197: Affairs with Old Lovers

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy.  I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach.  If you are engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgments.  A lot of the so-called advice that’s out there for people who are cheating is little more than thinly veiled judgment, but that is not what I provide.  I give you guidance and support that respects the fullness of your humanity, and the complexity of your infidelity situation, no matter what you’re doing.  When you’re ready to resolve your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, there are two ways you can have me as your coach.  We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can enroll in my self-guided course, which offers teachings and assignments that go beyond what I share on the podcast.  To get started on either of these options, go to my website – mariemurphyphd.com.  I can’t wait to meet you.

Okay, I could have called this episode a few different things.  I could have called it, “having an affair with an old flame,” I could have called it “having an affair with someone you had a relationship with a long time ago” or I could have even called it, “having an affair with your former spouse.”  Because that is a thing!  Some people have affairs with their ex-spouses.  They get married, they get divorced, they get married to someone else, and they get involved with their ex-spouse as their affair partner.   Never done it myself, but I hear it can be kinda fun.  In a totally crazy way sometimes.  

When people are in this kind of affair situation, when they’re in a relationship that involves some kind of infidelity, and the person they’re in the relationship with is someone they were involved with before, people sometimes use particular terms or jargon.  Some people talk about “lost love.”  Sometimes people talk about “the one that got away.”  Some people use other terms too, and I’ve been told there’s all kinds of stuff on the internet about the phenomenon I’m describing.  I’ve never bothered to confirm this, because there’s all kinds of stuff on the internet about all kinds of things.  But, perhaps as a result of there possibly being all kinds of stuff out there on the internet about having an affair with someone you were involved with before, the sense I’ve gotten is that the language of “lost love” or the various other terms people use which I can’t seem to remember for the life of me is VERY meaningful to some people.  So if this kind of language is meaningful to you, by all means, keep using it.  But from my perspective, the kind of experience we’re talking about here is more important than any specific terminology.  From my perspective, the thing that matters is that you’re having an affair with someone that you were in a relationship with before, at some point in your past.   Maybe the relationship was an affair the first time around, maybe it wasn’t, but the second time around, there’s definitely some element of infidelity involved.  Maybe both parties are in committed relationships, maybe only one is, but at any rate, there’s some kind of infidelity happening in the current relationship.

What I have noticed is that when people are having an affair with someone they were involved with in the past, they tend to see the stakes of that relationship as being VERY high.  Very, very, very, very, VERY high.  And that’s saying a lot, because people usually see affair relationships as pretty high-stakes situations, even when the person they’re involved with is not an old lover they’ve reconnected with.

And this can be a recipe for a whole lot of drama.  And that may not be an entirely BAD thing – which I’ll say more about in a moment – but it’s definitely important to be aware that it could be a pretty torturous thing.  And if you like that, by all means, swim in the ocean of drama and torture.  If you love that, I love it for you.  But so often what I see is that people DON’T love torturous drama, but they also don’t see the ways in which they are creating it for themselves. 

So today we’re going to talk about some of the common challenges I see with folks who are having an affair with someone they were involved with at some point in their past – and in doing so, we’re also going to talk about how we can inadvertently create a lot of unnecessary drama for ourselves through the way we think about relationships.  And that will probably apply to you, at least to some extent, even if you aren’t having an affair with a long-lost former love.  Or your former spouse!

So here’s what happens sometimes.  Two people will be involved, and they’ll have a great thing going, or at least something that’s pretty great in some ways.  And then the relationship will end in a way that seems abrupt, or unfair, or seems like it was beyond the control of one or both members of the relationship.  And this may seem like a pretty big deal.  It might even seem like a life-defining big deal.  It may seem like you were yanked out of the arms of your soul mate, or your one true love, or the most amazing person you’d ever met.  And again, let me stress that this can seem like a really terrible thing has occurred.  It can seem like a cosmic injustice to not be able to continue a relationship with someone you really want to continue a relationship with.  If you had a great thing going, and that thing ended for reasons that seem grossly unfair, it can seem like the gods have turned against you. 

