Can you maintain a friendship with someone you had an affair with while trying to fix your marriage?

In My Humble Opinion
21

From my experience in a similar situation, I’d say no.

Spouse B is going to feel justifiably threatened by the continued relationship. This will continue to cause problems in resolving the trust and communication issues in the marriage.

Spouse A is going to divert time and energy from the marriage into the side relationship, which is counter-productive to fixing the marriage problems.

I would also agree that Spouse A is not really able to accurately judge their own emotions and levels of involvement in this situation. I suspect that Spouse A is underestimating the impact of this friendship on the marriage. If Spouse A is using this friendship as a “safety valve” or “sounding board” or “marriage advisor” for the marriage, then that is energy and intimacy that should be put into the marriage to make it work instead of into the friendship.

Can the marriage reach a stable balance where it continues to limp along, even with the continued friendship? Yes, undoubtedly. Question is whether that’s the desired result.

Spouse A needs to be willing to put the marriage first, which means stopping contact with the friend for some (lengthy) period of time until the marriage issues are resolved. Depending on how things are going in the marriage, then limited contact might be resumed at some point well down the road, with restrictions tailored to the comfort level of Spouse B .

If friend is truly concerned for the welfare of the marriage, then friend should be willing to go along with this.

OTOH, Spouse B needs to acknowledge the major sacrifice being made for the marriage, and make commensurate efforts to meet Spouse A’s needs for companionship. If Spouse A can give up a close friend for the marriage, then Spouse B can put the effort into becoming interested in activities that Spouse A enjoys.

22

I thought you were A as well, and it’s because you make yourself sound entirely sympathetic to A’s point of view, desires, and needs, and not at all to B’s.

It would be one thing if you were simply trying to adopt an unbiased tone, but beyond that, you:

  1. assume the blame for most of the problems prior to the affair
  2. “went along with” an unwanted open marriage because A was unhappy with your sex life, and
  3. have agreed not to stand in the way of A’s maintaining an Affair-Lite with the 3rd party

That is all very disturbing to me. I have to wonder why you seem so willing to sacrifice yourself to hang onto A. You have to consider your own happiness first in this or any relationship. It shouldn’t matter to you whether you think, or the 3rd party thinks, or even A thinks that working things out with you “seems most likely to make Spouse A happy in the long term.” A is clearly capable of looking out for A’s happiness - long term, short term, and eveything in between. Your only concern should be whether you’d be happier with A or without A - not the A you want, but the A you have.

23

Abso-fucking-loutely not.

24

So, Asimovian, what are -you- getting out of this relationship? She’s not happy with your sex life and she doesn’t enjoy your activities. What -does- she want to do with you?

And how is settling for all this better for -you- than dumping her and finding someone who’s enthusiastic about you?

As for the question, no, it won’t work and Spouse A has a hell of a lot of nerve to ask if she’s really serious about maintaining her marriage.

25

open marriages seem to most often work best with lots of communication. sometimes rules, restrictions and explicit guidelines are needed for success. continuing communication and possible restructuring likely might be needed.

some open marriages are ‘sex only’, ‘affection only’, ‘companionship only’ or some mix or variation. all depends on the people and where they are at in that point and time.

i would treat this as similar to an open marriage because that is where it came from and it has elements that are or are close to that in the wide spectrum that it can be.

talk about where you are at now, where you want to get to, how you want to go there. you might have regular talks based on a time frame as well as feeling the need to have a talk. you might define level of allowed closeness or time spent of your spouse with the 3rd person.

guidelines and structure can add a lot of stability and security that wouldn’t be there just winging it. based on your story doing the more structured thing would be best.

wish you well in working things out.

26

Wow, this is almost word for word what I was going to post once I saw that Asimovian was in fact B not A.

