Saturday, August 8, 2009

Random Connections.

Last summer in the midst of all the craziness of my life, I made a connection. A connection with a man, who was not my husband. He had a post on an Internet site, and I read it, and I immediately connected with it. I inherently understood what he was saying. I recall debating whether to send him an email, thinking to myself this was one of the more ridiculous things I had done. This guy was a total stranger, could be a stalker for all I knew, but yet deep down I knew he wasn't. I hit the "send" button.

A week of emailing back and forth and my connection was confirmed. We connected on so many levels, it was a bit unnerving that I could randomly meet someone I nearly instantly fell in love with. He made me laugh at a time when laughing was not part of my daily routine. He made me smile when I saw a new email from him, he made me feel safe and protected an allowed me to express anything and everything I was feeling without risk of retribution or judgement. He allowed me to cry. He was a friend. A friend who understood, a friend whom I connected to.

He is the heterosexual version of my husband. Its freaky when he expresses his struggles, and his emotions. On more than one occasion the words coming out of his mouth are the very same words I have heard from my husband. I guess that is probably one of the reason I feel connected to him, he is familiar. But at the same time he has many qualities that are very different from my husband, and are uniquely connected to me. We think alike. Within a very short period of time we could almost finish each others sentences. We have a connection in many ways I can't even begin to describe....I just feel its existence.

But.........he is married. (As you can imagine if he is talking to me there are issues there.....)

I know I shouldn't have, I know it is wrong, but I also know that he came into my life during a very dark period and provided the only existing light. I needed him, I depended on him.

It got too intense, too quickly, and we took a break for 6 months. No contact. It was hard. But I needed to know for me, if what I felt was situational or real, and I think he needed to decided that as well. Six months to the day up pops and email from him. He didn't forget, nor did I.

Future????????? Question: Is anything random?????

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I removed the previous entry because of spelling errors. Here is what I wrote:

I will get straight to my point: you are playing with fire. STOP unless you want to get severely burned. What if YOU were the wife of this man, who now has interest in another woman? How would YOU feel?

You say there are problems in his relationship with his wife. Let him figure them out. If he needs to leave the marriage, let him. THEN pursue him.

If you two are so in love with each other, it will survive and last while he does the noble and right thing: break off one relationship before engaging in the next. Fair and right is fair and right. And, it would be full of integrity.

Who do YOU want to be? The "other" woman or someone of integrity? As a judge by profession, this SHOULD be an easy question and choice for you. And, remember, eternity is an AWFUL long time to think about one's choices.

Good luck in your decisions.

Pieces of Me said...

You are right he does need to figure it out for himself, and we have had that discussion. And for that very reason right now my contact with him is VERY limited. He needs to focus on several events that are coming up in his family, and then make a decision about his marriage.

As for his wife....she does know that he has had contact with me, and as you can imagine she is not happy. During our "break" they went to counseling, until the counselor wanted to discuss her intimacy issues and she walked out.

A marriage takes two people, and so often its the guy who gets the bad rap, and everyone feels sorry for the wife. I have a number of friends whom I see 'hen peck' their husbands, make all sorts of unreasonable demands in the name of "your obligated," withold sex as punishment, and then are left wondering why their marriage is not fulfilling, and their husbands are distant and resentful.

In someways I think these women are a product of "emotional porn" that stems from books such as Twlight.

I will admit I was not the perfect wife, but I truly believe I treated my husband well, if fact he would be the first to tell you I treated him well. One of his biggest concerns in finding a new relationship is being able to find someone who will allow him to express his creative side and understand and accept him as well as I have.

Oprah last year had one of her "favorites" on her show. He is marriage counselor, and wrote a book about protecting your marriage from an affair. One of the things he said that in his experience and research it is not the sex men are looking for, but it is the emotional connection. That is not to say the behavior is justified, it simply explains one of the reasons couples find themselves in trouble.

My point is that it take two parties to wreck a marriage, and perhaps women need to stand up and accept their responsibility for the damage they have caused to the relationship, rather than just continue to point the finger at the husband who has never lived up to their unrealistic expectations to begin with.