I've been seeing a married man for 6 months now. Initially it got very intense quickly and we both agreed we wanted to be together. I finished my 7 yr relationship ( I have no ties) he went cold turkey (son aged 12!)We lost contact for a while but now it has started up again but he insists as friends. We have more contact now than ever, sharing things on the phone etc. He freely admits he is very unhappy, said he knows he will be happiest with me but can't leave for the sake of his son and said he can't understand men who do leave their child. 

Men do value their children very highly, if they leave their children they will probably look back in future years and think I should have been their for my children.  That child has not grown up with a dad and will be affected by that, that child may go on to have an unhappy life as a result and an unhappy marriage themselves.  These are the sort of thoughts that go through a guys head when it comes to splitting up with their wife, when there are children involved.  A guy would not usually tell a woman any of this, because guys are taught that being overly sensitive is a sign of weakness, and guys believe they should be able to sort out their own problems by themselves.
 

He is in a relatively sexless marriage and yet he chose for us to no longer have sex either because if he thought of us as an affair then he 'can't handle it' but as 'friends' means we can have more contact???

He sounds like the more sensitive, sensible kind of bloke (almost religious) that doesn't like to do something morally wrong and feels guilty about it if he does do something wrong.  He will also feel guilty by the fact that he feels he is keeping you tagging along, without being able to make a decision about you.

I said fine but I would always have a ray of hope that things would change - he said he too has this hope! What does he mean? I said that by being friends surely this will bring us closer than a quick romp in the hay so to speak. he looked as if to say 'well yeah'.

You probably confused him with that line, although it sounds like a pretty clear phrase, he probably thinks there is some hidden meaning in what you are saying, but he has no idea of what that hidden meaning is.  Are you hinting that you think it was a quick sexual fling? Are you placing too much hope that the relationship will progress further?  It's the sort of phrase that a man has absolutely no response to, it's a conversation stopper. 

Sam, do men that say they will never leave their child really mean it or can they change their mind?

They can change their mind, it just seems that at the moment being with his child is the better option.  If his wife was to make it totally, totally unbearable for him, then he would eventually think I have to move on because being with my wife is affecting his health and may even affect his child's health by being round an unhappy situation. 

Is it just an excuse?

In a way it is an excuse, but really it's a genuine excuse, because he will value his child far more than a woman he has only seen for 6 months. The child is something he has created and been around for whatever age the child is.

Is he trying to build firmer foundations in our relationship to re-assess in the future?

It is very important to a man to make sure that any relationship he moves into is fully assessed to be better than his current one and with a fairly good guarantee that it is going to last.  You don't just leave a child and a wife for someone that may only last for a few months, you need a firmer idea that the other person is right for you first. 

What is in this 'friendship' for him?

The friendship gives him a chance to release his emotions about his current wife, not necessarily directly to you but the ability to get away from her and enjoy time with someone else.  At the moment being with his wife is probably a negative time, men don't like negative things, being with you brings more positive things and that is a form of escapism for him.

He says he never wants to lose contact. We get on so easily and it feels like a natural fit and i can envisage us together and so can he. Is he building up to having the courage or will he stay in his marriage for many yrs to come?

It sounds to me that he either has moral barriers to overcome or his marriage is not quite bad enough at the moment to convince him to be with someone else.  For some guys there has to be a slow transitional move out of a marriage, where the steps are planned accurately and slowly, to give him and the others involved time to adapt.  I can't answer whether he will stay in his marriage for years to come. It sounds from what you have said that he has been unhappy for a long time and there is no sex anymore which to me sounds as though there is unlikely to be a long lasting marriage there.  So I would say there is a good chance he will get out of his marriage but I could never guarantee that's what will happen.

I just wanted to add, after reading statistics that unhappy marriages can be saved, that this man was unhappy by yr 2 (14 yrs now) but was told to 'work at it' by his parents who i think has had a strong influence. I think they are a miss-match from what i know so how can that ever be put right?

You have put your finger on one of the moral situations he is in.  His parents have been with him for life, they were with him long before he got married, if they want him to give it a go, that's a big pressure on his moral judgement.  His parents are probably more important to him now than his wife because of this breakdown and so he won't want to disappoint them.  To dissapoint them he would be leaving his child and their grandchild, leaving his wife, breaking up his marriage and setting up with a new woman.  That's too much to go through his head and too much to put his parents through.

Marriages are under an immense amount of pressure in recent decades.  I won't go too much into what my thoughts are the reasons marriages are under pressure.  But here is the most likely resolvable situation in a marriage.

Women and men think in different ways.  Women don't understand how men think, men don't understand how women think.  This results in confrontations and if couples don't have the ability to communicate effectively they get caught in a circle of fighting. Where both people constantly have a go at each other without the real reasons for their disagreements actually being communicated effectively.  One person goes on the offensive, the other person goes on the defensive, then the other person bites back and then the opposite person goes on the defensive and it just ends up in a circle of arguments, where nothing gets sorted out.  This results in both people ending up having low self esteem which in turn makes it even less likely that the problems can get sorted out.  Eventually people get so fed up with the unhappiness caused by these arguments that the best way to make themselves happy is to get out of the marriage and find someone else.  These sort of problems can be sorted out with counselling or by one of the two people coming to their senses and sorting out this situation.  So these people might be part of the statistics you are talking about.

Reply by joss 01.12.07

Sam we had a huge blow out on the phone the other day or rather i did and i had even sent a message with his home number on (small threat) but he didnt even question it.

