Please help

I really need some help. I really don't need judgment so please refrain from that right now.

I'm in love with a married man. He loves me too. This is my story. For ease, I will refer to him as H.

Just over 2 years ago, he began to work in the same, small, office as me. At the time I was married.

H has told me that he was immediately attracted to me, both physically but also emotionally (if that's the right word). He told me my personality lit up the room and he felt like a moth drawn to a flame.

We were drawn to each other, we had fun, we share a similar sense of humour. We both have young daughters. We had a lot in common. But we were just friends and I didn't consider any kind of relationship with him.

About 5 months after H joined, we had an office night out. The attraction between us was powerful. As we drank more, we became bolder. As the night went on, other colleagues went home. We made a decision to go to a club. The night culminated in us kissing for hours. I remember asking him if he had ever done anything like this before. He replied no. We shared a taxi which dropped him home first. We texted for an hour about how we felt. There was no sex.

At work, it wasn't awkward. We went for lunch together and agreed that we would just be friends. There were no other options. However, we were texting each other constantly, we continued to meet for lunch. We ended up kissing several times. We had a month of excitement and happiness before I stopped things. I told him that I couldn't do this because, unlike me, he was happily married. I couldn't be the reason for that changing.

Around 3 months later my marriage broke down. My now ex husband and I went for counselling and had a nightmare 8 months before he moved out. The reason for the break down was not H.

For around a year now, I have been in a relationship with H. Again, it started fairly innocently, we had been friends for a year and after my husband left, I allowed myself to become more emotionally dependent on H.

In short, we began to spend more time together at work, outside of work, we messaged each other continually and sometimes for hours. I put out of my mind that he had a wife because I selfishly needed what I conned myself into thinking was a friend.

He became my best friend.

The turning point was one Friday night. We'd arranged to go for a drink after work. He left in a hurry and then sent me a message telling me he was sorry but he couldn't. He told me he had strong feelings for me and had had them since he met me. They'd only got stronger but he had buried them and concentrated on his family. As we'd been spending so much time together they had resurfaced. He told me he was scared about what it could lead to and he told me there was a line he could not cross.

I replied and told him that we were friends. That I cared about him. That I knew how much his family meant to him and that I would never ask anothing of him.
I meant every word. But it opened up the possibility in my mind.

Eventually, we began to have a relationship. It was limited physically to kissing and cuddling. There wasnt even any touching under or over clothes. But there was the continual messaging. There was the declaration of feelings.

She challenged him about me. He denied everything and she seemed to believe him. I think she is suspicious again now.

He told me he loved me on my birthday. It made me cry, I'd been waiting so long to hear those words. He came back to a hotel room with me and kissed me like he never had before. But he came to his senses and left. It was the best and worst nighthing of our relationship to date.

We had a long talk about love. Throughout, he has NEVER bashed his wife. He loves her. He will not leave her. I've always known this and until very recently I've been fine with that.

Since my birthday 8 months ago, things have only got deeper. Kissing every day, spending all the time we can together. But it is limited. We've never spent any time together that he would ordinarily spend with her.

We slept together just before Christmas. He was drunk. Without going into too much detail, he'd been more physically forward with me in the month or 2 leading up to it. We'd had a few evenings in the back of my car where things had got a little heated. I had not touched him. There was a line still.

He told me I was the biggest temptation of his life. That he'd not felt this way before.

After we slept together things inevitably changed. He was distant with me the following week. We talked about it and I reassured him that I still had no intention of trying to make a claim on him.

We resumed our relationship, the emotional side and the kissing.

Over Christmas, our contact was limited. Whilst with her so much, he obviously felt guilty. I was torn apart inside. Whereas I could deal with being second best when I knew he cared, the minute that reassurance was gone I was a mess. I was jealous. And I was guilty for being jealous. I had no right.

After Christmas, back at work, he apologised. Things were better than they had ever been. We were closer than ever and he told me loved me, unprompted, on several occasions. I was in heaven. We were planning to spend a day together. We had decided to take a class together once a week. He told me he wanted to do more together.

Last week it all changed. Something has happened at home. I think she is ill. He has been distant. I challenged him and he told me that he can't tell me yet what is wrong but that he has had a reality check which has scared him to his soul. He says he cannot continue at the level we are at and that he cannot progress what we have. He says that his feelings for me are very very strong but once again he has to bury them.

It's been the worst week of my life in a long time. We met yesterday when he told me that we are still what we are. I don't know what that is. He held me. He told me he can't be the man I want. He doesn't know what I want.

I think we are friends. But my heart is broken. I can't stop thinking about the plans we had made. I have always known he would never leave her. I've always known I am second best. I suppose in my heart I have known that it couldn't last.
The pain is unbelievable. I have 2 young daughters to look after and I cannot function myself. I'm not sleeping. I'm not eating. I need him back. I don't need the sex. I need my best friend. But I need the cuddles, I want the kisses. I want a part of him to be mine. I know he is her's. I feel wrong for feeling the way I do. The guilt compounds the heartbreak.

We still have to work together. I can't imagine a time when he will not be in my life.

I want to allow him the time and space he needs to be the husband he wants to be. I want to be there purely as his friend while they go through whatever they're going through. I hate to see him scared.

But I cannot help but hope that once things have settled he will come back to me, the tiny part of him that has been mine for a year now.

Having written this down, I feel somewhat better already. There is so much I've missed out. There is so much you as a reader don't know about me and about him which I can never convey. I'm very self analytical. I know my faults and I know the reasons I make the decisions I do. I don't believe myself to be a good person.
He is a good person. Throughout our relationship/affair he has felt guilty. I think the lack of sex was his way of convincing himself that what he was doing was just about okay.

He says that watching my hurt and pain and confusion this week has been unbearable and that it's been tearing him up inside. All he wants to do is comfort me.

But I know she has to come first.

I know I should move on. But I can't. Maybe in time?