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[vardahilwen]

Can you guys stick with me on this path to a positive resolution?

Not if "this path" means taking him back and being a second-class citizen in this relationship, sorry.  You are just prolonging the inevitable here.  You have my best wishes, but if you reconcile with this guy, I can't support you.

[bald_cypress]

Mischt,
I am so sorry for the heartache you're going through. I've been there before, and your relationship can survive if that is what you and your partner want. I'm in your corner.

There is wonderful advice on this thread, but you will live with your decisions. Go with your gut and your heart. If you are spiritual, meditate or pray about it. You'll figure out what you can and cannot accept in your relationship. If you feel peace of mind after this, you are more than likely on the right track.

You may have to be the strong one in wanting to work through the pain to find your way back to each other. Someone wrote on a thread (I think it was t_r_b's relationship thread) that he/she and his/her SO had gotten through a terrible time in their lives by being commited to their relationship   even when their love for each other was buried under a lot of stuff. They stuck it out, worked through their problems, and their relationship survived. Another forumite wrote how her mother had reminded her that marriages go through seasons, and so do relationships.

You're in the middle of a bleak ice storm right now.  There is clear weather after this, believe it. The leaves might have been stripped from the trees, and the bushes beaten down, but they will survive. So can your love.

Relationships, someone to love and who loves you back, are not easy to find in this self-centered world. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes in judgment. Forgiveness is difficult but helps the giver more than the receiver. Let your SO know you are committed to staying together and if he is also, you can begin this challenging process of reconciliation together.

[oseph]

Mischt,
I am so sorry for the heartache you're going through. I've been there before, and your relationship can survive if that is what you and your partner want. I'm in your corner.

There is wonderful advice on this thread, but you will live with your decisions. Go with your gut and your heart. If you are spiritual, meditate or pray about it. You'll figure out what you can and cannot accept in your relationship. If you feel peace of mind after this, you are more than likely on the right track.

You may have to be the strong one in wanting to work through the pain to find your way back to each other. Someone wrote on a thread (I think it was t_r_b's relationship thread) that he/she and his/her SO had gotten through a terrible time in their lives by being commited to their relationship  even when their love for each other was buried under a lot of stuff. They stuck it out, worked through their problems, and their relationship survived. Another forumite wrote how her mother had reminded her that marriages go through seasons, and so do relationships.

You're in the middle of a bleak ice storm right now.  There is clear weather after this, believe it. The leaves might have been stripped from the trees, and the bushes beaten down, but they will survive. So can your love.

Relationships, someone to love and who loves you back, are not easy to find in this self-centered world. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes in judgment. Forgiveness is difficult but helps the giver more than the receiver. Let your SO know you are committed to staying together and if he is also, you can begin this challenging process of reconciliation together.

While I acknowledge that in many situations (and ultimately, *maybe* in yours) this would be good advice, I still encourage you to take some time for yourself before telling your SO you are committed to working this out.  Don't let the relationship drive itself - individuals should be driving the relationship, and they have to be driving sober.  You are, understandably, not yet sober.  Detox and then see how you feel, BEFORE getting behind the wheel again.  And SO needs to be sober too, and from what you've told us, he is punch drunk and likely to remain so.  See if he's willing to detox with you, and if not, remember that you NEVER get in the car with a drunk driver.

[ideagirl]

I also heartily endorse reading a couple of good and entertaining books (travel narratives, murder mysteries, CS Lewis' Space Trilogy and Till We Have Faces, Sherlock Holmes stories, and Graham Greene novels all saw me through a tough time, helping me make a decisive break with Bad Old Boyfriend and preparing me for a healthy relationship with Mr. Oseph) each night before bed.

And don't forget PG Wodehouse's Jeeves novels, and his Psmith novels. Pure (but beautifully executed) fluff--mental tiramisu. Just the thing to read when you want to laugh and not think about anything important.

[ideagirl]

1.  I have to say, I am 100% committed now to trying to work it out, to hammering out terms, to finding a way

Why?

Simple question. What's the answer? If the answer is anything like "because I can't stand to keep feeling this bad and/or I can't imagine my life without him and/or if this ends then I'll feel like I just wasted six years of my life therefore it has to not end," then you're walking right into a vortex of pain and dysfunction. Or in other words, if that's your reason, then you haven't learned the lesson here.

Basic life lesson: IT IS OKAY TO SUFFER when relationships go awry--it won't kill you--you can get through it. In other words, yes, you CAN stand to feel this bad--you'll be fine. You'll get through it, as long as you LET YOURSELF feel pain, let the grieving process play out completely, and ride with whatever emotions you have--sometimes over the next 20 days you'll be in intense pain, sometimes you'll be full of hope about that relationship, sometimes you'll be furious with him, sometimes you won't even be thinking about him--just ride with it, and when you're suffering, DON'T PANIC. You will be fine.

