I'm in love with a married man!

Love can happen at anytime, anyplace with anyone...right? You decide.

Ask Lynn: Advice on love
By Lynn Harris

Help me, Lynn!
I have been dating a married man. He is the person that I have been looking for my whole life. I can talk to him about anything and in return he tells me everything. I hear about all his problems at home. He is a truck driver, so he’s on the road and I get to see him every couple weeks. One evening, when I had way too much to drink, I decided to tell him about my very strong feelings for him. He wanted to know why. I have a very hard time expressing feelings and couldn’t spit it out. He told me that what I was describing sounded like friendship, but I feel so much more. He thinks that since I didn’t have a “good” reason that it must be infatuation and I will eventually “get over it.” It breaks my heart that he doesn’t understand how I feel. I’ve never felt anything like this for anyone. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had boyfriends and thought that I was in love, but it was nothing like this. I think of this man as my best friend, my confidant. He makes me feel sexy and pretty. I enjoy spending time with him. Relations in the bedroom are some of the best that I have ever had, but even if that wasn’t part of our relationship, I would feel the same way about him. My problem is, how do I express how I feel? Last night he told me that he loves me and I swear that I saw stars.
– Helpless in Love

Dear Helpless,
This is not the answer you want to hear, but I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong question. It’s not “How do I express how I feel?” It’s “How do I get in the express lane out of this dead end?” I hate to be harsh, but I’m afraid I need to shine some high beams on reality here. This man is not the person you “have been looking for.” He is married. He is a person who cheats on his wife. He never sees her, and he still makes time for you. (I know you are flattered, but put yourself in her shoes.) He plays dumb about not getting how you feel — you’ll “get over it?” What was that about? — and then plays head games with you by using the word “love.” No, no, no. This is not how “best friends” treat each other. A “confidant” doesn’t dismiss your feelings. I’m sure he makes you feel great, you know, when he’s not jerking you around, but missy, he is leading you right on down the interstate.

What, really, is your goal here? What do you think will happen if he “understood” how you feel? (Which I guarantee you he already does—and is taking utmost advantage of it.) Do you want to keep things the way they are, only with more stars? Really? With a once-every-two-weeks “boyfriend” whom you can never introduce to your friends, enjoy without secrecy—or, say, marry? Or wait, do you think he will leave his wife for you? Look, even the cheaters who say they’re going to leave their wives don’t do it. Do not hold your breath. You may see a few stars now and then, but listen: That’s also what you see when you’re passing out. Please don’t lose consciousness here—of what’s really going on, and of how much better you deserve.

Don’t misunderstand me: I want you to feel sexy and pretty and loved. I get that your feelings are sincere. I know you can’t just turn them off. I don’t want you to be lonely. But I promise you, you will be lonelier in this relationship than you will anywhere else. Please, please: Start using the 13 days you have without him to fill up your life with something other than waiting for him. Friends, hobbies, a makeover: the usual corny stuff that really does serve to remind you that you have a life outside the motel room, that you have a life worth sharing with someone who can offer you the same. And then walk away. Yes, walk away.

It won’t be easy. Use the buddy system: Confide in a friend who will stand by you as you start to walk away and remind you that you are doing the right thing and that you deserve better than half a boyfriend who’s only half a husband to someone else. (I know your past boyfriends may not have measured up, but that doesn’t mean much in the scheme of things. It means they just weren’t right for you—not that this one is.) And start thinking about why you would find this arrangement acceptable, even thrilling. Is it the danger? The falsely-flattering sense that he loves you so much he’ll see you over his wife? The way you can protect yourself from really committing by knowing, deep down, that he never will? That’s your other homework. Once you tackle the tough task of believing that you are worth it, you’ll drive off into the sunset with someone truly wonderful.

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Lynn Harris is co-creator, with Chris Kalb, of the award-winning website BreakupGirl.net—you can visit BG’s blog to discuss this letter! She is also the author of the new comic novel Death By Chick Lit. A journalist and essayist, Lynn also writes about gender, dating, and culture high and low for Salon, Glamour, The New York Times, and others. In her spare time, she enjoys being married. Submit your own dating questions for Lynn at BreakupGirl.net. Your question may be answered in a future column.

