How do I know when to give up???

Gosh, where do I start? I've been reading the posts and I know what is right and wrong but when do I give up on my YM and know that it is over.
This is my soul mate, we have everything in common, our interests, our likes and dislikes, and we didn't have to change a thing. what we didn't have in common, we both tried out just to make our relationship stronger.
I did not want to marry again until my son, 12 years old at that time, was out of school. I homeschool and this was important to me not to interrupt his education and my YM understood.
That was 2 years ago and now I don't know. I am 46 and he is 34. From the start it has been one obstacle after another and we have conquered them all until now.
Both of us were in terrible marriages, him in his second one with someone 4 years his junior and me in one for 24 years with someone 8 yrs older. My marriage was all but over and lawyers had already been contacted.
Then my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and suddenly I felt I needed to stay around and help him deal with it. The prognosis was not good, and now he is in remission, and I hate every moment that I am here with him but I know need to stay here for my son's dad.
Now all of a suddent my YM's first wife, that he had a son with is in the picture, and I am afraid I am going to lose him to her.
She does not know about me and my husband does not know about him. All the secrets are coming back to haunt me and now all of our plans no longer seem to mean anything to him.
I know that I should be happy for him if he can reconcile with the mother of his child, but I ache so much.
You all will tell me that it will work out if it is meant to be and give him some space and time. If he goes back to her, then he wasn't worth my time anyway. What kind of time frame do I have to wait for?? When should i give up and move on?? A week, a month, longer tell me how long until I know he is not coming back.

You all will tell me that it will work out if it is meant to be and give him some space and time. If he goes back to her, then he wasn't worth my time anyway. What kind of time frame do I have to wait for?? When should i give up and move on?? A week, a month, longer tell me how long until I know he is not coming back.

Mmunchkin,


It sounds like you basically have two husbands right now, and one is saying "No, honey, I have to move on now." There are cultures where you can have two husbands, but I don't think the USA is one of them. :D

How much time do you think the younger guy should give you to wrap things up?

5 months? One year? Two years?

What would you like to hear him say?

Okay . . . clarification please . . . is this YM married or not? You never said whether he ended his marriage.

How long has he been waiting for you? Unless I misunderstood, he has been waiting for you for a long time and now you are wanting to put time constraints on him???

Actually, this is a relationship that should never have gotten off the ground in the first place. It might be prudent for you to be free of marriage and available before beginning a relationship and make sure the person you are interested in for a relationship is also available. Then a lot of these types of problems can be avoided, ya think?:(

Okay . . . clarification please . . . is this YM married or not? You never said whether he ended his marriage.

How long has he been waiting for you? Unless I misunderstood, he has been waiting for you for a long time and now you are wanting to put time constraints on him???

Actually, this is a relationship that should never have gotten off the ground in the first place. It might be prudent for you to be free of marriage and available before beginning a relationship...

This is a tough one, Peachy.

What if she really can't stand her legal husband... BUT she doesn't want to abandon him after he's got cancer and he needs her emotional support.

Now she has to do a juggling act:

1) Provide solace to a cancer survivor... BUT

2) Find emotional and sexual intimacy elsewhere


I'm not saying this is a great thing. It's wrong. Clearly Mmunchkin is bothered by it too.

But isn't it better than just completely abandoning her husband as he copes with the aftermath of cancer? Basically a "lesser of two evils" situation is what it sounds like to me.

Does that make sense?

Many marriages are over before they are legally over. I agree with Harrison. Munchkin, I think that you should talk to your YM. Is he dead set about going back to his ex-wife? What hope does he give you?
You have to be triple strong, caring for a sick person, going through emotional turmoil, plus mom to teenager.
Best of luck and strenght to support you during this trying period.

...My marriage was all but over and lawyers had already been contacted.
Then my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and suddenly I felt I needed to stay around and help him deal with it. The prognosis was not good, and now he is in remission, and I hate every moment that I am here with him but I know need to stay here for my son's dad.

...

When should i give up and move on?? A week, a month, longer tell me how long until I know he is not coming back.

I think you know that the time has come to let your YM go but you are hoping that he has made the decision for you. You made what I think is an admirable decision to stay with your husband through his illness and it sounds like your YM waited for you through that time, but then you made a decision to stay with your husband, so the time to let go of your YM is now. If your son is your first concern, he deserves a Mom and Dad that are in a true marriage, and that isn't going to happen as long as your YM is in the picture.

I can't urge you enough to put your YM out of your mind and deal with your marriage; if necessary, deal with your divorce, but give your current relationship and your son your full attention right now.

I wish you the best in this difficult time.

Well, it doesn't look like your issues you are dealing with are age gap related, but I'll give you my thoughts.

