I have been married to my husband for 4 years now. But during thos years he was an alcholic and I got very ignored and left alone at nights. We have a small child that I have had to raise on my own. I recently found comfort with my best friend. He has been wonderful thru all this. I really think I am in love with him and I am so confused of what to do. My husband knows of us and is very hurt. He has been sober for over a year now and is trying to redeem himself but there is so much hurt and resentment that i sont really want to be with him any longer. I have been thinking about a divorce but he keeps telling me that I will destroy our 3 year old son. I feel pressure to stay married for my son but I really want to be happy and the other man makes me happy. What do I do? I really need help

You could do the ethical thing, and erase this "best friend" from your life, and work on your marriage with the father of you son.

Or... you could keep making excuses for being and adulteress, destroy your marriage, and seriously confuse your son.

Adultery is wrong, no matter the excuse.

I suggest you start reading the basic concepts, Q&A columns, and come back with questions based on those.

You think you love the OM because he is meeting emotional needs that your husband is not. It is confusing because affairs bring nothing but confusion. You are boarding a train that will soon go right off the tracks and into a deep hole.

You need to determine if your marriage will stand or fall on its own merits, without the distraction of an affair. This site will be the best thing that ever happened to you, if you choose to use it.

What if you could have that same happiness with your husband? We could teach him how to do that and you wouldn't have to ruin your life and your son's life by taking up with the OM.

See, there is no future in your affair. And I will explain why. The OM is a scumbag who does not care about you and your son. If he cared, he would not be degrading you by committing adultery with you. People who really care about you won't help you be BAD, they will help you be GOOD because they only want what is best for you. He wants the WORST for you only because he wants some free nookie.

This guy has already proven that he has no respect for marriage or for the bond between the man and wife. So you know he won't value his relationship with you. He cares nothing for your son or he wouldn't be rutting like a pig with his mother and threatening to destroy his family.

95% of affairs never make it to marriage and of the 5% that do, 85% that do, end in divorce in under 5 years. The reason is because the very things that made the affair possible, dishonesty, deceit, thoughtlessness, eventually destroy the affair.

And lastly, some day your son will find out that you destroyed his family and took away his father over what? Over a big fat loser who cares nothing for him.

That is an awful lot of trouble for some bum who is going to dump you when he tires of the free nookie and moves on. A better strategy is to end your affair with the OM, bring your H here and we can walk you through a program that WILL restore the romantic love to your marriage. It works and it works pretty fast.

The best solution is to be passionately in love with your husband.

Melodylane speaks the truth. Your happiness will certainly not be found by being with a man who doesn't give a rat's *ss about your well-being. He is pretending to be a "friend" but he is actually using you in the worst way. He is making a mockery of your marriage and a mockery of what it is to be a true friend.

A man with character would tell you, "I would love to help you but it's not right to take advantage of a woman who is in a vulnerable position. Sharing information with me about your troubled relationship is likely to cause an emotional connection that is not real nor sustainable. I recommend that you talk with your husband and share your feelings with him. Your husband and child deserve it from you. I would be a scumbag if I got in the middle of this and caused you to develop feelings for me. I'm out!"

I think you need to stop viewing your afair through a soft-focus lens. You are seeing yourself as Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County when if fact you are the unpaid starlet of a hardcore porn peepshow.

You are giving this man no-strings sex. He doesn't respect you and he doesn't have to pay your bills.

A more appropriate title for your thread would be "Pig-pen Sex".

Don't degrade yourself with this affair any longer, lostmommy. Be better than that.

I sensed the same thing. Affair sex is about as romantic as 2 pigs rutting in the pig pen. You just get dirty. You can put lipstick on a pig, but you still have a pig.

My apologies to pigs for the insulting comparison.

I have not ever had sex with this other man. It has all been a long distance phone relationship.

And still an affair.

You mean "AFFAIR" right? Lets not dignify it by calling it a "relationship." The fact that you have not had sex yet does not change the fact that it is an AFFAIR. And it is wrong.

I think it's time you make a decision, if you are convinced that the OM can be all you want then why don't you leave and let your husband move on........
Your selfishness at this point is not fair to your husband..........You are in the middle of Affair Fog and it's sad that you can just rewrite your history to make the OM look like the better option, did you not let the marriage problems get to where they were, are you not responsible as well?
I think your husband has problems but it seems like he is trying to over come that and make his life more positive, can you say the same thing?
If you weren't attached to someone else, could you see the good things in your husband I bet you could, the OM stops you from the reality of life and keeps you in that fantasy world that doesn't have to deal with life's real problems........
Would it really be the life for you? Or would there be a lot of things wrong there too.
I think you have a child now you have to think of, he deserves both parents in his life, happy and devoted to each other and him..........
I think you give yourself 1 year to see where you are at. Spend time with your husband, cut all contact off with the OM, if you still want to leave after that time then so be it, but at least you will have given your marriage and family a try.......
I think you will see that once the OM is out of your life you will see your husband in a different light.............
Marriages and families are worth it, don't just quit, you are an adult with a child now............you work at what is wrong you don't just run to someone else.......you are honest and want to set a good example for your son..........
You will feel good about you and your life...............

This statement:

"I recently found comfort with my best friend. He has been wonderful thru all this. I really think I am in love with him and I am so confused of what to do."\

can lead one to believe this is more than just an affair over the phone. You are falling in love with him based on phone conversations????? If so, he's clearly meeting your need for conversation. What other needs is this OM meeting over the phone that apparently far outway what your BH has met? Your husband may have been LBing you but 1) that's no excuse for an affair and 2) You are willing to through your marriage and any attempt to reconcile it away based on phone conversations? Do you see how silly that is? When you and your BH met and got married was it based on phone conversations???

lostmommy, does this "friend" know you are in love with him? Is he married?

You've apparently confided in OM information that was and is none of his dang business. Information that you should have been discussing with your BH and only your BH. Boundaries my dear boundaries. Do you know what they are??

Let me share with you something very profound: my wife met another man while she was with me on an out-of-state business trip. They began texting as "friends." Do you see where this is going??

8 weeks later, they couldn't understand how they had fallen in "love." He started flying from another state to see her and have sex together. Unfortunately, he was very married with several kids, as was my wife. But they shared enough personal details about the perceived problems in their relationships, that they got lost in the fog of an affair.

My wife was soon convinced that he was the better man, and she was prepared to divorce me and the kids, after an 8 week texting affair that turned into a physical affair.

That was 3 months ago, and we are now in recovery, fighting to repair our 20 year marriage. The OM's marriage is ending in divorce.

You probably look forward to every secret text or call from him. It makes your heart beat faster just thinking about it. Am I right? You are an addict, plain and simple. And you are on a train ride to hell. Take it from me. Phone/texting affairs are just that: affairs. And everyone loses in the end.

yes he knows and he is in love with me also. He is not married. We dated about 15 years ago and have been best friends ever since. He knows everything about me and we have been thru a lot togeter over the years. He happens to live out of state currently so that is why it is a phone thing. I have never truly gotten over him all these years I just had to put him in the back of my mind because we were better off as friends. Then when I realized I was no longer inlove with my husband and was miserable in my marriage I let those feelings surface. I did not tell the OM for over a year later how I felt about him. Come to find out he never got over me either and just kept quiet like me. It really feels "right" when we talk. When he does come into town we hang out (nothing sexual) and we get along perfect. He makes me happy. In fact happier than I have ever been with anyone.

First things first. Write a no contact letter to your friend stating that you will not have contact with him ever again. Have your BH read it and send it out. Block your your Aduletery partner like a bad habbit (because he is) numbers, emails, facebook, whatever you guys use for correspondance.

Then change your life like your BH is trying to change his. You have to change all habits, patterns, and change yourself to the point that you abhor what you did, and make it so that you will never do anything like this again.

It seems if your husband has been sober for over a year. you also state that the OM has been through this with you I assume this affair has been going on for longer than a year. You have been married for 4 years so if I do the math then over 25% of your marriage has been with OM.

Sorry that your BH "was" an alcoholic, but the past is the past, what is the problem now is the affair.

Oh boy..... what a hot steaming pile of crapola!!!

Get out your helmet because you are about to get 2x4'd big time. If you have the courage to stick around and truly listen to what is said to you then you have a chance to make your life better. If you just get defensive and don't truly listen then things won't get better and you might as well leave this site.

OK lostmommy. You are truly lost and your handle should wake you up because you will also be lost to your kids if you don't get out of the fog. If you've come here for support of your affair you've come to the wrong place. I believe your original post asked for help. Help for what exactly? To continue the fantasy? To have someone support and convince you that you should leave your hubby for this scumbag (he is one cause he knows your married and continues to pursue you) and frolic in this fantasy? Are you looking for an easy way out of your marriage? Or are you looking to get yourself out of the fog and recover your feelings for your husband? Which is it? If you're looking to get out of your marriage you need to go else where. Stop wasting peoples time.

If this is the case, you need to have enough character to end the charade you call a marriage, and let your husband move on to find someone who doesn't long for someone else. If your heart is truly somewhere else, why do you want to go out as an adulterer? The way you are going about this will have lasting consequences far beyond what you can imagine now.