Why I Am Here

I have been involved in an affair with a former boyfriend for over a year now. I feel a daily struggle with the guilt. Guilt because he and I are both married and I know that what we are doing could hurt a lot of people if it comes to light. For some reason writing is a form of therapy for me. After following a fellow bloggers affair history and realizing how much his writings have helped me I decided to begin my own.

The man I am involved with I will call P for short and to protect our identities. We have known each other and have been friends for over 20 years. He was my first husband's (I will refer to him as JM) best friend. P and I began seeing each other romantically after we went through divorces at about the same time due to unrelated circumstances. P would call to talk to JM who was never at home (one reason for our divorce!) and wanting someone to talk to we began to get closer. After our divorces were final he asked me out for a "practice" date since he had not been out with anyone other than his wife for ten years and he was nervous about reentering the dating scene and so was I. We went dinner at a local restaurant and we both commented on how comfortable we felt with each other. After dinner we went back to his sister's house where he was living at the time. I can still remember what I was wearing that evening. P came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me and began to kiss me on my neck. We drove back to my house and made love that night for the first time. The next morning he freaked out over us being together because he was JM's best friend and P felt guilty and disloyal. He left and later told me that we could not be together again.

Over the next several months we became closer and closer and shared things that we would not share with anyone else. We both dated other people and we would even discuss the people that we were dating but we still continued to see each other although each time P would say that this cannot happen again. There has always been an extreme physical attraction between the two of us and it seems that we cannot refrain from being intimate with each other when we are alone. We continued to see each other secretly for about eight months and at that point his aunt introduced him to one of her co-worker's and a short time later he moved in with her. We saw each other a couple of times after that but his moving in with her was confirmation for me that he could not get over the guilt that he felt and that things were likely not going any further for the two of us. I met a nice guy at work that at the time I though would meet all of my needs. I began to change my habits and friends to suit his preferences because I though that he was a good catch and that I should do whatever it took to hang onto him. Was I really being true to myself? No, but I was doing what I thought was the smartest and best thing for my future at the time. Did I still love P? Yes, but I thought that we could never be together and that I needed to move on. So I married this man ( I will refer to him as C) and tried to move on. I will continue our history in my next entry.