am i over analyzing or am i right?

I really need some advice...I am in love with and involved with a married woman...she initiated the relationship...are first date was supposed to be harmless then one thing led to another and we slept together...we both have very strong feelings for each other and as time goes on we become very close friends and share everything with each other and her 3 kids adore me and I them...she says that she is no longer in love with her marriage but still has feeling for her husband in spite of all his wrong doings...she also tells me that i am amazing and super sweet and do a lot of things so much better then him..like being there for her and her kids and giving her emotional support and being a great listener...so i asked if thats the case why am I on the outside looking in she said cause its very hard to start over after 10 years and even though she believes every word i say and promise i make it will take time because not only does she have a hard time trusting men but she keeps focusing on the fact that i am 25 and she 37...recently i had a death in my family that had a big impact on me and due to that and all my other stress i had to go to the er for high blood pressure...i takes meds for it and have a family history of it...she thought it was her fault and was gonna leave me thinking it was to much on me and she also feels guilty in spite of her husbands actions for cheating on him...we talked it out and she decided to stay...however since then she doesnt call me her young love anymore or other terms of affection like she did in the beginning when i ask her why she simply says she is tired or just not in the mood...i dont get that but ok..she calls and txt me everyday except on weekends cause thats when the husband is off and when i dont hear from her i worry and over analyze everything and because of our work schedules and her kids and trying to get away from the husband we are spending less and less time together over the last couple weeks...i dont know if this means im losing her or what..and just to be clear not only am i very much in love with her i want to spend the rest of my life with her and grow old with her and in doing so i will have to sacrifice my chance to have children of my own and possibly make my family mad...but i dont care aside from the poems i send her its like the 2 songs we listen to together go everything i do i do it for you by bryan adams and amazed by lonestar...she is my world my everything..what i need to find out is am i losing her and if not what can i do to show her that i want to be with her and will always be here and how do i cope or get through the waiting process without driving myself crazy all the time wondering what does this mean and what does that mean and why havent i heard from her today and why wont she say how she feels ?

If you don't want the truth, don't read any further.

This "relationship" was dead in the water as soon as an affair began. You are the other man, you will always be the other man, and nothing more. Not once in the post do you mention her uttering the word DIVORCE. She has no intention of leaving - she practically admitted it. She doesn't respect you, she doesn't respect her children, her husband, and in all probability doesn't respect herself either.

At 25 you're willing to throw your life away for an adulteress (you by no means are innocent, either) whose trust you would undoubtedly begin to question down the road, because if she can do it to her husband of ten years and father of her children, she most definitely will do it to you.

She will end it if you don't. Hopefully you can gain some insight by seeing the errors of your ways. Think about her husband and her kids who she parades around in front of you.

Do yourself a favor and stop seeing this woman. Give yourself some time to get over her and then find a nice young single woman your own age and take it nice and slow. You deserve your own, committed relationship. That woman and her husband made vows to each other -- step out of their relationship and give them a chance to reconnect.

when you are the "other person" you are almost like a toy in a box waiting to be taken out to play with. you don't experience all of the aspects of a relationship -- the bills, the day to day things that go on at home....it's just the clandestine meetings....

Don't throw your life away on this woman - you are young - it will hurt and then you will heal and be better for it - this may sound harsh, but just think about what she's doing when she's home with her husband....who she told you she still has feelings for....does she kiss him hello when she comes home? Does she sleep in the same bed as him? Do they ever sleep together? Are you the first person she's ever done this with? And all the while you are home by yourself, with health problems, and she can't even be there for you....How can you trust one thing that comes out of her mouth when she is lying on a daily basis...

i'm sorry to be the reality check but it sounds like others are on the same page - things like this never work out well.

Like the others have said ~ I have a feeling she's realizing that this is wrong, and she's putting an end to it. You can NEVER win when you're dealing with a married woman. You're talking about breaking up the family, for heavens sakes!!! That means taking the children's father away!! Or perhaps she won't even get CUSTODY -- so that would mean taking the childrens MOTHER away!!!

These type relationships cause so much PAIN in so many people! It's not just you and her and the spouse. It's many many people that you affect! It's just not worth it!! Especially when you have kids in the picture.

She's obviously going thru some sort of crisis right now -- she's how old? She 37? She's probably having some mid-life crisis type thing going on ~ she doesn't want to get old, so she picks on someone alot younger than herself to try to stay young. It just doesn't work. Soon she's "wake up" and find that she's STILL twelve years older than you ~ and that doesn't hold up well when you get down the line some years ahead.

