fix anything. It's easy to do that because it hurts less, but the more you practice vulnerability, the easier it gets to do it. If you and your husband do want to open your marriage - by all means, go for it - but you need to be dedicated to your relationship at the same time, and that means talking about your expectations, needs, and feelings.

[Kates David]

Blimey Ero, and even now I would not think to judge you, nor ever, for even with all this much more revelation, even indeed with everything which the written word has to give, there is no one absolutely right perception, this even if it were possible to share with you the entirety of your circumstance in miniscule detail. I believe that you had thought that you loved your husband at the time of the marriage, now only to realise that he is not loveable. I do mean not genuinely loveable by anybody, trust me. It would be easier for you to love a man that cares not at all that you sleep with another than to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. Half stolen sentiment haha!! Well, perhaps not quite that hard, it would have to at least be a reasonably small camel, perhaps smothered in butter!!

In terms of my perception, and I`d even argue that beyond the territory of perception itself, beyond the piece of paper, for this is all that your marriage is, a sham, you have actually done nothing morally wrong. On paper yes, but not empirically, not in terms of what the actual relationship itself materially comprises. I can understand where you have been coming from, and am only sympathetic in terms of the outcomes. Seems you have been with a whole string of inadequate men, and that in this inadequate environment that you have of course only had available to you inadequate choices.

May I ask, have most of your dates been with guys significantly senior of years. If this be the case that circumstance would definitely not surprise me. Ideally, I think that you need some considerable amount of time out from men. Under the circumstances of your marriage you actually owe to it very little, and with the benefit of yet more revelation I might even suggest to it being nothing, nothing at least of any genuine value, for the contract on its own has none. Time out to genuinely stand back, take stock, to realise your true self, to reestablish self worth, and to charter your own course, not one laid down by inadequate men, taking with it on this occasion your soul, and if by this time still necessary, well before your head.

Your soul is far and away to good for this circumstance of an open marriage. The same may be true for him. Your only mistake has ever been to full in love with your manifestation of true love. It`s easily done, and I still do it today. For an easy life it really does pay not to be overly romantic, and more especially when you are young. You sound like a great girl, far too good for your current circumstances. Be lucky, and here`s hoping that I`m not chatting with a robot!! If it were possible for you to have "fixed" the relationship with your husband I do sincerely believe that you would have already done it by this time.

Of all of my romantic verse, none of it is real, and it all concerns the being in love with the notion of love. This commodity can be automatically attached to persons in the real world. At the time of attachment one only perceives that there is love. This is called being a romantic. Pays to write more but to love less.

[Hooo!]

if i am not mistaken: you do not love each other
you have a crush on each other
you desire each other
maddly attractive and seductive

And I can not imagine a scenario where both of you would stay well if you continue what you do.
Either you go full time and be together and work it out.
Or you stay away from each other for good
or you continue to cheat on people who love you until either of your relationship turns sour - or until one of you gets mad with longing.

Those are the only scenarios i can think of.
And i only like the first two. But you can chose for yourself.