WWCOJD? (Page 2)

I would be beyond angry.  I think the post above that speaks to how little the neighbor respects YOUR marriage hits it on the head.  If you play this through to how your neighbor would like to see things go, count the number of people that are crushed by the potential fallout and tell me that isn't a catastrophically damaging situation.  Your neighbor is playing with gasoline and a lighted match with both spouses and all children in the blast zone.

I can understand your awkward feeling at the time but how you described it has left it wide open in his mind.  He needs to know that you will never be an option.  Not knowing his personality makes it hard to comment on the best approach but your husband should be part of a discussion on how to resolve it.  

Tell your husband and decide together what to do.

Your neighbor is caught up in lust.
That's a very powerful thing.
He views you as an object, not a person.

Once you disabuse your neighbor of the notion that you will be an object for him,
and you do that by making very clear unambiguous boundaries,
then he may very well turn on you in shame induced anger.

If he  doesn't begin to heal from the pull to give into the temptation of lust,
then he'll just go find another object to lust after.
If his lust begins to spin out of control
make sure that you and your family are not in the vortex of that. 

Ummm... I realize I may be on the further side of the spectrum on this one but here is my opinion.

1. You absolutely should tell your husband. That is way too much for you to carry around, you will feel much better once you tell him. Also it is the best way for him to find out. Stuff like this always has a way of being found out, the worst is when your husband finds out for himself or someone else tells him. My wife has been in your shoes more than once (unwanted advances from boneheads) the first time she didn't know what to do, I found out myself rather than from her. It hurt me a bit that she felt she couldn't or didn't want to tell me. I was careful to react properly but everything would have been much better had she just told me. It is an opportunity to strengthen your relationship, rather than a risk of weakening it. 

2. This guy is way outta line but it sounds like there have been lots of warning signs. Commenting on his bedroom life with his wife??? Telling you how hot you look??? I may be in the minority on this one but even lunch for two sounds a bit weird to me. 

It sounds to me like he has been slowly testing you to see how far he can get, how close you can come to making a mistake. It starts with my wife sucks, then you are soo hot, then hey lets grab lunch and then to the kiss. If you don't push back strongly he will get the hint that the kiss was no big deal and it will progress from there, just as planned. His big play was to get you alone, then to ask for a kiss, then you provided an opening and he took it. You are giving him the signs he is looking for. Give him a big red STOP sign right away.

He needs to know it is absolutely not okay and he needs to know that your husband knows what happened and is not happy about it. You are a nice person, who so far hasn't shut him down, you are easy to test the waters on so far. Also it can look "inviting" that you have chosen not to involve your husband in what is going on. If he interacts with your husband, he kisses you and then notices no change in your husband's reaction to him he can pretty well guess that you didn't tell him. So now it is your little secret between you and him... NOT GOOD! You need to say NO, I am a team with my husband and anyone who tries to mess with that is not welcome to interact with us. 

Sounds like your neighbor is a class A douchebag, no need to worry about how it will affect your neighborly relations, you don't need a relationship with him.

All that said, in my wife's situation she said the person who had come onto her was the kind of jerk that like to escalate things and was just looking for attention. She said that her responding to him and especially me responding to him (we had never met) would just egg him on. I trusted her judgement and she solved the issue by not responding at all and then completely ignoring his existence the next time they were in the same place (gym). It worked to just ignore things for that situation. But he wasn't our neighbor, it didn't get physical (it was a very inappropriate text) and the most important thing was that I knew about it. He tried once more and the first thing she did was tell me about it. 

So main point, tell your husband!!! Give him the chance to react well and to strengthen your marriage, don't hide something that can do damage later on. 

There are only two issues with your reaction.

1) You are carrying the burden yourself

2) Your neighbor's behavior has caused you to go indoors.  His indiscretion should not affect your behavior.  You have let him affect your freedom.  Confront him and get your freedom back.  Tell him that you shared it with your husband.

Ya... this is sort of what I was talking about mixed signals. Go nuclear, be clear, do it now.

Again, in your head you understand. But from an outside observer.... well I don't know, are you thinking it over? Perhaps maybe sounds good to you. Just sayin".

He made a pass at you. You have not told him that was not OK. He is STILL perusing you. You are STILL returning his texts. This is how things get into places we never intended them to get into.

I agree with Mike. I don't understand why you have to stay inside and avoid him when you didn't do anything wrong. I get that you still have hope of a quiet calm outcome where nobody get's hurt. I'm sure it has been swept under the rug plenty of times(in the rest of the world) and it tuned out OK. Easy for me to sit behind a key board and suggest going nuclear. I get that.... but he is STILL perusing you. This isn't an occurrence that happened two weeks ago... this is STILL happening.

And as far as your husband... no he does not get it. Why in the world would he have a problem with you going to lunch with your neighbor of 13 years? Even if you have not done so before. Maybe he thinks he might need some help with something? Why would you "drop hints" for him to get it, but not just flat out tell him? You could leave him wondering what the heck is going on, or if it does get worse and you do tell him he is going to feel like a smuck you did not tell him sooner, or that you left him festering over it.

Hope it get's worked out. But he will CONTINUE to pursue you until you do something about it.

On that note, guys are really bad at hints.

Your neighbor will not get the message, and your husband won't have a clue what's going on unless you just tell them flat out.

Before we all became so "enlightened", a wife would tell her husband that a neighbor was making unwanted advances, and the husband would handle it.  

I'm sure we were all wrong....discussing it forever with no real solution is such a better idea.

I'm just saying. 

Um.....I'm pretty sure if you go back you will see that the overwhelming advice was to tell your husband....you chose not to.  That's cool....but you asked.  I would say since you didn't like the answer you are now left to defend your position.  

Hey, make no mistake, I don't care what you do.  I have made my opinion pretty clear...you need to tell your husband.  Do whatever you want, but you sound kind of whiny now...again, just saying.

I guess it didn't come out the way I intended. None of this is your fault. What I was trying to say is that "IN HIS MIND you haven't said "NO"" So, "IN HIS MIND you are ok with what he did". You don't have to severe any contact with your neighbor(s), just be clear; that's it.