Ok here goes. I stumbled onto this site yesterday, and after reading posts by others, I think this is a place I can share. I honestly don’t know what else to do or where to go. This is my story.

I’m a male in my late thirties. I’ve been with the same woman since I was in my early twenties, and married now for a decade. I’m a professional musician and music teacher.

A few years ago, in my early thirties, my life completely bottomed out. Crashed. Due to a period of prolonged bad luck, I had no work for nearly a year and a half (either as a musician or in regular “day jobs”, I couldn’t get arrested as they say). Nothing was going my way and I couldn’t see an end or way out. I sighed so regularly and so deeply that my chest began to hurt. All my thoughts were dark. People noticed and I was difficult to be around, because I couldn’t share in anyone else’s joy authentically or be present to anything other than my own misery. Panic attacks came multiple times per day, with regularity. I thought it was all over.

Then, due to my patience, persistence, desperation, and something like good fortune, things began to turn around.

Through one good connection I started to get some work, then more and more work. I started to be recognized and respected by my peers and other professionals, after decades of working in the industry. I got new opportunities that I never would have previously imagined, and excelled. Slowly my confidence returned. For the first time in my life, I realized I was experiencing the authentic joy that comes from truly loving oneself. I never knew that feeling before, which is insane but true.

After my first big gig in this “new” life, I broke down completely. I cried with joy and gratitude that I had been given a second chance at a meaningful life, even though I’d pretty much given up. It felt like all that darkness was passing. I was seeing the dawn of my real self, for the first time. And it came from music, the one thing that I always knew I loved. I never doubted that at least. This taught me a powerful lesson about what the “self” is, how to recognize and defend it.

My wife reacted disconcertingly to this turnaround in my life. Of course on one level she was happy that I was finally happy. But my lifestyle meant that I was spending less and less time at home. I had a new peer group and a new social circle, most of whom she found pretentious and repellant. When she came to my gigs she would start fights with me about how awful my new friends were, or how I was becoming full of myself, or how that random girl by the bar was flirting with me. She vacillated between cripplingly insecure and hostile around any of my music friends. I got to the point where I told her I couldn’t do my job at a professional level if she was going to act that way during my work. She genuinely tried I believe but wasn’t able to fully get past her own insecure feelings that she was going to “lose me”. So she started not coming to gigs, which I was more than fine with.

This turnaround in my life changed my disposition completely. All of a sudden I had confidence, compassion, and a desire to connect with other people through music. Beyond that, I knew now that my purpose was to use this skill set to enrich society, to spread joy, to ameliorate pain. I was born again as a kind of artistic being, and I felt I understood my role in the world for the first time. I was so positive I could charge other people up with positivity, like a battery. This weapons-grade joy was so strong that I’m sure I got some work just because I made other musicians feel good and confident about themselves. I had a mission now. I knew who I was.

That’s when I met her. I’ll call her nonAP. This is the version of me that was waiting for her.

We met through work. One of my bands fired somebody and she was the next musician through the door. I fell in love with her playing almost immediately (this is a thing musicians know, you can get a ‘crush’ on the way somebody just plays their instrument, totally outside of who they are as a person). Her predecessor was stiff and joyless; nonAP played with joy and a sense of playful recklessness. We were introduced and I just thought to myself: “well, she plays great, she’ll be a great addition to the group.” Little did I know.

Musicians and performers spend a lot of time together waiting around, you see. We do this very intense performative thing for a living, which is very heightened and compressed into a short timeframe. But our job is bracketed by hours of tedium and waiting around. So naturally, if you start to work with people a lot, you start to get to know them. nonAP and I started to get to know each other. There was a vibe.

We shared a lot in common, and the fact that we both do the same somewhat insane thing for a living made us both feel that we weren’t alone, that someone understood us and had our back. As I said, I am married. She had a boyfriend at the time, and went through a few different relationships since. Because of the aforementioned vibes between us, I intentionally kept distance between us. Only met or spoke at rehearsals, but we connected on a deep level. She was so open and fearless about her struggles in life that it inspired me to do the same. But there was this extra thing that happened when we played together, an electric telepathy that I can’t describe but musicians will understand. When you really connect with another musician it’s indescribable.

But that was all onstage. Off-stage I was a married man and I kept my defenses up. But all the signs were there from her: a glance, a hand on my back as we were about to take the stage. It wasn’t nothing, it was definitely some kind of feeling. But I shoved it to the back of my soul. “Careful,” I said to myself. “Don’t fan this flame. You’ve just found yourself again, this isn’t real.” Whenever we had extended breaks with no gigs, I was secretly happy that I wouldn't have to see her and confront the feeling again. I sometimes avoided work with her on purpose for the same reason.

