As to my mother I wouldn’t say she let me down but my childhood was a bit unstable for probably the first 12 years because of her poor selection in men and because she had an extremely dysfunctional relationship with her own mother (think the Joan Crawford portrayal in Mommie Dearest).  We moved quite a bit and the men she got involved with didn’t treat her the best. Not what I would call physical abuse but men who were just very emotionally unavailable “bad boys.” Not sure if this helps. As to my wife, that  situation  has been pretty tough for years.

When I first reached out to B to offer her some extra support with some stuff she was going  through at the time my wife and I were not talking at all.  So when B almost immediately started texting, and calling me,  and expressing a real interest in me it felt really good to have someone  who seemed to care about me and see me.  And when I told B about my situation with my wife  I think B felt it was kind of “open season” when it came to reaching out to me and contacting me.

But the truth was I was not in the same situation B was with her husband. They were already not sharing a bedroom and were essentially just in this mode of co-parenting their kids and trying not to argue. I wasn’t there with my wife, and I am still not, and at times I had to back off on my friendship with B because my wife was really starting to have a major problem with our friendship. It got to a point where my wife pretty much hated B and viewed her as existential threat to our marriage.

Initially my wife had requested B and I not see each other as much alone than it went to not wanting us to text, or talk on the phone, and it finally got to a point where my wife literally didn’t want me even liking anything B posted on social media. She flat out told me she would like B to disappear completely. But from my angle I have given up a lot of things to accommodate my wife over the years and while I was okay with reducing my friendship down with B I didn’t feel it was fair of my wife to expect me to completely ex-communicate B from my life.  But I am sure that B picked up on all this and I am also sure I came off at times as being a bit unavailable or aloof.

I think I mentioned this but one of the last things that happened before things went “South” was that B made a flirtatious comment on one of my Facebook posts, which I could in no way respond to, and she deleted it the next day.  I know she made that post to get my attention and I know she got rid of it because she knew it would probably tick my wife off – which it did. But truthfully, when B came into the picture I was literally at a place where I was considering whether I was going to move forward with my marriage. I think her presence probably complicated things a bit and made it hard for me to really work through what I wanted at that time.  And obviously going on lock down with Coronavirus further changed things up quite a bit.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Timepassages2070.