Hi all. I'm new to this site and I guess I just wanted some feed-back on my situation, good, bad or otherwise.
I have been married for 15 years and have two young children. I have been unhappy in my marriage for a long time but instead of confronting the problems in my marriage I just re-focused all of my attention on our young children. My husband too was unhappy and we now are realizing that he is depressed and has a drinking problem. Both of us choose to run from these problems instead of facing them and it ruined our marriage. I see all of this clearly in retrospect now but at the time I just saw that I was married to a miserable man who didn't care about me and was either mean to me or completely ignored me.
Almost a year ago now I started a flirtatious sexting relationship with an ex from college. It was just flirtatious and this person was not in the same state as me so we never saw each other in person. Now I realize that I was looking for something I wasn't getting in my marriage but at the time I thought it was harmless fun. About 5 months ago I contacted a HS ex living in the same state as me and we started talking. He was married (no kids) and was miserable in his marriage as well. We had, had a pretty intense HS relationship and he was my first love. I'm sure you can see where this is going,... not long after we started talking we also started having an affair. We would talk all day everyday and see each other several times a week. At first I thought that maybe the relationship was just about sex (something neither of us was getting in our marriages) but our connection became much deeper and over time we fell in love.
Almost immediately I knew I could never continue this limbo of having an affair and just pretending everything was ok in my marriage. I began seeing a therapist to work on my issues and started to really dissect my marriage. I knew that I would never leave my husband for this other man. If I was going to leave my husband I wanted to do it because our marriage was not working - not because I had discovered this other relationship which may or may not work in the long run. With my therapists help I started a dialogue with my husband about where our marriage had taken a wrong turn. Over 2 months we hashed everything out. My husband started going to individual therapy and we went to marriage counseling. My husband discovered that he had undiagnosed depression and started treatment for it. He has been on meds for a couple of months now but is still struggling. We also both realized that he has a drinking problem and he is just starting to consider going to AA. All of thi s time I was still seeing this other man. He became my rock and I his. I never told my husband about my affair and he still does not know. In the meantime, while my husband and I were going through this intense incredibly sad time, my husband started seeing two other women. He told me about them though, and offered to end it if I wanted him to. By then I had realized that (I think) our marriage was over. Knowing that he had been depressed did not erase all of the pain he had caused me over the years. I felt so angry and hurt - I just couldn't get past it. While I could see loving him as a friend I no longer felt in love with him at all. I had completely lost all attraction towards him. I could not figure out a way back.
So I told him that he did not need to end his own affairs - that I thought we should separate. That is where we are now, 4 months down the road from where this all started. We are going to file for a legal separation as I don't think either of us is completely ready for a divorcee. I am still in my relationship with this other man. He intends to file for divorce and leave his wife in the next couple of months. Who knows though, if that will actually happen and even if it does, who knows if our relationship will work in the real world.
I just feel so completely lost and alone right now. I want to move forward with living on my own with the kids and finding a new job but my husband and I have decided not to change the kids living situation until the school year is done. Though I feel like I made the decision to end my marriage based on the marriage itself I do find myself wondering if I would be willing to work harder if I wasn't in love with someone else. At the same time, the idea of reconciling with my husband seems impossible and our problems seem unfixable. I want him to be with someone that can give him all the love that he wants and after everything that has happened I don't think I can be that person.
I have never felt so completely adrift in my life.
I have been married for 15 years and have two young children. I have been unhappy in my marriage for a long time but instead of confronting the problems in my marriage I just re-focused all of my attention on our young children. My husband too was unhappy and we now are realizing that he is depressed and has a drinking problem. Both of us choose to run from these problems instead of facing them and it ruined our marriage. I see all of this clearly in retrospect now but at the time I just saw that I was married to a miserable man who didn't care about me and was either mean to me or completely ignored me.
Almost a year ago now I started a flirtatious sexting relationship with an ex from college. It was just flirtatious and this person was not in the same state as me so we never saw each other in person. Now I realize that I was looking for something I wasn't getting in my marriage but at the time I thought it was harmless fun. About 5 months ago I contacted a HS ex living in the same state as me and we started talking. He was married (no kids) and was miserable in his marriage as well. We had, had a pretty intense HS relationship and he was my first love. I'm sure you can see where this is going,... not long after we started talking we also started having an affair. We would talk all day everyday and see each other several times a week. At first I thought that maybe the relationship was just about sex (something neither of us was getting in our marriages) but our connection became much deeper and over time we fell in love.
Almost immediately I knew I could never continue this limbo of having an affair and just pretending everything was ok in my marriage. I began seeing a therapist to work on my issues and started to really dissect my marriage. I knew that I would never leave my husband for this other man. If I was going to leave my husband I wanted to do it because our marriage was not working - not because I had discovered this other relationship which may or may not work in the long run. With my therapists help I started a dialogue with my husband about where our marriage had taken a wrong turn. Over 2 months we hashed everything out. My husband started going to individual therapy and we went to marriage counseling. My husband discovered that he had undiagnosed depression and started treatment for it. He has been on meds for a couple of months now but is still struggling. We also both realized that he has a drinking problem and he is just starting to consider going to AA. All of thi s time I was still seeing this other man. He became my rock and I his. I never told my husband about my affair and he still does not know. In the meantime, while my husband and I were going through this intense incredibly sad time, my husband started seeing two other women. He told me about them though, and offered to end it if I wanted him to. By then I had realized that (I think) our marriage was over. Knowing that he had been depressed did not erase all of the pain he had caused me over the years. I felt so angry and hurt - I just couldn't get past it. While I could see loving him as a friend I no longer felt in love with him at all. I had completely lost all attraction towards him. I could not figure out a way back.
So I told him that he did not need to end his own affairs - that I thought we should separate. That is where we are now, 4 months down the road from where this all started. We are going to file for a legal separation as I don't think either of us is completely ready for a divorcee. I am still in my relationship with this other man. He intends to file for divorce and leave his wife in the next couple of months. Who knows though, if that will actually happen and even if it does, who knows if our relationship will work in the real world.
I just feel so completely lost and alone right now. I want to move forward with living on my own with the kids and finding a new job but my husband and I have decided not to change the kids living situation until the school year is done. Though I feel like I made the decision to end my marriage based on the marriage itself I do find myself wondering if I would be willing to work harder if I wasn't in love with someone else. At the same time, the idea of reconciling with my husband seems impossible and our problems seem unfixable. I want him to be with someone that can give him all the love that he wants and after everything that has happened I don't think I can be that person.
I have never felt so completely adrift in my life.
Put the internet to work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment