How To Wreck Your Life

Dear E. Jean:

I’m married. I love my husband dearly. We have happy children. However, I have always felt a loss because I never got to have the relationship (sexual and otherwise) with my first love.

We met as teens on holiday abroad. We became close over the next few years and spoke multiple times a day. We had a few meetings together but overall due to our age and commitments to education we couldn’t continue in this long distance relationship with no hope of being physically together in the coming years. We officially broke up, but still spoke daily. Then I had to cut him off as I felt I was not moving on and I wanted a partner to share my life with.

I met my husband and we are very happy. But I’ve always had feelings of missed opportunities about my first love. Now a decade later I started thinking about him a lot. I contacted him and now it’s like we were never not in each others lives. He was in a long term relationship but is now single.

I keep thinking about us being together one day. I don’t want to leave my husband who is truly my best friend, but I have romantic feelings for this man in a way that I have never had towards my husband. I wish I had had the opportunity to experience more with him at the time. I wish there was a way I could settle this desire in myself. I just don’t know what to do with these feelings or how to navigate my relationship with my first love!

I can’t imagine it would ever work out for us. But is there a way? I currently have the freedom (financially and career-wise) that I didn’t have then, but I am committed to my marriage and my children.

Did I completely miss my chance? — Looking for a Way

Looking, My Luv:

Now. Nine out of ten “normal” upright, red-blooded readers would glance at your letter about being committed to your husband and children and asking if there’s “a way” to bang your brains out with your First Love, and, naturally, they expect me to flog the mortal stuffing out of you—Hell, even the fact that you have the gall to ask if you’ve “missed your chance,” probably drives most people completely crazy.

So really. The only mystery that remains is— how am I going to beat some sense into you?

But! Aha! Readers of Ask E. Jean are NOT “normal.” Readers of Ask E. Jean are peerless champions of the heart! The Brain! And the Uterus! And readers of Ask E. Jean won’t be surprised to hear that I’m going to pay you the compliment of believing that you are committed to your husband—and—in love with your first love. And if you’re not free to love whom you love, Ms. Looking, what is your worth as a human being?

Therefore, my advice is this:

If you possess the mental strength and the moral vigor to rebel against convention, and if you believe in the ideal of Fair Play, talk with your husband, open the marriage, and start an affair with your First Love.

P.S. Of course, as the Mighty and Peerless Conflab will soon tell you (see the comments below, SEE THE COMMENTS BELOW IMMEDIATELY) some open marriages work brilliantly, some do not. If your husband is wounded, if your children are distressed,