But the universe had other plans. Because of the aforementioned chemistry between us, and the fact that we’re both good musicians, we just got more and more work together. I started to see her several times per week, though always for work. One day after I had known and worked with her for a year, she called me up, which she had never done. She was trying to negotiate her rate for a freelance gig and wanted my advice. She normally went to her boyfriend at the time for such things (he was also a pro musician), but they’d just broken up. “So if you’re ok with it, you’re probably going to get more of these kinds of calls now,” nonAP said plainly, “because you’re my music friend.”

Two months later we were playing a terrible gig that one of our bosses had booked. All night she was teasing me, vibing with me onstage. The minute the gig was over I tried to hide backstage, but she found me. We talked, deeply and interestingly as we always do. She is fearless and the smartest person I’ve met. Eventually I asked her how she was doing with her break-up (stupid, I know, but I cared about her), and she replied that it was hard but she was recovering, dealing with self-esteem issues etc. “You are an enchanting human being,” I heard myself saying to her. “And any guy who doesn’t appreciate you doesn’t deserve your magic.”

At that exact moment she burst into tears. And hugged me. It was the first time. Not one of those perfunctory friend hugs, which we’d had a bit before (although I’d tried to avoid those too). A deep hug. One where the person puts both their arms under your arms and reaches completely around your body and squeezes. She buried her head in my chest and sobbed, so hard I could feel her body shaking. I had no time to react. At first I stiffened, as I knew what was about to happen. But feeling her tears and shaking through my chest, it was impossible not to respond. I softened my back somewhat and put my arms around her back, just holding her while she cried. We just stood there for what seemed like forever.

At that moment, my little spark of affection for this woman, one that I had hid and attempted to snuff out, burst forth into a roaring conflagration in my heart. When she hugged me that night I felt something explode in my heart. I actually said to myself, quietly, “oh fuck...oh fuck...no, not now.” After this gig I immediately got a cold for a few days. I believe I was love sick, such was the shock to my immune system of all those neurotransmitters that had been dormant for ages.

A week later we were working again at another gig. This time she brought a guy she was dating, albeit briefly. When he arrived she turned to me and said with a wink: “Ok, come meet this guy I just slept with. I want to know what you think of him.”

Later that night, as we were backstage getting ready for the next set, she came to me and asked what I thought of her date. Without thinking I blurted out: “Listen, I think you’re perfect, and you’re going to make perfect choices.” Ouch, right? What the fuck was I thinking? Should have kept that one to myself, but it just erupted out of me. I cannot describe the look she gave me in response to this. It shattered me.

At the end of the night, we made plans to work together again at our earliest opportunity. We laid plans for a new project that would be our own, rather than the accompaniment gigs that we normally did together. I could be crazy, but I swear I saw her glance shoot across the room to where her date had been sitting. Finding him momentarily absent, she looked me dead in the eye, and with a smirk and bit of a dare she said: “Now give me a kiss.” I leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the right cheek, like you do with ‘friends’. In reality it was nothing, but in my chest there was a lightning storm.

I wept in the car on the way home after that gig. I knew my heart was already gone.

My life began to unravel swiftly after that. My wife did notice that I had a new “best friend”, and the amount of time we were spending together for work. She started calling nonAP my “music wife”, which secretly gave me great joy. I managed to convince her that it was just like all my other music friendships, but eventually she noticed the difference in how I spoke about nonAP and the depth of my admiration and respect for her. nonAP and I had never touched outside that hug and I remained faithful, but something had changed in my marriage. Simply put, my heart wasn’t in it anymore. It belonged to someone else now.

I lost weight, I couldn’t sleep. My hands would sweat and my heart would pound at the mere thought of nonAP. I woke every night and sat in the dark contemplating my heart, like an animal howling at the moon over grief from its lost mate. I was smitten. I was sick.

My marriage began to crumble as my wife started to demand that I stop seeing nonAP. I wasn’t willing to do that, as it would have negatively affected my career, and taken away my most cherished friend. By this time nonAP and I were having emotionally intimate conversations, not about our relationships, but ourselves, our nature, human psychology. So I suppose that’s an emotional affair, although I still have problems defining it that way because it just felt like being close to a friend. But I concede I maybe don’t understand that distinction in this situation.

Finally last Christmas my wife gave me an ultimatum: stop working with nonAP or else. I wouldn’t budge. As much as my wife has given me, we have grown deeply unaligned in many ways and I couldn’t imagine giving up the one intimate friendship I have. January 2020 passed in a sort of miserable haze, the war in my home erupting every time nonAP posted on social media or something reminded my wife of the situation.

By March 2020 things had worsened. I secretly told one or two newer friends that I thought I was probably heading for divorce. I started to try to plan a separation, but my wife controls all of our financial resources, so I struggled a bit with how to exit and the logistics. At this point I had stopped talking to many of my longtime friends because they tended to take my wife’s side, or minimize my pain. So I kept it all inside. But I also had no support network, no resources, so I hesitated on how to actually leave.

