Question
I'm 40 years old. Fifteen years ago my then boss told me he had feelings for me. Although I liked him, I didn't get involved. He was married with a young family and it wasn't the future I wanted for myself. We got over this and became great friends, although every now and again he'd make a joking reference to us being soul-mates, teasing me that my relationships with other men didn't work out because I needed to find someone like him. I subsequently changed jobs, and went abroad, but we remained close.
Early last year he rang to say that he had left home and was separating from his wife and he wanted us to meet. He flew over, and we had a wonderful long weekend together. I know it was wrong, but I started to feel that we might have a future. On the last day he told me he was confused about what was coming next and didn't want a relationship. I said I understood and would give him space and then cried my eyes out on the plane back home. With hindsight, that's probably when I should have cut my losses and cut contact.
I didn't and he rang me regularly. He also suggested several further trips which never came off, always because he somehow couldn't make it. I've just got another email cancelling another weekend together. Only this time it wasn't a flu or a last-minute work commitment. He's just told me that things had changed, that he was confused, and didn't want either of us to end up hurt. When I pursued the issue, he admitted that he was in a fairly important relationship for the past four months.
I feel angry and hurt that I allowed him to treat me like a one-night stand. It eats me up to think that he was already in another relationship when he suggested this latest weekend together, probably a case of hedging his bets in case it didn't work out with the new woman in his life. Most of all, it kills me to think I could be such a poor judge of character. I've been hurt before and now always try to protect myself from pain. He was the last person I expected to reject me, to hurt me like this.
I've cut off all contact with him, telling him we needed a long break from each other, and saying that I'll ring him when I'm ready. I'm not sure that time will ever come. I feel so angry, bitter and disappointed. I even wonder if our friendship had any basis at all, if he ever cared for me at all. I can't see any hope of salvaging a friendship, which is what he says he wants. Am I hopelessly naïve? I feel such a fool for being taken in by the attention, for getting my hopes up. How do I get through this and out the other side?
Answer
People on their way out of marriages are a complete mess. Most of them don't mean to be. They just are. Which means that you are invariably the nicotine patch for their emotional withdrawal, a buffer against the fear and guilt and disappointment of a failed endeavour, a safe haven in the psychological storm. Sometimes you do become the next wife or husband. Often you end up being little more than the place he parks his emotional baggage. Or she, for women work out their hurt in similar style.
In your case there was more. I can't say if he was your friend. I do think you were a symbol of the temptation he felt to leave his marriage. I'm not saying he played with you deliberately, as in being nasty and mean and calculating. I do think, however unconsciously, he kept you hooked. Friendships are complicated, and not just between the sexes. Ultimately, of course, it was down to you. This man is not responsible for your fate. You are.
How many broken arrangements does it take before you say stop? You've allowed this man to mess with you. My guess is that you do that with everyone - or at least with every boyfriend. Which would explain why you get so hurt and feel so vulnerable and retreat into unrealistic hope. You're right, of course. You should have walked away after that first weekend when he told you straight that he didn't want commitment. The friendship made it complicated. It was low self-esteem that allowed it to happen.
We can cry, forever, for the things we got wrong - there are just so many, it's easy to get stuck in sadness. Or we can painstakingly pick over the pieces of past mistakes, learn whatever lesson we need to learn, and catch happiness by the tail. You are a good, honourable, competent and kind woman. You are not a coward. Go use your courage to work out why you value yourself so little. Then change.
