My husband has 3 sons. We have been married 25 years this September. I went to work for/with my husband and four months later he sat me down after work (I thought he was going to fire me :-) and told me he had feelings for me. He was not the first married boss who had hit on me but was the first honest and mature man I respected who had.

What you want is important but there is a larger element to this too; how mature you are and what sort of man you are/wish to become and what sort of women your wife and girlfriend are. I "dated"/lived with my husband for five years while he was working on getting a divorce (his wife was not helpful, called social services in the beginning asking them to "make" him come back to her) and saw up front and personally how he treated his wife, his mother, my mother and myself. He "passed" on all levels. His wife and I are friends now, she will be driving here from out of town next weekend for our annual Mother's Day barbecue. His sons and I are friends. All of us went on vacation together last summer. His grandchildren are my grandchildren.

It is not primarily about whether you think you will/will not be lonely in your old age -- what you want -- but about what sort of man you want to be/grow into being as you grow older. Only you can decide/know that. It could be that neither of these women are a good partner for you. Someone wanting to be with you, looking "hurt" on your marriage day is not necessarily a good way to judge a potential partner? I have the feeling you married your children's mother just because she wanted that or you thought you "should", etc. Commitment takes more than just feelings and while other people's feelings are good information about that person, we should not be making our life decisions based on other people's feelings but on our own.

My husband married his first wife because she was pregnant with their first child, he was graduating college, had gotten a job, and, overall, thought it was what he should do "next" (graduate, get a job, get married, have children, etc.). He arranged it all, they were married in the Catholic Church though she was not Catholic (and he has said if he could have done it over again he would have done that differently). When she got pregnant, my husband's first wife quit her job, just assuming my husband would marry her though he had not asked yet. My husband went and talked to her parents, his parents, his priest, etc. and everyone counseled that he did not "have" to marry her and probably should not, it was not a good basis on which to start a marriage. Almost 20 years later, what happened?

There is no shame in things not working out, in learning and growing as one ages. But the trick is, one wants to learn and grow, not just "feel" while one is living and continue to act on one's wants or feelings or ideas of what one "should" do. Obviously my husband, a married man with 3 children "should not" have taken up with me, another woman (nor I, with him). However, my husband now had a better perspective, was a mature, older man, and knew who he was and what he wanted and was better able to relate to the people in his life, as himself (instead of he-who-should-do-X).