I think you are wanting to pin down a timeline on when you should just let go. But how many people can actually ever do that? I don't think you're going to be able to know just when to let go. You'll do it when it feels right to you.

While I have a great amount of respect for Peachy and her stance, I don't happen to agree that it's good to talk now about what you shoulda done in the past before this all began. There's nothing you can do about it now.

You didn't mention why he is considering going back to his wife. Is he considering it because of feelings he still has for her? Or has he said it's because he is tired of waiting for you?

I am unclear why you are still with your husband if he is now in remission and you had intended on divorcing prior to this. Are you worried what others may think if you divorce him now?

My YM was not married when I met him and my husband ( 53 yrs) and I were separated for several months. My life was moving on and we were just waiting for he legal stuff to be over, when he was diagnosed with the cancer.
Originally he was given 18-24 months to live and this was 14 months ago. He has been in remission for 3 months now.
I don't expect for someone to wait forever and never felt this was an issue. There were never any time frames involved with this relationship because neither one of us were looking to get involved.
As far as the age difference, I originally had a problem with it and I guess that's where my insecurities are coming from now. But I know this is the person that I need to spend the rest of my life with...When I think about life without him it hurts so deep that its hard for me to even type these words.
Through all of it he has been there to support me and now to think of loosing him is unbearable. I can feel it fading and I guess I needed you guys to tell me what I already knew, if it is meant to be then it will be.
I have a feeling I'm going to need this website a lot in the next weeks and its great to be able to get other people involved to see so many sides of a situation.

I'm confused... he wasn't married when you met him, but he's married now? Or he wasn't married when you met and still isn't... he was married and divorced all before you met him?

He is not married and hasn't been the whole time I have known him. He had been married twice both times to women younger than him. Now his first wife is free and using their son to spend more time with him so old feelings that he had before are coming up.
He told me he was very much in love with her when she left him in '2000'. They had been married for 5 years and when she got pregnant with their son, she left him. This always had hurt him so deeply that he decided to get a vasectomy so he wouldn't have anymore children.
His second wife left him in 2004 when she got pregnant with someone else's child.

Gotcha! Thanks. I don't know why I was having such a problem following the timeline before, but that really cleared it up for me.

Hang in there. This can be a great place to be heard.

How did you find a way to be close when you were still married and your YM was single? Did you have to sneak around? Maybe he wants a relationship in which he doesn't have to do that. Does your husband know about the YM? Maybe he feels you are just waiting for him to die and would be just as well off if you left now. Your YM may still love his first wife, if so, you have to let him go and be a father to his child. You can still homeschool your son and be there for your husband during his illness. You will probably feel better about yourself if you stay. The thought of losing both of them has to be terrible for you emotionally. My husband died last year. I had been seeing a YM during the last few months of our 27 year marriage. He knew about it. I don't think I will ever forgive myself for hurting my husband in the last year of his life. So whatever I say comes from that point of view. You truly do have a hard decision, but you probably have to go with what your YM decides. I feel so bad for you in this delima.

Fritts, the original poster mentioned that she was already separated and the papers were filed when she met her YM who was single at that time. Somehow because the situation is complex, everyone seems to assume there was a whole lot of cheating going on.

Before she and her husband actually divorced, he was diagnosed with what looked like terminal cancer. And may well yet be. So she did the noble thing and stayed with him to help him through this because he is the father of her child.

She had already decided this marriage did not work, and apparently the husband agreed, too. His illness changed the direction of things. Naturally, original poster did not want to tell her dying, almost ex-husband, that she has someone she wants to be with. Instead of being a comfort to him, it would make him feel like she was eager for him to pass on or be healthy enough to go through the divorce.

And since her divorce has stalled, and the YM's first wife is free, and the YM and his first wife have a child together, he is spending time with her. He loved her once very much. This is hard for original poster as she wants a life with YM someday, but feels she is losing him while she is doing the right thing by her child's father.

She need a lot of support through a turbulent time made even harder by the illness of her still husband, the normal turmoil of divorce and the thought that the man she loves may move on from her.

What if she really can't stand her legal husband... BUT she doesn't want to abandon him after he's got cancer and he needs her emotional support.

Now she has to do a juggling act:

1) Provide solace to a cancer survivor... BUT

2) Find emotional and sexual intimacy elsewhere


I'm not saying this is a great thing. It's wrong. Clearly Mmunchkin is bothered by it too.

But isn't it better than just completely abandoning her husband as he copes with the aftermath of cancer? Basically a "lesser of two evils" situation is what it sounds like to me. Does that make sense?

If she was already planning to divorce her husband, why should him being diagnosed with cancer change that? Who says she has to stay MARRIED to him in order to BE THERE for him? If the marriage was already over, couldn't she have just gone through with the divorce as planned and gotten on with her personal life while being there for her (ex) husband AS A FRIEND? Unless his being diagnosed caused her to realize that she was still in love with him and wanted to continue to be married to him, I don't see how this changes things...