Big mistake!  Threaten to blackmail a man and he will want to avoid you as much as possible from then on.  Basically what goes through his mind, is she chooses to blackmail me now, imagine what she would be like if we were in a long term relationship.  If she does that once, she's likely to do it again.  The only way he would ever see you again is if the relationship was just about sex, not as a long term relationship prospect.

 said he knew i wouldnt do that and he's right. I hardly see this man - he lives away and yet even with the threat that i do now have his home phone number and i said that i had rung it just to say wrong number - i was daring myself, he still doesnt want to stop the contact - which is infrequent.

It can't be any significant relationship if the contact is infrequent.

i asked him how he felt about me he said he knows how he would if he let himself go. I asked does he ever think that we will ever be together - long pause - I dont know.

Long pause followed by neutral answer: Translation, no.

But I want to avoid confrontation by Yes or No.  Yes being a lie, no being something you wouldn't want to hear.

It was all re his son again so i asked will that ever change - no answer. He said he should of got out of the marriage before a child came on the scene but didnt have the balls because he was told to work at it. (at least he is consistent with his story!). Sam, we have had so many blow outs and this should have been the last straw but it wasnt. I said i wasnt going to end it because that would make it easy for him and he didnt want to end it but did suggest no contact till next yr to see if we still wanted to see each other. but i mentioned we have done that before and it lasted nearly three months but still it started up again so he saw there was no point in trying that one.

Exactly you have tried loads of times before, so you are just going to go through the same thing over and over again.  It might start off well again, but in reality you weren't meant for each other, so why not just give up, move on and find someone else.

Sam, this isnt a full blown affair nor is it much of a friendship and when you think about ending it you think well what is there to end and yet there seems to be something there between us. I took a leap of faith and told him that i did see us together in the future and asked him did he think i was in love with him, he said he thought i probably was so i said i must be, (never said stuff like that before)I also painted the picture of us starting our own family. He said he hates the thought of being a part time dad and has seen it happening to friends but i mentioned he was not them and shouldnt compare.

He is saying to you "He hates the thought of being a part time dad", that means he is very unlikely to ever get with you in a long term relationship. 

Sam I am so confused, there was probably a lot more said and i am remembering the bits i want too, may be there was a message of lets leave it but i never heard it.

Relationships shouldn't be confusing.  For a relationship to work, both people should be devoted to it and at roughly the same stage in the relationship.  He is at a stage where he doesn't want to commit to you or it sounds any relationship.  You are at a stage where you want him to commit to your relationship.  It shouldn't be confusing anymore, there is no long term relationship potential now and I doubt there will be any if you try again and again next year.

The only thing we could agee on was that if i was feeling angry or hurt then to text saying please call so that we could talk and i asked him to call me when he felt he wanted to rather than stopping himself because it was the right thing to do. It's like this - if he said ok no more contact i know that he wouldnt mean it so it wouldnt stand up and vice versa so you have to just keep plodding on. he said he doesnt want to string me along so why not end it but end what?

He doesn't want to ditch you, when most men have had enough of a woman they like the woman to ditch them.  The only time men don't like being ditched by a woman is if he really fancies her, in that case he would be putting forward the positive things about your relationship, not the negative things.  Negative things are there to sabotage the relationship and make you realise it's not working and therefore to push you towards ditching him.  He may get the urge to have sex with you again in the future, he may even miss you and want to get back together, but the truth is there sounds like no long term relationship potential there.  The longer you let it drag on, the more you are going to spoil your prospects of getting with another man.  You need to be going out there and looking for another man. 

he was in the area and we didnt see each other it was all on the phone - he's not up again till next yr! He did offer to come round but strangely i didnt want him too! Why was that?

There was more chance of him getting some sex and making you calm down if he came round.

He said his work isnt real life nor is his home life. I said he seems to have so many layers and that only i know the real him at the core of it and that Sam is how i do really feel. He says i make so much sense so it wasnt as if he thought i was talking nonsense.I am going to be strong and try not to think about him but when he calls or if, how should i be?

I think your best option here is to completely ignore him from now on, that is really important to you, otherwise you are just going to constantly get into a bad situation again and again.  What you need to do is go out there and find another man, even if it's just a man to help you forget about this man (a rebound).   That will then help you to move on and see past this stage in your life and realise there is more guys out there than this one guy, who is quite frankly messing you around.

Yeah lifes great and I'm dating or i'm ok and still thinking about him? Why is he so straight on thinking that staying at home is what he must do although he did verify its also what he wants. I asked if the son ever saw mum and dad cuddling up on the sofa etc - it was a clear no!  Why think this is a good environment?

Maybe it's because he wants to make sure he is always there for his son and wants access to his son, maybe it's because there is still something in his relationship with his wife and he's been feeding you lies, but really he's weighed up a relationship with you and doesn't see that as a better situation than staying with his wife and son. 

sometimes they argue infront of him but as a child you are very aware of any atmosphere. When we were at our best earlier in the year he did tell his wife he wasnt happy etc and she was quick to get the son in on the conversation - it was decided to give themselves six months of openness and honesty but that is up at the end of the year and there will be no reevaluation on either party so to speak. They have sex every few months!

That's why he wants sex with you.

How can men live like that? What do i need to do sam if i want to keep this going - i'm thinking for another six months then thats it.

In my opinion it's time for you to realise your relationship with him is not going to work.  He is not devoted enough to you, to contemplate spending any significant time with you and certainly wouldn't think of having a long term relationship with you.  It's easier said than done, but you need to move on and find a better option than him. 

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