Asimovian, you seem to be bending over backwards to see things from A’s point of view (e.g. A has activities that B doesn’t enjoy, so cutting out fuck-buddy friend would be unfair) to the point that I think it’s clouding your perspective. Heart of Dorkness is 100% right – you have to make your happiness in a relationship your first priority. It’s not selfish, it’s the key to having a good relationship – when you’re with someone who compliments you and makes you happy, you’ll make them happy. If you and your spouse are incompatible sexually and incompatible with your hobbies and having relationship problems on top of it, what is the draw? Love isn’t itself enough, in fact sometimes it’s the glue that keeps you stuck in a mostly miserable situation.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

27

I question what any party in this whole mess wants out of the situation at this point.
If I was Spouse A and left my partner to look for physical happiness elsewhere and at the same time found intellectual happiness, what would make me want to go back to Spouse B?
If I was Spouse B and my partner left to find physical happiness elsewhere and at the same time found intellectual happiness, why would I want them back if I had nothing to offer them?
If I was 3rd party and had an intellectual bond with Spouse A that started as a physical relationship, why would I still want to be involved with them in a “friends” only realtionship?
I think everyone needs to figure out what the hell they want out of this whole ordeal.

28

Yuck, that sounds like a mess. Are they trying to get back to monogamy or polyamory?

I think this could work out one of two ways.

If the two spouses have a serious grounding in shared values, including the value of a monogamous marriage, and they really commit to saving it with the help of counseling, it could be saved. I’m sure marriage counselors have seen bigger messes cleaned up before. In this scenario, the 3rd party would need to be out of the picture.

On the other hand, maybe they try to make a go of it as the 3 of them. There’s nothing here that makes the 3rd party seem like a bad person. If you’re going to be polyamorous, how would you want to be polyamorous differently? If you can only be polyamorous with people you don’t really like, that sounds unpleasant. OTOH, I’m no expert on polyamory.

And then there are at least the 50 ways Paul Simon sang about that this could end.

29

This is just a hunch, but is 3rd party a woman?

30

Robert Heinlein, the grandmaster of science fiction, polyamorous fiction, and wish fulfillment, once defined love as a condition in which another person’s happiness is as essential to you as your own.

By this definition, A does not love B; neither does B.

31

Sorry for the absence. To address some points.

First, Diogenes, no, the 3rd party is very much male, but I can see where you might get that.

To all of you who suggest I should be putting my happiness above anyone else’s at the moment, I actually agree with all of you. There isn’t any way for me to capture here (nor do I particularly wish to) everything that has gone on in our lives in the three and a half weeks since I first learned the affair was happening, but I can try to summarize a few things for you.

First, and maybe most importantly, since I started this thread, I have learned from her that she now realizes on her own that her friendship with this guy is not healthy for our marriage, and that she needs to put that on hold for the foreseeable future. Learning that from her has softened my opinion quite a bit, because up to this point, I have been of the mind that she really and truly doesn’t get it. Maybe that’s changing.

Second, in terms of me taking responsibility for a lot of wrongs in the past, that’s not me trying to skewer myself for any particular reason other than that I believe it to be true. We went to a couple of counseling sessions together when this news first broke, and I figured out through some side reading I did that I have really ignored her pleas for certain changes in our relationship. We’ve been together nearly 13 years, and married for 10 of those, and I have missed a lot of signs over the years that I get now. It’s very easy to say that her having an affair was the wrong solution, and everyone agrees with that, including her. But I bear a lot of responsibility for not listening to what was being said to me, directly and indirectly, in this marriage. And I’m not going to shirk that.

As for the sexual incompatibility…well, that part is difficult. It isn’t that we aren’t capable of enjoying sex together – we can, and do, and even that has improved quite a bit in the last three weeks or so. What I have learned in the past few weeks (and always suspected in the back of my head) is that she has never had a “chemical” attraction to me – that raw physical appeal where the very scent of someone turns you on. I’ve always had that for her. And the question we both have to ask ourselves is, are we willing – and are we able – to continue our relationship going forward with that knowledge. There’s no magic pill to solve that problem. Her answer to that question seems to be yes, particularly since there has been improvement in our sex lives as of late. I’m not sure what my answer is yet.

