filed in Sex and Dating
Are There Romances You Regret?
A reader commenting on my post 10 Reasons to Stay Away from Married Men, referred to herself as “collateral damage” in her affair. This got me to thinking about relationships we regret, and if there were any in my history so scarring that I wished they’d never happened. From my current state of calm singleness, I can’t come up with one. But I wondered what stories you have to tell.
Regrets by Emiliano Ponzi
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29 comments for “Are There Romances You Regret?”
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I go back and forth with wishing that an affair with a married man never happened.
I’ve done it twice, but the first time, I didn’t know he was married, and dropped him as soon as I found out.
The second time, I knew he was married, but he’d been separated for 4 years, so I figured it MIGHT end up OK. Unfortunately, it didn’t set off the sirens for me when he told me that he wasn’t going to divorce his wife until his youngest child was too old for her to collect child support (his youngest was 12 years old at the time). And I ignored the sirens when he spoke of his children in a less-than-loving way. And then I ignored the sirens when he didn’t want me to tell our mutual friends that he and I were involved. And then I ignored the sirens when he told me that he’d repaired a faucet at a mutual (female) friend’s house. It wasn’t until he started cancelling our planned weekends together and I was noticing that the same mutual friend (female) had been talking about him a lot when she and I conversed. He was cheating on me with her…and I became, yes, the “collateral damage” of the relationship. She and I are no longer friends (and we had been friends for many years).
His wife contacted me a few months after it was over. She and I spoke many times over the course of several months, and I now know that my experience with him was not unique. His wife wasn’t the shrew that he had described to me. She’s a warm, kind woman with a good (and forgiving) heart. He’d cheated on her with many women for most of their marriage, and the reason they never got divorced had little to do with child support. (The reasons are financial, but they’re far more complicated than I can describe here.)
I go back and forth about regret on the experience. It was to my benefit to find out that my former friend was the kind of woman who is capable of stabbing her friends in the back, and I’m more than happy to have her out of my life. I got over him fairly quickly, because hey, he was a douchebag, but I still have moments of blazing anger at my former friend that she could do such a thing to me. I hate that I had to go through that experience to find out her true colors, and I do sometimes wish I’d never met either one of them.
Stacey: I’m sorry you had to go through this but am really impressed with the way you processed and dealt with all aspects of this episode. And also the way you wrote about it was compelling. Lew
I agree, Lew. I was gripped by Stacey’s story and the telling of it.
Well, I do enjoy writing, lol…
What a saga, Stacey. I feel your pain. When I was passionately involved with my MM, I thought it was a completely unique experience in the annals of adultery, and it happened only because we were true soul mates and destined to be with one another. HAH! I also found out after it was over, that he’d had affairs with other women before and after me. Still, no regrets. It was amazing, at the time.
I probably wouldn’t have regretted any of it, either, had it not involved losing a long-time friend. That’s the part that stung.
Losing friends is a really bad wound. That takes a lot of time to heal.
My last relationship, which was an off-on thing for 6 or so years is one that’s laced with regret.
The main one is that, after breaking up with her the first time, I’d get back into it with her when she’d beg me to do so. Classic co-dependent behavior. And, the thing is that the main reason for the first breakup (very critical of me) was the reason I should never have gone back:
Actually, the true regret is not that I went back to her time and again (think Putty and Elaine from “Seinfeld” only not funny); it’s the opportunity cost (i.e. not being able to be open to another, more appropriate woman).
I can relate, Lew. It took me 5 times to break up with one of my great loves.
Sometimes the “security” of what is known seems more attractive than the scariness of what is unknown.
I regret my most recent — and fortunately, very short-lived — relationship. I didn’t really want to go out with him, but it had been so long since I’d been out with anybody that I went. He turned out to be a bit of a creep with his own creative definitions of honesty. Even though I emerged unscathed, just angry, I wish I hadn’t been talked into going out with him.
Creepy is definitely not good. But I understand wanting to get something going with someone when it has been awhile. I’ve done that many times.
Trusting a gut instinct is hard, especially when it’s been awhile and you just want to get out there again.
I regret every every second time around relationship. Getting back together with someone and breaking up again, especially if you got hurt the first go round, is torturous blend of heart ache, humiliation and self-recrimination. I’m not talking about taking a month or two to evaluate the situation or deal with issues unrelated to the relationship. Separations can sting but they can also be quite beneficial to one or both or you. After a full-on break up, though, going back is going backwards every time.
