Thankyou to both Mark and Anita for replying. I will reply in the order the replies were, begining with Mark.

Mark- thankyou for replying. I do appreciate you taking the time to do so. It is very much self loathing and hating myself and what I did. It was an affair in that it happened behind my boyfriends back. I left when I felt so overwhelmed eg I had my heart flip flopping, my head saying it was morally wrong and against my values and my gut and I just got so overwhelmed I moved out for a bit and stayed elsewhere in the hope I could get some clarity but I did not. I didnt sleep, cried all the time etc so it did not help me move forward at that time.

As for what I am getting out of therapy, my mind has gone blank right now. My therapist is really good and very kind and takes the time to write back to me. She calls the states that I get into “emotional flashbacks” as my mind replays the awful times eg like the time my boyfriend found out or that I learned the person I had an affair with didn’t love me and was dating someone else. It replays that rejection and hurt over and over. She helps me try and hold onto logic when my emotions seem to take over and all seems pointless. She has also been helping me to appreciate and notice the little things like a cup of coffee or the birds. Noticing these things felt so “blank” compared to the highs and lows and intensity of emotion that I felt during the affair- or the deep deep sadness and pain of hurting my boyfriend and that grief. But I am starting to notice and pay attention to the world. Starting to see things. I did not realise until my therapist pointed it out how much I live on autopilot or “numb” and still do now. Life either feels like a flat line of nothingness and I don’t feel like real or like a proper human, or I feel incredibly incredibly sad and with that comes hate, guilt etc.

As for the medication, I took it at a very low point. The experience of going to the doctor was not nice. I explained what I had done and he said “these pills won’t help you, you need to get yourself out of this mess”. I said I was struggling to move on from the affair and that person and he looked at me and said “people move on you know!”. I know people do and I felt at the time so weak for being there asking for medication. I felt so stupid. I took the pills for a month which was the maximum he gave me before I needed another appointment. The pills made me feel hazy, like almost hungover in like a fuzzy state where I could not think that quickly. However I was still very very sad and cried alot. I also had like “jolts”, it felt like electricity going through my brain and hands and I would jump as this happened. This stopped me sleeping and it also made me feel scared as I did not know what my body was doing. In the end it did not feel natural taking the pills and I was scared of going back to the doctor and told I wasn’t trying hard enough again.  That sounds wimpy now I am writing it. I should of gone back. I now have lots of vitamins and omega 3 and try to eat well, exercise etc. I stay away from things that make me cry. This includes most songs (I listen to songs without words mainly), alcohol, films or stories on the radio. I notice I still cry very easily. For example I asked someone in a shop about if the shop had a toilet and he said no.it was in the middle of nowhere and I felt tears come in my eyes. It was very embarrassing as it is no big deal, I can find another bathroom, but it just felt like the “last straw” on that morning, even though nothing bad had happened that morning.

I will do as you suggest and continue to work with my therapist to try and move forward. Thankyou for taking the time to reply to me and offer guidance.

Hello Anita,

Thankyou very much for replying. I read and re-read your reply twice slowly with tears down my cheeks as you absolutely hit the nail on the head.

I am terrified that he was right about “that nagging feeling and always feeling restless and wanting more” than I have with my boyfriend as I do still feel that feeling and I feel such a fool for missing my chance with him. He is now happily married with children. I know it is silly but sometimes I so so wish that could of been me, that I could of “jumped” so to speak and be with him as girlfriend and boyfriend and dated and been together. I loved him alot. Also he was wise and alot of what he said about life and relationships was very true and I did not listen.  He said to me we were “soulmates” and this “kind of chemistry and love doesn’t come round often” and on one level I KNEW he was right from my own life and experience but at the same time, I didn’t trust that feeling, I didn’t trust him and I don’t know why. It was very frustrating meeting someone who I just “clicked” with but being too cowardly and stubborn to do the right thing. I know if I had, we could of dated and who knows. Instead he fell in love with someone else and I still miss him and those feelings alot. He was so kind to me and cared, genuinely cared about me.

