Getting Caught Up With Life

Well, world, I got so caught up with life that I almost forgot about this blog!

My MM and I "made up" again: our attempt to break things off turned out to be only a temporary lapse in time. Intellectually and even psychologically, I know and understand that this is a common pattern between married men and their lovers.

I can also psychologically and intellectually analyze my situation and say that it is not healthy for me. I deserve better. I am a vibrant, intelligent, successful, kind, caring, honest woman with a thriving career, dreams and passions about many things, as well as witty and fairly attractive. People tell me I look much younger than my age, which I attribute to my playful nature in feeling young. Yet this one issue of being the other woman eats away at times at my inner depths of my soul.

Do I really think that much of myself? Psychologists would tell me that I have a self-esteem issue, yet I know and I believe and I feel in my heart that I am certainly capable and will attract a man who can love me like I deserve to be loved, after I get out of my current predicament.

Am I so desperate for companionship that I will settle for whatever I can get? That's not how my relationship with this man started, although I will say that I was going through some tough times when we met. I was vulnerable and he was an emotional rock for me. Perhaps I feel obligated to him in some unconscious way.

Could it be the sex? I am definitely not a person who gets in and stays in a relationship with a man purely because of great sex, but it certainly helps to have a thriving sex life. Ask anyone who doesn't have one right now and see what they say. I admit the sex is great but it's not the overriding issue why I'm still here, although my critics will certainly say that's why he's still here. And the sad thing is that there may be some truth to that, particularly if he is not getting what he wants at home.

Am I just so caught up in life that I don't want to take the energy and the pain that I know will be there to change it and let him go? Hmmmm....Interesting thought....I certainly know that it will be very difficult for me and lonely and sad to let him go. Secretly, I acknowledge that it will be a turning point: 1. he will either realize that I, too, am the love of his life and get out of his situation (or) 2. that will be the end and I can move on. Statistics point to the latter. Most married men don't get out of their situations and of those that do, there is great distrust in the relationship they establish with the other woman afterward.

Still, I know two couples who made a very happy life together later after getting out of their situations. They are happy together.

And I also know that they are the exceptions to the rule.

So I am caught up with life. Too scared to move forward, I think, yet knowing I need to or we will be looking at another 7 years of this.