But after the initial shock and sadness dissipates, time passes, and life moves forward, and the members of the couple that was ripped apart or were otherwise relieved of their chance at lasting happiness make their way through life.  Maybe they think about the one that got away often.  Maybe, like, every hour of every day often.  Or maybe they think about their lost love now and again, but always with great fondness and more than a tinge of sadness.  Or maybe they daydream about maybe, just maybe, meeting up again and having another shot at love.  Or whatever!  The point is, each member of the once and future couple is still thinking about the other.  Maybe they’re actively in touch, maybe they aren’t, but then, something happens.  Either they get back in touch again after a period of disconnection, maybe they randomly run into each other.  Or if they’ve been in touch, one or both parties confesses that they’ve been longing for the other the whole time.  You get the idea.  These things can play out in all kinds of interesting ways. 

And then one thing leads to another and the relationship begins anew.  And the parties involved are so deliriously excited to be reunited.  They’re absolutely thrilled to have a second chance at what seemed like such a good thing, but ended prematurely.  They’re delighted to have a chance to finally be together like they’ve been yearning to be. 

Except at this point, one or both members of the couple are involved with someone else.  Maybe very involved with someone else.  Maybe married, maybe with kids.  And so the new relationship isn’t just the second time around for two people who have already been in a relationship, it’s also an affair.

And this can make for a really messy interaction effect between the challenges that often accompany affair relationships, and the heightened hopes and expectations that can come along with reuniting with the one that got away.  It can make the whole thing a lot more intense, which may feel intensely great at times, but may not feel so great at other times.  Sometimes relationship drama is exciting, and makes us feel really alive, and the highs can feel so insanely good.  But the lows can feel pretty darn low, and the dramatic ups and downs can get pretty exhausting.

So by all means, enjoy the excitement to whatever extent you want.  But also bear in mind that if you want a way out of the drama, you have to create a way out of the drama.  You have to find the less torturous path for yourself.

One of the reasons why affairs with old lovers can seem so torturous is because of the way that people sometimes THINK about these kinds of relationships.

Sometimes people believe that if they have reconnected with their former lover, the relationship HAS to work out the second time around.  Sometimes people believe that because they let someone get away one time, they CANNOT let them get away again.  Sometimes people think that having a second chance at a relationship is PROOF that the relationship is MEANT TO BE.  These are just a few examples, of course, but the common theme within the way people often think about second-chance relationships is, “it has to work out this time.”

Thinking that ANY relationship has to work out can put us in a pretty tricky position.  When we believe that any specific relationship HAS to work, we may put up with things we don’t really want to put up with.  We may tolerate being miserable in the relationship, simply for the sake of not losing the relationship.  We may behave towards our partner in ways that don’t create a very enjoyable dynamic for either one of us.  And, regardless of whatever we specifically do or don’t do, we may feel pretty desperate and pretty terrible if we think a particular relationship HAS to work out.

Because here’s the thing.  It simply isn’t true that any relationship HAS to work.  It just isn’t.  How could it POSSIBLY be true that a particular relationship HAS to work?  That just isn’t reality.

And as Byron Katie says, when we argue with reality, we only lose 100% of the time.  And as I like to add to that, when we argue with reality, we also feel terrible 100% of the time.

But we often DO believe that particular relationships HAVE to work out.  This may be especially true when we’ve gotten a second chance with someone we had a relationship with before, but this kind of thinking certainly isn’t limited to that kind of relationship situation.

Now, I want to point out that there’s a difference between thinking something along the lines of “This relationship HAS to work out” and thinking, “I really want this relationship to work out, and I’m going to do as much as I can to contribute to this relationship continuing and being great.”  I’m not suggesting that wanting a relationship to work is the issue!  But there is a difference between really wanting something and thinking that you have to have something, or thinking that you NEED something. 

But we humans often get really mixed up about that stuff.  We often confuse want with need.  Perhaps especially within the context of romantic relationships, but then again maybe not.  I definitely have an issue with confusing want with need when it comes to buying scarves.  I wish I were joking, but I am not.  It’s probably fair to say that I am a compulsive scarf buyer and I might go so far as to say that it is probably something I need to work on, but that’s another story for another day. 

Anyway, what happens when our second chance relationship has an infidelity component to it is that we believe that the relationship HAS to work out the second time around, but in order for that to happen, one or both members of the second-time-around couple may need to do some serious stuff.  Like, you know, get divorced.