dating advice

	Dating & Personals
Top of Form Bottom of Form	Finesse Mitchell’s love advice By Chelsea Kaplan Finesse Mitchell knows a thing or two about women—and men. The comedian (you probably recognize him from Saturday Night Live) is also an author (of Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much) and advice-giver, most notably in Essence magazine. Though he is presently engaged, he formerly had a reputation for embracing, as he puts it, “the opposite of commitment.” Once he settled down, however, he found his single female friends constantly asking what convinced him to commit to a woman. Problem was, “they would consult their girlfriends first, which caused them to screw up a situation with a man that could have been easily fixed or avoided had they sought my advice first,” he says. To help you benefit from his wisdom, Finesse here shares the 10 things he knows for sure (things that your girlfriends can’t tell you) about looking for love. 1) If you want to know whether to buy that pair of skinny jeans, by all means ask your girlfriends. But when it comes to guy advice, ask a guy! If you go to your girlfriends for love advice, it’s all gonna be based on her messed-up experiences. Guys, on the other hand, love telling girls the truth about male behavior—as long as it doesn’t affect him. If you tell a guy about a sketchy situation with your man and he hears one or two things out of whack, he’ll recognize it for what it is because chances are, he has done something like that before. 2) Are men dogs? Maybe, but women can be just as bad. When it comes to finding a good man, a lot of women are really discouraged; they think all men are dogs. In my experience, I’ve seen that women can be just as bad as men. You gotta remember, whenever a guy cheats on a woman, he’s usually doing it with a woman who knows his relationship situation. 3) Cool it now…you got to slow it down! The number-one mistake women make when they’re dating is being too anxious. Women have too many rules: he has to call within a certain time frame, he has to ask you out within a certain time frame; once they find someone they like, they want everything to be perfect right then and there. You gotta relax and just go with the flow. If you just slow down, the relationship has a much better chance of actually working out to your advantage. A man will never like someone unless he’s ready to do it, and he will run if you go from cute to crazy really fast. 4) When a man loves a woman, he’ll do whatever she wants. Really. If more women knew this — that a man who loves her knows it’s about whatever she wants to do — they probably wouldn’t obsess so much about how their man felt about them. Want to know how he’s really feeling about you? Check out what he’s done for you lately. If your man is in a club holding your lip gloss, he is in love. Ain’t no man who likes holding your lip gloss or purse, but if he loves you, he doesn’t mind. That much. 5) If you want to keep a good man, match his affections—and don’t take them for granted. If a woman wants to keep a man, all she has to do is match his affection for her. Sometimes she gets too comfortable with the fact that he’s being good to her and stops returning the kindness. She’ll get to a place where she thinks sex or things like that should become a treat for him. If that sounds familiar, ask yourself, “When is the last time you did something sweet for him, just because?” Men don’t like to always give, and when they do without getting the same back, they feel stuck. Women say, “I got you and I don’t want any other man”, but men say, “I gave up all these other women for you—show me why!” What the men are saying is, “I am willing to do all of this stuff, so there are things I need you to do.” If you want to keep him around, you gotta pony up too—not just with sex, but with all sorts of good, kind things. 6) When it comes to sex, men are dogs…but not in the way you think. The beginning of a relationship when you’re always getting it on is great. For a lot of women, however, when they’ve progressed into a relationship they don’t want to do it as often anymore. Of course, this disappoints him, and women get annoyed. What these women need to realize, is that this change in course, for her man, is like telling a puppy he can’t eat. If you used to feed that puppy twice a day, but you reduce those feedings to once a month, your puppy is always gonna follow you around and cry because he wants that food he used to get all the time. This is why he acts that way when you aren’t giving it to him the way you used to, ladies. It’s not because he’s a pain, it’s because things have changed and his needs and expectations aren’t being met. 7) Men cheat for one reason and one reason only. When it comes to cheating, the bottom line is that no man cheats on his woman to go to the library and read books. They cheat to have sex. Period. Not because she is a good listener or understands him in a certain way or something like that, but for sex. If you don’t want your man to cheat, keep him sexually satisfied. It’s that simple. Sure, there are some jerks who have it good and cheat anyway… but they’re just jerks and you shouldn’t want to be with those guys anyway. And you know the types I’m talking about. 8) Playing hard to get isn’t a good way to keep a good man. Women always tell each other that they need to play hard to get to keep a man. That’s not true. The key to keeping him is matching his efforts. If he calls you, call him back, and expect the same. If he doesn’t call, stop calling, and really pull back until he starts matching your efforts. When he does, there is no reason to play hard to get. It’s dumb. All you’re gonna do is make him think you changed and that you stopped doing what worked for him, which will make him lose interest, understandably. Men don’t like women who are playing around. If he’s as great as you are, he’s got options too, and he’ll start seeking them out. 9) Reconsider having sex on the first date. My general rule when advising women on first-date sex is to tell women to avoid it—especially if you really like him. See, if you do it, you’ll then be left wondering, “OK, so now where’s the relationship?” Don’t mistake sex for a relationship—the real thing takes time. A great sexual relationship doesn’t take hard work, but the real thing does. If you do decide to do it anyway because you just want to have sex, if he never calls you again after the fact, you have to be OK with that. 10) Want to know what good men are looking for? Men want someone we can wake up and see each morning for the rest of our lives who makes us smile. It’s not about being hot, though. When that beautiful face is frowning or her brow is furrowed, that’s not the beautiful face we were looking for. I’m speaking metaphorically here. Men need peace. A woman who nags and never lets her man have things his way does nothing but make him want to take off. It doesn’t mean we want you to shut up—it’s just that we want you to let some things go and let us just have some peace. Here’s a perfect example: Don’t make him start cleaning up because you are. If you were watching Oprah and he interrupted you to want to have sex, you’d want to bite his head off. It’s the same thing when you ask him to do something like clean up in the middle of his watching the game! Chelsea Kaplan’s blog, “I’m Somebody’s Mother?” can be found at www.chelseakaplan.com.