I feel too embarrassed posting about this, but I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer and need to know how to get out of this. Apologies for the long post.
I am a 34 years old , mother of two kids, one is school going.I live in Pakistan, My husband passed away a year ago, prior to that we had been separated for nearly 2 years. It was a difficult dysfunctional marriage, he was involved in several extramarital affairs right from the beginning. Anyway, so I have been living with my parents for the past nearly 3 years. I am educated , have a good career alhumdolillah. I am considered quite good looking and people are often surprised when I tell them I was married and even have kids.
well, a couple of weeks ago, there was this work related gathering that I had to attend.I don’t want to go into much details, but there were lots of people there and I didn’t know anyone there so I was bored.and there was discussion going on about something we were doing about raising funds for poor patients, something which I am actively involved in. I entered into a discussion with this young man, whom I didn’t previously know but his brother worked in our field so he was there with his brother and he had some suggestions about the fund raising thing. He is 24, studying in US, was on holidays in pakistan and returning in a couple of weeks. Well, I found the conversation with him interesting and I confess I let my guards down a bit and was more open and frank with him than I usually am while interacting with the opposite sex, because I thought of him as a kid and I thought he would think of me as an aunty. I teach in a college and kids his age are my students whom I often address as “baita” so there was nothing wrong going on in my mind and the discussion was entirely harmless… we discussed things like peshawar incident, compared education and life in pakistan and US etc
A couple of days later he contacted me on fb, asked if I could help him with some money raising thing and we ended up talking for hours.Again it was a general discussion, he told me about some girl he had met and some of his family issues etc and asked about my life kids,work. but we did talk a lot. this raised some alarm in my mind but I brushed it off telling myself he is a kid, I am 10 years older than him,widowed 2 children etc, what can happen?? and to cut things short we have been talking everyday after that . he says he has started to like me a lot, he wanted to take me out to which I refused even though he insisted and insisted. I feel so bad and I feel I am entirely to blame , I am older, more experienced than him I shouldn’t have let things come this far. Thrice during the past couple of weeks I tried to cut off contact with him when I felt things were getting out of hand, but he got angry and kept calling, messaging.I am at fault here I should have stayed strong and should not have gotten back in touch, turned off my phone etc. and I kept telling myself that he is returning to Us in a couple of weeks so what can happen, I didn’t have the slightest inkling he would end up getting so emotionally involved.
I am not justifying my actions, but I got married right out of college, never had any bf, never been in any kind of relationship prior to marriage, my marriage was an arranged one, and I found out he didn’t want to get married to me and wasn’t man enough to tell his parents so I got no love and affection from him either. For the past year I have been feeling very lonely and even when I wasn’t widowed I often wondered and yearned to know what it felt like to be have a man have those special feelings for you, so with this guy I grew weak. I shouldn’t have but I did, bash me all you want I deserve it.Also, my family is against women remarrying, so they have no plans to get me remarried, so being lonely all these years I felt maybe this was my only chance to experience how it felt like to have a man’s affections, again no justification.
So,coming back to present, he is on a flight back to US right now and I know this is all wrong , we don’t have a future together and I should break up with him ASAP. I need advice on how to, he had been calling me all night from the airport before boarding the plane telling me he would be back before I knew etc, i have been trying to give him a cold shoulder and ignore him but when he sees this he gets upset. I am hoping things will fizzle out once he is back in college and meets some girls his own age which I have told him he should. Like I said I have never been in a relationship before , so tell me which is least painful way, 1. let things fizzle out? 2. tell me I don’t have any feelings for him and cut off contact? 3. tell him even though we share a chemistry and I have feelings for him we don’t have a future together so its going to end up in a heart break anyway so better to break up now? I tried no 3 with him and it ended up in him getting very angry,
help!!!
I’m curious to see how he’d respond.