Dear Eli:

“I don’t know how explain is the guilty feeling or feeling like sinner”, you wrote. By guilt/ feeling-like-sinner, do you mean that you feel like you are cheating  on your married lover if you go on a date with another man?

anita

Dear  Eli:

In your original post you wrote: “He told me he is married has kids and family but I am his family as well”– this is the part that may explain why you feel like you will be cheating on him, the feeling that you and him are a family.

You feel very attached to him, had great time with him day after day as he visited you, and as you traveled together, so you feel like a couple. You wish he didn’t have a wife and you get angry that she  is part  of his  life, but you feel better thinking that they sleep in separate bedrooms. So… in your mind, you and  him are a couple and his wife is a woman who sleeps in a separate bedroom, I figure.

But will you definitely not be cheating on him if you break up with him first and then date other men?

anita

Dear Eli:

I feel better reading that it is only “one side of (your) character is so selfish” and not all  of you.

Well, here is an idea: he supposedly lives with his wife as a roommate, they interact but have no sexual interactions and they sleep in separate bedroom. You know his situation.

What if you date another man, have no sexual interactions with that man and tell your married lover about it, so he knows your situation just like  you know his. He interacts with another woman and  has no sex with her, you interact with another man and have  no sex with him.

Does this make sense to you, as a possible solution to your current dilemma?

anita

Dear Eli:

So there is an established lack of equality: it is okay for him to have a wife who sleeps in her own bedroom but it is not okay for you to have a boyfriend who also sleeps in his own bedroom, and even better: his own home!

And this lack of equality is established by his money that finances your travels and shopping.

You used the word “mistress” so I just looked it up and found that Wikipedia has an entry on “Mistress (lover”): “A mistress is relatively long-term female lover and companion who is not married to her partner, especially when her partner is married to someone else. Generally, the relationship is stable and at least semi-permanent, but the couple does not live together openly and the relationship is usually, but not  always, secret. There is also the implication that the mistress is sometimes ‘kept’- i.e. that her lover is contributing to her living expenses… A mistress is not a prostitute… the principal difference is that a mistress has sex with fewer men and there is not so much of a direct quid pro quo between the money and the sex act. There is usually an emotional and  possibly social relationship between a man and his mistress, whereas the relationship to a prostitute is predominantly sexual.”

Well, according to this definition, a prostitute is free to have as many sexual partners as she can handle and a mistress is expected to have “fewer men”, not necessarily just one. If you want to remain his mistress, according to Wikipedia, as I understand it,  you may be able to negotiate the terms of the relationship to include a few men, not just him. Or if it is to be just him, then there should be some   adjustment in the terms of the relationship?

anita

Dear Eli:

“in the real  world we don’t follow the correct definition that’s are in dictionary”- what if you make your own definition, what if you define your desired relationship with a man and then go for that definition in your life?

And what if you can have a boyfriend who is  single and who will travel  with you, both, not one or the other…

anita

Dear Eli:

Freedom is important to you, to have alone time, to be say and do what you want to say,  without limits, to not owe anyone explanations, to not have to convince anyone of anything, to … not have to get permission from others, I suppose. To “control my own life only”-

I can relate. It feels like a trap to be stuck all the time with a person, to be imprisoned in many ways, imprisoned by what-will-people-think and having to get permission to live your life as you need your life to be.

Freedom is a good thing, necessary, really, for one’s emotional well being.

anita

Dear Eli:

Maybe your experience is similar to mine: as a child  I felt very much trapped  in the relationship with my  mother. There was no space for my thoughts, my feelings… me. It was all about her thoughts and her feelings and what-would-people-think or say. It felt like being squeezed into a tight prison space with hardly a place  to breathe!

Anything like that?

anita