The goal for the two of us is monogamy. I never wanted anything other than that, and she is fully aware now that there is no way this marriage survives in any other form. There is a certain amount of security in the amount of love we have for one another and the lives we have built around each other, certainly. But beyond that we really do make each other happy in other ways. We are of very similar intelligence, and so we enjoy our conversations very much. We have the same senses of humor, which also goes with the conversations, but it also means we share many of the same friends, the same taste in movies and TV shows and books…many of the same intellectual pursuits, in fact. And we’re both computer geeks to an extent. So if I’ve given the impression that there is love in our relationship and nothing more to offer one another, then that is false. It is true that we don’t have many of the same hobbies in common, however.

If I’m forgetting to address anyone else’s specific points, I apologize. I made myself sound like Spouse A as an effort to not try to draw sympathy to my own side. It is not that I completely sympathize with her points, believe me. But I do make a genuine effort to try to understand where she’s coming from, whether I agree with it or not.

32

Asimovian, good luck to you.

It sounds like sex might actually have been a big part of your problem. One point that you may not have considered:

Good sex is like a good golf swing; you’re not born knowing how to do it and plenty of people have made $$$ trying to give people advice on how to do it better. If you haven’t already, put some effort into researching this the same way you would any more intellectual topic.

In a pleasant bit of synergy, psychologists are always talking about the value of “novel” and “exciting” (in the sense of physiologically arousing) activities in maintaining interest in relationships. :stuck_out_tongue:

33

Telcontar, to the extent that the “mechanics” of sex or creativity within have been a problem, I agree with you. Those problems are addressable, and already have begun to be addressed, with some notable success.

As I said, though, the bigger issue is, am I going to be able to go forward in this relationship knowing that we don’t have that chemical connection that partners have? There are women out there with whom I would have such a connection. But am I willing, and should I be willing, to give that up in order to have everything else that I know is possible in this relationship? I have deep love, a lot of fun, security, and a physically gratifying sex life. But can I survive and be happy without having that emotional connection that is missing?

I’ve talked to a lot of female friends about this, many of whom have told me that they don’t have that raw chemical draw to their own spouses, but that they don’t feel their sex lives are lacking in any way. So I’m not concerned about her end of that. When she says that she can still be happy without feeling that for me, I do believe that’s possible. This is about me. What does that do to my ego? Is it worth it? Short of having her magically feel that kind of attraction to me, are there things we can do to improve our sex lives from my point of view?

These are some of the things I need to continue to think about.

34

You said what was missing was a chemical connection. Why do you conclude that there is anything emotional about that type of chemistry, and thus a lack of emotional connection? In my experience, it is quite the opposite: the two don’t have much to do with each other. And as per

it seems you feel there is an emotional connection.

Edited to add: consider reading The Five Love Languages. It’s a bit cheesy and a bit jesusriffic, but there’s still some very good info there.

35

Since you put it like that, sorry, not likely.

You two may be best friends, intellectually compatable, secure with each other and in tune with each other’s likes and dislikes. But if one partner isn’t sexsually attracted to the other, there will always be a fundamental imbalance in the relationship.

Now it could be that with a lot of counseling and therapy, the two of you may achieve a sexual dynamic which makes her happy (and doesn’t make you unhappy.) But if not, then there’s going to be a big hole in what she considers important in a relationship, and it’s going to manifest itself EVERY time she meets someone she feels a spark for.

I’d say that in addition to relationship therapy, the two of you should also look into some sort of sexual counseling to determine what she feels is missing in her relationship with you, and whether or not it’s something the two of you can correct.

36

What is misssing for her is a chemical attraction to me. She has decided that is not important to her. The fact that she doesn’t have that for me, however, causes an emotional reaction in me every time we have sex. A reminder, every time, that there is imbalance in our relationship, as kunilou put it. Because I have a feeling for her that she is incapable of reciprocating.

With regard to The Five Love Languages, I’ve read it. Our counselor assigned it as homework. And it was reading that book that caused me to have the reaction I referred to earlier in terms of recognizing how I’d missed out on providing her with so much of what she’d asked me for previously in this relationship. That’s the “side-reading” I was talking about. And for the record, I’d recommend the book to any couple – you can easily take or leave the religious aspects of it depending on your own personal bent. I found it rather illuminating.

37

Well, one thing about that chemical, physical attraction is that it doesn’t always last. So her situation with “chemical guy” 3-5 years from now might be exactly the same as her situation with you. That’s something for her to consider.

