Sorry so late but I just saw this today...

I could have written this letter, right down to the married boss, no sex, incredible manipulations, and turning it off only to have the bastard come back at me with various invitations to entangle myself again, pity ploys, and reacting with anger and feigned distress when I didn't play. And yeah, unknown to myself at the time he used me as leverage on his long-suffering wife (three kids and full time mom) to keep her in line.

(BTW, early on, every time he suggested doing something social, I made a point of suggesting his wife join us or be included, only to be met by some very FALSE stories about her mental state... damn, I should have known. It was all part of the setup, LW.)

People like this play on your sympathy and true desire to do what is right; the immoral playing the moral like a fiddle. In my case, the guy had no intention of divorcing; he just wanted to feel like a big man with multiple women on the side. I thought that refraining from physical intimacy would be a reason for him to lose interest and walk away if he wasn't sincere emotionally. Boy was I wrong. It just inflamed him because his interest was primarily emotional (feeling like a big man) and not sexual. I had NO intention whatsoever of having sex (with my boss!!!) until I *saw* a divorce decree: thank God for that. And I too had to leave the workplace to get away from him.

What worked for me, LW, and allowed me to finally come to terms with the insanity in which I had been involved, was to initiate No Contact. I happened to be looking across the net for some information on detaching on bad relationships and came across this article (see my sig) on No Contact and why it is so important when you want to detach from someone who is dishonest, manipulative, and wants nothing more than to have you in his life so he can use you to bolster his non-existent identity, no matter what the cost to you. Sounds like yours was exactly like mine, at least in that neither one of them seems to have had any problem with monopolizing your time or mine, friendships, dating, even what I did with my money, and whatever else would tend to separate me from his control.

And yeah, in the end, it's all about control.

As Cary said and so many others have echoed (in fact, I think it was almost unanimous, which is RARE among Salonistas) not only should you not apologize, you should detach. Period. You cannot begin to heal or to reclaim your soul until you cut it off completely. NO contact at all, not by phone or email or IM or carrier pigeon. And it's hard, because he knows exactly what your weak spots are: all that time he was lying about himself, you were being very honest about yourself, and he was listening intently. But he's not interested in being with you in order to have a mutual relationship with you; he is interested in continuing to use you emotionally, and engaged in what I personally came to see as a form of emotional masturbation.

You are worth better than that, and in your heart you know it: that's what enabled you to move on. But don't stop halfway. No contact at all. Break it off completely. Start building some badly-needed boundaries.

And after you've been out for a while, don't be surprised what information about him comes your way. I broke it off with mine simply because I couldn't stand the push-pull and drama of everything; it was only later that I found out the seriously ugly truths about who he really was. The things your ex has already done prove that he has no integrity; don't be surprised to find out later just how far the deceit really goes.

Best wishes to you!

P.S. The article I have linked to is geared toward people trying to get out of relationships with narcissists and sociopaths, which may not apply to your guy, but the technique and rationale behind it is the same. Good luck!

which is that part of why people's "personal lives" seem to explode so messily, I suspect is that it's the only area where they actually have the freedom to be "creative" or "self-expressive" ...

do people still have hobbies? I know gardening is a megaindustry for us boomers, but I know many of my past hobbies and crafts have become remarkably expensive to continue. People can rationalize their gym memberships as "health care" ... (gosh how many romances start THERE???) but people are pretty strapped for "outlets" ...

If relationships are MORE complex, MORE tumultuous etc, I would look to such things being functions of both "pressure release" and "things I do for me" ...

Marcuse might argue that it's all symptomatic of too little joy.

occasioned by the publishing of -- the essential or complete Marcuse -- the editor was a student at UCSD ... in the course of the 1 hour program, talking Marcuse's greatest hits, they talked about One dimensional man and Eros and Civilization ... the former most struck me (I read both long ago) ... talking about how in an "industrial" or -- more apt currently -- "cubical farm" world, repression of instincts is essential to "the dominant paradigm" necessary to the sort of productivity desired.

Anyhow I thought of this thread and my last post .... Americans work more hours, more days than most of the world -- yet real wages have been flat or regressing for 20 years or more. Most two worker households are seriously DEPENDENT on both salaries -- the second worker is no longer working for self-fullfillment or luxuries, unless buying and maintaining a house is considered a luxury (something that actually can be argued)

Anyhow -- The author pointed out that in terms of "one dimensional man," the head-down, nose-to-the-grindstone lest the boss see you slacking, worker bee mentality has risen to extraordinary levels -- aided and abetted by the availability of credit, of course.

I have seen many posts by "young people" who report feeling absolutely suffocated by their college debts, their job insecurity, their over scheduled lives... that their "youth" has been eaten up by survival concerns. [There are such vast differenced between different socioeconomic and cultural levels, I think it's perilous to generlize too far, but the lucky ones who actually got to and got through college seem to feel remarkably bleak about their futures, drone like) ...

When I then consider the stagnation in much of the urban populations ... something has got to give ...

One can hope that it's not some new -- what the hell, kids give me joy -- baby boom ... but we might be ripe for some serious "turn on, tune in, drop out" redux, but much angrier this time.

I have grown accustomed to angry, vitriolic attacks on "boomer parents" -- characterized as selfish, self-indulgent and generally useless -- but I remain uncertain exactly how old the writers are, much less their vilified parents.

In a college class about 20 years ago, I recall mentioning how disturbing I found family sitcoms -- the Brady Bunch as exemplar -- in which the parents were depicted as dropping EVERYTHING to deal with every one of their children's crises ... overinvolved, I would have said. Oh no!, cried my 20-years younger than me classmates, that's how parents are "supposed to be" ...

It's too easy to blame television ... but as I said in an earlier post, I really think that many people today have no idea what "happiness" looks like beyond the material ... as if the awesome spirit of the trancendentalist or even the great naturalists/poets are no longer felt -- that there is a terrible void resulting from far too little idle "free time", introspective reflection, and conversation.

Imagine an America with european work weeks, vacations, healthcare, safety net, public transportation ... The absence of all that in fact helps produce this suffocating rat race that keeps everyone on edge and in their place. It's not "coincidence"... it's keeping the workerbees hungry and insecure.