Everything lost?

You can't change the past. Life goes on. Hopefully you are focusing on moving forward in life with a moral compass honed by the experience of making bad choices. Often it is only through moral transgression that we can gain real vigilance in the pursuit of a nobler life. Count your blessings that you've survived your own bad judgment and look forward with hope to a future that will be better than the past.

You can talk to a therapist. You have therapist-patient privilege. Any therapist who reveals your secrets will lose their license to practice. So it's in their best interests to shut their traps.

And talk about how this makes you feel. But also about what you think the consequences are for your former boss, if any. It takes two to tango. You don't have to do all the suffering for the both of you.

Thats right however still I can't understand why I let myself drag into this.
I was young and stupid, that's probably why but still doesn't justify at all what I've done. I have always had strong morale and values so I am very disappointed with myself for doing such a mistake and I've been living with this terror that this could happen to me too

( karma, what goes around comes around).

Shame on me really

Thanks for the suggestion, I've been thinking to ask for help to a therapist but they really charge way too much in my area. And yet I'm too afraid they would tell this to someone and will get caught somehow.

I don't even live in the US, just wanted to find a forum where to discuss about this in total discreet. Maybe I'm being too paranoid?

Closed off myself for years, I finally tried to move on and started a relationship with a guy however working in this office . We knew each other before, he just moved from another branch to this place years later. We met and we fell in love.

He doesn't judge me for this but tells me every now and then they are talking about me in that place. Even newbies and people I never met, who just listen to some stories (fake too).


Imagine how he would feel

I've also found out to have some common acquaintances with his colleagues' friends so if they would take pictures of us together it will be the end .

What's the best way to get out of this mess?

How about if I will end up working with some of them?

This ex is enotionally blackmailing you. How dare he tell you that others are talking about you!!

Is he bragging to others that he bedded you?

Stop this discussion with him asap!

Get a new job somewhere else, or even move.

Forgive yourself - you admit you were niave and gullible, and he was a marital cheat. He really did worse things than you.

It really sounds like he is harassing you and affecting your career and emotional health.

Karma comes in cycles. If what you did can come back around to you, then it may just as well have come around to you because of something that already happened before in the past. What's more, it's not necessarily the case that the karma can be satisfied by coming around once, so it can be like a series of retaliations where one person attacks another as revenge for an earlier attack, which causes then yet another attack, and so forth.

So what you have to do is just focus on moving forward and resisting temptation. Reflect on what a truly good relationship is, e.g. marriage, and then work on being happy in your life waiting until the time such a relationship is within reach. That way you won't be tempted again to get into a relationship you'll again regret.

Daffodil
Sorry - I misread you post. I thought that your ex was talking about you in the office.

Instead, it is your new BF who tells you that people still talk about you and your ex.

Don't you realize she's doing the right thing by focusing on owning her own responsibility instead of on blaming her accomplice?

The issue isn't who was more at fault. It is on realizing the gravity of the mistake in order to avoid repeating it in the future. I think she is doing that, so why would you focus on exonerating her relative to the man?

Own it. That's the way.

If anyone says anything, the response is, "Oh, yeah?" And then change the subject. Don't let them see it bothers you.

It needn't bother her at all if she gets square with an all-forgiving God. You make amends with God by accepting forgiveness and choosing the righteous path forward. "Let him (or her) without sin cast the first stone."

Yeah, it does bother me Indeed.. Because those are rumours behind ‘my back’, and no one knows the exact truth (unless that guy told them everything out of the blue, who knows).
But as far as I am aware they talk about me every now and then, probably by judging me and going to wrong conclusions. Most of them don’t even know me so it’s quite of an easy and entertaining subject for them I Guess.

So how could I let them change the subject?

Yes exactly. It was referred to my new bf and I feel even ashamed in front of him, because he has got to hear all this gossip pretending he doesn’t even know me.
One day I had the brilliant idea to go and pick him up From work and he got mad at me because people might see us together (and they could tell this to his boss ).
I just feel so sorry for him being with me and I wish for both of us a ‘normal’ relationship, without being afraid If they see us together.

Not sure how karma exactly works, but I haven’t done anything like that before. I always had had long terms relationships based on trust and total respect for each other (from my side for sure) and I think I haven’t behaved in such a terrible way to deserve to get this ‘back’ in my future?

And yes I will definitely work on myself and try to learn from my mistake, although it will be hard for me to move on ..I’ve been living in guilt and disgrace for years, stopped going out with guys (even if it had to be just for a drink..my answer was ‘no thanks’), and kind of isolated myself from the world.

I finally managed to let myself go when I felt in love with my bf, but all these nightmares came up again as soon as he mentioned how uncomfortable he feels when they talk about me

What karma means is that past and future are linked in a cyclical way. So what goes around comes around, so to speak, but what comes around will also go around again, etc. We reap what we have sown in the past, maybe from past lives, and we will also continue reaping what we haven't yet, maybe in future lives.

With karma there's no way to be a good person and thus not 'deserve' to reap the consequences of bad actions you've sown. People are simply people, not good or bad. We do what we do and those actions come back around to affect us again later. Everything that happens to us, good and bad, is what we deserve from the past, including past lives. You don't have to believe in it, but that is how karma theory works.


That may be a blessing in disguise. All relationships harbor the potential for hurt. You can be in the best relationship ever and then it will end for some reason or other and one or both partners will be traumatized emotionally.

If you really want to have an ethical relationship, you have to wait for marriage. Now your problem will be that you will always worry about your husband cheating on you because you helped some other man cheat on his wife. Long after she has gotten over him having an affair, you will still be worrying about your husband doing it to you. You might even get to the point where you wish he would just get it over with already so you can stop worrying about it; but then when it happens and you lose him to other woman, you will wish you had not wished for it at all.


Ask him if he's ever done anything wrong himself, and if he says no or that he's never done anything that bad, then tell him he doesn't know what he's talking about and he should walk a mile in someone else's shoes before judging them.