What would you do for love?

Anything. but not that

Throw it all away…

Wait, I did that.

And what did I learn? I learned that if you don’t love yourself. You will always make a bad mistake.

Learn to carry both sides of the conversation. ;)

All kinds of crazy shit! lol

Tie up loose ends first before making new ones.

With the situation in the description, I have no idea. Hopefully I never have that problem.
For love in general, I’ll do just about anything. I love love.

“I won’t do that”
I am a ridiculous romantic and I am very giving so there is a lot I would do for love. I am taken advantage of because of this.

You should never leave someone for someone else. If you don’t love your spouse anymore get out. Put the other relationship off, if after 6 months you still want the other person, then start dating, slowly.

Not much these days, I’m good! lolololololol

I’d love my family before anything, or anyone else… That’s what I would do.

When I try to imagine being in this situation, I keep getting stuck. It’s like deciding between your loyalty to your family and loyalty to yourself. No matter what you do, someone will be hurt. That someone will be someone you love—theoretically. I’ve not always loved myself. If I were in one of those places where I didn’t love myself, then I might grasp at love as a way of learning to love myself.

Anyway, it boggles my mind trying to sort it out. I know that the conventional wisdom is to stay with your marriage. It’s not possible, in this society, to have multiple wives. So that’s out. Besides which, many women won’t tolerate another who shares the affections of their spouse.

I could see myself going back and forth and around and around on this. Would I change my whole life and start over for love? Absolutely—if that were the only consideration. I’d do that at the drop of a hat. Would I stay with my wife and children and everything I have built in my life? Absolutely! My children are incredibly important, as is my wife. It’s really one love against the other. One is stable and yet unfulfilling at some fundamental level. The other offers the promise of the imagined, perfect life.

That fantasy can be very powerful, I think. It can seem more real than reality. It can make you believe that its reality is just around the corner. And that might make you mistrust your judgment. Are you seeing a mirage of your own making, or is this real? And you’ll never know unless you try it, and if you don’t try it, you may come to be satisfied with what you have, and you may end up kicking yourself for the rest of your life about what you never tried.

Then again, it might not even matter. It might not matter what society thinks or what your loved ones think. This is the only life you have. You can make yourself believe that anything is good. So you just make a choice. Maybe for what seems to offer the most completeness, or maybe for what seems to offer the most safety.

Maybe you don’t even try to decide. You leave it to fate; to chance to see what happens. Life throws all kinds of choices at us. There’s no telling what will come up, and right and wrong are not necessarily the paradigms you want to live by. Life can be very complicated, I think. Some questions are not easy for some people to answer. Not everyone has the certainty that some rule-based moral code might bring. It doesn’t matter, though. No matter what code you live by, when a situation like that happens, you have to make a choice at some point, and then you have to live with the consequences of that choice.

@wundayatta

Are you having a mid-life crisis by chance? lolol

I have a friend with a Cobra for sale! ;-)

I would learn to juggle and play the kazoo while river dancing!!

I’d share everything in my life without fear or reservation.

If you’re talking about Courtney Love, I’d take the first plane to as far away as I could get.

Although I am enjoying some of these answers, I really want some yes or no’s here. This is actually a serious question if you know what I mean

And how long have you known this guy for?

The same thing I’d do for a Klondike Bar.

Yes.

I would move towards a disillusionment…( why do you think it’s called that anyway? lololol)
Knowing what I know now…IF you truly don’t feel there is hope for your marriage ( and I wouldn’t be suprised if your wife/husband has their own strong feelings on the matter as well. )

Staying for kids, financial reasons and other obligations is living a lie.

I wouldn’t want anyone to feel an ‘obligation/duty ’ to remain with me, nor I them.

Living a lie is far worse than doing whats truly right for all parties involved.

I know I might take some flak for this but…..being unhappy in a relationship IS good enough reason to go.

I’d start buying the latest in emo fashion and stop being so selfish. I’d internalize my emotions until they built up and exploded in to a huge mess, thus damaging myself as well as all the people around me…..?