And as we’ve talked about many times on this podcast, some people decide to get divorced and then they get divorced and they do all the stuff that comes with that and they deal with all the feelings and it might be hard, but they get it done.

On the other hand, though, some people believe that it is literally impossible for them to get a divorce.  I’ll say that again because it is so important to emphasize this.  Some people believe that it is literally impossible for them to get a divorce.  Now, for a lot of people, this is NOT TRUE.  But when we believe things are true, we act accordingly.

And this gets extra-fun when we also believe that we HAVE TO make our relationship with the one that got away work out since we’ve gotten a second chance with them. 

Believing you can’t get divorced is tough enough.  Believing you CANNOT let the one that got away once get away again is pretty tough, too.  Believing BOTH of those things is a recipe for torture.

It’s a recipe for torture because of all of the conflicting feelings these competing beliefs will create, AND because of all of the things you may do when you feel all of these conflicting feelings.

For example, on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, you may have a VERY hard time deciding what to prioritize.  Do you focus on keeping up appearances with your spouse, because you’re terrified of them finding out about your affair?  Or do you prioritize spending every possible moment with your affair partner, no matter what lies you have to tell in order to do so – because you believe that if you don’t, the relationship might not work out, and the possibility of that happening might seem like the end of the world to you.

If we are sure that our relationship with our affair partner HAS to work out and that the two of us have been given this second chance and now we have to do EVERYTHING possible to make the relationship work, we may end up making decisions based on those considerations alone.  And sometimes, this may not be terribly consequential.  Maybe having lunch with your affair partner tomorrow isn’t going to detract from anything else you have going on in your life.  Maybe it’s just a bit of time out of your day that you can easily spare.

But maybe choosing to have lunch with your affair partner means finding a way to get yourself out of an important work event.  Or maybe it means ditching out on plans you made with your kid.  Or maybe it means extricating yourself from some other important thing that you committed to, and coming up with an elaborate lie about why you “have to” do this.  And my point isn’t that doing this is morally WRONG and therefore you shouldn’t do it, my point is that prioritizing your affair relationship in this way might end up having consequences in other areas of your life that you really don’t like.  And it also may get really exhausting and stressful.  Keeping your various stories straight takes a lot of work, and although that might be novel and exciting it first, it might not be fun forever.

But if you’re desperate to make your second chance with your lost love work, you may not be able to think about much other than how you’re going to ensure that your relationship with them continues.  And if this is what you’re doing, it’s practically impossible to step back and make systematic decisions about what you actually want to do about your whole situation. 

Also, if you aren’t in a committed relationship with anyone else but your affair partner is, you may find yourself deferring to their schedule or their availability to an extent that you never would if you weren’t hell-bent on the idea that you and your beloved were destined to be together, or had to make this second attempt at your relationship work, or something like that.  And again, deferring to someone else’s availability isn’t BAD in any moral sense, and it might not even create consequences for you that you don’t like.  But then again, it might. 

When we get stuck on the idea that we have to be with a particular person, or a particular relationship has to work out, we may throw all of our standards for what we want any relationship we’re in to be like out the window.  And we might like what we get out of doing that!  But if we think we have to do everything possible to make a relationship with a particular person work, we may not be able to see that this is what’s going on.

If we want to find a way out of this predicament, we have to step back and examine and question what we believe to be true about relationships in general, and our specific relationships in particular.

To echo what I said earlier, if we believe that we CANNOT get divorced, is that true?  Probably not.  It is quite possibly the case that it is not true that you literally cannot get divorced.  Might it be challenging to get divorced?  Of course.  But that doesn’t mean you cannot do it.

Also, is it true that your second chance relationship HAS to work out?  No.  It doesn’t HAVE to.  Might it be sad if this relationship ended, for a second time?  Yes.  Possibly very sad.  But that doesn’t mean that the relationship HAS to continue.