As for my home, yes you were right. My parents do love me and do provide alot for me eg I was able to go to horse riding lessons. However I was also told I had to perform and get the best grades in all my subjects otherwise I could not go to horse riding .This was my weekly escape as I stayed there all weekend helping out. My friends were there. So not being able to go was a massive fear that I felt. One time I got a B grade and was told “I was a failure”, “I was being insolent” “I was thick and not trying” and had to have 1:1 lessons with my dad. He shouted and raged at me for not knowing the answer to the math questions but I honestly did not know. I felt very anxious and trapped.

My child hood friend was lovely. He was open, confident and chatty and for a while we were best friends. We used to write valentine’s Day cards to each other on valentine’s Day and go to each others birthday partys and on day trips and just hung out in the holidays. His family was so relaxed and safe and I tried to spend as much time there as I could (probably too much time in hindsight). It sounds very silly now but I thought if I could be a best friend to him I would not be forgotten and I would be part of the family. Of course as soon as he did not want to be friends (he wanted to go out with my best friend and so did not see that we could be friends) that was that.

As for having a home. This is something I crave so much. Someone to be on my side and to hug and feel safe with. I am scared this is not possible with my boyfriend as he suggested and I need to leave. But I have never been picked by a boy before and so I would be scared of being alone. My boyfriend is kind and does have a good heart but sometimes it feels I am invisible. Like that part in titanic with Rose on the edge of the ship. The person I had the affair with felt like that kind of saviour.

I would like to learn how better to deal with feelings. I felt so much for the person I had the affair with. so much. yet he wanted me to “prove my love” and for us to be together and I felt that was not possible. I felt disloyal to my boyfriend and felt torn. There was another reason why I held back and I could not get passed this reason but I feel uncomfortable and anxious sharing it as it makes the whole thing so much worse. I was a complete idiot. It seemed alot of pain for nothing at all. Only sadness.

My boyfriend and I are intimate at times and it is hard as it gives me flashbacks or brings up so much emotion I end up trying to end me crying. It feels forced and not natural. I do love my boyfriend. I love his honesty and kindness and I can 100% understand why he finds it hard too and intimacy is hard for us both.

I also would like to add after reading your post again that I do think it is as you said, in that my experience now feels worse as it has guilt and sadness and longing added to it, but I felt so so alone and sad before I met my boyfriend and almost like “my family is crazy” but no one else saw it. I have always been “highly strung” or “high maintenance” or “tightly wound” at home. I seem to get affected by things deeply.

With the person I had the affair with it felt like a “click” or the “chemistry” feeling. that was how I felt like with my childhood friend. I said that also to the person I had the affair with. Like hey I have waited 12 years to meet someone that is like you! (That was how long it has been since my childhood friend did not want to be friends). I remember very little from that time eg how I coped or how I didn’t .cry in front of my family but I certainly had a deep sadness in me that I can feel now, only it now feels worse. I feel like not only did I let my childhood friend go, I also left the person who I loved go through being too stubborn and cowardly to leave my boyfriend and get into the whole thing in the first place.

Hello Anita,

Thankyou for replying. I will try and clairfy the points the best I can.

1) he said out of the blue to me when I was on the scooter in his garden one day that he did not want to be friends. I was so shocked and disappointed and felt numb. It seemed so random. I asked him why but he did not say. I went home that day and tried to forget it. I gave him a few days and then tried to talk to him again. We were friends then, but it felt unstable as he did not want really want tto be friends and I think underneath I knew hat. He felt like a different person to me. Like he was going away from me and I was trying to hold on. A few months later I would guess but to be honest I can’t remmeber, it was certainly more than days or weeks, I went round to do my homework with him. He then said he wanted to talk to me. He said he fancied a girl in his class who recently did a gymnastic display at school assembly. He wanted to ask her out and so we would no longer be friends. He knew I knew this person as she went to the stables with me but he whether he knew she was like my best “stable” friend I don’t know. After that we did not speak again.

