31Years I Broke up with a Man Because He Had Cheated on Me While We Were Engaged

I think according to your other post you are married, perhaps ask your husband what he thinks.

YOu are retirement age and think it's a good idea to start talking with a man, whom you say you still love, for WHAT reason exactly?
How about we think of it this way.....your husband, whom you have three kids with, tells you that he fell in love with a woman years ago. Never fell out of love with her. BUT, he still decided to marry you and have kids. Now, all these years later, he would like to call her and tell her about this great song that made him think of her.
How would you feel?
You have GOT to be kidding me.

You broke up with the man you were engaged to, because he was cheating, and you felt that he would cheat when you were married. So according to your own principles, cheating was a deal-breaker.

Now, three decades later, you wish to express your romantic feelings to this man.

Unless the situation is that you are single now (divorced or widowed, NOT feeling unloved by, or dissatisfied with, your husband), and this other guy is also single (again, legally unmarried, NOT something like his wife doesn't appreciate him, or he's not happy in his current marriage) then you have your own answer to your own question. You don't tolerate cheating by others in a marriage. Why would you cause the same pain to your husband?

It seems to me you're not clear on the concept of 'breaking up'.
He doesn't need to know anything.
He cheated on you - like your feelings meant so much to him he didn't care about sleeping around - I'm sure he and his current girlfriend(s) know plenty and it doesn't keep him up at nights wondering what YOU think about it.
Quit beating a dead horse and cut him out of your life and thoughts (and email, facebook, phone numbers, address and anything else that resembles contact with him).
This is wasted energy and potential drama - no, it's not closure - it's more like wanting to have the last word.
How would you like it if your husband was thinking about some old girlfriend?
Let it go - completely and irrevocably.

I think it sounds like a good fiction book.

Your feelings are not based on reality.....have you raised children with this man, budgetted with this man,heck cleaned up daily after this man?

Your feelings are based on who and what you were 30+ years ago, not who and what you are today.

So, I gotta ask you, as a married woman, would send another man 'a song'? ( how about a mixed tape...hehe....sorry couldn't help myself, but really?) Is this man married? If so, it doesn't really say much about either of you.

Let this fantasy go and focus on your marriage.

I had an old flame of mine tell me very much what you are saying right now, he even carried my picture in his wallet for 20 years, even while married and starting a family with someone else. He said he always considered me the one who got away, that he still loved me, and that he wanted to give it another go. Here is the problem with that, he was not in love with me, he was in love with the idea of me. He was in love with the woman he imagined that younger version of me grew into. We all change as we age, and our experiences help shape us, we are not the same people at 40 as we were at 20. As it turned out, after getting to know each other again, he was not someone I even wished to continue a friendship with, let alone a lifetime.

If you think you might be interested then tell him so, that you would like to reconnect and get to know each other again to see if anything is still there. But don't go in with blinders, you have both changed a lot and you need to take time and get to know the new people you are now before declaring love.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to let him know your feelings after you seperate and start divorce proceedings with your husband assuming your old BF is single.

I think this is something that should remain a thought, nothing more.

If someone sent me a text to 'listen to this song' in order to communicate feelings, I'd find that rather immature. That's something I equate with high school, not adulthood.

Wait.... you are married?! BAD IDEA. Unless you are determined to sabotage your marriage.... I can't imagine asking someone else to consider 'how I feel about them' as a married woman. That seems incredibly selfish and like you are fishing for a new man.

I think you still have romantic "young love" feelings for someone from 31 years ago. He cheated and you ended it, but you still harbor the good feelings without really dealing with the terrible feelings of having been betrayed.

Your last post talked about retirement with your husband to Florida, and your mixed feelings about that. I wonder if your current feelings of wistfulness for your former fiance are tied to resentment about your husband wanting to move? Maybe you are feeling the middle-age boredom of a marriage that doesn't seem as exciting as your memory of a young love? But you are clinging to the feel-good stuff and totally ignoring the hurt from being betrayed.

Either leave your husband, or let the ex-fiance go! Nothing good can come of keeping these feelings hot, but certainly not if you tell him how you still feel about him if you have no intentions of acting on them. Figure out how you think you can be "friends" with someone who hurt you so badly and why it's important to you. A counselor might help you sort this out.

Drop it. There is NOTHING that will help, including this song you're talking about. All it will do is tell him that you are obsessing over him.

Stop letting him play with your heart strings.

Oh! And you're married? Oh please! Stop this right now!

Stop it, just stop it. Put this effort into your husband.

It has taken you this long to try to figure out your feelings for a person who you dumped before the marriage shows there your gut feeling was right but your emotional state was off. Much has change with both of you and you are not the same people.

You need to let this man go and stop wandering about what could have been. Delete him for your life. Nothing good can come from this. Spend that extra energy on your husband and family.

