Dear Kelly:

You shared that your husband provided you with emotional stability (“my husband’s emotional stability”), and your lover provided you with great instability (“this emotional rollercoaster”).

You shared that your husband has been a “loyal, loving and decent man”, and your lover  was disrespectful and emotionally cruel to you (“ongoing disrespectful behavior such as cutting contact for weeks at a time…silence has always been his weapon of choice…   somebody who was emotionally cruel”).

You shared that your husband has been your best friend (“my best friend, my husband”), and your lover didn’t want to be your friend (“I asked him if he wanted to keep  in touch. He said he wasn’t sure. This hurt so bad. I don’t know why we can’t be friends, and why he has cut contact so coldly”)

If this is all true, then seems to me that it is possible that you’ve been trying to resolve, through this extramarital 3 year long affair, an old unresolved childhood issue having to do perhaps with a parent who cut contact with you so coldly (emotionally, if not physically); a parent whom you reached out to again and again lovingly and desperately, but he or she rejected you coldly, with deafening silence, treating you disrespectfully and cruelly.

anita