Are you considering this or are you asking us hypothetically? If you are seriously considering a life change like this then I would make sure you get a good lawyer and make sure that your new SO can handle the ride. Take a look at the people who are there for you now and check out what you are leaving behind. Just make sure you get a good lawyer, because with the devil on your side you will at least come out with fewer scars.

To clarify….unhappy as in unresolvable unhappy, as in. been unhappy for a looong time without any changes. As in, not unhappy because YOU have internal issues that you expect a partner to ‘fix.’

OK cold hard truth.

The fact that your biggest concern is the pain in the ass it will be to start over with a new life and not really concerned with how this is going to hurt your family, screams that you are not mentally or emotionally stable enough to be in any relationship. Seek counseling.

Read up on how bad divorce is for kids—the real story. (For a start, see “Dan Quayle was right.”) Then, fall back in love with your existing spouse, and be an adult as far as your responsibilities go. Let the “new love” go.

By the way, if you asked this question and your weren’t already married with children, I would say I would do just about anything for love (ie, relocate, etc.).

No. It’s not worth the excruciating heartache. There are absolutely no winners in this scenario. And there is no way on planet earth one can walk away from a family and not have it haunt you the rest of your life.

If I were in the position of being torn between family or new love, I would find a way to take a sabbatical from my family to get my life together. I would not continue romantic affections with my new love. Not because I don’t love either, but because I don’t want to hurt anyone while figuring out my stuff. If I were to come to the understanding that I cannot live honestly and faithfully with my spouse, then I would be honest and try to figure out whether to salvage the marriage or move towards divorce.

It’s not good for your heart to try to maintain the love you have for the new person while figuring out what to do with your present situation. Taking care of yourself must come first. If you do this first, your heart will lead you in a way that will honor all involved.

I’m not married with kids, my boyfriend is. We’ve been having an affair for three years. We are definitely in love but he is married with 2 kids. He doesn’t love his wife. He’s only there for the kids but is it really fair to stay with someone just because of the kids?? He wants to leave but it’s certainly a hard decision

Whoa wait. Does the wife know about this?

Aw girl you got no business getting up in there.
You gotta move on.
That dude’s married and that means, you got to back down.

Ditto what @rangerr said.

@Justnice – that must feel very painful. What prompted you to ask the original question the way you did? Are you wanting to make a decision and/or are you hoping to find some convincing information to pursuade your boyfriend to leave his wife?

He has to come to his own heart-felt decision. No matter what he does, the advice I gave holds true for you too – it is so very important to take care of yourself in this situation. You don’t want to carry the burden of “breaking up a family.” I’m sure you love him very much. There’s no judgement here. But, above all else, guard your heart… It is the source of your true happiness.

I would never ask him to leave his family because I don’t want the burden of breaking up a family. But on the other hand, I love this man very much and I want to be with him forever. We’ve been through a lot and I know that he loves me. He really wants to leave but he just hasn’t built up the courage yet

You cant have that both ways. If you love him, you need to stop this.

Show a little class and find another who’s family isn’t threatened by your mere presence.

@Justnice Leave him. Don’t ask him to leave his family. Walk away. You will never change him. Why would he leave his family, he has you anyway. If he was unhappy with his life he would change it with or without you.

He may not love his wife but his wife and his children have rights and feelings.

I am going to ask you to consider the feelings of those three people who are being affected by his cheating and by your cheating with him.

Ok, that being said, this is going to come out… it always does. The amount of damage it does shall be greater if it comes out after you two hiding it when she finds out than if he sat her down and told her about this.

I am suggesting to you to do the right thing. Leave him. If he leaves his wife, then get back together with him. The ones who suffer the most in this sort of thing are the children. Do you want to do that to his children and, whether or not you like his wife as a person, does she deserve this? Do you deserve to be the other woman?

If I was in his shoes, I would have told her, we would have done what we needed to do… before starting a relationship with someone else. Even if I could not stand her, I would love my children and that, in and of itself, would make me do the right thing.

I’ve hear many stories where men in his situation promise to leave their families. Then they come up with excuse after excuse about why they can’t do it now. Eventually, they leave you and go back to their family. To make a promise to a woman when a man is in that situation seems to me to be, no matter how much he might believe it to be true, a lot of self-deception.

