Hi Anita and Nekoshema,

Thanks so much for your comments.

Anita – yes I think it has started to come back a bit, the closer we get to the wedding. I’d say it’s always been there but I’ve always been able to manage it. Whereas lately it’s bothered me a lot more. I think the big mistake I made was even entertaining the affair, I did it because I had never felt such attraction/passion and I immaturely believed i deserved to explore it. When it ended I kind of left it on a cliff, if it had a of been a relationship in normal circumstances it would have ran it’s course in one way or another. But as an affair that you suddenly stop, you grieve what could have been with another person, even though you know it may not have been right. Secondly I do think I have a bit of fear about getting married, it’s a big deal, so perhaps these fantasy thoughts act as an escapism.

I think what’s always kept my on the straight and narrow since is that I believe you could hop from one relationship to the next and 10 years down the line you might be vulnerable to external attention again, but you can’t keep hopping from one to another, if you are going to create a marriage, you have to commit and knuckle down. I don’t think I had the maturity before to realise that.

Nekoshema, thanks for sharing your experience. It sounds like you’ve decided to knuckle down and stay put. I very much agree with what you have said about listing qualities. I did just that, the new one was fun, made me feel alive, sexy, he was easy going, fun, up for a laugh, cute etc. But you notice there I haven’t written anything there about qualities. Things that put me off him were how he said I was too emotional, he once said he didn’t feel bad about the affair as he didn’t know my boyfriend and also other little things like he once said he thought he was quite a selfish person. Things like this made me see that perhaps he wasn’t the most emotionally mature, and how I was behaving wasn’t either!!

Whereas my partner is the kind of man who is strong, resilient, caring, the kind of man that in the future of marriage if I was sick or we had a baby screaming at 3am, he’d get up and take charge.

I think you are also right about giving up freedom, I think a lot of this is often about how I feel a bit trapped in giving up that care free part of me who can do what she likes. When I was a kid my father when through a five year spell of alcoholism and during that I grew up too fast, trying to look after family and I think part of me just wants to be care free. I fantasise about going off on solo holidays and meeting new people etc. I think that would always be there though, if we split up now and In future I found someone else to commit too, i think i’d still crave that freedom.

It’s refreshing to chat about what can scare us, in a world where places like instagram make relationships look perfect.