Pretending that you as a couple are on the road to recovery just because it hurts too much to just sit with the fact that you're not, the fact that things are so completely broken right now... that kind of pretense will not make you feel better in the long run. It will not make you happy. It will just perpetuate any unhealthy emotional patterns that got you here in the first place. Don't make major life decisions (such as "I am 100% committed to finding some way to avoid losing my relationship with the man who just boinked a student while I was out of town") from a place of panic or fear. Which leads to the next thing you said...

2.  to be where I should be for myself.

Yep, that is your only job right now. Well, that, eating, and finishing your book. :-)

[hegemony]

Ideagirl, so true.  I wish I had read these things twenty years ago -- before I tried to put back together all those broken relationships simply because I thought it was the only way to solve the pain. 

[t_r_b]

I have to say, I am 100% committed now to trying to work it out, to hammering out terms, to finding a way, so maybe this should be on the open relationship thread... I reread some of that and found that one comment rang particularly true: that loyalty is the point.

Can you trust him to be loyal to you?

Can you trust yourself to be loyal to you?

If the answer to either of those is anything other than a very solid "yes," then you are setting yourself up for a great deal of unhappiness. And everything you have said in this thread suggests that the answers to those questions are very far from a solid "yes."

Ultimately, the sex is unimportant (others here may disagree, but that's where I stand). Other kinds of reliability are much more so. One of those is reliably not doing things that are liable to get one fired. Another is not treating one's partner cruelly. On both of those counts, your partner has fallen well short of the mark. In other words, this is not about him having sex: the two of you had already agreed extracurricular sex was okay. It's about him having sex that violates all sorts of professional and ethical and commonsense standards, and about him telling you about that in a heartless way. And it's also about you not taking care of yourself.

I suspect I was the person writing about loyalty in the open relationship thread. I probably wrote that back before I decided to get divorced, LOL (I have a dark sense of humor). I still think it's good advice, generally. But in your case I think you are both far far from where you need to be to commit to each other (or to anyone else) in that way. And the only way for both of you to get to where you need to be is to do a very great deal of emotional work, most of it individually, so that you can become more comfortable with who you are and less dependent on validation from others (and that goes for him every bit as much as it does for you).

I will be SO supremely sad if I have been replaced, but I just have to believe that I am kick ass and super smart and that I cannot be replaced in all my awesome facets that easily. Can you guys stick with me on this path to a positive resolution? I need to be myself again - both to meet him where I should on October 31st and to be where I should be for myself.

1. Tough love: it's not up to you to decide whether or not you can be replaced. That's his decision.

2. Whether or not he has replaced you has nothing to do with whether or not you are awesome. He would not be the first person to decide to replace an awesome partner with a less awesome one. Far from it.

3. Him choosing someone else would not in any way diminish your awesomeness. In fact, it might free you to go live a better life in which you can more fully realize and enjoy your awesomeness for yourself.

4. Whether or not we stick with you on this path is not that important. Whether you stick with yourself - with taking care of yourself - is.

5. If you do choose to sacrifice your own well-being and self-respect for this relationship, as it sounds like you may do, you can't count on your friends (including us) to stick with you. Watching a friend walk down a self-destructive path is extraordinarily painful, and the closer you are the more painful it gets, because if your friend won't take care of herself, there is nothing you can do to help. I have had to cut ties with RL friends for exactly this reason. If you want to hold onto your friends, first take care of yourself.

6. What exactly do you mean by "be myself again"? If it's "be under control emotionally so that it isn't clear to everyone that I'm distraught," then stop. Recognize that it's natural and healthy to be distraught right now, and that no one with a heart would hold that against you, and that you have no reason to hold it against yourself. Recognize that you can't actually be yourself unless you are taking care of yourself. Recognize that the "self" you become in order to "be yourself" for others is probably a far cry from your actual self, especially since it takes so much work for you to get there.

Perhaps the best thing for you to do, for now, is just to focus on being, intransitively. Don't try to "be yourself," or "be normal," or "be reasonable," or "be calm," or anything else. Just be. See where that takes you.

