I am dating a married man. Before you judge me, please hear my story first. I was in a relationship with someone I genuinely loved, but we were not in the same country, and communication became really bad. I tried to manage it because I was comfortable, but deep down, I was unhappy. Then I met someone who asked for my number one day. About a week later, he reached out and immediately told me he was married. Honestly, I thought he was crazy. For context, I am 28 years old, properly raised, not desperate, and not the type to fight over what doesn’t belong to me. I asked him why he was calling me if he was married, and he said he just wanted us to talk so that I could know what he does. We met in an open place, had normal conversations, and that was it. Nothing inappropriate happened. At some point, I told him I was job hunting. He offered to help me look around, though I eventually got a job myself. Over time, we became friends. Once in a while, he would check on me, and because he was married, I sometimes asked him for relationship advice about my own relationship. I was also speaking to another male friend from church at the time, so it was nothing unusual.
I even posted my relationship story anonymously on a blog once, and most people advised me to consider dating someone physically present in my life instead of forcing a distant relationship. So I decided to move on and meet people around me. Then one day, this man suddenly broke down crying in front of me. He said he was tired, emotionally drained, and no longer at peace in his marriage. I was shocked because he always looked calm and happy publicly. Still, nothing happened between us immediately. In fact, while trying to move on, I met another guy I really liked and casually told him about it. That was when he finally confessed his feelings for me. I asked him, “But you’re married, so what happens to your wife?” And he told me something I still think about till today: “If you walk away now, I will still eventually become single.” At some point, I ended my own relationship because I had already decided to move on with someone physically present in my life. Months later, this man truly left his marriage, although things are still not fully finalised legally.
And this is where my dilemma begins. Because I am genuinely happy with him. He is everything I ever wanted. We have lived together, travelled together, built a life together, and somehow I never get tired of him. He always wants me around him, and I genuinely feel loved and at peace with him. But sometimes I still cry. Not because I regret loving him, but because I wonder if I offended God or hurt another woman in the process. And no, I did not intentionally enter someone’s home to destroy it. Long before anything happened between us, he already felt trapped and unhappy. Even while we started dating, he refused to speak badly about his marriage in detail. It was much later that he slowly opened up about some of the things he experienced and why he chose to leave. Still, I know every story has two sides, and maybe that is why the guilt stays with me sometimes. I even feel tempted sometimes to explain myself to his ex-wife because I never intentionally tried to hurt her. Whether I was in the picture or not, their marriage already seemed broken long before me. Whenever I bring up my fears, my fiancé reassures me that he made his own decision and that at least he was honest with me from day one.
According to him, many people hide marriages, children, and entire lives from women, but he chose honesty from the beginning. I know many people will still judge me regardless. Some will say I ruined a home. Some will say, “How you get him is how you lose him.” But life is honestly not always black and white. I am not claiming perfection, and I am not trying to justify every decision. I am simply telling my story exactly the way it happened. I genuinely love this man, and he genuinely loves me. I just hope someday I stop feeling guilty for choosing happiness. And I truly pray everyone involved eventually finds peace.
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