Reader’s Question

I’m a nurse and have been involved with a man at work for five years. We are both married. He goes to church. This is his second marriage. I had been happily married for 28 years until I met him. There was never any sex between us — just a lot of sneaking around the hospital and kissing and feeling each other. Over time I fell in love with this guy and told him so in letters.

We both never intended to leave our spouses. Yet he is very jealous and easily gets mad and pouts for weeks if he even sees me talking or laughing with another male. He is now flirting with another nurse that I work with, and I know they have something going on. I confronted him, but he said I was falsely accusing him and got mad. Now he won’t even look at me but continues to visit the nursing floor where she and I work to look at and flirt with her. This hurts really badly because I still love him. The nurse he is flirting with is the hospital “whore.” It really makes doing my job hard. I don’t want to quit my job. How can I get over him?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

You can start by being grateful that this guy’s not helping you carry this relationship much farther. And, if you were truly “happily married” until you met him, you can do some soul-searching about why you might jeopardize your happy marriage to be involved with him. Perhaps the lure is mainly that he is so unattainable (twice married and obviously still not capable of commitment). If that’s the case, you need to really reckon with your own wants and needs. Some women get the misguided notion that their love is strong enough to “nurse” the promiscuous soul to health. It’s probably a good idea for you to seek out a counselor and sort things through. In the meantime, be grateful. From what you say, you appear to have come pretty close to making a very big mistake.