I have surprised myself by having a relationship with someone outside my marriage. I have tried to stop it but somehow it keeps continuing and sometimes I even feel that I have stopped loving my spouse. But my children are very dear to me, and I don’t know how they can manage all of these.
Benny says
Dear Jan,
When you say that you do not know how your children “can manage all of these”, exactly how are you expecting them to respond? They are not in control of what is happening and may have little choice in the matter. Their response will be dependent on what your plans for the future are. Are you planning to exit the marriage, continue your relationship indefinitely or end it?
Having discovered that you can feel romantically for someone outside of your marriage may be somewhat of an unexpected “surprise”. But continuing to develop and stay in this relationship involves a series of choices and actions. It sounds that some attempts to end it before it became too serious were made, but I suspect that the cost of ending it was considered too much to bear, given that your marriage is not in a good way. To put it plainly, the desire to salvage the marriage is not compelling, whilst the pain of ending the relationship may seem too costly.
To complicate matters, sometimes having the relationship may “allow” parties to hang on longer in an unfulfilling marriage. In such cases, the marriage may only exist in name.
Unless you are in a physically abusive relationship and the children’s lives are in danger, do not use your children (and how they would feel) as the deciding factor on whether to end the affair. Finally, do not take too long to decide as I fear that the consequences of the affair being discovered can be devastating.
