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Do things differently this time.
By Mitzi Bockmann — Written on Jan 30, 2023
Have you just had enough with your married man and do you know that you need to move on?
Good for you!
As you know, because you have probably tried to do so 1000 times, breaking up with, and staying broken up with, your married man can seem impossible.
But, if you are reading this, I am guessing that now that you have resolved to end it with him, you really want to follow through.
Five ways to finally leave the guy who is cheating on his wife (with you)
1. Be firm in your decision.
First and foremost, as with any resolution, it is important that you are determined to do this. That you know that it’s time to break up with him and that you are 100% clear that you are ready to do so.
I know that when I was having an affair with a married man, I tried to break up with him many times.
I wanted to break up with him because he wouldn’t leave his wife. I wanted to break up with him because I wasn’t a priority. I wanted to break up with him because I was lonely on holiday. I wanted to break up with him because our relationship was distracting me from my life and making me isolate myself from my friends.
I told myself that I would break up with him and that I would be done with him.
But, if I am honest with myself, I broke up with him for one reason. I believed that if I broke up with him, he would miss me and leave his wife and we would live happily ever after.
With an attitude like that, I wasn’t really leaving him. By breaking up with him, I was actually hoping to cement our relationship, not let it go.
So, this time, you must decide that you are truly ready to do it. That you are doing it so that you can have the life that you want, to be happy and to find love, not because you are hoping that he will get lonely and jealous and come back to you, promising you happily ever after!
2. Do things differently this time.
Take stock of what you have done before.
Have you invited him to your house to have the conversation privately? Have you reached out to him a few days later for some ‘closure?’ Have you done something that would make him want to break up with you?
Have you broken up with him only to reach out to him on his birthday or your anniversary, believing that you can do so as a ‘friend?’ Have you begged him to not let you go and then broken up with him when he doesn’t fight for you?
Have any of these things worked in the past? I bet they haven’t.
It is essential that, if you want to have success breaking up with him this time around, you do things differently. Something that will make the breakup stick this time.
If talking to him face to face hasn’t worked before, talk to him over the phone instead. If talking to him over the phone, hearing the sound of his voice begging you to not break up with him, makes you feel bad and prevents you from breaking up with him, text him that you need this to be over. You can even ghost him.
If you know that he is going to reach out on holidays, block him everywhere.
If you have begged him before to not let you go, don’t show any emotions during this breakup. Be clear and concise and businesslike — don’t give him an opportunity to appeal to your emotions.
What I always recommend to my clients is that they text their married man to tell them that they are done, for good this time, and then, before they respond, to block them everywhere. This seems to make it easier for women because they don’t feel like they are being rude by ghosting their married man but are being clear by blocking them.
If that doesn’t work, you have my permission to ghost them.
Whatever it takes for you to not make the same mistakes again and get the breakup to stick!
3. Recognize why he won’t let you go.
Take stock of why he doesn’t want to let you go. Most likely, if you are trying to break up with him, the reason is that he won’t leave his wife. You need to take care of yourself and your own happiness.
Unfortunately, while your married man says he loves you, the reasons that he doesn’t want you to break up with him have nothing to do with that love. They have to do with what he wants.
If your married man truly put you and your happiness first, he would know that breaking up with him would be the best thing that he could do for you.
He knows that you are miserable and that he can’t keep his promises to you and that he most likely never will. It would be a gift to you that he let you go so that you can get on with your life.
But, your married man most likely isn’t putting your needs first. Your married man wants you around for his own selfish reasons. He wants you around because you make him feel loved and taken care of. He gets regular, probably exciting, sex from you.
When he is with you, he gets to step out of his mundane life and feel alive. And he can have all that and stay with his family too.
I encourage you to take stock of the reasons that your married man wants to keep you around. Maybe if you see that they have nothing to do with you, it might make it easier to keep your resolution this time around!
4. Fill your life with other things.
I am guessing that your married man takes up a considerable amount of your time. Even if you aren’t actually with him, you are most likely making sure that you are available whenever he wants you.
Over the course of this relationship, you have increasingly isolated yourself from those you care about and neglected the things you like to do.
It's time for you to get back to the life you had before you met him, the person you were before he came along.
What does that look like? Perhaps taking up running again. Having Sunday brunch with your friends. Planning a hiking trip with your sister. Volunteering for that time-consuming project at work that you know will bring you lots of accolades if you successfully pull it off.
Whatever you can do to fill the time that you would have spent with or waiting around for him. Get out and do things that will make you feel good about yourself.
Things that make you feel accomplished, that make you feel loved, that make you feel worthy of happiness and true love.
Breaking up with your married guy and sitting around as you have for months, keeping space open for him, will only prevent you from following through with the breakup in the way you want to.
5. Don’t reinvent history.
Whenever I broke up with my married guy, I found that I was reinventing who he was and what our relationship was like.
I remember missing all of the love and support he gave me, how he used to listen to me when I needed him to and guide me when I was feeling lost. This made me miss him and seek to get back together with him. Over and over.
During another breakup, I stumbled upon a diary that I had kept a few months back. In it were some things that really surprised me.
I wrote about how he never listened to me — that whenever I talked I felt like he was always waiting for me to finish so that he could say something. I read about all of the times that he wasn’t there for me when I needed him. I read about the loneliness that I would feel when I got off the phone with him as he headed home to his family.
Reading those things changed things for me. Instead of missing things that I had created in my head, I was able to clearly see the truth about how he treated me. I was able to remember the things that he did that made me feel bad and that were most likely a big reason why I broke up with him.
Remembering those things made me not want to reach out to him to reconcile. They only reinforced my determination to stay steady in my desire to break up and I stayed away from him.
I know that, without a doubt, you can leave him.
Even if you have failed to do so in the past, you still can do it now and keep it going forward.
When I finally broke up with my married man, I did so by ghosting him. He had hurt me one time too many. Ghosting him felt very mean but I did so remembering the hurt that caused me and recognizing that it was okay for me to hurt him back.
I blocked him but he still managed to get to me via email. I didn’t respond.
About 8 weeks in, he called. That had always been our routine — after 8 weeks he would call and I would take him back. This time, I didn’t answer the phone. I sent him a text and told him that I wasn’t ready to talk yet. This ‘yet’ seemed to satisfy him and he left me alone, most likely because he thought I would reach out down the road. I never did.
Letting go of my married man was one of the hardest things that I have ever had to do but I did it. And what happened when I did? I met the person who I am going to marry in July.
I never would have met him if I hadn’t, once and for all, ended a relationship that was sucking me dry.
Even if you haven’t done so before, I know that you can leave him now.
Be determined, do things differently, take stock of his motivations and the truth behind your relationship, and stay busy.
You can do this! I promise!
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Mitzi Bockmann is a certified life and relationship coach. She has over 10 years of experience in helping people find happiness in life and love.
This article was originally published at Let Your Dreams Begin. Reprinted with permission from the author.