I've been dating one of my co-workers for a couple of months now. We have a great time together and love all the same stuff—it's pretty perfect. The only problem is that he's been in a relationship with a friend of mine for the past few years. We initially got involved kinda randomly one drunk night when he and his girlfriend were broken up. We'd kept our involvement quiet out of respect for our mutual friend, and I was surprised when he told me they'd gotten back together. I get it—they have been together for years and live together and have animal babies—but we just can't keep our hands off of each other! We've been meeting secretly when she goes out of town or works late. The sex is wonderful, and it's even better when we can go out. There's something really sexy about keeping this quiet, but as time passes I feel more and more in love with him. He says he loves me, too, and is just waiting for the right moment to end things with his live-in girlfriend, but I'm getting impatient and wanting to really share this awesome love with my friends and family.

Waiting For Him

Waiting, I am genuinely sorry to tell you this, but you and this asshole are not in a relationship. If you were, you'd do more than just meet up and have sex when his girlfriend isn't around. He's cheating on your friend with you, and he intends to never tell her.

Unless this guy and your friend moved out and split up the pets, they never broke up. They were just pissed at each other for a minute, and he took it too far and cheated on her with you. I venture that he's one of those dudes who thinks of himself as a “nice guy,” so he probably thinks that he can lie his way out of this without hurting anyone. He is not “waiting for the right time” but is actually just treading water until this blows up in his face.

While he's desperately trying to think up a way out of this, he's also having a blast and feeling like a pimp with two women on his jock. He feels like a god every time he leaves your bed and hops into hers—trust me. Keeping it quiet “out of respect” is a line I've heard a million times from guys with too many irons in the fire. They can literally build themselves a harem by manipulating willful ignorance out of the people they're sleeping with. This guy is a predator, and if I hate anyone in the world, it's men who ruin good women by treating them badly and making them jaded.

This is going to end terribly for you no matter what, but try your best to take the high road. Tell your friend that you've been sleeping with her boyfriend, and that he tells you he loves you, but be prepared for that information to literally ruin her life. His girlfriend is the only innocent party in all of this, and she's going to lose the most.

For you, this is going to sharpen your edges in an ugly way, but it will also make you stronger. You betrayed a friend for what you thought was love, and though it's gonna make you hot with rage and shame, you'll learn from this. It will make you more cautious, you'll be a better friend to future women in your life, and it will help you to understand what love really is.

Love yourself. You should not be treated like a shameful secret. You deserve a person who will take you out in public and be proud of you. This guy is not the one, and he doesn't want to be. You two might try to make it work after this is all said and done, but believe me: Any romantic, public, monogamous relationship you have with him after this affair will be colored by the fact that you started out as the side chick. It's not a place of honor, and men know that. You deserve a man who respects you from the start.

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