How to Cope in a Love Triangle – Help for the “Other” Man or Woman

You can view a more recently updated version of this article at www.nomoreheartbreak.com

Disclaimer: The following article is for the “other” person in an affair or a love triangle. Before I get a slew of angry email asking me how I can condone affairs, let me just say that affairs and love triangles happen. Being a coach I do not judge people but try to help them. Given that love triangles and affairs happen, the people in these situations need help and support, just like people in any other complicated relationship situation. This article does just that - it offers help and support to the people who need it.

To be in love with someone who is in a primary relationship or marriage with someone else can be the most excruciating and at the same time the most seemingly beautiful experience of your life.

The experience is excruciating because it is hard to stop or change it. It ensnares you in a situation that you may not be able to get out for a long time, one you may in fact not want to get out of. Your inability to make the situation into exactly what you want makes you suffer.

The experience is beautiful because the person that you are having the relationship with seems like your perfect, ideal partner — your soulmate. There is a very special connection between the two of you. The attention from your loved one and the way he or she feels about you is deeply satisfying. The bond between the two of you seems magical.

In spite of the beauty and the connection in the relationship, you suffer tremendously. It’s as if you are on a roller coaster ride, up one moment and more in love then you have ever been, down the next and in more despair then you have ever felt.

Below you will discover the reasons you are suffering in your relationship and coping strategies to ease your suffering.

#1 Reason for your suffering – you think your loved one is “the one”

At times you want to leave the situation, but you don’t feel you can - you feel your loved one is “the one”, the intended one for you. Not being able to be together with your “the one” all of the time causes you pain. But when you try to leave, you feel agony. The pain of having a part-time relationship is great, the pain of leaving is even greater. The pain you feel when thinking of leaving or trying to leave reaffirms to you that your loved on is in fact “the one”.

Coping strategy to consider: What if this person you are in love with is not “the one”, not your soulmate? What if this relationship is only a step — a big, significant step – but not “the one”? What if you are not trapped in the situation, waiting for your intended one to extricate him- or herself from someone who is not “the one”?

In fact you are not trapped. You feel trapped because you feel the person you are with is “the one”, and that you cannot let him or her go.

How do you know if he or she is “the one”? The pain of trying to leave is not a reliable way to tell. That pain can be attributed to other reasons, such as your deep fear of being alone - which most people have - or how much of your needs are getting met in the relationship and how much you don’t want to let that go.

You will only know looking back if your loved one was “the one” for you. Most people with love triangles in their past say their loved one turned out to not be their soulmate. When the suffering gets to be too much, start to wonder if in fact your loved one is your “intended one.”

#2 Reason for your suffering – you think there won’t be another love after this relationship

You are suffering because this love feels like your only chance at the kind of love that everyone dreams about. Even more, it’s hard to imagine being in a relationship and being satisfied with anyone else.

And so you are trapped.

All of your needs are not getting met in your relationship, yet all the while you are not free, nor do you want to be free, to get them met elsewhere. In fact, you don’t think there could be or will be anyone else to meet your needs in such a way again, to love you this well.

Coping strategy to consider: What if there can be love even deeper than your feelings now, a love where you share ordinary moments with a special person, instead of only special moments stolen in secret?

Start to wonder if the whole package of your needs could be met in another relationship. People do find happy, fulfilling, loving primary relationships.

When the suffering about being alone yet again, at night or on holidays, gets going, focus on the fact that in the future you will have a loving relationship where your needs will be met.

If you need to, say to yourself a thousand times that you will be happy, your heart will be happy and all of your needs will be met. You just don’t know by whom yet.

#3 Reason for your suffering – you stifle your anger

Another reason you may be suffering...

is that you feel anger at your loved one, yet try to stuff that anger inside or pretend you don’t feel it.

You may feel angry at your loved one for staying in his or her primary relationship while being in a relationship with you. You may feel angry at your loved one for making promises that are not being kept, or because you have to spend weekends, holidays and most nights alone, even though you are in a relationship and in love.

Coping strategy to consider: You have every right to feel angry, so go ahead and feel the anger.

This does not mean you need to be mean and belligerent to anyone, including yourself. But it does mean you need to acknowledge your feelings to yourself and to your loved one and it does mean that you need to be authentic about your feelings.

This could mean that sometimes you choose not be with your loved one because you are too angry with him or her for the situation. At times you may need to cry, write in your journal, or hit something safe to get your feelings out.

Have you checked the Help for the "Other" Person in the Affair page: three resources to help you now?