2) as for not giving a reason for me to doubt him. He was strong and by my side. The relationship would of changed family dynamics and the family business and yet he still wanted me and wanted to proceed as a couple. He waited for me to leave my boyfriend and did not date anyone else. I felt torn and conflicted. I told my boyfriend it was over and moved out for a while trying to “know” what to do. He said if I didnt proper ly leave him he would date other people. He told me the truth. A week later he said he had met someone online and she was “like me but not like me” , “his type” etc and he went on a date. From then on he was distant from me and fell in love with her. She is his “one”. I Replay the time I found out about that again and again with him saying he was dating her and loved her and seeing her changed things with me and him and he could never see us being together. I know it was my fault for not leaving and being torn but I was shocked. I felt like it was “true love” and “soulmates” and so the love was always there and how could he move on so quickly and I be replaced. He looked at me with the same look as my childhood friend did when he told me about the person he wanted to ask out..a kind of happy grin and I knew then that he was lost to me. I know this is silly as it was my mess that I got into and I truely did love him and my boyfriend but in very different ways.i know I could of at least had a chance to be with him but I felt like I could not no matter what my heart said, yet that time he told me he was in love with someone else does go round and round in my head if I don’t try and stop the thought quickly.

Hello Anita,

Thankyou for writing back. I would be willing to communicate with you over time, however long it takes. Right now, I feel very anxious about writing my life down onto a forum. I feel disloyal to my boyfriend and am worried someone will find it and show it to him. I think I am just feeling anxious and scared. I rarely ever write down how I truely feel and I don’t trust myself to know if this is how I truely feel or am I in the middle of an “emotional flashback” and am just getting too emotional and not rational.

os regards to number 2) I will answer this first as it is more straightforward and factual. I lived with him the full 9 years (minus short gaps when I moved out briefly during the affair) and summer holidays from university when I lived with my parents.

We talked about marriage and children a few times. Before the affair when we talked of it he said he did not want to get married until he was 30 or over. At the time it seemed more like something he felt like he had to do but maybe did not want to, at that time. However, understanding my boyfriend better now after the affair, I feel like he does want to get married but felt too young before 30. We are both late twenties. He does want children but is scared of being a dad which I can understand as it is a huge change and responsibility. He is a man who keeps his word to people and does not let people down so I think he would be a good and stable dad but I think he worries. I really would like children and have always. I would also like to be married, but I have not really dreamed about the dress or the big day, I just wanted a little ceremony in a forest somewhere or somewhere quiet. We have talked about marriage since the affair and he feels we could not get married as we have lost the innocence and purity of marriage and so it would be a sham.

1) Going back to point 1.. I do not know why I did not trust him fully. I grew to trust him more (until he told me about dating) but I did not ever fully trust him.  There is not one thing I can say or point out. It could be that I did not trust his genuineness of feeling toward me. That I did not trust he loved me. He said he loved me the first time we kissed. This was very quick and I felt like it was too soon. It was not love, it was lust maybe, but not love as I understood my experience of love. So I guess I doubted if he truely did love me. He would also be very mean about my boyfriend, and sometimes say things and I would be internally like “what? How can you think that?”. I can’t think of an example of that and given the rest of the feelings when I talked to him or saw him eg happiness and calm and safety, it did not feature highly. it was just something niggling at me. He reminded me of a crocodile that smiles at times, slippery. Like he would say one thing one day, then forget he had told me then when I asked him about it be like “how do you know that!” I would say “you told me”. Like he was holding himself back from me. Probably more than I realised at the time. I did not hold anything back from him.

This does not sound coherent. I do not have a definite reason why and I am very open to the fact that I just distrusted love and so my brain made up things or just anxiety that made me feel that.