almost raped last night and still in love with a married guy

PS- even if he could afford to pay my bills, which he can't (i used to work with him, i know exactly what he makes. 70K a year is not enough nowadays to pay for a mortgage, cars and everything else howadays. His wife decided to quit her job two years ago to be a stay at home mom), i probably wouldn't let him.

I feel crappy enough about the situation, last thing i need to feel like is as if he's my freaking sugar daddy....

Hi LostGirl! I don't think I've posted on one of your threads before, but I've followed along and would love to see things work out happily for you. ..just had a thought or two after reading that last post...



"Perfection"? Um, like, what's that?

My husband is, seriously, about the nicest guy possible, and I think we're about as devoted to each other as I could imagine two people being. But perfect? hahahahahahah! whew! Not hardly. Nothing about our relationship is perfect, not my love for him, not his for me, nada.

I don't even know what love reaching perfection would be. Please don't take offense at this, I mean it kindly: it sounds at times like you are reaching for a kind of, well, naive idea of how the "right" relationship will feel. Do you ever think maybe you might be, hmm...a bit too stuck on the idea of a Prince Charming, perfect-one-true-love kind of thing? I ask because it seems like there are a lot of little things you mention, like about looking for "sparks" and love reaching perfection and stuff, that sound like either you really think there is a perfect guy out there (and mr married man may well be him) -- or else that you're using these ideas as excuses to stick with him...



See, I don't think you're going to feel that anyone measures up UNTIL mr married guy is out of the picture. As long as you have your fall-back, why bother?

Hey cyphercat,

thanks for responding. Hmmm, well, perhaps 'perfection' was the wrong word....what I mean is, perfection in an individual circumstance. Does that make sense? As in, everyone has their own sense of what they like in another person, what makes them happy. Of course there is no such thing as perfection in and of itself. People are not perfect by nature, but I mean, finding that one person by whom their combination of qualities , however imperfect, is perfect for you.

I do not say that cheating or infidelity or whatnot is a GOOD thing, by any means. But you have to wonder, all these people that cheat, and there are tons that do that most other people would NEVER suspect, they must do it for a reason right? Some are just incapable of relationships and should never have bothered to get married. Some have no remorse about what they do and dont care who they hurt. But sometimes, just sometimes, there might be people who went into marriage with proper and good intentions, they found someone they thought, perhaps, even if they werent IN love with them, the person was comfortable, and kind, and would make a good spouse, and they marry them, and five , ten, twenty or more years down the line they realize that they are living with their best friend. I have lots of good friends, but I cant imagine being married to any of them would make me happy in the long run, which is why they dont go beyond being my friends. I mean, if someone cheats, there must be a reason right? Does it make the wife being cheated on any less guilty when she finds out that her husband has cheated and makes no effort to find out what is wrong in the relationship that this happened? Im not saying she made him cheat, but in my situation, his wife found out two years ago about me, and the way she dealt with it was to barely speak to him for a few months, be pissed off at him, and then forget about it. I guess if I had been her, I would have wanted to know what the hell he felt he was missing that he would do this. When me and him were just at the friends stage, he would tell me things like "oh, Mary's a good woman, a great mother, there's just no spark between us", or, "when i got married, i did it because, I dont know, somehow she felt like home".

So maybe he's getting his family fullfillment from her, and his excitement and physical and emotional satiation from me. In which case isn't he the lucky bastard eh? Well I can't be too mad. He's not putting a gun to my head and making me let him come over to see me.

I make no denials about being a bit of a hopeless romantic at times, and maybe I'll end up screwing myself in the long run by "waiting for that perfect feeling" with someone, even though I feel it right now, but obviously in the wrong situation. I suppose I just wonder if sometimes its meant to be difficult for some people.

I think I mentioned this story once in one of my other threads, about this couple I knew, let's call them Rachel and Tim. They were madly in love until the day the husband died at the age of 85. However, when they were younger, they had been married to other people, and even had children with their first spouses , respectively. One day Rachel and Tim met each other, and despite being married to other people, they couldnt help the attraction they had. So eventually they start an affair with each other. They do the same thing Im doing now I suppose, sneaking around, except I have no husband to be sneaking from. Rachel even gets pregnant at one point and her current husband thinks this son is his for years, even though Tim knows the whole time its his kid. Eventually Tim and Rachel divorce their spouses to be with each other. They probably hurt alot of people in the process, but their kids eventually became adults and forgave it. The son they had together, he happens to be my current step father. But i guess my point is, they didnt find love in a traditional way that made everyone around them happy. But after the drama subsided, what was left when the kids grew up and went about their own adult lives, were two people madly in love till the day one of them died, and their whole lives everyone had told them what they were doing was wrong, wrong wrong.

