-- Question for John --
My girlfriend of 4 years is demanding I divorce my wife of 5 years or else we are through. I am torn because my wife is a lovely person but the years of me having fun have doubted my ability to enjoy my wife’s company. I’m torn between my wife and my girlfriend. I feel under pressure to end my marriage because I fear losing my girlfriend who incidentally is more receptive to love making than my wife.
My wife knows about the affair and says she accepts it. I am 33 , my wife is 30 and my girlfriend is 25. To make matters worse I love them both but in different ways. Its not just about having your cake and eating it. I don’t want to lose either person. My worry is that if I choose my wife then I will never get over my girlfriend and if I choose my girlfriend then perhaps I don’t know her as well I thought I did.
-- Answer from John --
Many men come to think that they cannot choose between two women because each woman has some of the qualities they want, but neither has all the qualities. This usually indicates that a man is in fact not truly ready to commit to a single woman.
Unfortunately, this gets even more complicated by going ahead and marrying someone, because that will usually not work until a man is truly able on the inside to settle down for one and only one.
That’s something that shifts inside a man, and it is not really a function of finding the “right” woman, by the way.
You would benefit from talking to a counselor to explore what it is in you that is going on around needing more than one woman, what or how that represents a split in yourself, and how to come to heal that split and get a sense of inner wholeness.
Only with that inner wholeness can you actually find peace on the outside in a relationship and fully choose to be with one other person.
And unless you have that internal peace and frame of mind, you will never have peace on the outside in relationships either, because I have yet to hear of a case of multiple relationships that results in lasting fulfillment for all parties.