You love him, but you also have to think of yourself. What if he never leaves them? Can you find another love?

Obviously there are men who do leave. But I think it’s a dicey situation. I’m sure that whenever you talk about it, he really feels like he wants to be with you, and it’s easy to make promises. But when he’s not with you, he is influenced by other people and concerns.

I think you may want to consider other relationships. Preferably with a man who is available. If he loves you, and you start finding someone else, then this may make him take a big step. Or not. You may lose him, but that may not be a bad thing.

I have sympathy for you. This is a very tough and complicated situation to be in. I just hope he loves you enough to have your best interests at heart, and to support you in doing what you need to do; not keep you close by giving promises he believes are true, but which he can not keep. A man who tries to cage you is not one to wait for. A man who wants you to be free—may be worth a lot more trouble for.

That was my situation July 2007 – I divorced my husband, kept the kid – he divorced his wife, left his state, moved here – now we’re married. We never looked back.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – does this mean you advocate this action for anyone in a similar situation? asked sincerely, not snarky

@prolificus No, I don’t advocate this for just anyone – we got lucky, we risked it all (it felt right) and we won the gamble. However, if there is no love in a marriage, it’s time to leave, kids or not and to enter in another relationship is optional.

@wundayatta Very good and interesting point. :-)

Fortunetly this is a situation I have been spared of in my life.

My boyfriend and I both just agreed that if either of us fell in love with someone else, we would end our relationship. It would not be fair to the other to string them along, but be in love with someone else.

The question can be interpreted two ways. One is asking what would you do to have love. The answer is to be a friend to many and keep an open mind and heart. The question can also ask what would you do because of the love you have for someone. The answer to that would be volumes and couldn’t be answered here, but put quite simply, almost anything.

Put up with a boring, self centred person who I have been “seeing” for two years. Selfish to the maximum, egocentric galore, doesn’t even remember my birthday, is distant, none emotional, yes I did that for “love”. Luckily unbeknown to him, I do not love him any more. However due to circumstance I have to keep him around my life. I don’t think he realizes I’ve cottoned onto him! I did that for love. It was a good thing anyway I normally attract needy obsessive people. So at least something changed. Yes I went off on a tangent.:)

@Violet Great answer. I would do anything for love. For me, it is the most important thing in the world.

Well if it were me, I’d do just about anything for love (short of killing someone lol) but I really believe in love and life is so short. We only live once so why spend it with someone who you don’t love?? When you’re on your death bed, would you say that you lived a happy life? Probably not. But if you are truly in love, even if you’re poor, you’ll still be happy. And most people would say that it was worth it

“I would never ask him to leave his family because I don’t want the burden of breaking up a family” ?? Are you kidding me? Umm, you have already done this. Any respectable woman wouldn’t have pursued a married man with or with out children period.

P.S. some “boyfriend”. Why would he leave his wife and kids for you? He has the best of both worlds. If he was any kind of a man and if he was really in love he would let his balls drop and be honest to his wife and children. Have you even wondered about if he would cheat on you ? if he did leave his family for you? He obviously is of good character. I’m sorry but I have little respect for people who are fools for someone who is married.

Well I desearve that one. But I didn’t chase after him, he persued me. And I always knew that he loved me. And I wouldn’t have an affair with just anyone but I love this man and that’s why I did it and honestly, I would do it all over again because I would do anything for this man. I love him and I would fight for him

And after you get him, and his family is laid to waste, how will you sleep at night knowing that he will pursue another woman behind your back, eventually leaving the family that you two have made together?

If you succeed, there will be a precedent to claim this about him. Be very careful of what you ask for. You just might get it.

This reminds me of John Edwards, cheating on his wife that is dying of cancer and creating a baby with another woman. She probably thought she was the “only one” in his life, but now they are saying he has cheated with others. What a catch.~

I agree loose ends should be tied up quickly after becoming serious in another relationship. When the two of you first took up (2 yrs ago) he should’ve chosen then but since you are a few years down the line and he’s still married then I personally don’t believe and the odds are definitely against you that he will ever leave and be with only you.