Don't think that I don't hope that I do end up finding love the traditional way- you know, i meet a nice single guy, we date, etc etc, everyone approves, no one gets hurt. But what if thats not how its meant to be for me? I suppose I dont know and what happens eventually will happen. I really have made an effort to like other men. I dated one guy for maybe 8 months that I really really liked very much, and I did not call married guy even once in that time period. But as usual, it didnt work out and back I am to square one, and sometimes I just don't have the bloody energy to try anymore. I really don't.

nice rationalizations

now, now, no need to be sarcastic.....

well, you enable him to cheat and his wife enabled him to cheat in the past. that makes him a user and both of you weak, lacking a sense of self-worth. sorry if that sounds too harsh, but damn... four years! what are you doing, girl?

I think you have stuff you need to work on about YOU, Lostgirl - your own self-esteem, for starters. He may "make you feel good" while he's stroking you, etc., but then he leaves you, every single time. So how does this help you at all? It's all so transitory, so temporary, so fleeting, and so unrealistic.

I personally don't think you're ready for a healthy relationship and your encounters with these 'dates' are examples of this. Emotionally healthy people do not almost get raped, sorry to say this to you. Usually we can size them up early in the evening and be gotten rid of, if we'd even have made the date to begin with. The fact that you're choosing these men says a lot about where you're at.

Why not just concentrate on getting emotionally healthy? Start with working on being happy with who you are and living on your own. It's a beautiful, liberating feeling.

It's unhealthy to NEED. It's perfectly fine to WANT. Figure out if you NEED a man, or this married man, or simply WANT one/him.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but I think you need a reality check.

If I may ask :
A- what sort of man do you think you deserve,
B- what sort of man do you want, and
C- how do you want him to treat you?

You often attract who you are subconsciously looking for (unless I guess, one is desparate, and willing to take anyone, and perhaps even then). If you keep attracting the wrong type of men, the answer is inside yourself.

Worded another way (and a better way) - The better you know the man you want, the more likely you are to find him.

Perhaps there is a need.

When every single person you encounter tells you the same thing, and you seek comfort in the fact a lot of people cheat, and that the wife should be doing something beside ignoring it, what else is there to do but be sarcastic?

I mean, what are you looking for, someone to tell you what you're doing is okay or reasonable?

Have you gone through every person you know with your repetitivness until they just don't want to hear it any more, and/or you haven't gotten someone to say whatever it is you want to hear?

Seems very cut and dry to me.

You're cheating with a married man. Stop it.

How?

You stop f*cking him.



You hate your job, you've been screwing a married guy for 4 years. Look for a job somewhere as far away from your current location as you can get, and move.

Change your phone numbers and email addresses and don't give him any of them. If letters are fowarded to you from him, shred them before opening.

When you get to your new location, don't go on a date for a year, at least.
When you do, make sure he's not married.

WOAH, now, Mame, generally i get what youre saying, but emotionally healthy people get raped all the time. If everyone knew someone was a bad seed off the bat date rape woudnt exist. This guy was a perfect gentleman from the moment I met him a couple weeks earlier, the whole night, and only at the end of the night when we took the cab home did anything surface. So im mildly insulted....I may have some issues, but so do alot of people and I didn't "ask" for it.

Anyway, on to other things. Im not asking anyone to tell me what Im doing is ok. I know it's not , and I know its not good for me, and I know it'll never make me happy because it'll never go anywhere, but there are plenty of intelligent, sane, normal people that make bad decisions, and they are not all disturbed for it. I do everything in my life the "right" way, I take care of everyone, I go out of my way for people, i work in a good job, despite my not enjoying it, I'm highly educated, I went back to school, and my life is very stressful right now. Maybe that shouldn't be an excuse for finding momentary solace with a married man, but at the moment it is.