You'd be smart to just get out of this now. She doesn't "love" you in the real sense of the word. She's just in love with love. Her marriage got stale, so she went out looking for something exciting and she found it in you. It just won't last ~ those fireworks will go out, and so will you. You will become just as boring as her marriage did. The problem is with HER. She needs a therapist. And you can't be it.

Get out of this, and don't break up a family - PLEASE. Those kids don't deserve a broken family just because of lust. Peace, Lee

Everybody else has already said it... and they're right. If this woman can cheat on her husband with you, even introduce his children to her lover, how could you ever trust her not to cheat on you? You say her children are fond of you... think how messed up those poor kids will be if they have any inkling who you are to their Mum. She's a very self centred, cruel individual, to play not only with the emotions of two men, you and her husband, but also with her own children's peace of mind. I know you're in love, but she's not. She wants somebody to validate her, to love her, but she doesn't seem to know how to return love. As a mother myself I'm just gobsmacked that she could parade her lover to her children like that, and feel no shame. And you only have her word for her husband's bad behaviour. If he's so bad, why does she stay with him? Do you want to be her little toy boy for the rest of your life? For her to take you out to play when it's convenient for her? What sort of a life would that be? Sneaking around, feeling more and more worthless every day that she manipulated and used you.

You're not someone else's convenient sex toy. Don't do that to yourself. As it happens, she's very unlikely to keep you hanging round for long... she got bored with her husband, now she's getting bored with you. Believe it or not, you're lucky. This woman is bad news. A bad wife, a bad mother, a cruel lover. You can do an awful lot better.

The kids are not his...all 3 from a previous marriage.

Dude!!

I gotta add my name to the growing list of people that are telling you that you have no "relationship" with this married woman... I'm afraid that if I really told you what I think of what you are doing I certainly wouldn't be as nice as these others have been...

...messing with another guys wife... Put it back in your pants and keep it there!

Nowhere else to turn, the fact that the three children aren't his does not in any way excuse her parading them to yet another lover. She's done this before! What happened to the father of her children?

I thought, when I responded to your post, that you would either never reply at all, or come out with a kneejerk defense reaction. You see, I'm a grown woman, I've seen this kind of crap before. And your response, in it's big bright letters, stating that all three kids are from a previous marriage, completely reveals how desperately messed up this whole thing is. You say they are fond of you? Well, I'm sure when she first "presented" them to her current husband they were fond of him. For the love of God, and I mean that literally, not as some fuzzy generic comment... for the love of GOD, however, or whomever you consider Him to be, how on earth can you carry on with this? She's a serial adulteress! She's abusing her children by constantly presenting them with new "Dad."

A stepfather isn't someone inconsequential in a kids life, he's the man who supplanted their natural dad. The poor child tries to make sense of this... and then, in this case, a new man supplants the stepfather. How can these poor kids ever figure out who on earth to love?

Can you really be this stupid and blind?

I guarantee you, even if she did hang on to you for a while, even if she left her current rent payer (sorry I meant husband) within five years she'd be playing you for the same kind of fool. She's playing you for a fool now. The only reason you don't realise it is because you're thinking with the wrong head.

You were in the right place at the right time. You were her fantasy, her escape, from her marriage. You asked if you were losing her, buddy, you never had her.

You have no right to date a married woman. You have no right to inflict pain upon those children. You have self-esteem issues that you need to deal with. Do you really feel like you can't do better than a married woman?

This path you have chosen will only lead to destruction for all. If I were her husband and found out about you I would hunt you down. I hope you reconsider what you are doing. Love and lust are two totally different things.

... I will be very surprised if NWETT85 shows his face here again... Poor guy... Nothing like walking into a hornets nest full of some very incensed people... Ouch!

Oh well, I wish him well and hope that he gets it all figured out one day... soon...

It isn't like I've never done anything that I wish I could take back... A "DO OVER!!!!!"

I related to this post, but as a woman who's been attracted to other (and younger) guys that I wasn't married to. So I feel the condemnations of the adulteress (what a word BTW! What is this, Bible study? Let's form a circle and stone her?) is a bit harsh.

From your original post, we don't know much about this woman, except that she made a mistake, and seems to be pulling away from that mistake. She sounds like she still cares about you.

I don't think she sounds like a remorseless monster. I think she's been unhappy in her marriage, found what seemed to be a way out, and then lost the courage to make a real change in her situation in order to be with you. Unfortunately, you're becoming a casualty.

I agree with most advice here to extricate yourself from the relationship (as she's doing) and mourn it. And it sounds just incredibly painful. It will hurt for a long time! Good luck, and I know it's a cliche - but try to learn from this.

