Is a psychologist who behaves like this dangerous?
I (28F) am having an affair with a married 45-year-old father of two. He is the lead psychologist at a psychosomatic clinic where I was a patient earlier this year. So he isn’t merely cheating on his wife, he is also potentially committing a criminal offense, risking his professional license, and putting his family’s financial livelihood at risk.
According to him, everything he is risking “for me” is a huge demonstration of trust, and when I was still his patient, I promised him I would never report him or press charges. But by now I’m starting to think that maybe he is simply fundamentally irresponsible if he was willing to entrust me with his entire life so quickly. And maybe he only kept me hanging on for so long so that I wouldn’t do anything against him. I’m scared that he might simply do this kind of thing more often.
During his very first group therapy session, I already thought he was one of those husbands who secretly resents his wife but would never actually leave because he isn’t independent enough and is too afraid of being alone because he kept making slightly spiteful jokes about his wife.
I also noticed that I found him attractive, and I tried to avoid him as much as possible because I’ve never had healthy taste in men and he was obviously unavailable.
But he would give me these smiles every time, and he became increasingly overtly flirtatious with me whenever we ended up spending more time alone together in the smoking area. I couldn’t stop myself from falling for him a little, while simultaneously being furious with him. Eventually I confronted him in his office. He apologized and said he wasn’t a person who had affairs, that he lived according to Christian values, and that he had basically gone “out of control” flirting with me because I had caught him completely off guard and I “threw him off balance.” He said that in another context he would like to get to know me, but that it would be an abuse of his power for him to do so and that I needed to focus on therapy.
Then he asked whether we could have a therapeutically appropriate hug to make up. His back-and-forth behavior made me angry all over again, but I couldn’t resist.
I accepted the situation as it was and continued trying to avoid him. But at one point he asked me how I was doing, and I told him that I wasn’t doing very well, but that it was actually good and important that, without the distraction of flirting with him, I now had to turn my attention back toward the more painful issues in my life. He was hurt by the idea that he had merely been a distraction for me and from that point onward, he simply wouldn’t leave me alone and I started to like him and somewhere along the way my perception of him changed as well, because he genuinely does seem capable of reflecting on how much of an asshole he is…
He said he was torn. He repeatedly emphasized that he couldn’t have sex without feelings, that he had had twenty years without doubts about his marriage, and that I had now changed everything. But he was terrified of losing his children. Things escalated to the point where I would spend practically every afternoon in his office until he had to drive home, supposedly to “figure out” this increasingly complicated situation. Or he would get into the elevator with me, press the button for his floor, and ask whether we wanted to continue talking upstairs.
Every time, we got physically closer and closer. We would stare at each other, completely captivated, for minutes at a time, until eventually we kissed. Before I was discharged, we also slept together once. He told me to contact him once I was back in my own world and still wanted him.
I did but I was often absolutely furious, and we fought because I didn’t want to be the other woman and he was afraid to leave his wife. So the back-and-forth continued.
The clinic is about 600 km from my hometown, and eventually we started talking on the phone during his 40-minute drive home from work. We had sex in hotel rooms a few more times.
We actually planned to see each other one last time and have dinner, because he said he needed some distance from me in order to “sort things out” in his life and think about whether he wanted to put the things he currently felt were missing back at the center of his life — “AND IF SO, WITH WHOM.”
Or whether he wanted to fight for his marriage, because that was what he had always done.
I impulsively ended things after he said that, shortly before our planned goodbye. It hurt too much to constantly feel that I was his second choice, and those emotionally ambiguous statements scared me.
He says he hasn’t slept with his wife in ages because she says the mental load has killed her libido and I start to get it. Once, he had to buy groceries while we were on the phone because their car had broken down, and I was absolutely floored by how helpless he seemed wandering around Aldi and asking me for help.
Apparently, she also cheated on him once more than ten years ago. He says that at the time she had also wanted more closeness from him, which he wasn’t able to give her.
I once asked him whether he still desired her, and he answered in this extremely passive-aggressive tone: “No… I gave up on that.” So I think there is a lot of unresolved history and accumulated resentment between them. And I often get the feeling that she occupies some kind of position “above” him whenever he talks about her.
There has now been no contact for three weeks.
The current situation is that he says he knows he cannot expect me to still be available if he ever comes to me as a single man someday. But he also says it would hurt him tremendously if I were with someone else, “even though he would never be entitled to exclusivity.” And I genuinely don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.
He also desperately wanted us to say “see you again” rather than “goodbye,” and told me that he is in love with me, that all of this has felt like a trailer for him, and that he finally wants to see the whole movie. I don’t know whether he is a dangerous abuser who has done this before and regularly leaves vulnerable patients in deep personal crises after “treating” them, or whether he is “just” a broken, immature man. Or if it’s just the midlife crisis and he simply needed the validation because he doesn’t feel desired enough.
I had some of the worst heartbreak I’ve experienced in a long time, and I don’t want to let him go. But sometimes I get so angry that I start looking up lawyers. At the same time I don’t want his wife and children to end up in financial trouble if he loses his job. And I don’t think I could ever bear knowing that I had devastated him, hurt him, or tried to destroy his life. I think the healthiest part of me is hoping that he will finally break my heart honestly enough for me to let go but I don’t think he ever would, because he always has to leave a door open.
He says I make him insecure and that he hasn’t felt anything like this since he was young. Whenever I text him, he calls me immediately, no matter how many times we have already tried to cut contact and it is exhausting having to stop myself from reaching out again and it hurts so much. Maybe he is even afraid that I’ll get angry and report him if he doesn’t keep engaging with me.
How can I interpret all of this? Is he overwhelmed but genuinely honest with me? Will he contact me again someday? He says he has no idea how long it will take. I don’t understand why, if he is in love with me, he needs to cut contact with me.
And if he does come back, am I eventually going to end up in exactly the same position as his wife once I’m no longer young enough for him?
And sometimes he says things that make me think that he is kind of cruel or sadistic. He once told me that he told his child to touch an electrified fence so he would learn that it hurts.
And he is passionate about cooking and food and once he said that he likes (!?) to slaughter animals.
So sometimes I’m scared that he might not be able to feel empathy. But sometimes he seems to be the opposite.
I don’t know how to get out of this or whether some part of me desperately wants to get all the way in. Am I simply being naive?