“I Fell for Someone Else Weeks Before My Wedding”
When I told my friends, they couldn’t believe my luck (!). Although I consider myself to be fairly good looking, Ally is beautiful. The problem was (and is) that I didn’t find her sexy. There was no chemistry. But because she is pretty, she is a lovely person, and we have a lot in common, and because my friends told me I’d be crazy not to, I gave it a shot. Long story short, we got on well (and still do) and started dating. Before long, we moved in together and were engaged three years ago. Although the chemistry never really materialzed, we had an OK sex life and all other aspects of our relationship were pretty good.
Shortly before our engagement, I started working more closely with a colleague a few years younger (Anna). Anna is very good-looking, and, although she was also engaged, there was immediate chemistry. She is sexy and funny, and as we have gotten to know each other, I realize Anna and I have more in common than Ally and I do. I’ve spent quite a lot of time with Anna on sales visits, and I feel like I know her better than most of my friends.
I kept these feelings to myself for a long time and so did Anna. Unfortunately, a month before my wedding, we went on a sales trip and ended up getting drunk together in the evening. I found out she had the same feelings for me and we kissed. Nothing else happened that night, and we didn’t speak about it too much. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it even though I was due to be married in four weeks. I didn’t say anything to Ally and we went through with the wedding, having a great day with our friends and family.
After our honeymoon, I returned to the office (and Anna). The feelings I had before returned and she confessed she hadn’t stopped thinking about me. We had several international sales visits lined up, and not long after being back, we slept together on one of these. This was really the beginning of an affair, and as well as seeing each other at work, we were constantly messaging each other on the evenings and weekends, and meeting up where we could.
It is now seven months since Anna and I have been seeing each other, and she has just ended it with her fiancé. She wants me to leave Ally and start a new life with her, or she is going to end what we have. I can’t bear the thought of it ending, but leaving Ally will absolutely destroy her, as well as causing tremendous pain to both our families. I can’t fault Ally as a person – she is incredibly kind, caring, and thoughtful, and she has done literally nothing wrong. She is also quite fragile, and ending it will undoubtedly cause irreversible damage.
What should I do? I could stay with Ally, let Anna go, and try my best to make my relatively new marriage work.
Or I could gamble on someone who might be better for me, perhaps even my soulmate. But in doing so, hurt someone I do still love and who only nine months ago I promised to love and protect forever…
Please help me. — Should I Gamble?
If you really loved Ally and wanted to protect her, you wouldn’t have married her knowing you weren’t sexually attracted to her and that you had feelings for someone else. You were selfish and you were cowardly. And now all of you — you, Anna, and especially Ally will pay a far bigger price than if you’d been honest months ago BEFORE your wedding and before starting your affair.
You think you have a choice — you presented your options as if they are equal, worthy of weighing on a scale to determine which has better cost benefits. The truth is, you don’t have a choice. You stay with Ally and you and she will be unhappy for as long as your marriage lasts. The cancer that has developed in your relationship, which she may have already noticed the symptoms of, will only continue growing, the cells multiplying, and will create a resentment between the two of you that will never go away.
The best way you can “protect” your wife from a life of unhappiness, betrayal, and lies is to be honest now and let her go. Whether or not you “gamble on someone who might be better for you,” is irrelevant, honestly. Your feelings for Anna aren’t related to your feelings for Ally, except that it took the adoration of another woman for you to admit your dissatisfaction with the relationship you were about to commit yourself to. Nothing you say indicates Anna is the right match for you (maybe she is, maybe she isn’t); but everything you’ve said indicates that Ally is not. And that is what you should focus on right now — finally being honest with yourself and with her about this sad truth and about the heartbreaking mistake you made to pursue a lifelong commitment with someone you were never really in love with. Yes, it will be incredibly painful for Ally. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t know. Living a lie with you would be far more painful in the long run, and you owe it to her to spare her that fate and give her the chance to be happy with someone else or on her own. You are not so amazing that you leaving her is going to destroy her forever – get over yourself.
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
You need to end the marriage even though it’ll be tough on all of you except the side piece it must be done . Make it as painless as possible split things right down the middle, and hopefully Allie finds the man that really deserves her.
Let’s cut to the chase: you are a complete jerk (and a coward) and will likely be a lying, cheating partner for your entire life. I hope your poor wife figures this out before she wastes any more time on you.