No I dont like the feeling I have when he leaves to go home to his wife. When he was going around work showing his baby's sonogram pictures to people when i still worked there I felt like running out crying. But I do hope you can understand why someone who is so massively stressed out all the time, and has barely two seconds to herself every day, might make these bad decisions, because even though she knows it sucks in the long run, she wants, and perhaps needs, at least just a few hours a week where she can geninly feel happy for at least that brief period. It doesnt make sense maybe, and its very easy to judge when you arent experiencing those feelings.

To Chai,

Actually, I'd like to move. It isnt the easiest thing in the world to do so. I have to finish school here, by the way, and financially its just not really an option right now. and my whole famly is here, and all my friends. Really, I dont think running away to another place and leaving everyone else because he happens to live in this city is reasonable. I did want to move to England for a while but thats a work in progress, visa's pending and all that jazz.

not sure what else to say. I came here not to have people tell me what I was doing was right or wrong. Right or wrong is irrelevant, really. I think I needed to rant, more than anything, and maybe hoped someone might have a good suggestion for how to make myself not feel quite this way.

I don't know what Im talking about. Im so tired Im literally delirious right now. I just came home from my friend's wedding. I introduced her to her now husband. That's the third couples in two years to get married as a result of my setting them up. If only I was that good at setting myself up, eh?

x

There's no quick fix for feeling good about yourself (or about what you are doing, or about others). The only way is to know yourself, and be true to yourself. The rest of it follows.

I've been kinda following along but also kinda hanging back.

I think you're pretty seriously depressed. As in, clinically.

Of course I'm no doctor (and if I were, I'd have no business diagnosing you online) but the idea is -- get thee to a psychiatrist!

There's no shame in doing it, just do it. You are clearly miserable in your life, and the affair is only a piece of it. There is a reason why you are not attracting good, sane, pleasant men to you -- it's because (at least in part) you're not emotionally/mentally all together.

I understand your need to have something good in your life but there are plenty of other ways to have good things in your life even if you hate your job. You say you have friends there. Then reach out to them! Make art! Exercise! Go on a vacation! Take a class for fun, not for school! Read a book! Go to a movie!

You need, I feel, other ways of having pleasure. Is it the same kind of pleasure? Nope, and I'm not suggesting that it is. What I am suggesting, though is that (a) you explore your feelings (and perhaps are medically treated) by a qualified professional and (b) you satisfy at least a part of your good feelings craving in some other way, with a positive outlet. Not only will it feel good and not be attached to this guy, but it will also, eventually, really bring it home that the stolen moments you have with this guy don't involve sharing those other pleasant things. He's not going to go to the movies with you, or on vacation. He won't take a class with you, won't visit your friends with you and won't take you to a restaurant. And you're worth more than that and there is more of value out there and this affair does not scratch that surface.

Oh, and another thing. I bet this is the last thing you want to hear, and you'll have a million reasons for me, to tell me how it's impossible and it'll never work, etc., but look for another job As in, start to crank up your resume, post it anonymously on Monster, start to reach out to your network, etc. It takes a while so while you are still in school is actually the perfect time to start. If something happens, great. If it doesn't, then you are being proactive and getting into the mode, getting ready for when the rest of your life will catch up and you will really be ready. But take some steps. It will make you hate your current job a little bit less if you can see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

jespah, I agree about the therapy, not necessarily a psychiatrist, but at least a psychologist or counselor.

I believe you hit the nail on the head about "a million excuses" and not just about changing jobs.

No matter what the advice is, there's a reason not to do whatever it is at this time.

Until lostgirl takes some/any action nothing will change.

if depression is involved (IF), then the million excuses and feeling stuck and incapable of changing the situation make perfect sense. Along with sense of helplessness and feeling unworthy.
Even if it's not the case, counselor is a great place to start. Some workplaces and universities offer counseling for free or for very cheap, also some health insurance plans do. He or she would then be able to help you to work on getting unstuck and making progressive changes that you'd like to see in your life. I went to the counselor even when I just felt stuck with writing and never regretted it once. It helped me work through many issues I would not formulate or see for myself, since I never asked myself the questions she asked me. Worth a shot.

You guys aren't telling me new news on the depression front, though I appreciate the effort.

Strangely enough, I am a therapist myself, oh me oh my! I just don't project my own crap feelings onto my patients, of course. it takes alot of mental energy to pretend you are happy yourself, to people that are sitting in your office day in and day out that are depressed, manic, schizophrenic, you name it. Joy.

