I (44M) feel like I’ve ruined my life and I don’t know where to go from here. I’m sure some of you reading this will feel I deserve all of this, and honestly I do too.
Last year, I started an emotional affair with one of my married best friends (F41). Over the years I had fallen in love with her, and thought she was my perfect person. When I confessed to her, she also had feelings for me. Me and my wife did not have a bad marriage, we were good partners, I just wasn’t happy – we tended to live almost separate lives at times. Me and my “friend” didn’t want to sneak around, so after a few months we decided to blow up our lives and tell our spouses we wanted to be together. This destroyed the lives of my wife and my girlfriend’s husband, who was also one of my best friends. Along with affecting family and friends. Luckily none of us have kids. I don’t regret her or the decision we made to be together. And going into this I knew I would lose a lot, but you don’t feel that until you actually lose it – at least I didn’t. I also didn’t think everyone I know would choose sides, and they definitely didn’t choose mine.
I willingly threw away everything in my life that I’ve dreamed of and that made me happy: my house in the woods, my two dogs that I love as kids. My wife kept it all.
All of my friends are gone. Everyone thinks I’m a piece of shit and that I harbor the lion’s share of the blame for this.
So after a few years of renovating my dream home I’m overloaded with debt, and won’t be able to start saving for a new one for at least 4 years. The way the market is now, I’ll never get back what I gave up. I’m back in a little apartment, which feels like a prison cell.
I’m so overwhelmed all the time by guilt, remorse, and anxiety about the future that I think about suicide almost every day. I won’t because I can’t do that to my girlfriend and I’ve seen what that does to families, but I just need all these feelings to stop. I’m in therapy, but It’s not really helping. Nothing my therapist says is going to make me feel better about an uncertain future.
I just needed to get that out.
Comments
These are the cards you picked and hold in your hands now, you have to deal with them.
I assume you love your new girlfriend, at least till you get not happy again and go bump in to a new perfect person.
That means for the years to come till then you have to make the best of it.
Set goals, like the house you mentiond in 4 years. Plan a vacation, get a dog. Rebuild what you had with your current perfect person.
People do change over time, and with different age comes different wishes. Who knows you will not act like a piece of shit again and learn to communicate and keep/re-find happiness after things get rough or slow a bit.
Good luck for now.
You did something wrong you get punished and deserved it and know you gotta start again , as tge other guy said set goals and try to achieve them
A lot of people would still find a way to make themselves the victim in this situation. You seem to have the integrity and understanding that your current situation is a result of your own actions. Being accountable is one thing you can hold on to as you find a new way forward.