When You Fall In Love With a Married Man

It isn't ever planned or well thought out, but women can and do fall in love with married men on a fairly regular basis. It is by no means an easy situation, and like it or not, someone is going to get hurt, that's just par for the course.

Do women go out with the intent to find themselves a married person to fall in love with? Of course not. Attraction, destiny, soul mate connections, current life circumstances, physical attraction, discontent with current relationship, they are all ingredients in the recipe for an affair.

Being the other woman requires you to take a step back and take a cold, hard, analytical look at the realities of your situation. There will be serious limitations and you should consider them thoroughly before embarking on an affair or continuing your affair with a married man.

It is entirely possible that someday he may leave his wife, however, you live in the present, not the future, and you have no guarantees that his marriage will end.

What you can expect when engaged in this type of relationships are a lot of spontaneous changes in your ability to see each other. Expect last minute rendezvous at the drop of a hat, but also expect that even your best laid plans are subject to last minute cancellations.

Expect to be spending all major holidays alone. He will be in the company of his family, which does include his wife and not with you. Unless you are well socialized, you can expect to be very lonely during these times.

You will need to keep your relationship discreet. You will be unable to share details of your relationship with friends and family as you would in a normal relationship. This can begin to have an isolating effect on you. You will never get to know his parents, his siblings, his children or his circle of friends unless he gets a divorce in the future, which again, is not where you are now. That part of his life will be compartmentalized away from you, where it is entirely possible that he is fully integrated into your life, creating a major imbalance.

You will truly be living in the shadow of his life.

The married male who is seeking companionship outside of his primary relationship, (his marriage), may be a male who has absolutely no intention of divorcing his wife. It is possible that he does project himself into a divorce, however, he may have reasons that lead him to believe that the timing of a divorce is just not right for him at present.

The question you must ask yourself is, what kind of a relationship to you really want?

Has he ever stated to you that he is getting divorced? How much time are you willing to invest in waiting to see if he will end his marriage and move forward into a relationship with you? You need to be realistic, these situations can and do drag on for years. Set a time limit in your mind as to how long you are willing to wait on the sidelines keeping your own life on hold and stick to it.

Do you want a relationship that you don't have to hide? Do you want to be able to go out in public together without fear of discovery? Do you want to be able to introduce your partner to your friends and family and spend holidays and special occasions together? If these are things necessary to your happiness, you must take them into account when deciding whether to continue your affair or not.

Are you realistic in your expectations of how his current wife and any children he may have would react were your affair to be discovered? It is highly likely to be very unpleasant.

If you feel that you just cannot let go of your married partner and are willing to suffer through this uncomfortable situation, there are ways for you to cope.

Try to regain some balance in this totally unbalanced situation. Don't be ready to see him each and every time he can slip away because he suddenly is available unexpectedly. Although you may be tempted to take advantage of sharing that special, limited time with him, you will not allow this to occur as it shows him that he is your number one priority, although you are not his primary concern.

Never forget that these types of relationship contain high levels of romance and drama just by their very nature, whether real or imagined, this is so. Grand gestures and excessive professions of love are not unusual in these affairs. Why? Because he well knows that you are in a precarious position by being involved in him and he has to make it seem worth your while. Don't take everything he says at face value. Married men who have girlfriends lie. This is a cold hard fact. There is no way for him to maintain two honest and open relationships in this situation (unless he is part of an open marriage agreement, which is rare). If he is lying to his spouse, do not think for even one second that he is not lying to you as well.

The biggest and most common lie that married men who cheat utilize is that they no longer are sexually active with their wives. Many will even claim to have separate sleeping quarters, Don't believe that lie even for one fleeting second. If he is still married to her and they are still living under the same roof and she has no idea that your relationship exists, he is still sleeping in the same bed with her.

With that in mind, the biggest mistake a woman in this position makes is being exclusive to the married male in question. Until he files for divorce, a woman in this predicament would be wise to continue to date single and available men concurrently. The best remedy is to walk away from the married man and tell him to look you up after his divorce, but if you simply can't, don't limit yourself to being his woman on the side, continue to investigate other relationship options. If you can't bring yourself to do so, you are going to be very lonely at times.

Exercise caution in sharing information about your affair. People love scandal and gossip, and a secret is only a secret when only one person knows about it. Many, even close friends, will judge you harshly for dating a married man, so be extremely cautious about whom you discuss your situation with.

Set a definitive time limit for your affair.

Unless you want to spend decades as the other woman, as Katherine Hepburn did, only to have the married man you love die married to his wife, bring up the discussion of divorce early on in your affair.

If he does not give you an explicit time frame, you should leave him, this indicates he truly has no intention of divorcing.

If he informs you that he is waiting for his children to finish high school, seriously consider their current ages, if they are still very young, walk away. If you were to continue your involvement with him throughout their primary, middle school and high school education, what motivation would he have to leave his marriage if you were still with him?

In all of this, you must also ponder how he speaks of his current wife.

Are his references to her respectful and honest and definitive of why he no longer feels he wants to be married to her? If this is the case, he respects women and is probably being honest about how the marriage went wrong.

If, on the other hand, he runs her down and blames the failure of the marriage solely on her you need to be extremely careful. This may make you temporarily feel secure because it convinces you that he is no longer in love with his wife, but, consider that someday you may be in her shoes and would you like to hear him speak of you in that manner?

Remember, these relationships are full of drama and deception, he has to keep you feeling like your stifled relationship is worth it, and he will lie to do so.

It is a volatile and potentially painful situation you are in. You could very likely have your heart broken. He may stay married permanently. It does happen. Remember Katherine Hepburn. You could potentially spend years in the shadows of his life loving him and hoping for change only to find, in the end, all of your love was in vain.

It is best to avoid the situation altogether if possible, but if you find yourself in this predicament, you are not alone. There are situations like these that do work out, contrary to popular conjecture, each situation is unique, but you must assess the emotional risks you are undertaking and be realistic about them if at all possible.