Comments

[Sue]

Hello It's been two and a half years now since i met and began a relationship with a married man. I've been married myself for 10yrs. I though i was inlove until he came along. Now all i want to do is end my existing marriage. I hate to admit that i look down on women and men that do the exact same thing i'm doing but i love this man so much, that i train myself to not think of the hurt i may put his family and mine through. I'm so confused i know i'm not being fair to either party and i know i love my husband but i'm also inlove with the way this man makes me feel.

This extra marital relationship is driving me crazy. However i feel i need this man in my life as much as i need air to survive.

Plz make the pain stop!

[Relationship Coach Rinatta]

Dear Sue, I am sorry you are in pain. The thing is, for most people being in a love triangle hurts and the only way to stop the pain is to stop the triangle. So unless you are willing to live with the pain, you are going to have to choose either your husband or the other man, no matter how hard it seems to be.

If you would like, I can help you by coaching you on how to greatly improve your marriage, so that letting go of the other man won't be as hard as you now think.

[ginger]

I can't seem to get out of them. Every time I try to start a new relationship, I get myself into a triangle and not a pair.

[Kat]

I fell for a guy at my uni who had a gf for 3-4years. She goes to another uni nearby. We are all 19. I met him in October. He had talks with her about how he had been enjoying attention from another girl [me], and discussed a break in February. Then overly intimate things happened between me and this guy, and he broke up with her. He told me that he had thought about marrying his ex, but then I came along. For a week, things felt wonderful, even though we were going against what I said - that we shouldn't do anything until he was properly sorted in his head.

Then he started being distant. He went fom thinking I was amazing, to wanting to be just friends. He had begun to miss his ex, and when he spoke to me last night about it, he said she was perfect - but she won't have him back. He says he crushed her - but he crushed me too :( Because we had become such close friends, we had tried to stay friends. But it wasn't working, I couldn't take not being "allowed" to talk about it anymore [I didn't want to be making him feel bad when he was already clearly feeling bad]. Yesterday I got angry about the whole thing, and now I'm not speaking to him.

This September I'm moving in with him and his flatmates, who are also close friends of mine now, in Halls of Residence in uni. I think it would be best if I didn't speak to him at all over summer until September so he can get over his ex and I can get over him. Although, I'm not sure if I should apologise for swearing at him over MSN when I was angry before I go home, or if I'd be better off just leaving it alone.

:( I don't want to have to apply to move to another flat in September. I want everything to be nice and happy again. Who knows, maybe when he's over his ex he'll want me as more than just a friend again. I'm not going to count on that though.

[sne]

i think u need 2 get over him it is clear he is not so into u, m sowi kat bt u still young go out there u wl find what u deserve its obvious he lvz hs ex.

[vanessa]

I have a huge dilemma my BF seems to be the one for me! He's perfect in everyway! But i dont feel the searing passion my friends describe they feel for there significant other. He's perfect but I was unhappy for awhile, and met this other guy over the winter break my heart seemed to soar for him even though I met him such a little time. I can't stop thinking about him, but feel like i cant get rid of my current BF. I cant make up my mind, one day I convincw myself it wont get better than that and other times all i do is daydream about the other guy! The other thing to add is this other guy studies abroad in Brazil but he is the same nationality as me and plans to go back to out HW country when he is done with college which is in 2 years. He knows I have a BF we discuss all the difficult truths honestly. We realize the distance and all of that. But i still cant stop my relationship with my current BF and feel like telling him I cheated on him!! I cant stand the LIE anymore!

[eric]

i'm a guy, and my best friend is going out with this girl that i like. I just found out that she has feelings for me too, but I don't want to lose my best friend. Advice?... I feel lost

[Lee Bell]

I am currently having an emotional affair with a married man on line. What started out as friendship has developed into an intimate and often sexually charged exchange. My marriage of ten years ended as a result of my ex-husband's infidelity and I would have NEVER thought in a million years I would be sitting on this corner of a love triangle.
We decided to lay it all on the table and address our situation.....I expressed my concern and doubt with my own behavior and temptations to engage with him in a full blown affair....he admitted he has thought about it numerous times. We both agreed that the consequences were too great and chose to NOT meet up in person, but to let this ride and see where it goes.

It has become more and more complicated. Feelings are running deeper, desire deepens, and longing is out of control. We have progressed from flirting and talking to "going there" ober the phone.

I dont want him to leave his wife but the three I's are killing me:

I - Inaccesible : Unavailable or difficult to reach or obtain.

Intimacy: Closeness, connection, confiding, friendship,
and sex.

Irony : incongruity, discordance, or unintended
connection that goes beyond the most
evident meaning.

How can I seriously be this intimate with someone sooo inaccessible? Ironic isn't it?

