You tell him you're developing feelings for him and he tells that's "okay" - he's giving you permission? Please - get some feelings for yourself, like some self-respect. That's something you can't get from any man, never mind violent ones or married ones.

And if you're in your 20s or 30s, shame on you for being so desperate!

You've been through a tough time. You deserve far better than some married jerk. Take care, and listen to Cary.

LW, I went through a similar thing as you: from a relationship with a violent and verbally abusive man to a relationship with a married one. Like your married boyfriend, mine made me feel cherished and special, and after five years of being casually slapped and shoved and being told I was fat, ugly, and stupid, I clung to those words, and to my married boyfriend, like my life depended on it.

But of course, it didn't. Married guy ended it with me when his wife found out, and it took my a few months to get over him -- three, to be exact. The first month, I cried every day and felt awful, like I'd be alone for the rest of my crummy life. The second month, I was beginning to feel better. By the time I reached the third month, I began to realize how lucky I was that the relationship had ended when I was still young, and by the end of the third month, I was over him. A few months later he called me at work wanting to see me again -- his marriage was, not surprisingly, tanking completely -- and I didn't feel much else other than vague irritation that he actually had the nerve to call. I had moved on.

Please take care of yourself. Things really will get better for you after you do the work you need to do -- it will be difficult and painful, but worthwhile. Be well.

(And although it goes without saying, please just ignore mean-spirited, ignorant jerks like the "Anonymous" who posted the first letter in this thread, nattering on about something they don't understand for reasons known only to them. Unlike you, who will come to understand the meaning of real emotional courage, Internet Courage is the only kind of courage they'll probably ever know.)

Darling, Cary knows best. This was going to be the title of my letter, but my Web browser wrote 'co-dependency kills' instead, and I let it stand.

Because it seems to me that an abusive man is essentially an unavailable man. Whatever he may say in his gentler moments, his actions are not loving, not nurturing, not those of a committed partner; an abusive man does not love you because his actions are not loving. You have gone from one unavailable man to another.

This tells me that whatever lesson you need to learn by experiencing life with an abusive man has not been learned. Until you figure out just what specific thought patterns lead you to pick unavailable men and stay with them, you will continue to repeat the same pattern.

Remember, a thought that causes you to stay with an abuser is a lie that you tell yourself, no matter how reasonable, stoic or serious it may seem. Learn what the truth is and live by it.

I fell in love with a married woman, and she even introduced me to her daughters.... But she sort of leveraged me, and went all iceberg eventually. Back with the same old originally-supposedly-verbally-abusive, allegedly-clueless husband.

These things with married people do not work out.

I have made this offer here in Cary's letters before: I know a fantastic guy named Mike, single, never married. Saintly, but with big feet. Contact me through Cary, somehow, and I will introduce.

And I'll just drop a line to affirm that people who read your story care about you and think you are special, and I am one of them.

You are special because of everything that is unique about you and every experience you have had, whether it be joyful or painful. And the next few months are probably going to be painful, so remember two things: 1) This too shall pass. You are going to come out of this on the other end as a whole person. This is not going to break you. 2) What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Even the pain you are suffering now is at work reshaping your conscience, your spirit, your identity. It is part of what makes you special, even though it hurts and even though you would not have wished it on yourself or anyone else. In order to find out how you have been changed, though, you have to speak about your experiences and be heard by people who can understand you.

May you have peace and may you come to know your own strength and your own unique and infinite worth.

You need to spend some time figuring out what being in a relationship really means to you, and why you are so willing to sacrifice your self-respect and self-care to be in the company of a man, even when it is apparent that the man does not care for you as you deserve.

This is a problem that will keep repeating itself, over and over, until you learn what it is you are searching for from abusive men. The abusive/unavailable men are not the actual problem -they are the symptom. The real problem remains unknown at the heart of you. You need to address this. Why do you think you aren't worth more? Who, or what circumstance, put this idea in your head, and why are you embracing it?

You are clearly lacking in self-esteem. Try to realize that turning to damaged or unavailable men to shore yourself up is a temporary and false fix and will only leave you more deeply mired in the self-fulfilling prophecy that you don't deserve better. Self esteem can only be built from within.

I'm amused at the first letter, which seemed to imply that if the LW is past her thirties, it's okay for her to be "desperate" enough to have an affair with a married man.

First of all, Cary is right, no matter how old the LW is, she's been through a tough time and could benefit from some support and help. She needs to take care of herself and recover from the abusive situation, and saying she should be ashamed of anything is not going to help.

It seemed to me that the LW knows all this, and if she's desperate for anything, it's confirmation that it's okay to take care of herself. Once she starts doing that, and regains a sense of her inherent self-worth, life will get better. And that can happen to people over 40, too.