This is something I've been struggling with for years. I'm very glad I found this site. I guess I'm looking to understand what I'm dealing with.

22 years ago I was married. Went into the marriage with doubts - things just didn't feel quite right - we weren't close emotionally. But he was a good guy, so I went through with it hoping that we would become closer after marriage.

6 months after I married, I met the Love of my life, at work. I was instantly attracted to him. It's as if it hit me like a ton of bricks. He was smart, masters from an ivy league school, athletic, the most gorgeous person I'd ever seen, very happy, funny, and we INSTANTLY bonded. He was single, but in a serious relationship at age 30. We worked together as much as possible. He made me feel like no one had ever made me feel. He understood me like no one. He flattered me publically and privately constantly. I had never felt connected to anyone like him. He was my soulmate. After three years of working together and me struggling every day trying to decide what to do with this relationship, we go on a company retreat to Napa. I had decided that on that trip I would profess my feelings to him (although I think he knew) and see if he wanted to pursue a life together. I was still married (but had no emotional connection to my husband and it was falling apart) and he was engaged to be married. We had an amazing time together on that retreat, talked about so many close and personal things - I felt like I was the one for him too. When I went to his room to talk to him about it, I was shocked to find out that his fiance was there. He had never mentioned she was coming, and we had bonded so closely on the trip - it never even occurred to me she could be coming. So I didn't talk to him and cried that whole night that I had lost the loveofmylife. They get married 2 months later and move away. Before he moves, he asks to see me, hugs me and tells me that he will miss me terribly - that I am the most beautiful, intelligent, witty, modest, fun to be with person he has ever known and he is really going to miss me. That we have incredible chemistry, and a special bond based on comfort and trust. Well, usually married people don't say this to eachother unless there is something deeper there, so I figure he must think that I'm the one, just like I figured he was THE one. But we just couldn't work it out.

Years pass, we both have kids. He gets divorced after 8 years as he says that he wife abandoned him. And he speaks vicously about his "ex"

I see my window again, that finally I can be with THE ONE. I could never stop thinking about him over the years. I had never been as close to any human being, my marriage is falling apart since we still have no emotional closeness and I make plans to move to be near him again. The Loveofmylife and I email constantly - we have intense emotional connectedness in our emails. He asks me to come out constantly (across the country) to visit him and tries to see me when he is back East. He asks me to go to Italy with him and stay in a villa, says it would be "just perfect" and again flatters me constantly. (of course we don't since I am still married) He is in and out of now I know dozens and dozens of relationships at the age of 40. Gets engaged to someone else and has her live with him and his two kids unmarried for three years (all the while claiming morale authority on everything). They cancel their wedding twice and of course he makes me feel like it is because of the feelings he has for me...that no one else could measure up.
We talk on the phone while I am still across country and it is clear that he is upset whenever he hears that I am doing something with my husband. But i assure him it is temporary and that I'll be moving cross country soon and be single soon. My husband and I talked divorce after 20 years.

We move cross country... and of course I am still receiving tons of emails from theloveofmylife where we are very intimately attached emotionally. We share all of our innermost thoughts, although I know he is seeing someone else. But I thought we were meant to be together. Although I had told him he was THE ONE...he had been more elusive about it and said he thought I was the finest person that he had ever met but he was finding it hard to think about me "that way" since I was married. But still I"ve never been so attached to someone, and it is addictive.

When I move, he stays a little bit distant since he is in a 1 year relationship. (I found out that although I thought he had been in one 1 year relationship with 1 girl, that he had actually been in a 6month relationship where he said that she wanted him to get her pregnant and he wasnt' ready. He told me this story in person and said "but I am committed to see if this relationship will work". Well, three weeks after he told me this, he went to Hawaii with someone else and his kids! and then stayed with her - I had thought it was the same girl, but it was a different one!)

