"This married man won't leave me alone!" So, you dated a married man but now you're overwhelmed because he won't let you break up with him. 

You've finally found the strength to let him go but he's making it very difficult for you to actually leave.

This is not unusual.

Even if you’re making each other miserable, it's hard to walk away. Why won't he let you just move on?

Understanding this might be the key to helping you make that final break and get away from him so you can have the life you really want.

If a married man won't leave you alone, here are 5 reasons why. 

1. You take care of him.

Be honest: how much of your time is spent taking care of him?

Do you support him when he has a fight with his wife? Do you listen to him when he talks about how unhappy he is in his marriage, how he hasn’t had sex for years, and how she treats him like a child?

Do you provide words of love and support? Do you rub his neck and give him all the love you can so that he can be happy?

Before he met you, he had to deal with his life on his own. He had to deal with his unhappiness, loneliness, and his uncertainty about his future all by his lonesome.

For many men, managing emotions is not easy.

So, now, you’re asking him to let go of the one person who can give him the love and support that he needs. He thinks he'll be miserable — and he might be — because he believes you're the only ticket out of that misery.

Ironically, you taking care of him is one of the reasons why he won’t leave his wife. Why would he? He has everything he needs from you — all that love and support — and he can keep his family and finances intact.

Perhaps now it’s time to stop providing so much to him and start taking care of yourself.

2. He doesn't want to miss out on sex with you.

Many married men have affairs because they aren’t getting any sex at home — or not enough to satisfy them. When you came along and the sex was plentiful and amazing, as affair sex often is.

Your married man most likely thought that he had died and gone to heaven, that you were the best sex he ever had, and letting go of it would destroy him.

If you leave him, that sex will go away. And that is a fate worse than death for any man.

Yes, he loves you but sex is a major thing that makes it really hard to move on.

3. He's obsessed with you. 

When I was involved with a married man, he wouldn’t let me go was because he was obsessed with me.

Before he met me, his life was miserable. He was in a job he hated, he was unhappily married, he was struggling with his finances, and his kids were having a hard time. And then along I came and made his life wonderful.

My guy was sure that without me in his life, he would no longer be able to handle all the things he needed to handle. He thought that I was the only one who could keep him from falling apart.  

He believed that without me his life was hopeless.

He's likely obsessed with you and has a vision of you as his savior, as the only person who can make him happy, and that makes him paralyzed when it comes to letting you go.

4. You fear what comes next.

You're scared to be alone, that you would never love or be loved again, of the pain and the loss and the loneliness.

He's in the exact same place, scared as hell. Only his is worse.

You're most likely the only thing in his life that really makes him happy. The idea of losing you scares him.

For you, your future is certain. You are not in a marriage that you can’t leave. You're not scared about breaking your family apart. You're not worried about your finances.

For you, once your married man lets you move on, the sky is the limit. You can put yourself out there and meet new people, you can excel at your job, and you can start building a life for yourself that might include marriage, family, and healthy finances.

But with you gone, your guy has none of that. All he has is the glaring absence of you in his life.

And that’s scary as hell.

5. He wants it all.

He has it all and he doesn’t want to let go of it. Who would?

He has somebody who can support him, somebody who will have sex with him, and someone he believes to be his savior in the world. And he has his family, a wife who is his partner, kids he gets to see every day, a comfortable house, and an active social life.

He's having his cake and eating it too. Who wouldn’t want to let go of that?

Ironically, this is exactly the reason why you need to let him go. During your affair, you've most likely put your life on hold for him while he's been able to live a full life because you were there, supporting him.

He had you to give him sex and love and he kept his family and his finances intact.

He never left his wife because he had it all and letting go of you means that he’s just left with what he started with: unhappiness.

Knowing why your married man won’t let you move on might be just the thing that you need to help you make the final cut and start living your life again.

When I broke up with my guy the final time, after blocking him everywhere so that he couldn’t contact me, I made this list of the 5 things above and kept it on my fridge.

With that list, I could remember why my married man wouldn’t let me move on. And my list made it quite clear — none of the reasons that he wouldn’t let me go had anything to do with me or my feelings, only what he wanted and needed.

As usual.

You can do this. You can let go of your married man. And, if you do, you will be way happier than he will be in the long run.