Please help me figure out what to do.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve been with the same woman for 10 years, never once cheated on her, or had thoughts of that nature. We never married because we really couldn’t afford it, living paycheck to paycheck. Recently in the past year things started to look up for us, and we’ve been able to save up enough, so I bought her the ring and asked her to marry me. We’ve planned and worked hard to put together a wedding, both families have been heavily involved, and now the wedding is LESS THAN TWO WEEKS AWAY. In fact, the wedding is in 11 days. She is really excited about it. I had been excited until a few months ago.

Over the past year I’ve had a very close friend at work, who is female, and I would have considered her my best friend. We talk about everything together. For about the past 6 months I’ve found her increasingly attractive, but have always had enough strength to push that aside. After all, I love my wife, and never considered myself a man who would be unfaithful to her. I had contained my thoughts and they weren’t really that much of a bother. I just wanted her as my friend most of all.

Until about 1 1/2 months ago. The woman that I work with came out and told me that she was attracted to me, and wanted to spend ALL of her time with me, in a serious relationship. She told me that getting married to the woman I am with is a mistake, and that she’s not right for me. She told me that all of her friends feel the same way and so do the people I work with. She told me that she would make me so much happier and she can’t believe that I can settle for my ‘future’ wife because of the way she treats me. Later, she told me that she wants me to come live with her instead, and that she loves me so much she lies awake and aches for me to hold her at night. She wants me to cancel my wedding and be with her. She told me she would marry me tomorrow if she could.

At first I didn’t really understand what she meant about my wife not being right for me. But after she told me how she felt about me, I have had thoughts spinning out of control for her (my friend). I have started to think about her every single day, most of the day. When I get up in the morning and when I go to bed at night, and in between. I can’t even focus on my wedding anymore, she’s all I am able to think about. I’ve already cheated on my ‘future’ wife in my heart and mind (but not physically) but if the woman at work wanted to have me, sexually, she probably could. I want to spend every moment I can with her, I want to touch her, I want to kiss her.

I’ve told my ‘future’ wife about my feelings, just recently. And she was almost devastated by how I felt. I couldn’t believe the look of pain in her eyes. I told her I loved her deeply, but wanted to work on the passion between us. Even though she has tried a bit, I just don’t feel the same passion for her as I do for this woman ‘friend’. I really love my ‘future’ wife deeply, but what this friend at work has shown me is that there is no passion in my life. I have security, love, obligation. But no passion and no feeling of ‘oh my god, I can’t wait to marry her’.

Now I really don’t know what to do. The woman at work is all over me, every single day. She is coming on stronger every single day. My ‘future’ wife seems to be trying somewhat to re-kindle something between us, but I just don’t feel it. I am so confused by all of this, it’s hit me like a ton of bricks, and I can’t even think straight anymore. I need some advice. What can I do? I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place. I need some help! I never want to hurt my wife, but if I cancelled the wedding or left her, I think I could scar her for many, many years. At the same time, I don’t know if it’s right for me to marry her now, feeling the way I do about someone else.

2

wow, you’re not in a good place there buddy.

Who do you picture yourself with in 40 years?

(btw, the mods are about to move your thread)

3

Not commenting on substance, but this sort of topic belongs in MPSIMS, not in Cafe Society, and is being moved forthwith.

Interestingtwist, you might want to read the forum descriptions before you start thenext thread. Posting in the wrong forum is not a big deal unless you make a habit of it. OK?

4

That is one tough-ass situation.

On the one hand, it sounds like everything was on a course for happiness until your “friend” jumped into thing.

On the other hand, the friend’s got some real passion to realize this was her make-or-break moment and lay it all out like that. Very few people have that kind of desire and fortitude.

I can’t have an answer, but I’ll say this: if you decide that you may want the friend, you should cancel the wedding now, even if it’s just a delay for 6 months till you get your head straight. That seems like enormous pain, but the longer you wait the bigger the pain will be, and after you’re already married, it will be even worse. It’s not right to put your wife-to-be through that.

If on the other hand, you do decide to go through with the wedding, you must force yourself to be faithful (in your mind too) to your wife. How you’ll resolve continuing to work with the friend will be tough.

Good luck.

5

Don’t get married with things the way they are. It will only make things 1000 times worse.

Also, what about the possibility that this a “grass is greener” kind of situation? No offense, but neither of these relationships sound terribly mature. Are you sure this isn’t a last-minute cold feet maybe-I’ll-get-out-of-it thing?

DON’T get married. My good friend went through a wedding where his fiance was having very serious doubts and she flipped out while they were on the way to their honeymoon. They ended up coming home the next day and getting divorced within one month. The families were furious because the wedding was a complete farce. He even got jacked out of the ring! She was afraid to say anything before the wedding and just ended up making things so much worse.