But then starts calling me constantly to convince me to work with him again. So the first question I have - why would he convince me to work with him unless he felt the same way about me, since he knows I am in love with him and think of him as THE ONE? Unless he just loved the adoration I gave him. I said I wasn't sure working together was the right thing to do, asked him about his current relationship and whether he thought things would still work out between us. His response was that his current relationship was moving down the path to marriage and that he still hadn't decided what to do about our relationship.
So we decide to work together - it is amazing, we are a great team, just as before. Except now we are nearing 50. He is still the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen, gorgeous body and happy personality. I'm still as attracted as the day I met him. We go to lunch together every day and he is asking me questions like "where do you want to live?" "where do you want to go on vacation", etc, etc. We are a great support system for eachother - we help eachother out with kid issues. Probably twice in 4 months I couldn't go to lunch with him (meeting my dad) and he would get upset and say "bite me". I thought it was cute, but brushed it off.

After one month, we go to a very romantic lunch on the ocean, we sit next to eachother and he is sharing his meal with me, where he tells me that he was proposed to one month ago, but turned it down, asking himself "what the hell am I doing?", locks eyes with me, of course implying to me that I am still the one for him and why would he marry anyone else. He asks if I want to go for a walk along the ocean, and of course I do.

I am still not divorced, ran into some snags financially.
One week later, he asked if I'm divorced, of course I say "no" and he looks visibly shaken. He asks when my divorce date is, and I say I don't have one yet, that there were financial issues. He is very shaken and seems upset for the rest of the day.

For the next 4 - 5 months, we are working together great. We are super emotionally attached. He emails me personal things at all hours of the night. we text constantly. He makes it appear as if he is 100% available. he tells me what he is doing all hours of the day so that I know he is available. Then he takes me out to dinner as a "reward" for giving him a reference. The moment we sit down, he asks if I am still sleeping with my husband. I don't answer specifics, because I am still married, but of course I think the only reason he asks me this is because he wants to know what is on the agenda for the evening. We have a great 3 1/2 hour dinner, but I could feel the energy drain from our relationship as I feel like he made himself available to finally have a relationship together, and I did not. And that he was disappointed. Question: he denies that he meant anything by this question...that I was reading too much into it when I interpretted this to mean that he was interested in a relationship with me. And he says that he can't get close to me anymore, because anytime he does, I read too much into it. But I'm sorry, this does not seem like a casual question!

He takes a job somewhere else and leaves our job together. But then quits that new job and calls me to get a job back together, after one month.

I get him a job back at our company, where he actually is now my boss. (COO)
As soon as he comes back, he becomes verbally abusive towards me. I saw hints of this before and never quite picked up on it. Also caught hints of him tearing apart his ex in the past and brushed it off as one bad relationship.
But he does things like try to force me to fire someone that worked for me, even though she was a valuable contributor. He stops acting like we were a team, and cut me off in meetings and cuts me out of important conversations. Not approving my vacation time even though it was something I had planned far before he came on board and it was to pick up my daughter from camp.

He would be very complimentory of me in public (I think because he knew I was highly respected and therefore he needed it to look like we were a team) and then he would tear me apart in every email I wrote and in private. I started feeling this dr. jekyll mr. hyde thing that I've never felt before and this is how I found this site. I started to see how 2-faced he was, in private yelling at me to fire a "loser" and then 10 minutes later seeing this "loser" in a meeting and acting like this person was his best friend and being super complementary of them. It started to make me wonder if all the complements to me were also false and just a way to gain my adoration. I started to see how he was such a charmer and was the sweetest person to everyone he met, would be super nice to someone he just met 10 minutes ago and share personal information with them and then cut me off and send nasty emails to me.
And as far as I know, I can't think of anything I did to deserve this.

Finally, I start feeling him really emotionally withdraw, he stops sharing personal feelings with me and actually tells me I can't take him out to lunch for his 50 bday. He acts very hot and cold with me and I can't figure out what is going on.

We go to lunch one day and I ask him why he is squeezing me out of his life. He asks "why does it matter?" in a very hateful tone. And he said "oh, is it because of you and me, becuase you want our relationship to be more than what it is" and I say "yes, you know that, and I thought you did too". His very hateful response was that "it is only because of your filter with me, and I don't know how to help you with that". Implying that he never had feelings for me.

The next few weeks were very stressful. Full of conflict, and I am completely confused as to what happened.

One day he leaves his computer up in a meeting and I see he is on chemistry.com. Which is very wierd because he told me he was still in a committed relationship, which he had been in for 1 1/2 years.