38

Asimovian, do you have any idea what a catch you are? You’re obviously a very intelligent, caring person, and she should be thankful to have you in her life. Really. You deserve everything good that life has to offer, including a fulfilling relationship. I hope that everything works out for you - this is a terrible test for any marriage.

I should know. No, we never experienced polygamy or affairs or anything even close, but my husband and I had a rough time of it a couple years back, and I was on the edge of leaving. We were able to work things out and now love each other more than ever. Our marriage is strong and he’s my best friend. I don’t doubt that we will have conflict in the years to come; we’re very different people. One thing that I have learned from all of that mess is that sometimes you have to fight for what is really important to you, even when you don’t think you can deal with it any more. If you’re both willing to put up with the stress, frustration, grief and anger to work towards something better, then that’s a positive sign - even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time.

It’s good that you vented here about what is going on - I know it helped me when I didn’t want to talk to friends and family IRL about things that were deeply personal to me.

The sexual/chemical stuff is an interesting point. It sounds like she’s been candid with you; maybe a bit too candid. There are some things that are better off unsaid. She needs to resolve this issue as soon as possible so that you can both move forward. Also, the other guy shouldn’t be a part of her life any more. I know that you want her to be happy, but it’s time to be assertive here and tell him to get lost. If giving up this other relationship is very difficult, that should tell you all something right there.

Good luck. I really hope this all works out for you. If you ever need anything, feel free to PM me.

39

I appreciate the compliment (very much), but I want to be careful to point out that the same applies to her. Just because a mistake has been made here doesn’t mean that she isn’t a wonderful person. If she weren’t, it would have been very easy to just walk away from the whole disaster. As is, there is going to be a lot of pain and suffering and a LOT of hard work on both of our parts if we’re going to turn our marriage around. But there’s a reason I happen to think that’s worthwhile. And the same goes for her. If I had nothing to offer her, she could have just packed it up and left me altogether when I screwed up and she got frustrated. But she didn’t. She’s still here, and still trying to make it work.

<shrug>

40

Wow, I am out of the loop and you didn’t say anything when I ran into you a few weeks ago…when you’re feeling up to it, email me and I’ll take you out for a lunch. You’ve certainly listened to me b*tch about my ex enough.

  1. For starters, I think you need to go on a good long vacation somewhere wild. Australia. What do I know…though…when I dumped my boyfriend I sat down and took the GMATs and now I’m stuck in application hell.

  2. My sister was with someone for a really long time with whom she felt she was not “truly” attracted to and eventually broke up with him when they started discussing marriage. I felt really really bad for him at the time but I think I would have felt worse for both of them if they had wasted their 20s on one another and then divorced. She went on to marry someone she did feel that way for (and honestly, I think my sister’s college BF was Not Annoying the way my brother-in-law is and they’re equally attractive but Bro is her choice and she has that “connection” so it’s her choice/life).

I think that it’s very dangerous when one partner is like “I love you, but I feel like I’m settling because…” and that because is a) combination of longtime guilt combined with affection and/or b) they don’t feel they can get anyone better or they’re afraid of being alone. I’m sure she’s a great person. My sister is a really nice person, actually, esp. to her partners-my brother-in-law is very lucky. But I doubt she would have been good long-term for John. I’m not certain they would have reached this type of implosion (as we were raised rather conservatively with heavy doses of religion) but she would definitely have divorced him by now.

Longterm, I think this arrangement is dangerous because it creates an imbalance where one person feels like they’re doing a lot of sacrificing and the other person feels guilt over being sacrificed for-and I think it results in outbursts of drama. And honestly, do you want to be settled for? It doesn’t seem like a great option to me.

I’d take this time apart not just to focus on putting your marriage together, but thinking about what you want out of life. Are you comfortable where you are? What’s missing (I mean, beyond the current seperation from your long-time spouse). Are there places you’d like to visit, degrees you’d like to earn, any other things you’d like to do? You may still love her but I think both of you need to re-evaluate what a long term marriage would entail for the both of you and if both of your needs are going to be me without resentment on someone’s (or both of your) parts.