Online Date with Fish2Fish: Issue Behind Loving A Married Woman

Issue Behind Loving A Married Woman

IF you love a married woman and you’re in a love relationship with her, read this post. You are engaged in what is commonly thought of as a ‘triangle.’ Triangles are rough on the heart.

Fundamentally, they are unstable, like three legs on a table. Something always goes wrong, or at least it should, because triangles usually end up hurting people more than anything else.

Triangles exist simply because a problem is not being resolved in a marriage. Two people get married and have marital problems, instead of resolving those problems either by fixing the relationship or ending it, which by the way can be a valid resolution of a problem, a third party is brought into the relationship, and now you have a triangle.

I know the story books tell us that it’s better to stay together. But I think there are plenty of people who never should have gotten together to begin with. A lot of misery is avoided with a respectful ending and opportunity to start again with someone else after a period of sincere efforts to fix a love relationship. The point is, a triangle happens when two married (or simply committed people) don’t fix their marriage.

Instead, defensive stuff happens like distancing from each other or finding another lover to make up for what is not happening in the marriage. The problem is you can’t get a piece of what you need from one person and another piece from someone else and expect to have a stable and satisfying love-life. Too many pieces for stability. What you get instead is fragmentation, conflict, and limited intimacy.

So let’s look at the type of triangle that has one woman and two men in it. The target of desire in the relationship is the woman. She’s at the apex. Her husband is not leaving and she is not letting him go (otherwise she wouldn’t need a triangle to cope).

The marriage is active and bonded. It doesn’t matter how negative wife and husband feel about each other, they are together. It doesn’t matter how passionate the sex with the ‘other man’ in her life is, she is not leaving her husband.

Usually at the beginning of such an arrangement, when the triangle is young so to speak, the ‘other man’ usually tells himself he likes this arrangement because he doesn’t have to make a commitment. She can go back to her husband when we’re done making love, right?

For a time this may feel freeing and easy. The problem comes in when over time, an attachment forms between the married woman and her ‘other man.’

Now she is growing used to the arrangement and has convinced herself that the triangle makes her disappointing marriage tolerable. If the ‘other man’ gets attached he will inevitably at some point start needing more from the married woman. He may start thinking about asking her to leave her husband. This is when the trouble starts happening.

Dating and Get the relationship you deserve

Let’s talk about the ‘other man’ for a moment. My heart goes out to him more than any one else in this arrangement because he is usually the one who gets disturbed first and has more to lose. He could be thrown out of the triangle and the married couple ends up fixing their relationship, this could happen. The ‘other man’ gets painfully left out, not yet knowing that is the best thing that could happen to him.

All three people in this triangular arrangement have their issues.

Let’s do one at a time starting with the ‘other man.’ He is definitely looking for love in the wrong place and with the wrong person. His superficial belief that he wants someone else’s woman for the convenience is a lie he defensively tells himself. The reality is he’s looking for love like the rest of us and afraid of what he’ll find.

The ‘other man’ is probably afraid that he won’t be able to ‘handle’ a love relationship with a fully available woman. He thinks that loving someone else’s woman will save him from this fear of intimacy. It only brings this issue roaring to the surface.

In my world that’s an opportunity for growth because triangles are no good for people. But for the ‘other man’ this is a painful transition from a illusory relationship with a married woman in a triangle with a married man to a period of being alone again where some serious work can be done on his love-life (if he’s up for it).

The work needed is usually in the area of developing a better tolerance for love and intimacy by clearing out whatever fears and blocks the guy has in the way. Then he can go after a whole and available single woman.

Now onto the married man. He’s the ‘other man’s’ competition, but not really. The important thing about the married man is he’s probably coping with his limited marriage by doing something else (work, alcohol, substances, whatever consumes and distracts him).

In some instances he ‘knows’ his wife is cheating on him and looks the other way. In other instances his defences are so thick he doesn’t read the signs, at least consciously. Personally, I think most if not all married people know on some level if a spouse is cheating, but that’s my belief.

Anyway, the married man like his supposed competition is afraid of a deeper intimacy as well. They have this in common. His willingness to live in a limited marital relationship thinly disguises this fear of deeper love and intimacy.

By the way, when people say they are afraid of intimacy think ‘exposure’ to what they themselves have difficulty accepting in themselves. Most people I’ve met who are afraid of intimacy, lose the fear when they accept and feel better about themselves.

The question is whether or not the married man will fix this intimacy issue with this wife. It’s hard to tell, some couples can pop out of a triangle and do the work of recommitment, others can’t and end up doing it apart, alone, or with someone else.

In this kind of triangle with two men and a woman, there are instances when the two men fight over the woman. This kind of drama is amusing only because if they know how connected they both are and how much they have in common they might realize that it would be more profitable for both of them to have a conversation together about the whole thing in a coffee shop or something.

That way they would learn about their love-life issues and probably resolve the triangle with less pain, skipping the whole painful machismo thing.

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