Like the 13,432,176 other people out there on the street, I desperately need your advice.I am a married woman with three small kids who lives in a suburb. I got married when I was 25 to someone significantly older than me after experiencing a traumatic event as my first sexual experience. I am no longer in love with my husband, who hasn't exactly treated me fairly either. In fact we've kept separate bedrooms for the last five years. We tolerate each other as housemates, and divorce is not an option for many reasons including keeping our children happy (one has special needs). I have spent most of the past five years in a daze until my neighbor across the street expressed interest in me sexually last spring. We ended up hooking up and have been on and off ever since. I have tried hard not to like him but I like him now more than ever.
He has been on and off with a girlfriend that whole time, and I've learned to swallow my jealousy and deal with it. This past fall I met someone new and tried very hard to get into that relationship but it didn't work out. I made the mistake of telling him about this other man, in an attempt to play the game and make him jealous, but I really didn't like the other guy. I'm crazy about my neighbor. I think about him all the time, and I am totally smitten, and I think in love. He has told me he loved me, although I don't know if it was to get me out of my underwear. Now he has broken up with his old GF and met a new one online and I can't contain my jealousy anymore. I know that I am not entitled to feel this sad and jealous being the (unhappily) married woman, but I am so heartbroken.
I don't know if he even knows how I truly care about him and I am afraid to say something. Please tell me what I should do. I feel to in sync and complete with him. I don't want to get hurt and I don't feel entitled to claim him when I'm tied up in a rotten marriage that isn't going to change anytime soon. Should I tell him my true feelings and risk ruining this friendship-with-benefits? Should I accept what I have and be miserable? Or do I throw it all away and tell him that I can't be his back-up girl anymore? I can't end my marriage because even though my husband and I are no longer in love, Dan, we have the kids, animals and financial ties.
I know that this is too long and crazy to print, but you don't know how much it helps to ask you all this. I can't tell my therapist pretty much because I really need the prozac that she dispenses, and I don't want to rock that boat either. Thx for reading, I appreciate it. You are a God.
An Unhappily Married Woman
My response after the jump...