Some of the threads about my personal life I’ve posted recently in IMHO have been met with a fair amount of (understandable) confusion, skepticism and offense.
I promised to write a clarification thread in order to explain it all once and for all. There it is.
First of all I must point out that I did NOT make up any of this. Feel free to see me as a clueless, selfish idiot, but not as a liar.
All in all, three aspects that must been taken into consideration.
(1) I’ve been married for 15 years and have two daughters.
I met my wife in 2002 and immediately fell head over heels for her. She was beautiful (still is by the way, now in her mid-40s, she looks almost 10 years younger), smart and affectionate. She had dozens of admirers but only had eyes for me. At the time I’d had no serious relationship for over 3 years and was fed up with one-night stands and dead-end flings. On paper, everything seemed rosy.
In fact, there were some serious issues from the get-go.
My wife and I come from radically different cultural and religious backgrounds. Whithin days, she demanded that I convert to her faith (“The only way for us to be together…”). I did, but deep inside, I just couldn’t believe word of it. I also discovered early on that she was prone to temper tantrums during which she quickly got verbally and physically abusive. Yet, I couldnt bring myself to leave her because I felt a duty towards her (we’d had sex long before we were married, a huge no-no in her culture). All in all, we were polar opposites in pretty much everything, and since she’s very strong-willed and I tend to be withdrawn, she dictated the way we lived, including how our daughters were brought up and whom they should really obey. For about 10 years, I submitted to this “for my family’s sake”. My life was basically : go to work, do my job, socialize as little as possible with my coworkers and rush back home at 5. I had no social life outside home, no real friends. Needless to say, I never had anything resembling a possible fling. It was a boring and a bit sad life, but at least, it brought stability.
It wasn’t a successful marriage, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have some good sides. Our daughters, first and foremost. Some sort of stability, and material comfort, too.
But as, the years went by, my resentment grew. I confronted her more and more often and our arguments became nastier. By late 2017, she was making death threats in front of our daughters. Divorce looked like the only way out, for both of us. In the past two years, we started divorce procedures three times, with additional “threats” of starting them again any time we had an argument. The procedures were always cancelled after a few weeks. The last one, still ongoing, started in October.
(2) Ruth joined our company precisely when my marriage was clearly failing. She was perfectly my type, with an infectious smile and dark eyes full of intelligence. We soon started talking and hit it off pretty much immediately.
After about 6 months, I came across her one Friday afternoon and, completely out of the blue, she looked me straight in the eyes and said that I should come to her office one of these days because she was always alone and bored. I took it to be a sign of romantic interest. We did meet in her office a few times but nothing came out of it and I slowly decided that I had been deluded about the whole thing. My interest was rekindeled very briefly last summer by a few things she said (see thread mentioned by TokyoBayer), but it quickly died down.
(3) I met Sandra when members of her team introduced her to me on her first day at work earlier this year. I must admit that I wasn’t really impressed with her at the time. For one thing, she barely acknowledged me and looked rather aloof. Moreover, while I found her cute in a “head of the class, daddy’s good little girl” kind of way, she wasn’t really my type and I promptly forgot about her.
I didn’t see her again for months, but when we started talking in mid-November, my opinion of her did a complete 180°. She was actually extremely friendly and immediately showed me pictures of her family, remarked that I wasn’t old (although I’m 12 years older than her, 45 / 33). Very soon, she started coming to my office on a daily basis, sometimes 2-3 times a day. At first, she always had a legitimate professional reason to do so, but it was always dealt with in a matter of minutes after she would stay for hours, leaving only when she really had to, at the very last meeting before a meeting for instance. One thing I noticed was that she always was blushing, dithering and bumping into things on the way out of my office. Very quickly, we realized that we had a lot of things in common, our intimacy grew and we started speaking about very personal things. Over the weeks, I became increasingly fond of her while she took to sending me emails and texts during the weekend. There were two things in particular that I found irresistable about her. First, unlike my wife who had mocked or pestered me for years about it, Sandra didn’t mind my (many) quirks and eccentricities at all. Better, she even shared some of them. Also, I was touched by her many little acts of kindness, like coming to work early to leave a post-it message on my keyboard before I arrived on days when we couldn’t meet, or packing lunch for the two of us as a surprise.
In mid-December, she invited me to her apartment for what was again a legitimate reason (going to a company event together with her car). She invited me again three more times in the following days. By my second visit, she hesitantly asked for a cuddle, then another one. Cuddles quickly turned into kisses, and kisses turned into foreplay. That’s where stopped. We didn’t have sex.
The evening after my last visit, my wife found the 40+ texts that Sandra and I had exchanged in the previous couple of weeks and although they were not clearly incriminating she linked them to my being late from work almost every day since November and asked me whether I was seeing Sandra. I confessed and she decided that I was going to kick me out (legally she could not do that, but I felt I didn’t have any right to object after what I had done). I quickly found some temporary accomodation but on the day I was to move, my wife called me and said I could still stay, but that if I moved, she would consider it final. I went back home that evening and I’m still here today. My wife seems to have decided that she wants to save our marriage at all costs, while I’m unsure as to why she’s adamant to stay with someone who clearly doesn’t deserve her. I also know that the many problems we had long before Sandra entered the picture haven’t been solved.
As for Sandra, I know that she sent me messages on my work email which I left unanswered. She also texted me three days ago about how she was sad that we didn’t talk anymore. My wife was furious, of course. She’s been very clear about wanting Sandra completely out of life, apart from work reasons. I must admit that I felt the need to call Sandra quickly to tell her not to text me anymore but also that we could still be friends. Knowing her has caused me to do some idiotic and reprehensible things, but I do miss our close rapport. The company is closed for the holidays, so I’m not going to see Sandra until early January. I had planned to find a way meet her before my wife found out about the fling, but that’s not going to happen of course. I suspect Sandra is sad about this, at least, that’s what I sensed from her text and the tone of her voice when I called her.
In a sense, I know that Sandra was using me (she even admitted as much when we hugged). She has a story of parental abuse/neglect. She’s also had serious health issues recently. I guess I was a shoulder to cry on then things got a bit… out of hand. However, I cannot say that I didn’t get anything out of it. I enjoyed having her attention and feeling her close to me. It’s something I hadn’t felt for many years and Sandra did this for me. I didn’t pursue her. From the start, she was the the one initiating everything : the first visits to my office, the first emails, the first texts, the invitations to her apartment. I felt valued, especially since it came for someone like her : significantly younger, highly educated, trilingual and… yeah, pretty.
So there it is. I hope that this lenghty post has cleared some of the confusion. I apologize for the offense that my posts have caused and I will stop posting about my personal life from now on.