Are you me? I’ve been with my MM for 9 years as well, have known him for 30+ years since childhood. We tell each other we love each other, have also been on trips together with his kids, he’s spent some nights with me for my birthday last year, and he has a key to my apartment. I also spend a lot of time with his grown ass kids—they are 16 and 22. The kids still live with them. His 22 yo knows about us and accepts me and loves me as well. She has even told me I am “family” to her. MM has told me I am family. SO knows about us, and has made it clear that she is not leaving and they are never separating. I guess knowing that someone else can sexually satisfy him is not a deal breaker as long as he goes home to her.
His SO is his long term partner of over 20 years, they are not legally married although they refer to each other as “husband” and “wife.” She works a low paying job while he has taken years off of work to finish his Masters program. They live in poverty. He has to do all the cooking, cleaning, driving his SO and kids everywhere, and anything else that deals with the kids. She seems to think because she is the only one who works, everything else is his job. I have to step in sometimes and remind MM that his kids are lacking in hygiene. They need to be told that the pits smell like nasty onions, their breath smells like rotten teeth and need to be brushed, flossed etc., and their hair needs to be washed not be an oily mess. I don’t understand how their mother can send her children out into the world like that.
I haven’t really asked why MM stays. He left for me once in the beginning of our affair 9 years ago, but at the time I myself was freshly divorced and not ready for another relationship. After 1 week, I told him he had to go back to her. His kids were smaller at the time too, so I know he had to be there for his kids. But now after 9 years, I’m not sure he’ll ever leave. And I don’t want to ever be married again. His kids will probably leave the nest in 3-4 years, and maybe that’s when he will leave her because then why else would he stay? He said they are in a dead bedroom and I’m his only source for sex. I can believe it because SO is not attractive at all. When I compare myself to his SO, I make 6-figures, I am slim and often called “an exotic beauty” and have been told by my friends that I have a heart of gold. His SO is really fat, very plain and homely looking, has a receding hair line, thin hair, thin lips, broken crooked nose, and a loud cackling voice. He tells me all the time I have nothing to be jealous of. But I’m jealous of the commitment he gives her and the fact that he goes home to someone else. I don’t have children of my own, so I always go home to an empty apartment.
But yet, I can’t help but wonder if I also send MM home happy so she can reap the benefits. The adultery board denies it and one person said something to the effects of “you can’t improve intimacy through the deceit of an affair.”
We have had our share of terrible arguments. He is still sweet to her, calls her pet names, they took a vacation together (the same place me and MM went although their vacation was the longer version and she got to meet his family there), I saw them at an event holding hands and he was cutting up her food, and he has gone back to sleeping in the same bed as her occasionally. When SO and I were both sick with Covid, he tended to her needs and didn’t even offer me a single cough drop or tissue. Luckily I had my friends at my beck and call. That is the one thing that really broke my heart and made me question this lifestyle. Because when he and his family were all sick w/covid, I bought enough meds, soup, food, tissues, etc. for his whole family. I was just left to fend for myself.
Yet here I am. Still going on with him. I was recently diagnosed with a chronic medical condition and he has stepped up and is researching dietary and lifestyle changes for me, helps me meal prep, asks to go to my appointments with me so he can exchange ideas with the doctor. He still continues to help me with work advice, business issues, car issues, house issues, etc. I think I am in it to win it as well. I’ve already been doing this for 9 years. What is 3-4 more years? I do have the option to date a single man in the meantime.