I would not want a person from my past to pop up in my life now as there is nothing in common and nothing good can come from it. Leave the past in the past.

the other S.

PS The grass is not always greener on the other side it could be mud.

ETA: Oh wait, you're married? I agree with Julie S. - ask your husband. There's your answer.

Orig: I don't think it would hurt to let him know, if he's single. It's a compliment, after all. However, don't expect him to return the sentiment. If you tell him, do it because you just want him to know, not because you are tying to get back together with him.

I think there was a similar if not exactly the same post in the past. Of course I may be wrong.

One point of what is written below is that people have to let go of the past before they can have a future. If you want to have his friendship, you have to start from today so that you're starting over with a new relationship built on who you and he are now. Most importantly, both of you have to be very clear that the past is gone.

I don't understand how one could be still in love with someone after 31 years. I very much doubt that one could love someone that far in the past.

It took 2-3 years for me to stop thinking I was in love with my first love. Getting over the love with whom one has the first intimacy is more difficult to move away from. I still thought about him. Even now, 50 years later, I still remember the good times we shared as well as the reasons we separated. I saw him frequently over the years because we worked at the same place. I saw first hand how much each of us changed over the years. I know we made the right decision to separate. I still love him because we are friends. I care about him and his well being. I do not think of him in a romantic way. The past is past! We have to move forward for our own well being.

I still, at times, wish we had married. When I'm lonely or facing a difficult situation I still sometimes wish he was still in my life. He always helped me get through difficult times. I do not give in to my fantasy and wish to call him. We are still frienda. Reality helps a lot. He has had several long term serious relationships since we were together. He only commits short term.

If this is a real question, I suggest you stop thinking about the way it was and focus on why the relationship didn't work. I suggest that if you had known him consistently over the years, you'd know your relationship was very difderent than you remember it. I now see red flags that I didn't see back then.

Do you even know who he is now? Yet you're willing to end your marriage and emotionally harm your children over him.

I suggest you are missing something important in your life. I urge you to focus on what is missing instead of dreaming of what might have been 31 years ago. I guarantee that giving your ex romantic messages will not only give you what you need, it will destroy your life and your childrens lives.

I suggest you're still too caught up in your previous relationship to have a friendship now.

You are married and want our permission to have an affair? No.

Hmmm.
Well I was in exactly your position when I dumped my guy I was going to get married to. I thought he would cheat. I did it almost on a hunch and said it before I could take it back. Afterwards I doubted my decision and panicked. Then my friend told me she'd already seen him in our car with another woman in the front seat - clearly involved. This was like 2 weeks later.

So I can relate to that part - we were together for many years. It was hard. I had closure though when he tried to do the smoozy thing by calling me up a year later to see how I was. I think he wanted to start stuff up again. By then though my family and friends had swooped in to make sure I developed a backbone, got my self esteem back, and moved on. So I let him have it. It felt wonderful.

That Adele song is about saying sorry that you've broken his heart. Or that's how I interpret it. If you are sorry and feel like you want to reconnect, be prepared to open up all that stuff again. Is that what you want? Is it just this time of year? I don't get "let's be friends but nothing else" from telling him to listen to a song. That's just my opinion.

And I've never really known a couple that were going to get engaged who called it off to be real friends. That's very hard to do. Why do you want friendship? Are you involved with another man at this point? I would probably focus on moving forward if I were you. Meet a good man who you won't doubt, who's both a friend and a romantic interest. Good luck :)

How would you feel if a woman from your husbands past did this?

Wouldn't you feel betrayed, hurt and ready to end your marriage?

Really ? Good for you for dumping him in the first place now what is going on in your life today that you are feeling like this over a man who doesn't deserve it?

Hi I would say no. You probably have an awesome head on your shoulders for being strong enough to move on but he is just a memory. Its fine to reminisce of people from our past but they are not in our future for a reason. Continue thinking ahead not behind. Best of luck and happy holidays.

If you're wanting to date him and have a relationship with him then I guess it's worth pursuing. Otherwise I'd let it go. It's the past. No need to open that wound up.

I have a friend that left her husband and 2 kids to go have a fling with an old boyfriend. It didn't last, it was hot hot hot for about 3 weeks then it was boring. She missed her husband and her kids. He divorced her and they were eventually able to work it out but he didn't marry her again. He has custody of the kids and if she does anything like she did before he has every right to take the kids and file for child support and more.

She had the hots for a guy and he had the hots for her. Instead of seeing what was wrong with her own relationship and working on that for her family she gave in to screwing around for a few weeks. It wasn't worth it.

I would suspect that although a cheater-he was exciting. While we do not like being cheated on it creates a certain amount of anxiety, or 'longing' which can be misinterpreted as love. Perhaps you miss that part of your life. And that longing has just resurfaced.