Expert: Azure - 10/9/2009

Question
I feel very bad these days, and could use some direction...

I am a 51 year old married man, and have been married for 29 years.  My wife and I are great friends, but our sex life has never been what could be called active.  We have not had sex more than twice a year for the last decade or so, and never really had a good sex life in the first place.

Recently I have become extremely good friends with one of my co-workers, who, at 25, is half my age and even slightly younger than my oldest daughter.  She and I talk all of the time, and do see each other as friends outside of the work environment.  We do go out to eat occasionally as well.  My wife is fully aware of our relationship and allows me to see my friend, and trusts me to remain faithful to her.

I have, naturally, found myself completely in love with my friend.  We are very comfortable with each other, and there are no secrets between us, so she is well aware of my feelings for her.  Fortunately, one of us is an adult in the relationship, and she has made it quite clear that we will only be friends.  Yet we still go out, we still hug, we still tell each other 'I love you', and then I go home to my wife.

I have never cheated on my wife, and I always thought I was "affair-proof".  I do love her very much.  Yet if my friend said the word, I would consummate our relationship as soon as the words left her mouth.  I am actually quite happy that she is taking a stand for our friendship, but if we continue on, I'm not sure she will hold firm.  This friendship has been going on for the last two years, but has only reached this emotional level in the last six months.  She does not want to lose me as a friend either, and also enjoys our very close bond.  We have shared things with each other that, if my wife knew, would certainly end up in a divorce, so now I have secrets from my wife, which has never happened before now either.

I do not want to lose my wife.  I also do not want to lose my friend, nor lose the closeness we have developed.  I do not want to hurt either of them, so of course the solution so far is to hurt the one responsible for this mess, which is me.  I feel like I'm losing my mind, but if I have to lose either one of them, I don't know what I would do.

To me, this sounds like something that has never happened before, but I'm sure it happens all of the time.  I am in constant agony, and I have no idea what to do.  I want to maintain my relationship with my wife (I have become accustomed to a sexless marriage), and I want to maintain my relationship with my friend, though I would also like to start a physical relationship with her.  Since I have no sex life to speak of anyway, I can live without that aspect in our relationship, but she knows I would like to be physical with her.  Right now she is in control of that, and it may never change.

So I feel completely rotten for a reason, and I feel like I'm cheating everyone involved, but I'm the one that is feeling the pain of everything.

I know I'm rambling, but I did want to get everything out, in hopes of some kind of help here.  Thank you for listening.

Answer
i'm not sure why you're in so much pain--aside from the physical (which can't be THAT important to you, considering you've accepted the non-intimacy for 10 years), you have the best of both worlds, and each knows about, and tolerates, the other; i don't see where ANYONE is being "cheated"...so, perhaps the need here is simply for you to alter your PERCEPTION as to what the reality here is, as my objective analysis has hopefully illustrated..