Okay, now that some of the details have been clarified:

My original post, Harrison, was advice for future relationships. Not the current one . . .that is water under the bridge for this one.

First of all, if I had been separated from my husband and the divorce was pending and he had been diagnosed with a terminal disease, I would have finalized the divorce and still been able to assist him and give moral support through the cancer treatment. But the marriage ties would have been severed and I would have been free to pursue other relationships. You have stated that your relationship with the YM is secret. If you didn't feel you were wrong in that relationship, why the secret part? That part I have a problem with.

Your YM has waited for you through all this, but even if that were not the case -- what if you had severed the marriage ties, and married the YM? If he was very much in love with the first wife, and she was the one who left him, he might still be pulled toward her if she is showing a renewed interest in him. Then you might be the one who was being cheated on.

What a mess this has become.

I say this all the time and I'm going to say it now. We might not be in a place in our lives that we want to be and we may not like where we are, but we are all right where we are supposed to be. Everything we do and everything that happens to us is a learning experience.

Joe and I have been living together for 3 years and I would miss him terribly if he were gone. But if his ex-wife wanted to give it another try and he was still in love with her, I would not try to talk him out of that. He has a child with her. And I certainly would not try to sway love. I would always feel that he was staying with me out of some kind of duress or duty and I would never want that. I want him because he wants me and gives himself to me freely and exclusively.

As far as a timeline, I don't do those. I don't think you can. People will say, I'm going to give him until {insert timeframe here} and then I'm moving on. Well, if you do move on and he comes back to you in a year, two years, are you going to say "Sorry, you had your chance." ?? That might be a mistake . . . you might be passing up a great opportunity at a wonderful relationship. You have to give a person the time and space and freedom to make their choices. And for some, that takes longer than others. This doesn't mean that I am going to put my life on hold while I wait for someone to make a decision. I would make it clear to them that I am going to continue to move forward with my life too.

My advice to you is this: Get your divorce if you are not in love with your husband. Start a new life with your child. Tell your YM that he needs to do some serious soul searching and decide what direction he is going to take. Be there as a friend for him during this time, but do not allow him to come to you for booty calls. Tell him, if he decides to be with you, that you are not going to be second fiddle to any other woman and you want him to make certain you are the one he wants to spend time with if he is to be with you. But you want him to sort out his feelings about this first wife first. You don't want to be put in a situation where you are with him and he is thinking about her.

Listen to the old Randy Travis song "One the Other Hand" . . . . I never, ever want to be the wife in that song and I really don't think any woman would.

Good luck in whatever decisions you make. :)

But I know this is the person that I need to spend the rest of my life withWhen does the "rest of your life" start?

If I felt that way, here is what I would do. Quit LIVING with the husband. You do not have to tell your husband everything, but develop a life outside of your ill husband.

Focus on giving your YM the love and ATTENTION that he deserves. Then see if the TWO of you can spend time with your YM's child. Get busy or life will pass you by. Good luck! :)

First of all, if I had been separated from my husband and the divorce was pending and he had been diagnosed with a terminal disease, I would have finalized the divorce and still been able to assist him and give moral support through the cancer treatment. But the marriage ties would have been severed and I would have been free to pursue other relationships.

My advice to you is this: Get your divorce if you are not in love with your husband.

Right on, Peachy! That's what I was trying to say too....

Right, what worries me is that no-one knows what the husband was actually thinking. No-one knows how fragile he is, at this point in his life, having fought off what sounds like was originally thought to be 'terminal' cancer.

I've never been through a divorce, but I know people who have, and even if you WANT it to be over, it doesn't mean it is easy to go through anyway. Perhaps, when one of the parties has a life-threatening condition, it isn't the best thing to be putting them through.

I don't know what you can do about your YM, other than let him know how you feel and let him decide what he is going to do.

Wow!!
So many answers and all of them correct. Of course no one knows my situation like I do but I look at all the point of views from everyone and they all hit home.
I have been visiting this forum for over a year now because of the age difference and it helped me realize that 12 years is no big deal compared to some of you guys.
I never felt I needed to join or post until now because I felt that our love could withstand anything, and we could work through all that was thrown our way.
As far as sneaking around, we were intimate before I moved back in with my husband and son but have not been since. My YM told me that he could wait indefinitly if I promised him forever someday.
My husband is a very sick man we have not been intimate for years and I am not in love with him nor was I ever and he knows that. I can not leave him to face this disease alone. After 24 years of marriage there is some feelings whether there is love or not.
I just needed to get so much off my chest to make room for the decisions I need to make. Now with me posting here and the out-pouring of responses from everyone, this has allowed me to see what needs to be done.

mmunchkin,
I'm glad that you feel you have gotten support and a sense of resolve from posting about your relationship.