I have a therapist of my own. It helps sometimes. yes, Im biologically depressed, known this for a long time. Have taken medications, didn't like side effects, ranging from making my already terrible insomnia worse, to gastric discomfort (and that's being lenient in my description), to various other things. I might try a new one again soon, but my body needed a little break for a while. No amoutn of meds will help me when I am sleeping 20 minutes a night, which is how bad my insomnia got on the last one. But hey, all the same stuff you guys tell me about going to get help, taking meds, hell, i say that same sh*t to my patients. It sounds good when you say it, in theory. Works better for some than others.

i am what one would call dysthymic. As in, I have my highs and lows like everyone else, but my lows are a bit worse than your "normal" person, and my highs alot of the time aren't all that high when compared to other people being in a giddy mood, I suppose. it almost varies somewhere in between this low-grade depression and major depression . I do have my periods in which i feel so awful i don't want to leave my bedroom, and have probably used all my sick days purely for mental health days, and yes, I forget who metnioned above, my depression is a big reason i have these feelings of being helpless and not knowing how to change my own outlook.

It's hard, living with this. I treat other people for the same thing I experience myself, and you can't imagine how difficult it is to put on my professional face every day at work when inside there's just nothing that makes me happy anymore, aside from seeing my family sometimes, but I barely have time for that.

I would LOVE to take a class just for fun, or exercise or any of those other million things, but don't have time, wish i did.

wanna know my schedule? Maybe no, but here it goes anyway.

I wake up at 4:45 am every day to make it to work at the hospital by 6 in the morning. i work all day long listening to crazy people spout out their troubles, delusions, and various other things. After I finish work I get ahalf hour to cram some food down my throat before running to school to revel in the wonders of physics and oragnic chemistry four hours a day while struggling to stay awake as I jealously listen to the 18 year olds besides me bitch and moan about having nothing to do every day except wake up and go to class and have mom and dad pay all their bills, every single bloody day. I get home at around maybe 9:30 pm at night at which point Im so exhausted I can't think. let's not forget that I also have to do lab reports and various crap of that nature that takes probably two hours to do, each. Oh, and find time to study for exams. Oh, and do stupid littl.e things like make myself food, pay my rent, go through mail, whatever. The little stupid tasks that actually do take up time. My two days off per week, saturday and sunday, is spent trying to do things like laundry (so much fun, i know, but one needs clean clothes). Or going to the mechanic to fix my car, because wouldnt you know this week i've got another 500 dollars worth of repairs! yay! Or pick up my little brother from his softball game because my mom's old car broke down again. or help my sister. OCCASIONALLY i can squeeze in a drink with a friend on a weekend. Once in a blue moon. Since weekends are really my only time to study its hard to fit other stuff in. Exercising is maybe an option on a saturday, but generally, since i sleep maybe 3 hours a night on weekdays, im so exhausted come friday night that i end up passing out for 15 hours and wasting all that time sleeping in an attempt to not go delirious.

My own therapist admits to me that he's rarely met people with such a ridiculous schedule as my own. I know its hard to understand, but im trying to express how I literally have no time for myself. This past weekend, for example, I direly needed to study for a test I have on thursday. Saturday I ended up spending half the day at the mechanic, the other half was so tired passed out. friday night before that had to see a family friends graduation. Sunday had to go to my friends wedding in which i was a bridesmaid. Got home at 7 pm from the wedding, and when most other peopel were tired and relaxing after the party, guess what I did! I did physics labs for four hours!

i know im depressed, i try to deal with it, i promise you. These feelings of frustration and helplessness I have are hard to control, and they may seem annoying to people reading them, because I keep hearing this whole "snap out of it" mentality advice, but its not an on-off switch that I can just fix and one day i wake up and im happy. I do alot considering how miserable I feel on the inside. I do not falter when it comes to giving my own patients treatment at all, one of them bloody well asked me how i manage to stay so happy all the time. HAHAHAHAHA. that almost nearly made me laugh. Which might not have been so bad....but I am digressing. This has all become ranting and trying to make everyone understand why I feel the way I feel.

