Compassion and possession in marriage

DEAR EPPY,

Please help me understand my feelings.  I am married and in my mid-50s.  Around three years ago, I met my ex-boyfriend and we exchanged stories about our lives.  I learned that he was married with two daughters.  His family didn’t know that he had a son from an affair he had while he was married.  His son knows about his family. 

I told him to inform his wife about it since it was just a brief affair and I felt that his wife and daughters had the right to know.  But he was afraid that his wife would separate from him and his daughters would turn against him.  I joked one time and said that if he died, his son would show up during his wake  and his wife and daughters would meet him, and they’d be angry and hurt.  His reply was it was no longer his problem since he was already dead.

During our exchanges, whenever I mentioned my children’s achievements, he didn’t look like he was interested to hear how proud I was of them.  But when he shared something about his family, I was interested in learning more about them.

I was seeing him because I was not happy with my marriage at that time and just needed a friend.  I didn’t tell my ex about my problems at home and made him think I had a happy marriage. 

He said he had a happy married life.  Yet, he expressed his desire to have an affair with me.  He said we would keep our respective marriages intact and have our own relationship at the same time.  I was turned off by this and told him I couldn’t do that to my husband and I didn’t want to hurt his family as well.  Although my husband and I were having problems at that time, I still love him.

He didn’t communicate with me for a while.  Then one day, he sent me a text message asking me to reconsider and have an affair with him.  I said no.  I just want us to remain friends.  He stopped communicating with me and changed his number.  

He didn’t communicate anymore with me after that.  Yet, once in a while, I would check on him in Facebook just to see how he was doing.  But I didn’t friend request him.  Recently, through Facebook, I learned about his death.  I saw a picture of his wake with a big picture of him.  I was shocked.  I couldn’t believe it.  I called his office and inquired about him.  He died of cancer.  I had a hard time accepting that he was gone.  I couldn’t understand my feelings. 

Was I sad?  I must have been.  I realized I wouldn’t be seeing him in Facebook anymore.  I know I didn’t love him, but somehow, I felt regrets.  I can’t understand what I feel.  When I got home, I told my husband about it.  Maybe he saw something in my face because he embraced and hugged me and said, “Condolence.”  That was the time I cried.  I cried while my husband was holding me.  Somehow he understood.  But I didn’t want to talk to him about my ex.  I felt relieved when I told him, but I still don’t know why I felt that way.  Am I confused?

My husband and I are happier now than we were three years ago.  I made the right decision, but I can’t help feeling there’s something sayang about something I can’t understand.  Now, my ex is dead and his family does not know about his son.  I don’t know if I should tell them.  Or what is the point of telling them?  They don’t even know about me.

What do you think, Eppy?  Why do I feel these things?  We haven’t been communicating for the last three years, but it came as a shock when he died.  I feel he didn’t feel anything for me, not even friendship, when we had contact before, as I feel he could have told me he was sick or let me know he was dying.  I still think about him once in a while and whatever I’m feeling has lessened.  What do you think?

EX-GIRLFRIEND

DEAR EX-GIRLFRIEND,

Your ex-boyfriend did not have any need for letting his legal family know that he has a son.  It’s best you leave things as they are.  Losing a husband and a father will be something his family will have to deal with at the moment.  They don’t need to deal with something else that will hurt them even more.  Just imagine an ex-girlfriend informing the family about a son from another woman.  Whatever needs to be known will come at another time when it should.

I find your story so moving.  I can see the tragedy of loss and yet feel the joy knowing that there are beautiful people like you and your husband.  You are a wonderful, loving wife.  Someone who can say “no” to a man who is so involved in his own pleasures and comfort.  Even in moments of conflict with your husband, you saw beyond his faults and recognized the goodness in him enough to decide to love him and remain faithful to him.

You are blessed with a wonderful and loving husband.  Only a loving, selfless, and caring man could forego his own feelings just so he could feel with you when you were in grief.  Your story is full of experiences about your ex-boyfriend.  Yet, in the end, the one that really struck me the most was your husband’s word of condolences and the hug you received from him.  This is the most moving.  Who would not want to come home to someone who just listens instead of accosting and accusing? 

My column is under the section of “Health and Family” in Philippine STAR.  And your story deserves its place right here.  I do wish everyone in every Filipino family home would read this particular article because they should all model after the responses of a model husband and wife.  This is the model of a successful partnership where compassion for another is more important than possessing the other. 

You were right to keep your husband by saying “No” to your ex-boyfriend.  Of course, you are sad.  If the death of the most insignificant person in your life will make you sad, what more a confidant?  Your ex-boyfriend showed intentions of romance.  As a consequence, you have filed that information under “romance” in some corner of your mind.  This is what makes you wonder about your feelings.  If another friend died, someone you confided in, you would feel the same pain, but would file it in another section of your mind.  You need not feel guilty about this feeling.  You are grieving like any other friend.  Allow yourself to grieve because it is your right to.

I purposefully kept the length of your letter and shorten my response for our readers to appreciate your experience because for me, it is a wonderful story.                                             EPPY

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E-mail eppygochangco@gmail.com.