Maddy,

As you pointed out, you have only been together for 12 hours.  It takes a while to really get to know someone. She is a fantasy, a projection of your desires.

You owe it to your marriage, to your wife to cut off all contact and walk away.

As you pointed out, this is futureless and a sin.

Mark

Dear Maddy:

I will repeat some of your story (it helps me process information this way) and then give you my understanding at this point, maybe ask you questions.

July 1995, when you were eighteen, you met and had a crush on a girl (I will refer to her as G) who was your sister’s friend but didn’t date her. During college you didn’t have “any relationships of any kind with other girls, other than simple friendship”. You considered G to be your soulmate, telling others about her in glowing terms.

In 2001, you were 24,  you graduated college and took on a job. Feb 2001 you told G that you “loved her like a maniac” since 1995. She told you that she was in love with another guy. You kept thinking about her, “never allowing anyone near me” and if a woman tried to get closer to you, you told her all about G, so to make an intimate relationship impossible.

In 2006, a year after G married, at 29, you met a woman and married her quickly, “all happened in a flash, not sure how”. In 2014, at 37, married with kids, you renewed communication with G. also married with kids. The two of you exchanged I-love-you over the phone. In 2017, at 40, you met G in person, kissed on the first day and eventually had sex. Following that, she became an addiction you wrote. And you started feeling jealous, suspicious, that she had other lovers from her office, while traveling on business, an ex boyfriend perhaps that she still met from time to time.

You got confused, “though she has always been everything to me for 22 years”, you figured that you have been far from being everything to her, that she spent more time with possible other lovers and/or “close associates” than she did with you. And she “cheated” on her husband with you.

Next, you “started suspecting that she is just using” you for sex. Next you asked her for a commitment, telling her something like “I deserve it for what she have been to me all my life”. Next she withdrew from you: she stopped initiating contact with you, but responded to you when you contacted her. You think about her a lot and haven’t communicated with her for ten days at this point.

My understanding: you are confusing reality and fantasy. In reality, you never got to know G. G represented something to you that you highly value. You saw that value in her but she is not closer to that value than other women, maybe she is farther away from that value than many other women. You don’t know, you just happened to project that value into her almost randomly.

The value that you projected into G has nothing much to do with who she is individually.

This value, this “something much much more than everyone… so much.. not just a physical thing.. EVERYTHING”, is completely trustworthy, undisturbed, forever kind of Love.

Before you met G and all through the years, you had little or no trust in love or in women able to love you. But you didn’t want to live life so empty of hope, so you made believe there is such love for you in G. And you used G to keep interested women away from you.

Once you became physically intimate with her, fantasy and reality collided. Wait, Reality said to Fantasy: if her love is so completely trustworthy, undisturbed and forever, how is it that she has those other close associates and that ex boyfriend she still meet, and spends more time with them!?

And then you went all the way to suspecting her for being a “habitual liar”.

But there never has been a relationship with her before the sex, you never got to know her. She never promised you love. That was Fantasy. And now, even that short sexual relationship is in question, as she has withdrawn from you.

Would you like to share about the time, long, long ago when you lost your trust and hope in a woman being able to love you completely, a woman who can be trusted to never hurt you?

anita

Dear Maddy:

I agree, it is a good idea to “stop contacting and stop thinking about her”. Regarding the contact, because she no longer initiates contact with you and responds only if you initiate contact with her, keep not initiating. This is the easy part, compared to the aim of not thinking about her anymore.

I am trying to understand your liking of the sentence, “Adultery is the revenge of the deserted possibilities from our past”-

will you tell me about the deserted possibilities of your past?

anita

Dear Maddy:

Spending more time with your wife and kids is a good idea.

You mentioned your mother, what is your relationship with your mother like and how was it when you were growing up. (I need this information to understand your situation better).

anita

Dear Maddy:

I don’t know why G “used to be everything” to you. Like I wrote to you before, and I think you agreed, you didn’t know her well. Seems to me that you didn’t know her at all,  other than maybe the way she looked, the sound of her voice, some details about her life. I don’t think you knew her thoughts, her feelings, her values, or her motivations. She was your Fantasy.

When Reality and Fantasy came together in a short sexual relationship, Fantasy exploded and you are left confused and angry.

You wrote before that she “cheated”  on her husband with you. You put “cheated” inside quotation marks, as if she didn’t really cheat on him with you, as if she was always yours. Part of your Fantasy was that you were as special in her heart as she was special in yours, that you were her number 1. This is what exploded, reality showing you that she had other close associates. You were not her number one.

I don’t think you fully understand this concept, that she was a Fantasy. That you didn’t really know her. And that you recently found out that indeed she is not that the fantasy woman you had in mind and heart. You don’t realize that you are currently angry at a Fantasy.

anita

Dear Maddy:

You are welcome. Living in Fantasy is not that unusual, by the way. People often do, because reality is not that pleasant. Different fantasies for different people, you had your own, that is all. Better Reality, I say because we are better, our mental health is better when we see reality for what it is.

We function better when we see reality.

I hope your marriage gets better, that you find what you need in your union with your wife, within your real-life family.

anita