[A Non]

Hello,

I am 30 years old and I have been involved with a girl, 24, for nine months now. She lives with her partner and has been saying to me since I met her online at the end of last year that she is not in love with him in any way. She tells me I am the most attractive man she has ever met, the only man she is truly turned on by emotionally, psychologically and sexually all at the same time. She says that for the first time in her life, she sees sex as more than just sex, she sees it as making love. She says that she wants to leave him, that she wants to spend her life with me, marry me and grow old together.

I have not had the easiest of times over the last twelve months or just longer, I came out of a relationship where I ended things because I realised that if I didn't stop and understand that I didn't want it, I would end up having 'another woman.' So I ended it and the breakup combined with the stress of losing my flat, job and getting up to my eyeballs in debt drove me to two quite serious suicide attempts in a month.

The thing I can't seem to shake is throughout knowing her, she has been more help and more of a rock to me in getting beyond and moving on from my last year. With her help, I have made more personal progress in my life than I believe I ever have. But it just hurts so much that I can't lie with her. That she would choose not to just lie with someone else, but someone who has abused her both mentally and physically in ways I cannot even bring myself to think about sometimes. I know that he has broken her and I just don't understand why she can't see her own self worth.

I try to show her that she is stronger than him, but she just tells me how much I don't understand and how he has supported her in ways I will never understand or know about and how it is so important to be friends with him after they break up. I guess I will never understand how or why she would ever want to be friends with someone who, drunkenly or otherwise, held a kitchen knife to her throat.

I have begun to lose friends and am feeling very much alone right now. The fact is, I have never felt like this about someone, or found it as easy to think about someone the way I think about her. I read this page and recognised all of the reasons I am upset right now. But a part of me just kept saying that "If we can just get through this,it will be alright." Can something right ever come out of a love triangle? Can somebody please tell me that there is hope out there. I fell so very alone.

[Relationship Coach Rinatta]

Dear So Very Alone,

I would love to tell you that triangles sometimes work out, that there relationship do in fact turn into life long wonderful exclusive relaitonships. Unfortunately, as much as want to spare you and shield you, the statistics say that less than 1% of triangles turn into monogamous happy marriages.

The best thing you can do right now is find the strength within to get up and rebuild your life and let your lover do what she must do with hers. It is possible that if she leaves her relationship situation on her own, without you in the picture, the two of you might find each other again, reconnect and live happily ever after.

From The Heart, Relationship Coach Rinatta

[Lillian]

I know that this site is for the "other" person in the triangle of love, however, I am the wife in that triangle. I just want to say that I know about his affair and I know that he is madly in love with this woman....but he still loves me too. He lies to the "other woman" more than he does to me. She has no idea that we still sleep together...he won't tell her. I guess all I really want to say is that probably 90% of married men having affairs are cheating on the "other woman" with their own wives.

[A Non]

Hello.

This is 'So Very Alone' again. So I've managed to do it. Well, rather, she finally came to a decision and said that for now at least, we have to just remain as friends. I know this may be painful for me but I feel like the hopeless romantic in me just can't give up completely and wants to at least give it some time for us being apart, to see if she can sort out what she needs to and I hope that will bring us back together one day. I guess time can only tell now. But I can see that I have been through basically, hell, since may of this year. I so wanted us to get to our anniversary, like somehow celebrating a year of a secret adulterous relationship would change things. I can see now that this is for the best. I just wish it didn't hurt as much as I feel like I do right now.

The strange thing is I can see all of the things she would critcize me about and they were all brought on by the situation we were seeing each other in. But at least she actually said to me that she could finally see what she was doing was wrong, that it was't fair on either me or her boyfriend. I guess that shows some semblance of care, right? I hope it's enough, that without the worry and stress I can act like more of a grown up and without the guilt and the fear of getting caught that one day we can find each other again and properly begin what we started.

Maybe I am a fool for waiting in hope but I can't help that beyond everything I have read here and on other similar sites, she has helped me so much with my life, as a friend. I know that the arguments aside, I love her more than anyone I have ever met and I can say that with my hand on my heart, honestly, that I have never given anyone the truth, commitment, honesty, dedication and loyalty that I have given her.

[brooke]

hello... could you help me...

im in a hard position right now. my best friend introduced me to a guy who she likes. this guy is falling for me dramatically and my best friend is still in love with him. she gets realli annoyed and jealous everytime i tell her something about him that she wants to know like what hes saying to me and what im saying back. i dont know what to do because i think i like him a little but she is my best friend and i feel like i cant move becuase im going to hurt one of them. im 14, can anyone give me some advice?