Honey, frankly, I believe that you are doing the good and noble thing staying with your husband through his illness, albeit not the "easy" or "self-serving" thing. I think your decision will serve to build a great sense of self respect for you, and that is an outcome that is immeasurably positive. To be honest, if I were the one with terminal cancer, and my husband of 20+ years decided to leave me then for a younger woman (or just leave me period), it would probably kill me. And I'm pretty sure that that reverse scenario may gain different responses here from women who would think the husbnd should stay and 'be a man' during his wife's tragic illness.

You are a stronger woman that I, munchkin....you have my respect for sure. I would suggest that you need to make provision for your emotional needs in some form however. I know what it feels like to be losing the man you are convinced is your soul-match...I'm sorry you have to go through that:( .

Is there any way to be honest with your husband...tell him about your ym (that your emotional attachement, etc started when you and hb were separated, and you grew to love him)..but that you have decided to stick by your hb throughout his illness because of the care you still have for him. Could you talk about divorcing but not abandoning him .... being there for him as a devoted friend? Or, do you think that the truth right now would only jeopardize his health more? I can tell from you posts and apparent noble character that you wouldn't be able to live with yourself if your decision/divulging the truth harmed his progress in any way.

I do think that reagardless....if your hb is in remission for 2+ years of more/ stable, and you still do not love him, etc. you should divorce and move on.

What a tough situation. Come here as much as you need to to vent.
I wish you peace in whichever direction you choose to walk from here.
Karen

To be honest, if I were the one with terminal cancer, and my husband of 20+ years decided to leave me then for a younger woman (or just leave me period), it would probably kill me. And I'm pretty sure that that reverse scenario may gain different responses here from women who would think the husbnd should stay and 'be a man' during his wife's tragic illness.

I might agree with this paragraph if she had decided to leave him after the diagnosis of the illness. But, they were already separated and in the process of a divorce. I do believe that lends a different slant on the issue.

I am well familiar with colon cancer as I have a family history of this disease having lost my grandmother, one uncle and my mother to it. (It is one of the cancers determined to be genetic.) And yes, I have been having all of the appropriate testing on a regular basis since I was 40.

I was not aware, however, that they ever referred to colon cancer as being in remission. I do know that, depending on how early it is caught and whether it has spread to lymph nodes, people have lived as long as 20 years after the surgery to remove a portion of the colon. My mother lived 8 years and that was even after it had spread to two lymph nodes before the initial surgery and then after the surgery, it metastisized twice (once to the liver and once to the abdomen).

So if the OP is resolved in staying with the husband because of the disease, she could be in for a long haul depending on several factors.

Like I said before, if I were already in divorce mode and committed to a divorce, I would have continued on to finalize it and still been able to offer my support and care for him during his illness. Who knows . . . depending on the nature of this man, he could play on her sympathies for a long, long time.

My husband's prognosis is stage 4 it had spread to 6 nodes, his stomach lining and his appendix. The doctors said 18-24 months and the remission means he had no signs of cancer 3 months after his surgery and chemo.
This diagnosis was an important factor in my decision to move back in with him. If his prognosis would not have been so grave, I would have given him the support he needed, and still went on with the divorce and went on with my life.
I know that I am making the right decision and I will give it a time frame. I am sure I will need to post often here to help me through all of this, but everybody's attention has made this decision easy.
I came here not knowing what to do as far as my YM was concerned and I know now that this is just another bump in the road and this will either make us stronger or will destroy us all together.
My love for him is undeniably real, and I know that my soul and my heart will hurt for a long time.

Special K:
Your post is the only one that made me cry. I could feel the sincerity of your words and the hurt still in your heart for your other YM.
If you have came through with such strength then I am sure I will manage just fine.
Hopefully my relationship with my YM will not end and all will be fine but I guess only time will tell and I am so much stronger now then I was yesterday.

Hi mmunchkin,

I guess you've probably weighed up a lot of the issues which only you understand completely in making your decision to stay in the `bad' marriage.

The only thought I would like to add is that if the marriage is a bad one as you say, then maybe all the tension is no good for him either? Cancer is serious illness and there are many schools of thought regarding it's cause....but emotional problems...particularly repressed anger... do often crop up as related to cancer. I guess it depends on what you believe.

Because i do not know much about your husband's emotional makeup its hard to say whether leaving the marriage (but staying on hand as a friend ) would be emotionally healthier for him or not.

If he has major abandonment issues...yep, i agree it would be very bad to leave. But if he's in a constant state of unexpressed anxiety because he senses your love for someone else and that you hate being around him, it might be feeding the disease.

Its just a thought.