Sorry if I've annoyed anyone. There's only so many times I can bitch about the same thing to my therapist (and no, my insurance is limiting on what therapists I can see and i cant afford a new one. sorry). Anyway, he's not bad. he's only human. he probably feels frustrated with me the way I feel frustrated when I have a depressed patient that I cannot bring out of a funk, but c'est la vie. you cannot save everyone. I try to look forward to the future, thinking that maybe when school's over I'll be less stressed, I'll have more time for myself, and I won't rely on things like my affair with married man to give me my mental vacations for brief interludes. It's around the cornner and yet feels so far away. hell, I've been depressed since I was a teenager, and I still never ask anyone for help with anything. Ever.

i come on this website because it's anonymous, and if people get annoyed that I'm complaining too much it doesn't matter because they don't know me. I don't complain to friends, or family. I do everything on my own. My parents love me to death but I've never asked them for help with anything as much as I could try. It's just how I am.

A stubborn idiot who complains too much perhaps. So there you have it.

I should probably get back to work now....next appointment in five minutes and this patient coming in next is five million times nuttier than me :-)

well, LostGirl, as a therapist yourself, you will surely then be able to look at your own case as if it was someone else. What would you advise to your patient who would keep giving you many reasons for justifying why each and every explored opportunity of change is impossible? that he or she is simply too busy, too this, too that? What would you as a professional tell that person?

I personally believe (and the following is just my perception of how 'life' goes, so don't take it personally...just an offering of one point of view) that we only have to die in this lifetime. All else is pretty much in our hands, or at least we have significant influence over it. Nobody is indispensable, and everyone CAN find time if they really want to.

I wasn't happy with my job and generally with the lack of direction in my life. Guess what. I found a new job, all the way in Netherlands, and I'm moving. I'm scared shitless, but I'm doing it anyway, I know it will help me get away from a very unhealthy situation. You can do ANYTHING you want, but wanting is the crucial part.

it seems to me you have built a barricade around yourself. i relate to a lot of things you said, since i do some of those things myself. having the 'tough independent, i don't ask anyone for help' facade myself, i know it's an act. in reality i'm very vulnerable and i think you are too. you don't ask anyone for help, although you sorely need it. even your busy schedule....who put it in place? that is often just another baricade we build for ourselves for reasons (i do that as well). "ranting' but not accepting any advise, insight, or suggestion...surely not out of malice and not even out of stubbornness I would say (which is actually just another act). i would encourage you to think about that barricade, why is it there.

how do you see your life developing if you do nothing? what do you see, say, 5 years from now? How are you being about your current situation? What opportunities do you have immediately at your disposal to make first small changes?

Wow, you're a therapist? didn't you say you're 25, or am I remembering wrong?

You must be a really driven person to have gotten to have an actual "career" established at such a young age, it seems to me--but maybe that's just coming from the perspective of being 28 and only just finished my BA...but anyway, point being, good God, don't you think maybe you need a break from school?? That schedule sounds unbearable. I think you need to knock that **** off for a while. Seriously, you must have been in school for so long already. What about a year off to decompress? To me, your schedule alone is cause for depression...

(just an aside, my husband is going to be taking organic chemistry next semester, I've heard allll about how hellish that is!)

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I was talking more about the types of dates you've been having, and shouldn't have specified just the one. It's just that it was so recent and I think your spidey-senses were out of whack or you'd have picked up on more than what you did.



Sorry, again, but intelligent sane normal people do not participate in a dead-end relationship for years on end. We have more self-esteem than that. Now, I'm not here to pick on you, but you do not do everything in your life the "right" way, since you're involved in this dead-end relationship. I'm not commenting on you; I'm just observing the facts as you told them. And good for you that you see your stress is an excuse for your behaviour, but actually, it's just adding to it.



I see this as justification for continuing in a dead-end relationship. What's wrong with loving yourself?

And if you're just ranting, that's fine. I wished I'd known that in the beginning.

Best of luck to you.

I'm curious why, if you suffer depression, you are putting yourself around depressed people all the time, and having to empathise with them? Surely there's another line of work (similar principle with marriage counsellors - I'm told they have a very high percentage of divorces)

You are familiar with what happens with a lot of physchiatric doctors/nurses when they stay too long around lots of mentally ill people?

You are familiar with the concept that people become happier around happy people, and sadder around sad people, madder around mad people etc?

You are familiar with what happens when you repress/ignore your feelings (like you have to do around the people you are treating - that it's for a professional reason is irrelevant)?