7 Ways to End the Cycle of Break Ups With Your Married Man and This Time Make it Stick

7 Ways to End the Cycle of Break Ups With Your Married Man and This Time Make it Stick

Every day I talk to clients who are trying, and failing, to break up with their married man and make it stick.

They don’t want to break up with them because they don’t love them but because they just can’t take it anymore. They can’t take the broken promises, the not being made a priority, the lack of understanding about the torture that they are going through.

They have tried and tried to be patient while their married man takes “baby steps” and they have finally decided that its time to break up and move on.

The issue is is that they have tried to break up over and over and over and it has never stuck. They have stayed away for a few days, weeks or months but always get sucked back in. How, they wonder, to do things differently this time around?

Many, many of my clients have left their married man and moved on to find true happiness. In fact, I did too. Let me share how those of us made it to the other side did so, so you too can finally leave your married man and get the life you want!

#1 – Are you sure that you want to do this?

This is the first step to making a break up with your married man stick. You must be determined to really do it this time.

How many times have you broken up with your person only to suffer unthinkable pain and ultimately reunite with them? He renews his promises and you have wonderful make up sex and you start to believe again. How long after this reunion did you begin to suffer again? Hours, most likely; if you are lucky maybe 24 hours.

I always point out to my clients what a waste of time and energy a break up is if you aren’t fully committed. Putting yourself through the pain and then letting yourself down by letting him back in isn’t good for one’s mental health. Doing so over and over can be life sucking. I know that, after 1.5 years trying to break up with my married man, I was a shell of myself.

So, before you follow the next steps, ask yourself if you are truly ready to do this. If you aren’t, bookmark this article for when you are!

#2 – You must definitively inform him that its over.

For many of my clients, when they get to the end of their rope, again, they often, in a fit of anger, block their guy and swear that they will never talk to them again. In the moment, they mean it. And then the anger fades and their resolution wavers.

I always tell my clients that they need to tell their affair partner that they are done. They need to make it very clear that their affair partner respect what they are asking for, namely letting them go once and for all. The affair partner must agree to not contact them at all and to fully grasp the pain that they have been causing.

This can be done either in person or via text but it must be done – the married man MUST understand that the break up will stick this time.

Your married man doesn’t want to let you go. Yes, he might be causing your tremendous pain but it is his needs, and the needs of his wife and family, that he is putting first.

Your married man needs you. He needs you to adore him, to be there when he needs you, to have great affair sex with and to give him some (misguided) hope for the future. If he loses you, he will be left with nothing, just an unhappy marriage and memories of you. He also knows that, if he lets you go, you will most likely find someone else and live happily ever after.

So, your married man isn’t going to just let you go – it will be on you to make it happen. Start by telling him that this is what you need him to do.

#3 – You must commit to having no contact with him.

I am guessing that you and your married man started out as friends and that, in an ideal world, you would maintain that friendship. I am sorry to say, its not going to happen.

An essential element of making your break up stick this time around is to not be in contact with your married man at all. No texting. No talking. No checking out their social media. No seeking closure. No being where you know they will be. NOTHING. Even on birthdays and anniversaries and holidays and special events. NOTHING.

The reality is is that any contact with your married man will carry the risk that you will let him back in. And, any contact that you have with your married man will cancel out any progress that you have made in letting him go. Unless you aren’t in contact with him, then you won’t be able to let him go.

I am guessing that you are thinking that you could never block someone – its so rude. And I want to tell you that that is just a justification. If someone where contacting you who you didn’t like or made you uncomfortable you would block them. You just don’t want to block your married man because you want to keep the door open for him to come back someday. I can promise you, if you block your married guy and he gets his shit together, he will do whatever he needs to do to contact you – he won’t need your phone number.

I absolutely can not understate the importance that going “no contact” will have in your ability to let go of your married man once and for all. So do it, for the sake of your future.

#4 – You must have to ride out the pain, no matter how bad it is.

Without exception, my clients who go back to their married men do so because the pain of the break up is so intense that they can’t deal with it. One of my clients described it as a physical pain so intense she believed that she was going to die. No one, I pointed out, has ever died of a broken heart.

Yes, there is nothing worse than the pain of a broken heart. Nothing. But the thing about broken hearts is that they heal. Times goes by, pain lessens and hearts become whole. And then life goes on, maybe with a dull ache in the background but it goes on, most often in a wonderful way.

