queer advice #62: a terrible, tangled mess
"The affair was spectacular, as affairs generally are, but it destroyed my marriage and broke my wife's heart."
New week, new queer advice column. If you’re new to this newsletter, this is a recurring feature where I answer love and relationship questions from lesbians and other homos. Some past editions include an important missive from a MILF lover and ”I'm a 33-year-old dirty slut who loves to be alone and go to bed at 10 pm.” Also, three different questions about a girlfriend who wants to be poly, coming out as having a high ACE score, and sex noises as abuse. You can read all my posts in one place here :)
Send me a question whenever, wherever. xoxo, Maddy
Messy, messy, messy. Last year I had an affair with a colleague. I am a married lesbian, she is a married “straight” woman. The affair was spectacular, as affairs generally are, but it destroyed my marriage and broke my wife's heart. Hurting my wife is my life's biggest regret. However, I had always felt trapped in my marriage (not my wife's fault - my own stuff), and now we are separated but on relatively okay terms.
I ended the affair just before my wife found out, on the advice of my therapist. My colleague, let's call her Marion, is a typically emotionally unavailable person who blows hot and cold, and my therapist warned me that if she ended it, it would trigger my abandonment wound (I also have a diagnosed mental illness).
Soon after I ended the affair (absolutely heartbreaking) and my wife moved out, Marion had a breakdown (not related to the affair - she ended up being diagnosed with biopolar type II, and she had been on a 'high' when we'd had our affair). She was off work for several months. In that time, I missed her terribly. I had fallen in love with her and was BROKEN by the end of the affair and her absence, but it also gave me time away from her, which I needed to start the slow road to recovery.
She returned towards the end of last year, and things were awkward and difficult for some time, until ultimately, we made our way back to each other earlier this year and resumed the affair.
Now, we'll make out from time to time and occasionally sleep together (she is still married and he doesn't know), but it's always on her terms: she'll contact me when she wants to, and if she doesn't want to talk, she'll ignore my messages. At work, she's either flirtatious or my best friend, or she'll treat me like an acquaintance she barely knows. We even went away for a secret weekend together, where we obviously slept together and had a wonderful time together, but then it went back to the hot/cold. We now also share an office, just the two of us sitting opposite each other, and sometimes I wonder whether it's my own issues that make me feel like she's ignoring me at times, when perhaps she is just being a regular human or trying to keep things low-key at the office (no one knows or can ever know). Because of my own issues, I can doubt someone's feelings if they aren't showing them ALL the time. I constantly doubt myself and others. And when Marion shows me a bit of attention, I am on top of the world!
All this said, I know the hot/cold thing is her stuff and the reason I'm attracted to her is exactly because I have to keep working for her attention, and I never know when I'll get it. It's mom stuff, for sure. My wife is (was) the total opposite: an unfailingly loving and supportive partner; someone who has my back no matter what. I always know where I stand with her. She adores me, and even now, she is there for me 24/7 (my mom committed suicide two months ago and my wife has stood by my side throughout it all. She has been my rock).
I have made a total mess of my life. I want to be best friends with my wife, a woman who loves me completely, and in a healthy way. A woman who would go to the ends of the earth for me. And I'm in love with someone who treats me differently to what I deserve, but I can't move past her.
In between all this, I'm trying to figure out whether I could fall in love with my wife again and repair my marriage. I feel my wife deserves better than me. I have treated her abysmally but I am a broken person and I am struggling to find my way towards healing. I wish my wife could find someone who loves and adores her the way she deserves, but I also panic at the thought.
It's all such a terrible, tangled mess and I don't really know what I want to ask - I just need someone to give me an honest, no-nonsense opinion on all this and advice on what I need to do to move forward with my life. What should I do? Probably just be on my own for a long, long time until I figure myself out and stop inflicting myself on others. Please help.
One-person L Word, 39
You asked for my no-nonsense opinion, so here it is: if you want to move forward and feel more clarity in your life and decisions, you need to end your relationship with Marion and create deliberate, meaningful distance from her.