Emotional affairs vs. "appropriate" friendships with the opposite sex

[SlaveToRighteousness]

That was really beautiful to read. I'm impressed by your dedication to your wife and the efforts you've made to secure your relationship with her. You have my respect.

Thanks, Kaybee. It is very helpful to try to live my life by evaluating all of my decisions in relation to what they mean for my marriage. If some action that I could take would be harmful to my marriage, then I shouldn't take that action.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

I'm around anytime you need someone to skip rocks at rationalizations.

It's a lot easier to identify rationalizations in retrospect than it is when you are using them in the present. I guess that's partly why it's useful to consult with other people, who can see things that you can't see yourself.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

It's amazing how sometimes just the right person comes along and we learn the lesson we need to learn from them.

So true. This has also been a case of something that could have been used for evil turning into something that was ultimately used for good.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

The building I live in contains 8 units, one of which is occupied by YW. Over the past year, 4 of the units have changed occupants and are now occupied by other attractive young women (some with male partners), such that 5 of the other 7 units in my building are now occupied by attractive young women. Today I met the newest member of that group, who moved in just a few days ago. She is the first woman to live on the same floor as my wife and I. (All of the previous occupants on our floor have been males).

I have had a few chats here and there with the other women over the past year, and have been encouraged to observe that (unlike with YW) I haven't found myself wanting to be friends with any of them, despite the fact that I enjoy their company and they seem like "good" people. I don't try to find ways to run into them around the building, I don't try to have long conversations if we happen to run into each other, and I don't spend any time thinking about them. This is a huge change from what happened with YW when I met her 5+ years ago.

Going back to the title of the thread, I can see that when I was a PMO addict I was incapable of having "appropriate" friendships with the opposite sex. If I was attracted to the woman, then the friendship would be tainted by my attraction; if I wasn?t attracted to the woman, then I probably wasn?t interested in being friends in the first place.

I think that I am now at a point in my post-addict journey where I could have an appropriate friendship with a woman, though I?m not in any hurry to find such a woman to be friends with. In the case of YW, the fact that I might have been able to have had an appropriate friendship with her if we were meeting now for the first time does not necessarily mean that I can have an appropriate friendship with her now. My PMO addiction (and associated fantasy life) already tainted our relationship, probably beyond repair.

 

[LTE]

It probably is best to avoid YW because you could be drawn back into an unhealthy interest.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

It probably is best to avoid YW because you could be drawn back into an unhealthy interest.

Yeah, I have been making every effort to avoid running into her for some time now. We passed on the sidewalk the other day and I just said "Hey" and kept going. I think I could probably handle her now, but I say that more as an observation of progress than as an excuse to try to reconnect with her. There's no need to put my resolve to the test.

 

[LTE]

Don't test it. You might be surprised by how strongly those old obsessions can act. I speak from experience.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

Don't test it. You might be surprised by how strongly those old obsessions can act. I speak from experience.

Thanks for the wise advise. While I don't think it's good for us to identify ourselves as "addicts" for the rest of our lives, I also don't think we should consider ourselves immune to falling back into addiction if we choose to start down the path that led to addiction in the first place.

 

[LTE]

Don't test it. You might be surprised by how strongly those old obsessions can act. I speak from experience.

Thanks for the wise advise. While I don't think it's good for us to identify ourselves as "addicts" for the rest of our lives, I also don't think we should consider ourselves immune to falling back into addiction if we choose to start down the path that led to addiction in the first place.

In this particular case I would consider this a lifetime addiction, just to that one person. Many years ago, I had a very destructive crush on a young woman. It tormented me for years and cause no small amount of emotional anguish. Nearly twenty years later, I had occasion to visit members of her family that were friends. While I had not even the slightest thought of the young woman I noticed a picture of her on the wall and was astounded the degree to which it bothered me. I had broken the infatuation over a decade earlier and had no conscious feelings for her, but seeing a picture took me back in time over twenty years and I found myself facing feelings I hadn't felt in many, many years.

I think it comes down to "ruts" in the neural maps of the brain. Even though that combination of neurons hadn't fired together in a long time, they linked up quickly and I found myself reliving something I had long since consciously disposed of. In this case, reason prevailed and I wasn't sidetracked by this old infatuation, but it was still a shocking turn of events.

I believe you to be a good guy, but you are still only human and I'd hate to see you stumble, even if only for a moment.

 

[SO Reboot Partner]

Learning to play the piano has a long term affect on attention and memory.
http://www.healthnwellnessblog.com/learning-piano-effects-brain.html

For anyone like me, I learned to play the piano by repetitive scales and practice, practice, practice. I'm no prodigy - it required some learning. Years later, I can sit down and play some ragtime without much thought.

While music is the most often sited activity for physical brain changes and skill development correlation studies, one has to question if all repetitive brain activity has the same lasting impact, the same brain wrinkling just in different areas, what Lte calls a "rut".

 

[LTE]

While music is the most often sited activity for physical brain changes and skill development correlation studies, one has to question if all repetitive brain activity has the same lasting impact, the same brain wrinkling just in different areas, what Lte calls a "rut".