Why do I suspect you’re a narcissist? You really come off as one. You sound incredibly self centred, egocentric and full of yourself. Yes this will be painful for your wife, but she won’t be destroyed forever. She will be way better off without you and eventually will come to see that. You can’t stay married to someone you aren’t really into and she deserves to know that you don’t think it is working for you and that you have had an affair. Frankly, she deserves better than you, and this new woman probably does too. What feels exciting and like chemistry is probably the result of doing something you shouldn’t be doing, the excitement of cheating and being taboo rather than actual chemistry. It doesn’t matter if she is or isn’t the real deal. Talking about “should you gamble” on this new shiny version or stick with the tried and true is disgusting. These aren’t objects or possessions or items to accessorize you and enhance you, they are human beings worthy of respect and care. If you have any respect AT ALL for your wife, you will be honest and leave her, split all your assets and go your separate ways. Stop treating her like shit ant stop being a self centered asshole.
Definitely. It sounds like he married her because she was popular and it made people envy him to have her. She was nothing but a trophy to him.
Selfish and cowardly is right. Why would you go on with a wedding and marriage if you knew you didn’t feel that strongly for Ally? Tell Ally the truth and accept the consequences that follow, because this is the mess you caused by not being honest in the first place. My guess is that once you are truly free, Anna’s attraction to you will go away and you’ll be without either woman. And really, could you or Anna trust a relationship with each other that started under lies and deception? As they say, if they will cheat with you, they’ll cheat on you. I truly hope Ally finds someone who will be faithful and honest with her someday.
You need to talk to a therapist about why you self-sabotage every aspect of your personal and professional life. And then you need to leave poor Ally alone so she can find someone who values her for more than the status she reflects to their friends. Especially if she hopes to have a family — you won’t destroy her but admitting all your lies, but she will need a few years to rebuild, so let her get a head start on that before you selfishly take that option away from her, too.
I hope both of them dump you, to be honest. You used Ally as free labor and a placeholder because you lacked courage to just be alone until you find the one you truly want.
Ally deserves so much better in a spouse than you. Please, for your wife’s sake, suck it up like a buttercup, admit that YATA, and divorce her. And find a new job, one that is far away from Anna. She sounds incredibly toxic and horrible as well, and actually, the two of you sounds perfect for each other so maybe keep the job and stay with Anna, but set Ally free. She shouldn’t have to deal with your shady bullshit any longer than she already has. I hope you lose every single one of your friends to Ally in the divorce.
I have a bit of a different take. I think some men enter into a marriage when they find someone who checks all the boxes and who they have a lot of time invested with but they dont really listen their heart. These marriages are endured but not enjoyed. He needs to walk away and give her everything, not half, because he will break her heart and the sooner the better before children come along. Out of respect, he should minimize a public relationship with a new partner or move to a new state or city. This will be hard for the wife but it frees her up as a young beautiful woman to find a long happy marriage with a man who absolutely adores her which she deserves.
I did this. Now, I was 21 not 32, and the man was my high school and college sweetheart, only my second boyfriend. We married because he was great on paper, our families expected it after college, he was my best frend and he asked? Even though at the time that I vaguely knew he wasn’t the person for me, there wasn’t a lot of passion (to be fair i wasn’t really aware that there was chemistry that felt different, I’d only been with him) and the life he wanted wasn’t the one I envisioned. What did i know right i was 21. I wanted out 2 years in after having met more people in the world, including a man i actually did feel chemisty with. I confessed the affair and said i wanted out (not to be with the other guy, he was just a symptom of what was wrong), but he insisted we couldn’t do that to our families. We took vows. We went to counseling, had 3 children, were married 15 years and in the end i just couldn’t do it. I ultimately left him just to be free at age 36.
Do i feel like we should have never gotten married? Yes (although i dont regret my children). I felt awful for leaving in the end. I should have just disappointed everyone in 2001 but I was too young and frankly afraid of disappointing people.
Letter writer needs to man up and disappoint people before children are involved and it gets more complicated. She’ll get over it lol. No woman wants to be with someone who would pick them out of obligation.
Ally didn’t consent to being in a marriage with someone that is physically and emotionally intimate with someone else. Doing so behind her back takes away her agency to make informed decisions about her own life. It’s as if you just married her as a prize and cheating shows a lack of value or respect. She deserves to be with someone that fully chooses her and you are wasting her years by being dishonest.