[LOSTINLOVE]

Hi....opinions please

I am with a guy that I truly love and he says he's totally in love with me. We've both said that we are each others best friend. We have tattoos that we went and got together, I've been to his house, he has a key to mine, he's met family and introduces me to people all the time when I'm with him. He has a girlfriend. They have children together and he says because his dad wasn't around that he doesn't want the same for his kids. Says he doesn't want to "go pick up" his children and he doesn't want the mother struggling to pay her own bills when they can all stay in HIS house and the kids won't have to ask for anything. I commend him on that, I really do BUT....we're suffering. Everytime we're together, regardless of what we're doing, he says this feels great or this is where I should be or something of the sort. He says with me he can be himself completely and can be happy whereas at home he spends most of his time with the kids. We even celebrated our 1 year anniversary. We've talked about Valentine's day and doing things in the SUmmer. I've seen him cry and he even said he stopped seeing the other women he was because none of them could offer what I could.

I HATE THIS!!!!!!!! We are soooooooo alike but still our own people. We laugh, wrestle, watch the same kinds of movies, play little text message games, and are so sexually compatible. I'm just getting tired of not having him when I need him. It's killing me that right now I need him and he probably doesnt even care. That's not fair, but it's how I feel. We both get up really early and he textes or calls me every morning, even when he is home. He says she's not my competition because his heart is with me but his kids are most important.I'm tired of being an option for him. THE last time I walked away from him, he told me I took a piece of his soul andhe needed to be in my life. I love him dearly.

WHAT DO I DO????????

[Still Lovesick]

Hi! I need an advise pretty bad. I really want to end this but there are things that prevent me from doing it. I think I still am in a love triangle. We both have long-time partners and have kids to care for. We started this thing nearly two summers ago. I never really thought I'd fall for him since I'm not keen on having one outside of my current relationship as I believe I'm fiercely loyal. But because we were always together at work, and that he pretty much worked hard to befriend and made me so close to him (and yes, we have already gone to bed a couple of times), I have fallen in love with him. We maintained this short, meaningful and discreet friendship/relationship until the day he left with his family for another country. I have never felt so much pain in my life.

I have been dealing with this painful feeling of longing and missing him for more than a year now. I wanted to make it stop but how can I if he doesn't want to stop? He calls me like, every week and one time, we even indulged in phone sex. Every time I decide for myself to just not think about him anymore...or maybe even flirt with some other guy, I get a call from him. I don't know if it's just me but even when he was here we sort of developed this mental connection. One time I was so busy that I wasn't able to talk to him for a month and I was really resolved to just forget about him. I thought that was it, but then he called and have been calling me ever since. I cannot stay away from him. It's like he doesn't want to release me yet. I still am madly in love with him. Maybe he's just being true to his word that he wanted us to be friends forever. But I find it so difficult because of the distance. Forever is torture. Pretty soon he's coming over for a vacation. I'm so excited to see him again and just be with him but at the same time I'm scared of feeling that pain again when he leaves. I can't do it anymore. Help!

[Confused but Happy]

I need advise really bad. I am engaged to a man. We've been together for a little over a year. We decided to let a good friend of ours enter what we had. Now it Me with my fiance and my best friend and all of us together. It's been going on for a little over a week and I am very confused. I dont by any means want out of it, I just want healthy ways to cope with the inevitable jealousy that it is bringing. I am in love with my fiance dearly and slowly growing to love my best friend as well. We are all intimate and this is all oh so very confusing. Do you know ways we can all three learn how to cope in healthy ways with the slight twinges of jealousy and does this sort of thing ever work?

[Confused but Happy]

forgot to mention, my best friend is female. sorry.

[vivian]

I have been with my boyfriend for 6 years and have been traveling away from him most of the times because of my career.
Now I am settle down and want to build a family with him. Suddenly, out of the blue, a girl called me and emails me that she have been seing my boyfriend for 3 years every weekends that I was not with him. I suffered so much pain and wanted to end it but now, still lingering on for 7 months because he keeps calling me. What should I do to get rid of this trial... that I want to get out so much but yet still stuck inside?

[0503]

Hi.... I'm in a relationship with a guy who has a girlfriend of 4 years. We are neighbors since we were nine and I didn't know that he had feelings for me until he confessed it in a friendly manner. He said that he was afraid to confessed then for I may just laugh at him. I tried to ignore it but as we see each other everyday and talk about it, I started to fall for him. He said he had no intentions of hurting his girlfriend but he can't fight his feelings for me and I feel the same way. He also confessed that he loves me more than his girlfriend but he can't break up with her for many reasons. Conscience as a whole. He wants to start a clean relationship with me. I want that too but it really hurting us. I've thought of breaking up with him but I can't. Just the thought of it hurts.