I found out: (and keep in mind this is a 50 year old)
- that he was going on 2 - 4 dates/week for months. Many of them during work, and when he told me he didn't have time to meet with me at work. And that almost every girl he went out with he said was "beautiful and intelligent" and blah, blah, blah after only one date.
- he talked to many of them about that same trip to Italy that he asked me to go on after one date.
- he was still having sex with his "girlfriend", but also with some of these new dates.
- he had another very full blown emotional affair with another married woman who he dated in college 30 years ago. She is still completely in love with him and every email from both of them ends in xoxoxxo. (someone else he had told me was a close "friend".) He asked her to go on that same Italy trip that he asked me to go on years ago.
- he has a close girl "friend" that he talked about sex to constantly. She told him she wanted to "do him" and explained the whole thing - sent pictures of herself to him - and he was stringing her along. Going out with her, but cutting it just short of that.

So you can imagine my shock in discovering this. I thought he always thought of me as THE ONE and was waiting for me. It was wrong what I did, but I felt I needed to understand the truth about our relationship. He always acted like an extremely moral person - talking about making the right decisions and right vs. wrong. "I would never want to cause a divorce".

After realizing the truth, I felt like I was on the verge of a heart attach for weeks.

The most hurtful thing of all:
- he was telling some of these chemistry.com dates about me even before they ever went on a date. That I was in love with him and it was making it difficult to work together. Used my name in a tight knit community, sharing our relationship with strangers.
- told his other married high-society lover that I blurted out that I loved him at his 50 bday (which was not true). She backed off and said that she needed to protect her heart if he had a role in it. He said "omg, no role whatsoever. It pains me that you would even think that I would have a role. You may not know me well, but I don't do things like that. I was so impervious to it that I didn't even know about it until she blurted it out at lunch" Which is untrue also because he had known my feelings, as I had known his, for at least 5 years, and probably 22 years! And to top it off, he told her "perhaps it would help if I told you she weighed 40 pounds more than me". Which is also untrue. I am a tad bit (maybe 10 pound overweight), but am still considered good-looking, athletic, etc by others....and what do looks matter - he always told me he loved my intelligence (I was validictorian at my very good university) and our "special bond" as he called it.

I felt that he took our 20+ year very, very close relationship and threw me out for chick bait to get the adoration of others. Wow, if a beautiful, smart, successful woman is in love with him and he is turning her down - he must be a catch!!!

And wow, how could I never know of all of these secret lives.

I flat out asked him if he was dating other people (as he told me that he would let me know as soon as he became available). He flat out lied and denied it, even though I walked in on one of these dates near our work. He said she was just a friend and wanted advise with a divorce, it was an elaborate story. It had no hint of lying in it, although I had evidence and knew it was a lie. And he said "why would I date when I'm in a committed relationship"?

Right when all of this happened, his temporary contract was not renewed at work and I was given his job. I had NO influence on that whatsoever. But his immediate reaction is that I got him fired. First of all, I still loved him with all my heart, and I would never do something like that to him, because despite the verbal abuse and the fact that he was 2-faced, in some twisted way I still thought he was THE ONE. His accusations were angry and unbelievable, and he wouldn't stop verbally abusing me and accusing me! How could he ever think I would do something like that to him. I would do ANYTHING for him. Despite the fact that I've been in love with him while married, I am a good person....

I guess it just hurts so much to see him be so sweet to people who are barely strangers and then see him treat me like this after so many years of closeness.

So my struggle? And I would love input.
- was he really THE ONE and just got tired of waiting for me, and reacted like any man would who was tired of waiting?
- Did he ever have any feelings for me?
- Is it normal for a 50 year old man (who is unbelievably charming, smart, good looking, nice, seemingly empathetic, etc, etc) to have all of these relationships with women, pretty much at the same time?
- why, after knowing all of this, do I still think about him 24 hours a day and still want to spend my life with him. I miss him all the time and just want to be with him. Even though now our relationship is so hot and cold.
- Was he just using me as narcissistic supply all these years? If so, how could he fake intimacy with me? It seemed so real and he told me how connected he felt with me.

We still have moments of sharing personal intimacy, but our relationship is very strained now, and I don't know what to do.