BUT, let me ask you. Are you in pain every day because of what is happening with your married man? Have you lost friends, have your work and your health suffered, have you lost your self-respect the long this affair goes on? I am sure that pain that you are feeling is huge – how can it not be.

If you stay with your married man, this pain will continue. As long as he keeps breaking his promises (which he will) you will daily feel pain. If, on the other hand, you can let him go, the pain will pass. You will have the chance to live a real life, not one tormented by what could be.

So, consider your pain. It might seem worse than the pain that you were feeling before the break up but is it really?

#5 – Write up a list of all of the reasons you are breaking up with him.

I have a client who, when I asked her to make a list of the things about her guy that lead her to break up with him, told me that there was nothing. That he was a really great guy and that she couldn’t think of one thing wrong with him. Ok, I said, let’s dig a little big deeper.

Does your married man make you a priority? No. Does your married man abandon you at the last minute because of family obligations? Yes. Does your married man make promises over and over, only to break them? Yes. Does he care enough about your suffering to do anything about it, one way or another? No.

So, there was plenty of things that was wrong with my client’s married man; they were just things that she didn’t think of when she thought about him. Like many women in love with married men, they tuck those things in the back of mind to justify staying.

Make a list, in writing, of the reasons that you need to break up with him is a key aspect of making it stick. When you are away from your guy, you will only remember the good things. The daily pains will fade and you will be left only with the happy memories. And these memories will lead you down the path to him again. I always encourage my client to refer to the list when they feel like their sentimentality is getting the best of them, to remind them of why they had to leave and why they need to stay away.

#6 – You must fully accept he will never leave his wife. Never.

Be honest, when you do a Google search about whether your married man will leave his wife, do you find any happily ever after stories? Do you find heartwarming tales of a man leaving his wife, marrying his affair partner, seamlessly integrating her into is family and living happily ever after.

No, you don’t.

That is because this married man will never leave his wife. He might believe that he will, and hence the promises, but he won’t. Why? Because leaving his wife means not seeing his kids every day, giving away half of his money and perhaps ruining his reputation. Leaving his wife might seem simple but its the rest of the stuff that complicates matters and makes him stay.

I do believe that married men truly do believe the promises that they make to their affair partners – that they genuinely believe that they will be able to leave their wives and be with them. Unfortunately, in my 10 years as a life coach, not one of them ever has. Some of them are even told by their wives to leave and still they stay.

So, don’t kid yourself. You will never have him.

#7 – Understand that you will never get your happily ever after.

Ok, let’s say you don’t believe me that your partner will leave his wife and still you picture your ideal life together. How based in reality is that ideal? Really.

The reality is is that you have been having an affair with this man. You will never, I mean never, be accepted by his family, his children, his social circle. They might tolerate you, but they will never fully accept you. You will spend the rest of your life at odds with the people who your partner loves best. And, these odds could very well be the thing that causes him to resent you and ultimately drives you apart.

Another thing is that you don’t really know this guy. You guys have a wonderful relationship that exists in a bubble, a bubble where there is no conflict over kids or money or mothers-in-law. All you have is time together.

But who is this guy out and about in the world? I know that when my married guy (temporarily) left his wife, I called a friend, concerned that this man who I considered the love of my life was really just a boring guy from Connecticut. What a let down.

So, recognized that this image that you have in your head about happily ever after just isn’t going to happen. I am sorry but it isn’t.

It is my strongest wish that you have read this list and are inspired to let go of your married guy once and for all and more forward to get the life that you want. And I totally understand if you have read this list and just aren’t ready yet.

The reality is is that someday you will hit your limit – that you will be done with the thousand little cuts that you are living with. That you will no longer tolerate being the woman who cheats with another woman’s man. (You know – she isn’t the raging bitch that he says she is – she is a woman stuck in an unhappy woman with a man who is capable of infidelity) That you know that, for the sake of your health and sanity, you must walk away.

When you are ready to do that, this list will help you do so – it will give you the strength and the clarity that you to join the millions of other women out there who had affairs with married man and found the strength to leave them. Women who are now, like happily married me, living happily ever after.

Mitzi Bockmann

I am a NYC based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate. My writing has been published on The Huffington Post, Prevention,  Psych Central, Pop Sugar, MSN and The Good Man Project, among others. I work with all kinds of people to help them go from depressed and overwhelmed to confident and happy in their relationships and in their world.