These may sound like really simple, obvious points.  But it’s so important for us to recognize and respect the ways we keep ourselves stuck through our own thinking.  If we want to find our way out of seemingly impossible predicaments, we have to be willing to do the work of examining and challenging our own thinking.  And it can really help to have a good coach to help you do this, believe me.  The reason why coaching is so valuable is because a good coach can show you how you are keeping yourself stuck, and show you how you can get yourself un-stuck.  And so often, without the help of someone who can astutely observe our thinking, we simply do not recognize the beliefs that we are entertaining that keep us in our self-created prisons.  We often fail to see that our own thoughts are what are making our situations seem so impossible to find a way out of.  And that’s not a criticism of any of us.  We can’t help but have blind spots.  We can’t help but fail to see the ways our own thinking keeps us miserable and stuck sometimes.

Once you start to dismantle your narratives about what you HAVE to do or what you CAN’T do, you can start to think a little more systematically about what you want in regards to your current situation, and what you’re willing to do in the service of what you want.  When you’re all caught up in thoughts about not being able to leave your marriage AND at the same time not being able to let your lost love get away from you yet again, and when you’re stuck in the frenzy of emotion that those thoughts create, there is no way you’re going to be able to think systematically and deliberately about what you want to do.  You’re probably just going to freak out and engage in behaviors that make your life even more complicated and stressful. 

But.  Instead of getting lost in elaborate narratives about being destined to be with our truest love, since fate brought them back into our lives, but the impossibility of fulfilling our destiny because of the promise we made to our spouse to stay with them forever, we can assess the situation and make decisions.

To put it in really simple terms, you could just say, okay, this person who I once loved came back into my life, and even though I’m pretty happily married, I want to give things a shot with them, and so I’m going to leave my marriage and go after this other relationship.  You could just decide to do that.  Some people DO just decide to do that.  They may carefully consider their options, but they don’t make that process overly complicated.  However, a lot of people don’t do that.  Instead of making decisions, they get totally lost in what they think makes their situation so complicated.  OR they have a very prolonged tantrum about not liking their options.

And it’s fine to have a little tantrum about not liking your choices.  Fair enough.  It may indeed seem really hard to choose between a pretty good marriage and pursuing a person you once loved deeply and has come back into your life and presented you with the chance of a lasting relationship with them.  But staying in tantrum-mode because you think you have a hard choice to make is a form of self-inflicted torture.  There are going to be times in life when we don’t like our choices.  Unless we decide that we’re going to love all of the choices we have to make – and that, for many of us, is a bridge too far.  But instead of giving up our power by endlessly indulging in our dislike of making choices that we consider hard, we can say, okay, I don’t like my choices here, but I am going to CHOOSE, and I am going to take responsibility for moving in a direction, instead of staying in limbo, or staying in my current situation. 

Maybe you really don’t want to leave your marriage.  Maybe it doesn’t matter how precious the other person you’re involved with is.  Maybe you just aren’t going to leave your marriage, for whatever reasons, and that’s all there is to it.  Maybe your job is to be willing to let your other person go, for a second time.  Or, maybe you DON’T want to let your person go a second time.  Maybe you want to give a relationship with them your best shot, even if that means getting divorced and dealing with all that comes with that.  Or maybe there are other options, too – maybe you can have both relationships, in a way that everybody’s cool with!  That is not impossible.

But in order for you to pick any option and pursue it, you're probably going to have to give yourself permission to do something – and maybe multiple things – that you don’t think you can do, or don’t think you’re allowed to do.  And that’s why coaching can be so useful, because changing our beliefs about what we can do or are allowed to do can be pretty significant endeavor!  Not an impossible one.  But possibly a pretty significant one.

So, even if being married and having an affair with someone who once seemed like your soul mate seems like an impossible problem to solve, I promise that it isn’t.  You can carefully examine your situation and what you want, and you can make decisions and deal with everything that comes with making decisions – such as, for instance, feeling a lot of emotions.  And I can help you do all of that.

Okay.  I want to say a little more about the specific kinds of things people tell me when they’re considering the possibility that their relationship with their lost love might not work out, and I want to talk a little bit about how some of these common ways of thinking might usefully be adjusted.

Sometimes people tell me, if it doesn’t work out with this person, I’m never going to love anyone again the way I love them.  Or, no one is ever going to love me again the way they love me.  Or, if this doesn’t work out with this person, I’m going to have unfinished business for the rest of my life.  Or, I’m always going to feel like I was robbed of what should have been mine.  Or, I’m always going to wonder what things with this person could have been like.

