Dear Phoenix11:

The easiest question for me to answer is: “Should I come clean..”? meaning, should you tell T that you have been cheating on him with C? My answer: absolutely not, because T has threatened to harm you, your daughter and, in this case, it would be C (“if the conversation of leaving him came up he would threaten to harm me , our daughter and whomever I was with.”) Before that he threatened to kill himself. So, no, don’t come clean with him on this matter.

Otherwise, there are a few issues here:

1.  You have a daughter with T.

2. You missed living your teen years as a free, young person, free to explore and discover.

3. You are afraid of T’s reactions to leaving him, and so fear is part of your relationship with T and part of your daily experience.

4. You feel unjustified or unwise leaving him following some of the changes that he made.

5. You having a sexual relationship with T and C for years.

Did I miss any additional issues?

If you’d like, elaborate on any one of the four I mentioned (and any other), and we can communicate and explore the situation further and hopefully, come up with possibilities.

anita