6

I’ve been with my husband for 15 years now, the last 7 of which we were married. I’ll tell you one thing - the passion you feel over a crush will definitely feel a lot stronger than passion you might feel after 10 years with someone. IANA Psychologist, but I did go to grad school for social psychology, specializing in interpersonal relationships. My advisor taught a class on interpersonal relationships, and I distinctly remember one day in which she was lecturing about how that feeling of “fireworks” is your brain’s way of telling you to pay really close attention to this person, but that something of that constant level of intensity can’t last forever - it has to mature into a comfortable feeling (with occasional bursts of fireworks), as you can’t maintain that level of intensity forever, it’d wear you out. One young woman said she didn’t see why it had to be that way, and my advisor’s response included the comment that if you sought constant fireworks, then you were dooming yourself to a life of serial relationships that were broken off the moment the “magic” faded.

You’ve been together for ten years. All of a sudden your “friend” drops this bomb in your lap that close to your wedding, so of course you start thinking about it - your body and mind are conditioned to go absolutely nuts over this sort of thing. Primally, your body/subconscious mind are going “woohoo, another partner to have sex with! Must go for it!” They aren’t the best judges of “who do I see myself with in the future? Which woman is right for me? I’ve been with my fiancee for a long time now and been happy, why am I suddenly going nuts for another woman?”

I don’t have a hell of a lot of sympathy for your friend. Yeah, I know what it’s like to carry a torch for someone. I didn’t drop any bombs after a wedding date had been set, etc. Sounds pretty damned cruel to me, personally, unless you were in some kind of seriously abusive relationship and she’d been hoping you’d wake up earlier and stop taking the abuse.

She claims “all” your friends and coworkers think your fiancee is bad for you - have you asked anyone about that? Or do you just believe this woman who has the most reason out of anyone to break you up? In the last decade, has your family said anything? You said they’re eager now, right? How about your other friends? The fact that she’s “coming on strong” to you in an attempt to make you change your mind worries me too - that doesn’t sound like something a friend would do in this case, that she’d really want you to just think it over and decide on your own what is right, rather than try to seduce you into cheating/leaving your fiancee.

And do you really want to start a relationship with a coworker? That’s got a lot of potential to harm your career - especially if gossip starts to spread, or if you would hook up with this woman and then break up.

I think you and your fiancee could use some counseling. Your fiancee at the very least is understandably hurt at this bombshell, and you need to figure out where your head is at regarding relationships.

7

Yeah, what Ferret Herder said.

I am suspicious of the timing here. If this “friend” had felt that your wife-to-be was so “wrong” for you, she’s had plenty of time to tell you up until now. So has everyone else. Why have they not said anything?

It’s the timing that’s getting me here. It’s bizarre. Sure, your hormones are all a-rage, but why is that? Because this woman is coming on strong. If she’d kept her yap shut, you’d be happily preparing for your wedding, wouldn’t you? At least that’s the impression I’m getting.

I echo what Ferret Herder said. Just cool your jets. Don’t throw away a good thing (wife-to-be) because of some new and exciting (but highly suspicous from what I can tell) development. I’m not saying to not postpone the wedding—you might want to do that until you can unfog your mind—but just cool your jets.

8

Oh boy.

Basically you’ve been “married” for 10 years and you told your 'wife" that a woman at work wants to spend every night with you, and you have doubts about continuing the relationship with your wife of 10 years (getting legally married).

I believe that was a huge mistake. You told your “wife” about all this. You haven’t cheated on her, but you told her about the situation before you could sort it out for yourself. What did you think your wife was going to say? That’s nice, honey. No wonder she was hurt. That one admission probably changed your life with her forever. Maybe you wanted it to change.

Tell the woman at work to buzz off, OR end the relationship with your wife, and start something up with the co-worker. Prediction – If you start a relationship with the co-worker, look for it to be over within a few months. Infatuation and lust wears off after a little while. Then you’ll have two former girlfiends: a co-worker you used to date, and a a former “wife” of ten years. Talk about starting all over again.

Or delay the wedding so that you and your wife can get some counseling. If she wont go, you should. You have a lot to sort out.

9

Shit. What a mess.

I’m not going to tell you what to do, except that I think you really should wonder about the timing; is it even remotely possible that the woman at works is actually a cruel manipulator and just wants to screw things up because she knows she can?

If you go ahead with the wedding, it might all fall apart because you become obsessed with ‘what might have been’.
If you cancel the wedding and run off with work woman, it might just turn out to be superficial and temporary (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that in itself, but sacrificing something real for it might be).
If you try to postpone the wedding, at this late stage, there’s a chance that it will all irretrievably fall apart anyway.

Isn’t there someone you really trust that you can go to to talk about this? - someone who knows you and ideally knows the two ladies as well - I think you’re likely to get a more accurate appraisal of the situation from someone you know than you will from anonymous strangers on a message board.