Also - another truism, but what does the relationship say about you? Why were you so intensely attracted to an older, essentially unavailable woman? Are you also emotionally unavailable? At first blush it would seem a young guy like you should have your pick of women closer to your own age and status. I'm not judging you at all. These are questions I've had to ask myself in my own struggles with just these kinds of dead-end crushes.

Anyway, like everyone else is saying, you deserve better!

While not speaking about the actions of the OP, we also do have to remember that PC is a site in which we give support to each other, especially treating each other as fellow human beings who all suffer and who all may stray or who all may not completely go the same path we follow.

Not saying I agree with the OP's ideas, all I am saying is that we do have to show some compassion and humanity towards others.

While we may not agree with what he is doing--there are kids involved, lets please to try to make it a more contentious and gentler approach/reproach.

We are all human, after all, no matter what kind of mistakes we make

That's even worse; she's done this before. Both her husbands probably believed her when she said "I do" to:

"[Wife’s name], do you take [Groom’s Name] to be your wedded husband to live together in marriage? Do you promise to love, comfort, honor and keep him for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful only to him so long as you both shall live?"

She's not a faithful woman; she hasn't been faithful to the other men, why do you think she would be to you? It does not sound to me, that at 25, you have had very much experience with women or know yourself very well that you would allow yourself to get in this mess and be trying to make a silk purse out of it anyway.

I agree with DocClyde. I feel for the OP. I'm in a relationship with a married man, however, they separated a year ago. After hearing from him the reason for not leaving a very terrible marriage that was based on lies, I've actually been so disillusioned with the whole institution of marriage. I believe 50% (this is a real statistic, btw,) of people these days DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT get marriage for the right reasons. It is very sad that the 37 year old appears to be less mature than the 25 year old. NWETT85, I wish I could find someone like you. Even though I like my boyfriend, I feel so tangled in his spider web mainly because his past with his wife continues to affect me...... believe it or not, you are very strong for getting involved in this situation.....deep down.....I think you know you will come through even stronger. I could never ever deal with being with my boyfriend if he was going back home to his wife. This is hard enough already!! ANd he even wants a divorce, but the funds are simply not there. It should be more expensive to MARRY rather than divorce. Most people in this world are not blessed with entering into a perfect relationship. Mainly, I believe most relationships we have throughout life are MEANT to be learning experiences. Sucks to go through life experiencing much heartache over lost love, but despite my current experience, I also believe that TRUE and REAL love cannot be lost. If it seems that way, maybe the love you thought was there was just an illusion. I wish you peace.

Also like to add..........Why, if the two people within the marriage do not respect their own marriage, are we as outsiders expected to live up to their vows, and respect their marriage for them? What the....? If either of married party respected their very own marriage and followed their very own vows, there would be no problem.........it's THEIR responsibility to protect the union, not the outsider's. The 3rd party has responsibilty to himself only, for he is not the one who joined himself with another in "holy" matrimony. He is only the outsider, and must look out for the single person that he is. The OP got mixed up the wrong person.

My honest opinion - your relationship with her has nowhere to go but down. You can chose to end it now or you can drag it out until you are no longer fun for her and she ends it. I don't see any other options.

End it with her and look for a woman who is emotionally available.

When I was 18, I had an affair with a married woman with a baby son, she was three years older. At first it was the most intense emotional and sexual thing I had ever experienced. I became convinced she was 'the one' and gave up college to get a job to be able to support her. I thought that was what she wanted. I never actually asked her...
After a few months, it became plain that she was not the person I imagined and vice versa. That was not her fault, she did not deceive me, I just filtered my view of her to fit in with what I wanted her to be.
She finally dumped me that winter, telling me she was being 'cruel to be kind'. I have come to realize over the years that she was totally right to do so and was much more mature than I.

It sounds possible that your lover is gradually cooling off and creating distance between you, and that may be the beginning of the end of your relationship.

I can understand how you have become so attached to her and how hurt you must be at her change of heart. It can be hard to believe at such times, but you will find someone else. The stage you are in now may hurt terribly, but it will pass and you will move on and learn to love again - maybe with someone who can build with you a family of your own.
I wish you well.

In my original post to this young man I overlooked his need for advice and imposed MY morals onto him. In hindsight this was wrong. I don't agree with people having affairs, but I also need to remember that my morals, values and beliefs are unique to me.

I hope the OP finds some clarity in this situation and closure. We all make mistakes and hopefully learn from them.