Dear Emily,
I am a 40-something husband with a loving wife and five lovely kids. I love my family. My problem started six years ago in a high school reunion, when I saw the girl I was in love with then, but got cold feet that she’d turn me down. Nobody knew about it but me.
During our reunion, she said she’s now married and a doctor who teaches nursing in an RN/Med school. We did a lot of catching up, and secretly I fell for her again. For the next two months I sent her text messages and e-mail, which she seldom replied to. I later found out that she and her husband migrated abroad.
In 2010, she was back here again and even agreed to meet me. I was nervous but happy to finally talk to her. Our dates became frequent as we started sharing family info, as well as finally opening up about my feelings toward her in high school. Then we stopped communicating again until after eight weeks, when she confessed she tried controlling her feelings, as she was falling for me, too.
We ended up where we should not have after that dinner. The intimacy did not last long, because she went back to her home in the US. She is planning to divorce her husband and settle here, but I keep telling her not to. I know I cannot give her the happiness she seeks, nor can I offer her anything except friendship.
My questions are: Why was being intimate with her the happiest moment of my life, and why can I tell my wife I love her when I know I also love this girl? And why can’t I stay away from sending her Facebook messages?
CONFUSED HEART
How could you not be the happiest in your life when you’ve fulfilled your dream of bringing to bed the woman you’ve lusted for since high school?
It’s like experiencing your first kiss, but you got so damn lucky getting much more than that!
You’re still walking on Cloud 9, the reason you clearly cannot seem to turn off your connection to her, be it only on Facebook. But unbeknownst to you, this relationship is heating up in her corner, such that she is already at that stage of jumping out of her marriage and swimming fast toward you.
In a little while, you’ll start feeling the panic because she will demand that you take the same drastic action. She won’t accept being alone in this. If this comes as a surprise to you, then you’re definitely not giving her the vibes that you are a happily married man, who only went to bed with her to sate his boyhood hormones.
She didn’t see you as the jerk who was only in for a good time. Are you ready to jeopardize the harmony of your own family for the sake of some momentary thrill, which may or may not survive the long haul?
Make your objection to her plan of divorcing her husband and moving back here louder! She has to realize that not only are you not joking, but that there is no future waiting for her in your life. Emphasize that it was a mistake going back to the past. You were momentarily side-tracked fulfilling boyhood lust—but that it’s now over. You already have a future with your family, and it’s going very well, thank you.
Remember this about intimacy, a famous playboy said: “The first kiss is magic. The second is intimate. The third is routine.”
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