I second that one. This is from someone who went back 6X, I’m embarrassed to say.
I’ve been compelled and felled by lust. It’s so hard to break loose. And sometimes, it just has to run its course.
Sage advise about separations and break ups. I make it a firm boundary with myself that I don’t recycle ex boyfriends after full break ups.
I’ve recycled a few times. NEVER works.
I’ve been in love two, maybe three times. And I regret all of them. Each of the three (which occurred over a period of twelve years…so there was space in between each) ended negatively (there are so few truly amicable breakups). And each of those negative experiences left me more hardened, jaded and hopeless than the girl I once was. Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? I think not. I envy some of my friends who have never truly loved, but also never truly has their hearts broken. I think they are softer, more open people for it.
I’ve been in love three times, but the only one I regret is the married man, because I really should have known better. I don’t have any regrets about the other two times at all, though. They were learning experiences.
Talk it out with a trusted friend. Get the anger, hurt and bitterness out of your system. It doesn’t have to destroy you. Eventually, hope can return, and you’ll be able to move on.
Exercising helps too. I’m a big believer in the power of endorphins.
I appreciate your honesty, Allison. But the fact that you survived, and are here sharing, is evidence to me that you’re not jaded or hopeless. Sometimes all we get from bad experiences is knowing that we can keep going another day.
Allison, I am with you. I was in love only once with my now ex-husband, and the pain he caused me is definitely not worth what I thought were happy times (I have learned since that it was all a lie on his part–you should never someone just to settle for someone because you don’t think you can do better. I KNOW that is why he married me. I can’t even have the luxury of looking back at good times and memories because they are tainted with the knowledge that what we had was all a fraud. Having also been cheated on by my ex, I can tell you, that having any sort of relationship with a married man is not and never will be an option for me. Only pain can come of that for all parties concerned. But the worst part is, when you confront the one who cheats and they still lie to your face…I wish I had never met my ex. And I will be happy if I never meet or love anyone again. To be honest, I don’t think I can. Because I have lost the ability to trust, and if you can’t trust anyone, you can’t build a relationship, period.
From my experience, part of rebuilding trust with someone else is first building the trust in yourself, to know that you can survive hurt and go on.
When I was a young man, I had an affair with a married woman. It was the most passionate experience of my life. I was ass-over-tea-kettle in love. But I would say that for every minute of joy there was a day of misery. Do I regret it? I “something” it, but I don’t know if regret is the right word. I have never spent any time wishing it never happened. Given the particular person I was at the time, I don’t know if I could have chosen differently. However, after many years of reflection and hindsight, I do think it was a dangerous and foolish choice. Committing adultery is like not like playing with matches in a tinderbox. It is like playing with a roaring fire in a munitions shed – there are any number of ways it can spectacularly blow up. Careers can be ruined, relationships ruined, not to mention that being shot by a jealous spouse can’t be ruled out. I was lucky that I got through my affair relatively unscathed (apart from 2 years of misery and landing in the hospital after being sick for a week and passing out, which I fully attribute to the stress of the situation). Yes, there were moments of rapture, but it was a lousy bargain. I wonder now why I chose to get into a dangerous relationship with an unavailable woman. I wish that I had been wise enough at the time to pour all of that emotional energy instead into exploring the answer to that questions and maybe searching for a woman I could have had a legitimate, healthy, satisfying relationship with. I am sorry for the role that I played in the betrayal of her husband and the damage to their relationship. I suppose regret is as good a word as any.
I was also young at the time, and no one could’ve talked me out of mine. I was so certain to be living out some sort of destiny. As I see it now, it’s a part of life. Making mistakes and hopefully doing it better the next time. But RS, I appreciate your point of view.
I regret having a relationship with a guy who had recently ended a 3-year relationship. When we met, I didn’t know that he had just moved out. They weren’t married but they had a son together. I guess throughout his relationship, he remained a good partner and father but they had $$$ issues. So when we got together, he started hanging out with his friends again which i didn’t mind in the beginning. However, it came to the point that I only see him during the week because we live together. He plans vacation with them, etc. I gave him several chances to somehow fit me into his life but it never happened. I became a filler to his schedule. The problem is, it’s always booked for his boys.
If I could take it all back, I would. Now, I’m trying my best to move on.
What’s the relationship status now, Meg?
I’m single, Wendy.