Dating a Married WomanWe often have visitors write in with solutions to each others' problems. Here is a visitor's solution to one of our visitor's questions. Original Visitor's Question from a 41-50 year old Male I'm completely confused...I've been best friends for the last 1-1/2 years with a married woman who's in a bad marriage. She knows how much I'm in love with her and want to be with her...I do feel similiar feelings from her, although shes not shared them verbally with me. She's insisted in the past that she's afraid if we had sex it would ruin the friendship. She also said that I couldn't be the reason that her marrriage broke up over, or we would never be together. She's also said that she doesn't want me to be her rebound. This was all prior to her finding out three months ago that her husband of three years (lived together on & off for 5 years) cheated on her shortly after she'd been in a nearly fatal auto accident about two years ago. Although her marriage has been falling apart since almost the day I met her, I believe that she'd been faithful to him. That all changed about two months ago when she started having an affair with her prior boyfriend that she'd lived with for 8 months before her marriage. She left him when her husband who had left her for the second time, came back and asked her to marry him. So she did. I'm the only one who knows about this affair..she has told me that its just a rebound and something she has to do...but it seems like she's in love...Whats the real story? As for our friendship, she is always the one calling me on the phone..I never do. We get along great with the only disagreements we've had being about me feeling differently (I'm in love with her) for her than her toward me (she says were friends)...We've had some bad disagreements about this, with me being sure that she'd never call me again. She always does. She sends me such completely mixed signals than just wanting me as a friend. For the first six months of our friendship, we worked together and spent virtually every daily lunch break, smoke breaks, her sitting in my office for more times than not hours, and then always finding an excuse to have me over on even the weekend nights,(albeit with her husband there also...who incidently accuses her daily of sleeping with me...telling her to break her friendship off with me, which she steadfastly refuses to do) and also every other friday on our days off. Although we no longer work together, we still see each other several times a week for lunch and she calls me daily and at times at night. It seems more to me like I'm the Long range plan...If so, how can I speed things up, or am I just being used to fill the emotional side of her life that her husband doesn't? I'm not sure what do do...do I back off completely...ignoring her calls and her invites to do stuff. Do I tell her I give up, that shes made it clear that she only wants me as a friend and I want more, so we can't be friends in the way we have been, I need to move on and find someone who wants me in the way I want them...or do I continue with the friendship as it always has been, ignoring the affair and hoping its the rebound she wants, see if she leaves her husband as she said she's going to and when her situations are worked out, see if she comes to me? As an aside...She is 30 w/an 11 yo daughter...I'm 42 w/a 15 yo son and an 11 yo daughter that live with me. My kids love her. I'm also much more financially able to take care of her than either her husband, or even more so than the guy she's having the affair with...(she told me once that was one of the reasons she went back to the guy she married because she knew the old boyfriend did'nt have a future...I recently asked her if he could take care of her...she said he's getting better, but not in the way I could...what is she telling me with that statement? I NEED HELP!!! I don't want to walk out of her life if there is the chance that she does want me in it, but the timing is not yet right. Thanks for your help...I'm so in love with her...TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO DO!!! User Submitted Advice from a 21-30 year old Male Get focus I'm in similar situation and I really feel your pain completely. I have been best friends with a married woman for the last two years. It has even gone a little past friendship at certain times but I never actually had sex with this woman. I actually know exactly how this woman feels about me though. I've have known she has been in love with me for the whole time we have been best friends. We tell each other "I love you" all the time. We usually just share a lot of hugs and a quick peck on the lips, but there were a few times where we shared some passionate kissing that almost led to sex. I stopped short of that because neither one of us is the type to have that kind of affair. We share a very powerful soulmate kind of connection. She has two fairly young children ages 8 and 9 and has always used them as her primary reason for not being able to get divorced. She claims that her husband has basically neglected her for the past 3 years. That is only half the problem. She is in no way attracted to her husband, they have nothing in common, and he has begun having a gambling addiction in the last two years. She is so unhappy but tells me she is willing to be unhappy for the sake of her children. We both love each other more than anything, but that doesn't seem to matter right now. There have been a couple instances where we almost broke off our friendship because it was too hard know we both wanted more but couldn't have it. We recently came to that stage again and I don't know whether to break it off or not. I don't want to lose her as a friend, especially since we are best friends. Your case looks even more complicated than mine with another man besides her husband involved. Are you prepared to wait years for all that she is involved with to be cleaned up? Trust me, you need to focus on other things, other women for your own sanity. Keep in touch with this woman, but get more involved in other thing where your mind is not so focused on her. Maybe some day she will be free, but its going to be awhile, maybe many years. That is the reality both of us have to face. The Original Question and RomanceClass Answer
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