Here's the deal, people.  It is possible to recognize the uniquely wonderful, uniquely precious aspects of a particular person, or a particular relationship, and to cherish what you’ve shared with someone, WITHOUT buying into any of the ideas I’ve just mentioned.  Or any similar ideas.  It is possible to really love someone, and to really want a relationship to work out, and to be really sad if it doesn’t, WITHOUT LETTING THAT BECOME THE NARRATIVE THAT DEFINES YOUR FUTURE.

Even if you don’t like it that the relationship ended – which is fair enough – you can choose to recognize that relationships do end, all the time, for all kinds of reasons.  If your second chance at a relationship doesn’t work out, you don’t have to make that mean that you aren’t fulfilling your destiny to be with a particular person.  Also, it is possible for you to really appreciate what you shared with someone, without wondering what might have been with them, if the relationship had continued.  Sometimes people spend a lot of time thinking about what could have been, had things worked out with a particular person.  You don’t have to do that.  You can if you want to, but you might prefer to mourn the loss, and then start thinking more about the future and the relationships you want to create going forward. 

Whether we do it consciously or not, we create the narratives of our lives, and of our relationships.  You have the opportunity to consciously decide what you want your narrative of your life and your relationships to be.  And if a second-chance relationship doesn’t work out, you get to decide what you want to make that mean.  It can be sad, without being a tragedy of epic proportions.  You can miss your person like crazy, and you can also move forward.  You can appreciate what you shared with them, without believing that they were the ONLY one for you.  You can be really frustrated by the way things ended without believing that the end of your relationship is an indication that your destiny has not been fulfilled.

Sometimes, what it comes down to is this: if we want to have a relationship, we may not get to have it with a particular person.  And if we want to have a relationship with a particular person, we may not get to have a relationship at all.  If you want to believe that losing your lost love once again means you’ve lost love forever and you like that, that’s fine.  But if what you truly want is to eventually find yourself a relationship with someone great, you’ve got to get your narratives about your lost love in check.  

Now, I’m going to say this again because I it’s so important to me to emphasize this.  Our connections with specific people can be uniquely precious.  Specific relationships can be uniquely wonderful.  We may cherish things we’ve shared with specific people in unique ways, or to unique degrees.  And the specialness of what we experience with a particular person may be something we really want to appreciate as singular.

But sometimes wanting to experience something wonderful as SINGULARLY wonderful gets in the way of experiencing more of the wonderful things that life has to offer.  So what I want to suggest is that you can DEEPLY appreciate and cherish what you’ve shared with a particular person, AND you can also be open to the possibility of experiencing intensely wonderful things with someone else.  If you love the idea of soul mates, why not love the idea of having more than one soul mate?  If you love the idea of having a true love, why not love the idea of having more than one true love?  If you love the idea that certain people are destined to be together, why not consider the idea that some people might be destined to be together for a certain period of time, or for a certain chapter of their lives?  Why not consider the idea that you might be destined for another great love, even if one great love is ending, or didn’t work out the way you’d hoped?

As I start to wrap up this episode, I want to note that I’ve emphasized the difficulties that can come with having an affair with an old lover because I see people struggling mightily with the stuff I’ve talked about today.  But I’ve also seen people have an affair with an old love, end their marriage, and then live happily ever after with their lost-and-found love.  I have seen it happen. 

People like to say that all’s fair in love and war, but I don’t know about that.  What I do know, though, is that all is POSSIBLE in love.  Or maybe it’s better to say that a LOT of things are possible in love.  We’ve got to be willing to create what we want to experience, but when we’re willing to do that, well, the sky’s the limit.

And of course, if you want my help dealing with your infidelity situation in a way that you feel great about, let’s get to work.  There are two ways you can have me as your coach.  You can enroll in my self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One, which contains teachings and assignments that go beyond what I offer on the podcast.  Or we can work together one-on-one via Zoom.  When we work together one-on-one, our work is rigorous, intimate, consistent, and transformative.  If you are serious about making change in your love life, my wise guidance is just what you need to turn what you’re dreaming about into your reality.  To enroll in my course or get started working with me one-on-one, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.  I can’t wait to meet you.