Am I wrong to grieve about this?

[Tropical Wilds]

I don’t think he technically ghosted you... You weren’t in a relationship with him, and he said he wasn’t looking for a relationship. I get you felt attached to him and you interpreted some behaviors on his part to be mutual, but with him saying he didn’t want a relationship and you being presumably unavailable, no explanations are needed for why contact ended. I mean, your situation and understanding of his needs/wants described why he ended contact.

Honestly, I think the two things that need to be explored (besides Zoolander’s observation about wanting more than people are able to give) are your driving need for external validation/codependency and the fact that, when you speak of your husband and your marriage, you talk like it’s already over and you barely tolerate him and your relationship. It truly, truly seems you’re just waiting for him to end it or you’re waiting until somebody signs off on the list of issues about him you have that justifies your leaving.

Listen, I get you’re having a rough go of it. I think we’ve all been there, I know I was there at the end of my first marriage. There does come a point though where you switch from life inflicting living on you and you deciding to proactively live your life. You need to decide if your really into salvaging your marriage and then draw out how you’re going to work to meet that goal, or if it’s a wash and you need to work out a different life. You can coast along in the middle forever, but it means that your tomorrow, and every tomorrow after that one, will look exactly like yesterday, and if you hated your yesterday, you’ll hate it as your tomorrow too.

 

[OK Jeff]

God did not put this man in your life. First off you’re married, second he isn’t a Christian. This was satan’s doing to destroy your marriage while it was weak. It’s created inappropriate feelings within you, a longing that has no place in your life. Recognize it for what it is....spiritual warfare. You can’t help how you feel, God knows this. But focus on Him. Repent as has been suggested. This will fade away. God will make your marriage everything you want it to be, and more (assuming both you and your husband are willing to put forth the effort). Open The Word, communicate with Him, learn from the experience.

 

[joshua 1 9]

At the beginning of the year, I was fighting with my husband too much. I had been for a long time and I was finally at my witts end. Sometime towards the end of January, I met a man who frequented a coffee shop that I went to almost every day before work (at the bank at the time). It was just a casual conversation with a stranger sitting near me up at the bar area, but something about him caught my attention. I felt a connection I never felt before... potential for a deep friendship? something that was missing from my life? If I wasn't careful, it could have probably been an affair.
In a way, that's what it became.

I kept going back to the coffee shop because I did anyway to get coffee, but over the course of several weeks, I started talking to the guy more and more often.
Then, during the seperation from my husband, I found myself going there to meet him on purpose.

We did have a strong connection, he felt it too... but neither of us knew what to do about it and we knew we couldn't really. For many reasons. Mainly, I was married. AT THE TIME my husband was angry and talking divorce so maybe I just didn't feel bad about this friendship.
But I still knew better. I still felt guilty for what I was beginning to feel in my heart.
The guy had been in three longer term serious relationships in 10 years and all three had broken his heart. He was 33 and never married. When he was maybe 31 he decided he didn't want another relationship. So I thought it was perfect... a guy who doesn't want a relationship can be friends with a woman who isn't available to be in one.

But I was wrong. The more we talked, the more I found stuff we had in common, the more he would tell me stories both good and heartbreaking about his life... the more I got attached.
I did feel like if my husband left for good, maybe down the road I could see myself with this guy. At one point, I even believed that maybe God was showing me who my "soulmate" would have been, had I not decided, rather codependently at 23 or 24 that my husband "was the only man in the world" and I had stayed single. I got feelings for this guy. And though I never told him, I think he could sense it. And it scared him away.
Oh well, might as well have been for the best.

Months down the road, I would bump into him in public somewhere and he would be perfectly friendly to me as if we had never gotten too close and he had never ghosted me and I would find this extremely confusing and upsetting but the old friendship could and would never return.

So yes, I had an emotional affair.

I told my husband, early on, when it was still fresh. It had just ended at that point... or at least, the guy had just ghosted me and I knew he had and I accepted that and I told my husband about it. Since in summer 2016, my husband found out in really horrible way about something terrible that happened to me during an 8 month break up when we were dating that I'd kept from him.... I felt I should be honest this time. It made him paranoid and crazy, and he wound up having a meltdown later on after drinking one night but that's beside the point.
All the side effects on my marriage from it are beside the point.

We still moved back in together, we still tried to work on things. We are still struggling now but it's not because of this incident.

However... I never forgot the friend. Let's call him M. M had such a deep impact on me... gave me friendship like I hadn't had with a guy in years, made me feel emotions I didn't know I could feel, showed me new outlooks on life (he wasn't Christian, but he had some very level-headed ways of looking at things like feeling that anger was a waste of time) and I went through intense confusion over him... sleepless nights, tears, prayer... all for nothing it seems.
And when my husband and I would fight after the seperation ended, I would actually miss this guy. Think of how kind he was and slow to anger and passive and wish I could have that.
But I don't. I have what I have because I married "R" not "M" and I accept that.
Still, I never truly got over M.

So one night I googled online "how do you get over an affair partner", even though he wasn't a true affair. And most of the advice to people who had posted about real affairs on other forums and had psychology doctors answer them back basically said "treat it like a normal breakup with a normal boyfriend, allow yourself to grieve, then let it go and find what you sought that was missing in your marriage so you can restore whatever it is and fix your marriage"....
Well, it's not what's missing in my marriage... it's what there's too much of. Discourse.
But we're seeing a therapist I'm seeing a therapist he's seeing a therapist we will get there...
But the part about "allow yourself to grieve"... in a Christian lifestyle, is that wrong?

Am I supposed to grieve a lost friend I never should have had in the first place?
I feel like psychologically I need to, just so I can go on with life and be ok.
And that would be even if there was no spouse and I just needed to be ok so I could focus on being my best self.

I do not forget people that I have had a special relationship with. There is a lot of people from my past I would love to get together and spend some time with them. Perhaps when we get to Heaven we will be able to spend time with the people that were so very special for us here in this life.