I'm certain that the corollary exists into all sort of area. Music is one of the fastest moving activities that humans engage in. It requires years of preparation in order to be able to play a complex at passage at speed. It involves development of procedural memory, IE, practicing scales, before it can be accomplished. Skilled musicians can develop new procedural memories quickly because they've developed a procedural memory for developing procedural memories.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

Interesting thoughts. I've played the piano all of my life.

One of the things about the situation with YW that is kind of messed up and that doesn?t help me at all is that YW lives directly above me, and I can hear her whenever she moves around in her apartment or when she talks on the phone. (I can?t hear what she is saying, but I can hear when she is talking). This means that there are multiple occasions each day when my brain is activated to think about her when I was otherwise minding my own business and thinking about something else. (It?s pretty much impossible not to think about someone when you can hear them moving or talking).

A guy stayed at her apartment last night, and is still there this morning. To my knowledge, this has only happened a few times in the 5+ years we?ve been neighbors. I have no idea who the guy is. He might be a friend, a relative, or a lover. This is the kind of thing that Old Me would have obsessed over. He would have been extremely jealous and would have done everything in his power to try to figure out who the guy was. He also would have been triggered to PMO as a way of making himself feel better. 

I can?t say that New Me feels no jealousy or curiosity whatsoever, but New Me realizes that it is absolutely none of my business who the guy is or what he and YW have been doing together. New Me also believes that any sexual activity that YW might be engaging in is not something that I am ?missing out on?, and also not something that is likely to make YW or her male partners any better off. On the contrary, it?s much more likely to do harm than good.

My wife and I would like to move to a different place sometime in the not-too-distant future, and there?s also a chance that YW will move within the next year. I am looking forward to that kind of change, as it will be easier to avoid thinking about her once I can no longer hear or see her.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

In this particular case I would consider this a lifetime addiction, just to that one person.

I think it's accurate to say that I have been addicted to particular people in my life, including YW. To some extent, the addiction is not to the person but rather to the idealized version of the person that I construct in my head.

 

[knowledge is power]

Dear STR,

I just want to say I respect you for you insight and logical thinking on this whole matter.  You are being true to yourself and your wife as well as your young woman friend. Much respect and I'm sure you'll continue on the right path.

 

[LTE]

In this particular case I would consider this a lifetime addiction, just to that one person.

I think it's accurate to say that I have been addicted to particular people in my life, including YW. To some extent, the addiction is not to the person but rather to the idealized version of the person that I construct in my head.

That's what makes her addictive.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

Dear STR,

I just want to say I respect you for you insight and logical thinking on this whole matter.  You are being true to yourself and your wife as well as your young woman friend. Much respect and I'm sure you'll continue on the right path.

Thanks a lot for your message. There hasn't been anything fun about this whole experience, but I have learned a lot and I know how to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. One thing that I have learned is that I have brought a lot of unnecessary pain upon myself by allowing myself to become emotionally connected to someone that I should not have been emotionally connected to. There was no "happy" way for this to end, but at least I won't put myself in the same position again.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

That's what makes her addictive.

Yeah. I've also been thinking about George Collins' phrase "You can never get enough of what won't satisfy you". I could never get enough of YW, and after spending time with her I always found myself wanting to see her again as soon as possible.

 

[LTE]

Dear STR,

I just want to say I respect you for you insight and logical thinking on this whole matter.  You are being true to yourself and your wife as well as your young woman friend. Much respect and I'm sure you'll continue on the right path.

Thanks a lot for your message. There hasn't been anything fun about this whole experience, but I have learned a lot and I know how to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. One thing that I have learned is that I have brought a lot of unnecessary pain upon myself by allowing myself to become emotionally connected to someone that I should not have been emotionally connected to. There was no "happy" way for this to end, but at least I won't put myself in the same position again.

I found that the posts by SORP and other partners of sex addicts help me to keep perspective about the huge impact this problem has on lives, not just our own, but the lives of anyone that cares about us. It's a strong incentive to keep me on the straight and narrow.

 

[SlaveToRighteousness]

I found that the posts by SORP and other partners of sex addicts help me to keep perspective about the huge impact this problem has on lives, not just our own, but the lives of anyone that cares about us. It's a strong incentive to keep me on the straight and narrow.

My Dad has been married 8 times, and his divorce from my Mom had a huge (negative) impact on my life. I vowed at a very young age that I would never get divorced, but it took me a while to recognize that the nature of my relationship with YW was a threat to my marriage. Not so much in the sense that we were going to have an affair, but in the sense that I was prioritizing YW over my wife.

 

[LTE]

I found that the posts by SORP and other partners of sex addicts help me to keep perspective about the huge impact this problem has on lives, not just our own, but the lives of anyone that cares about us. It's a strong incentive to keep me on the straight and narrow.

My Dad has been married 8 times, and his divorce from my Mom had a huge (negative) impact on my life. I vowed at a very young age that I would never get divorced, but it took me a while to recognize that the nature of my relationship with YW was a threat to my marriage. Not so much in the sense that we were going to have an affair, but in the sense that I was prioritizing YW over my wife.

Your father's marital history must've had a profound effect upon your perceptions.