[oseph]

We stay in relationships for the worst reasons.  I spent almost seven years of my life in two terribly dysfunctional relationships.  In both cases, I tried to end the relationship multiple times, only to have Guy A beg me not to (refuse to leave me alone) and Guy B celebrate then come crawling back after a few days, pretending he dumped me and wanted to help me out by 'taking me back.'  Would you believe that I let the relationship continue, in both cases?  It was as if the damn thing had a life of its own, and I was powerless to resist its suction pull.  NOT TRUE.  My friends thought I was insane for staying with these guys as long as I did and were disgusted with me for my behavior.  In fact, with the second guy, I willfully let my self-esteem get flushed down the toilet again and again and again until the spectacular conclusion when I woke up, realized what a bad place I was in, and made a decisive break.  I am still recovering from these relationships in many ways, and I wish I had not thrown away a good part of my twenties.  On the other hand, it seems to be a common learning experience, and in the long run these relationships taught me some good lessons.

That said, Mischt, everybody (almost) is telling you that, based on what we know, it is time for you to forge a new path for yourself.  Do it, and worry about the guy later.  If you don't, you are going to be dragged so deep into that vortex that you will be suffering its consequences for the next decade or longer.  The guy comes after you're firmly on the new path.  Maybe he'll have a change of heart and maybe he won't, and you may cry a lot of tears while you're waiting to find out which it is, but you have to be well on your way down your new path before you turn back to see where he is.  Start today, tell him he'll have to wait while you figure out where you are and you'll get back to him when you are ready.

Everybody is saying the same thing, speaking from personal experience and a lot of collective wisdom.  That is a big fat red flag that you probably should take our advice seriously.

[kedves]

To love is to suffer, the Woody Allen version.

Mischt, please protect yourself financially regardless of the future of the relationship, please see a doctor if you continue to have trouble sleeping, please spend the next days and weeks thinking about what you need rather than what you can bear.  You are being yourself now; this is the self that is hurt.  Take care of her.

[bread_pirate_naan]

You need to print this out and read it regularly. 


author=t_r_b

1. Tough love: it's not up to you to decide whether or not you can be replaced. That's his decision.

2. Whether or not he has replaced you has nothing to do with whether or not you are awesome. He would not be the first person to decide to replace an awesome partner with a less awesome one. Far from it.

3. Him choosing someone else would not in any way diminish your awesomeness. In fact, it might free you to go live a better life in which you can more fully realize and enjoy your awesomeness for yourself.

4. Whether or not we stick with you on this path is not that important. Whether you stick with yourself - with taking care of yourself - is.

5. If you do choose to sacrifice your own well-being and self-respect for this relationship, as it sounds like you may do, you can't count on your friends (including us) to stick with you. Watching a friend walk down a self-destructive path is extraordinarily painful, and the closer you are the more painful it gets, because if your friend won't take care of herself, there is nothing you can do to help. I have had to cut ties with RL friends for exactly this reason. If you want to hold onto your friends, first take care of yourself.

6. What exactly do you mean by "be myself again"? If it's "be under control emotionally so that it isn't clear to everyone that I'm distraught," then stop. Recognize that it's natural and healthy to be distraught right now, and that no one with a heart would hold that against you, and that you have no reason to hold it against yourself. Recognize that you can't actually be yourself unless you are taking care of yourself. Recognize that the "self" you become in order to "be yourself" for others is probably a far cry from your actual self, especially since it takes so much work for you to get there.

Perhaps the best thing for you to do, for now, is just to focus on being, intransitively. Don't try to "be yourself," or "be normal," or "be reasonable," or "be calm," or anything else. Just be. See where that takes you.

[larryc]

I received a stupid presumptuous email from the partner in crime of my partner (a skirt chasing colleague who was on the trip with him, where all of this took place), offering "hugs" and sympathy.

He is of course hitting on you. This is what your partner looks like from the outside, by the way.

[marigolds]

I received a stupid presumptuous email from the partner in crime of my partner (a skirt chasing colleague who was on the trip with him, where all of this took place), offering "hugs" and sympathy.

He is of course hitting on you. This is what your partner looks like from the outside, by the way.

Ew. 

But as always, Larry is right.

[mystictechgal]

Listen to t_r_b.  He is 100% spot on about this. 

A couple other things to consider:

Have you even told him that what he's done means that your relationship is over?  No.  Given that you haven't told him that he's gone you can't tell him you'll take him back.

Has he even asked to be taken back?  Does he want to come back?  He's the one saying that he's not giving up his, highly improper, relationship with his student.  Yeah, he told you he's sorry that he hurt you, but he isn't; not really. 

You need to find yourself, independent of this guy, or any other.  You cannot live your life as an extension of someone else; not without losing who you really are.  And, that's not awesome at all.

[zoelouise]

Whether or not he has replaced you has nothing to do with whether or not you are awesome. He would not be the first person to decide to replace an awesome partner with a less awesome one. Far from it.

Amen.

[spork]

Let's hear more about the boyfriend, his colleague, and the students they've been having sex with.