Good luck

10

So you’ve been with your fiancee a long time and it doesn’t feel as exciting as it does with this new attraction? What a surprise. If this is the only point in your life where you are attracted to another person, consider yourself lucky. Once upon a time, I considered myself an unshakably faithful person… until a person whom I had a simmering attraction to came on to me hard. I got out of that situation fidelity intact, but just barely. My beliefs about myself were shaken. I was immune to the temptations that everybody else feels. I wasn’t used to it. Ultimately, it’s kind of like saying you’re courageous though you’ve never encountered anything scary.

It’s best to take the “excitement factor” out of the equation because all long-lasting relationships will enter periods of tedium. As far as this homewrecker saying that she would make you “so much happier” and all the friends who say your fiancee isn’t right for you… ignore this as well. Neither she, your friends, your fiancee nor you can tell the future. More importantly, none of these people know you as good as you know yourself. And you are going to have to live with the decision you make, so the decision had better be your own.

That this is coming up now, eleven days from the wedding is a bad situation that you already know full well. I only mention it to say that there is nothing you can do about it. So take this very unfortunate turn of events out of the equation as well.

Frankly, I think this homewrecker is despicably selfish. She only told you of her interest a month away from the wedding? I would put a lot more faith in the opinions of a person if they do not benefit as a result of my decision — i.e. if she was just/still a platonic friend expressing concern about your marriage. But as it stands, she gets you for herself. I believe this homewrecker has her own interest at heart as much if not more than yours. The fact that she would be willing to marry a person that is being tempted out of a different marriage is very suspect, and despite what she says now, it will prey upon her mind if she gets the opportunity to get engaged to you. Personally, I don’t put a lot of stock in people who are ready to get married after such a short time (though I know there must be examples of great marriages that happened quickly).*

You’re not married to your fiancee yet, so you are not technically committed to her. But it’s evident that you two have been through quite a lot together, and that means you’ve invested a lot in one another. You in her, she in you. You owe her the utmost consideration. That’s not to say you should marry her just because she’s been at your side for the past few years, but that does mean you should put yourself in her shoes and act accordingly.

Now the tough part: who do you belong with? I would think long and hard about the qualities that are most important to you in a mate. Don’t think in terms of finacee vs. the homewrecker, but in terms of an “ideal.” Go so far as to assign values to the qualities. For instance, both red hair and sharp wit are both qualities I am looking for, but the wit carries a lot more weight than hair color. Once you determine what your ideal is, realize that this person doesn’t exist. But the process of going through this exercise should go a long way to “reset” or “course-correct” what you are looking for. Now you can see how your fiancee fares against these qualities. If she fares well, hold on to her. At the very least, keep communicating with her. You have to make decisions concerning your life, but since you have a degree of a shared life with fiancee, you may benefit if you involve fiancee in those decisions that involve her as well.

Finally, don’t let your decision be guided by whether something is difficult or unpopular to do, let your decision be determined by what you believe in your heart to be the “right” thing to do.

  • Who am I and why do I hate the homewrecker?

Because I was the homewrecker once. Though I didn’t instigate it, I was a wiling participant and it caused much heartache to all involved. I still have yet to forgive myself. But, they ended up marrying and today have a beautiful child.

11

Postpone the wedding.

I’m sure it wouldn’t matter too much, since you’ve been waiting so long. And I’m sure your wife will understand that you need some time to think about it.

I disagree about the timing issue. She could’ve been driven to action by the thought of losing you, so her motives are unclear. Just make more time so that you can figure this out.

And, uh, good luck.

12

Run away from BOTH these girls while you still can…

Go hurry do it now!!!

13

SHAKES, why on earth would he need to “run away from” his long-time girlfriend, whom he refers to as his wife? What did she do?

14

Postponng the wedding is going to matter a LOT - it’s eleven days away and considerable time, effort, money and commitment will have been invested in it - cancelling a wedding with a fortnight to go is a serious undertaking.

However, none of the inconvenience caused would outweigh the inconvenience of a fucked-up life, so it might actually be the right thing to do - let’s just not trivialise it.

15

Yes, let’s try a little role-reversal…

You’re really, madly in love with your wife. Sure, you’ve been together forever, and sometimes it’s not as thrilling as it could be, but you love her. In fact, you’ve gone so far as to buy her a ring and ask her to marry you! Joy!

And so, you go about, busily getting ready for your wedding. You’ve waited for this moment for so long. You can’t believe it’s finally happening!

Then, your wife comes home from work one day, and sits you down and tells you that her co-worker has just come onto her. And she thinks she reciprocates those feelings. Think hard. Dig deep. How does this make you feel?