Then the pandemic came.

The day the lockdowns began in my city, my wife was about to take a two-week vacation with her family. I was staying behind because I had to work, but I also planned to use the time to get my plan together: pack essential items, move my instruments to another location so that I could continue to work, figure out my statement, etc. (I know this maybe sounds harsh but a lot of divorce advice sites say to do this-- once you’ve made up your mind, have a plan, pack your stuff, do it when they’re not around, etc.)

The trip obviously got cancelled due to the pandemic. And of course all the work dried up. My wife later told me that she was also planning to not return after the trip. Unbeknownst to her, I’d also accepted a contract to work as a cruise ship musician in a far off location for the summer, beginning in June. My reasoning was that I could likely couch surf for a couple of months, then simply disappear and go to where I could work in peace, on a boat where the real world couldn’t find me. Yeah, I did need to have my fucking head examined. I was so desperate I nearly took a job on the other side of the world just to get away from the mess I’d created.

Lockdown forced my wife and I to confront our issues. She’s still livid with me for having an “emotional affair”, and I still resent her for taking my friend away. We still aren’t aligned on so many things. She is self-admittedly “basic”, loves reality TV, finds all confident or intriguing people to be “full of themselves”. She is cripplingly insecure and lacks self-awareness, but believes that all therapy or interventions are for “crazy people” and that working on yourself means that you’re already broken. She spends most of her days binge-watching the worst stuff imaginable and then complaining about her life. For the last two months I’ve been working 3 jobs remotely, while she just chills because everything seems to exhaust her. Even in lockdown, she doesn’t want to do anything that we aren’t doing together, at all times. She gaslights me constantly, making me apologize for things I didn't do, and using my relationship with nonAP against me every time she feels like it. I feel like I’m trapped in a hell of my own making.

nonAP and I have hung out a few times since the pandemic began, when conditions allowed, including a couple of magical evenings when we just walked and talked and everything felt electric. Like gravity, the thing between us started as a weak force operating over great distance, and then the force grows in strength as the objects get pulled into each other’s orbit. She has inspired me to confront myself in therapy, to be a better musician, to be more fearlessly honest. She has awakened me to parts of myself that I never knew existed. Nobody has ever shown me more of my own heart, and for this I will be grateful until my final breath.

I know I love this woman. I know with more certainty that I’ve ever felt in my life. I know it in my bones, I feel it to the deepest core of myself. I’m sure now that I had no idea what love even was before this, so great has been my internal expansion. I was living in darkness in my own heart, without knowing it, and she turned on the light.

The last straw came recently. My wife noticed I was still liking nonAP’s posts on social media, and told me that every time she sees that she feels a knife in her heart. She asked me not to like any of nonAP’s posts moving forward, and to never see or speak to her again.

I have genuinely tried to rise to this request. But the flame I carry for nonAP is still lit. When haven’t seen each other in six months, haven’t texted or spoken in at least two months. I spend my days now play acting as the good husband, trying to keep my wife happy, and attempting to convince myself that I want the things my wife wants (kids, house, traditional careers, family vacations to awful resorts and timeshares, etc.). Even though I’ve managed to keep working through the pandemic as a teacher and contract worker, she still asks me when I’m going to get a “real job”.

Here’s the hilarious coda to this story. Two nights ago I woke up at 4am having a full-blown panic attack. I had just dreamt about nonAP, as I often try to do, as it seems to be the only way I’ll ever get to see her again. I got up and looked at my phone. The first thing I saw was a FB video from a magazine featuring nonAP. It just auto-played on my phone. I stood staring in disbelief, having just been with my dream incarnation of nonAP moments before. Then I realized why she was featured in the video.

This amazing woman, who I’ve spent over 2 years obsessing over every single day, who I have ached for more than I thought possible, who has changed me in ways she isn’t even aware of...this woman is currently on the cover a magazine. I cannot walk down the street right now without seeing her and being confronted with whatever madness or desire has consumed my heart.

I am alone. I am completely fucked. I am hopelessly in love and can never escape it. I’ve been in therapy for over a year to deal with this disaster in my soul, and nothing has changed. My love for nonAP has become solidified, like it’s a physical parameter of my universe. Like gravity.

I'm too weak and afraid the speak my heart's truth, because if I did it would destroy what's left of my life, as I have no support network, no resources, no one to turn to.

I keep telling myself: “All you need to do is pretend to want to be in your marriage, for the rest of your life, until one of you dies.” And then I weep and scream inside myself and curse the universe and the fates for visiting this feeling upon me. Unrequited love. To be in love with someone that you cannot be with is the worst pain imaginable, I now understand. I would not wish this upon my worst enemy.