Everyone gets the itch. Is it worth throwing ten years away? Is it worth starting over? Is it worth the possibility of your “wife” hating you for the rest of her life, and the woman you ran off with? Because, as sweet, cool, and mature as she may be, she will see you in a new and different light when this happens. You will, in all probability, lose her as a friend, too. She will be gone. Are you willing to face the possibility of never seeing her again?

Yes, I am really pulling for your “wife” in this one. What did she do wrong? Think way back to when you met her. Think back to when you proposed. Think of how many happy, content years you’ve spent. Think of how many more you could spend.

I do not like the co-worker, for too many reasons. Whatever the reason for her timing, she’s being incredibly selfish. And who’s to say she won’t change her mind after getting you? Or you won’t? What kind of man are you, are you (even subconciously) showing her what type of man you really are? That after ten years - you could up and leave her, too, just because someone else gives you some new “thrill” you haven’t had in so long. I feel no sympathy for you or the co-worker. Buck up, be a man, and honour your commitments. When you make a promise, you stick to it - you obviously don’t hate your wife, since you’re the one that went and bought the ring and proposed to her. What is it in life you think you deserve?

You do the right thing, and you will be rewarded in the sweetest way - a loving wife who has been faithful and loves you, warts and all. Do the wrong thing, and you get what you get.

It’s just my opinion, and you don’t have to listen to a word of it if you don’t want to. It’s a free country. It’s your choice. I’m sorry if I sound so harsh, but it really gets to me. My heart goes out to your wife. I hope you’re worth the tears. You might yet be…

No flames, please. This is just my opinion and I voiced it. I am biased, as I’ve been cheated on. My ex-fiance has since come crawling back, begging me to take him back and he’ll never do something so stupid again - and I treat him like he doesn’t exist. I’m married now… to his ex-best friend. Burn! :stuck_out_tongue:

16

Preach it, Anastasaeon! Amen and hallelujah!

I, too, have been cheated on. My ex-husband eventually walked out on me and our three children (the oldest had just turned 6) following an affair with a younger coworker. I’m sure it was exciting because it was new. Love and marriage have a lot to do with commitment, and little to do with fireworks. Fireworks with anyone are just a passing phase.

This may sound cruel, but if you’re the kind of man (and I hope you’re not) to fall for seduction just because it’s new, then maybe your wife will be better off without you. However, I hope that you’ll come to your senses and realize that you can’t just throw away ten years with the lady you call your wife. You may need to postpone the wedding to get your head straight; counseling certainly wouldn’t hurt anything. I would even go so far as to suggest that you consider leaving your job and avoiding contact with your coworker.

Anyway, this is just my two cents. Best of luck to both you and your wife. Whatever you decide.

17

Sorry, I thought it was obvious I was kidding…

18

Count me as not looking too kindly upon the “friend.” She’s shown that her happiness is much more important to her than the happiness of your SO, and that she has no compunction about throwing a monkey wrench into the works if she thinks it will bring her what she wants. A true friend would keep their feelings to themselves, suck it up and wish you the best. You’ve been happy with the woman you’re with for ten years, so why would she think your SO isn’t right for you and that she would be better?

My guess is it’s a competition thing and that if you get involved in a relationship with this woman it will be short lived. Once she has you, she’ll likely lose interest. It’s very hard to find someone you will be happy with for ten years, and you’ve been lucky enough to have found someone. I wouldn’t throw that away on a hope and a prayer if I were you.

Just sayin’ is all…

19

I think this decision is easy. You stay with your fiance and you dump this friend. These kind of infatuations are temporary and fleeting. For a time it seems strong enough to obscure how you feel about the person you’ve been with for years but it passes…it passes.

I’ve seen it a million times. Guy gets his head turned by new, exciting chick. Guy leaves boring long term SO. Six months later, new relationship is over and guy is begging his old SO to take him back.

You better really do some hard thinking about your fiance and really force yourself to consider what you’d be losing. Then really think about this “friend” and consider whether she’s really that much better.

Infatuation and horniness are transient conditions. They are not love. I’ve never seen a guy who did something like this and didn’t regret it.

20

If you did not feel as if anything was wrong prior to this woman dropping ‘the bomb’ on you, then obviously there was nothing wrong. This woman has her own physical and emotional gratification in mind - she obviously doesn’t care much for you, because you have been happy for years with your current lover, and she doesn’t seem to care that it would turn your life upside down, so long as she could have you. The time when a true friend speaks up is when they have nothing to gain. Also, the talk of you ‘settling’ makes me think that she doesn’t realize the way that love ferments over time - it goes from the heady bubbly stuff that sets us whirling on our feet to the warm thick friendly rapport and trust that you can only have with someone you’ve stood against the world with for years. (though you can always break out a bottle of the bubbly once in a while!) That does not bode well for her, no matter who she ends up with.