| Hi TAM members, I have been a long time lurker here but unfortunately wish I could have contributed more during that time but I felt like I didn't have enough experience under my belt to advise. Well after this life changing event I think I will. So here it goes. QUICK FACTS 1. Wife started relationship with out of state co-worker, turned EA then PA.(4 month period) 2. I had one drunken night mishap at 4am with a random girl, not full sex but enough to cross the line. Never knew the girl, have zero contact information. 3. My wife and I have had long term communication and intimacy issues that we seeked counseling for a few years back(went to counseling for 1-2 years) 4. Emotionally, we are stereotypical opposites, I am very emotionally extroverted and she is very emotionally introverted.(definitely polar opposites) 5. Intimacy has been a huge issue over our 12 years of knowing each other(friendship, dating, marriage). I've been the one unfulfilled (not in terms of quantity, but in terms of intimate emotional bond and her lack of sexual curiosity) 6. I'm a business owner who has been very successful the last 6-7 years and have put a lot of time into it, however I have still made sure to find time to do things with her and friends(we are extremely busy every weekend doing fun things with friends both together and apart). She is a very hard working in corporate America, the company she works for is great and I'm very happy for her as she has confidence/smarts issues, feeling like she would never amount to much career-wise. She has succeed in her job more than she ever imagined. 7. We are both Catholic, don't go to church much since leaving for college 13 years ago. Both of us know we want to get back to a closer relationship to God in our lifetime. 8. We are both very outgoing and extroverted from a social standpoint. 9. We both have flirty personalities, with other people. 10. We both understand hardcore loyalty to friends. 11. We are both fiercely independent. 12. No Kids - Currently dealing with fertility issues. Have been trying for about 2 years. I realize I left this out in the letter below. 13. I am 31 and she is 30. Ok, this is the first time I've ever written down this complex relationship so I hope it makes sense…. EARLY YEARS My wife and I met in college, my buddies were friends with her before me as I was in a different relationship at the time. Eventually I met her and we immediately had eyes for each other the first time we met. Throughout the rest of college(2-3 more years), we always remained extremely close friends with occasional bouts of dating eachother. We both wanted to have fun in college and didn't want a long term thing at the moment(ok, I admit, she wanted that a bit more than me, to have fun I mean). We did turn it sexual during college with each other but it was never deep or connected, or had any rhythm. I was a year ahead of her so I graduated first. During that year apart we both still had fun/healthy early 20 something lives with other people(nothing too serious). When she graduated from college we made the decision to move in together, we were not dating at the time. Of course in the matter of a few weeks, we were official(I had to jokingly force the official title with her as she likes to float without titles sometimes). This was summer of 2005. After moving into together we really felt like we were clicking and it was good to have each other back in our lives. We had a few smaller issues...she was one of those girls who had a ton of guy friends so initially after college we had to work on weaning her off those and letting her know that it was hard on me, and secondly we never had a strong emotional sexual relationship in the past and I thought it would get stronger at this point but wasn't. Other than those two things, our lives were awesome. We both had great paying jobs(I had yet to start my business yet so was working in corp. america), we socialized with friends every single weekend, we didn't fight about anything except the two things above. Everything else in our lives seemed great. We can spend copious amounts of time together and not fight or get annoyed with each other(we once did a 14 day road trip together and barely had an argument). Finances were not a problem at all. PROBLEMS GAIN MOMENTUM As time went on the, lack of an emotional connection both sexually and non-sexually was starting to drain on my life. I felt a big lack in my life. On the surface I was happy, but deep down I wasn't at all, borderline depressed. As stated above, I'm very extroverted when it comes to emotional talking so she was well aware early on, say 2006-ish, that I was missing this in my relationship. Over the course of the next 3 or so years, that hole in my life(lack of deep connection and lack of deep strong sexual relationship) was making me depressed. I would bring it up to here every 3-6 months, we'd fight about it, nothing would come out of it. I'd wait 3-6 months, then bring it up agan, rinse and repeat. During this time I had started a business and ended up quitting my day job to persue my dreams. As most business owners know, those first few years are constant 80-100 hour weeks with no reprieve(thanks to the internet). My wife and I agreed that my business is top priority as it would give us the future we dreamed of(financially). We both accepted that during this time I'd be spending more time on work and less on our relationshiop. Also during this time, 2008, we got married. Neither of us had reservations and loved each other dearly going into the marriage. By about 2009, my business was going strong but I was getting to the end of my strength relationship-wise and didn't know where to turn so I suggested going to a therapist, to which she agreed to go with me. I think I need to preface here that I'm always the one who is trying to bring up new ways to try to improve our marriage and I'm always the one taking the lead on these things. She is not good at acting initially with these things which was always very defeating…I felt like she didn't care at all since she never took action. Anyways, back to therapist. I sourced a local marriage therapist who also specialized in sexuality and we started going. Ultimately the therapist was fresh out of school I didn't give us a whole lot of feedback during the 11 months we went to therapy with her, however this time in therapy gave my wife and I a permanent/set time to talk about our feelings each week with a mediator there which was really nice. I don't really have much more to say about that experience I guess. We went to this first therapist for 11 months or so then we both decided we felt like we were on a rat wheel and just wasting money. 3 months later we decided that she had a ton of learning to do on our own….learning about herself, her emotions, her sexuality so she found a new therapist and started going by herself. A few sessions in, they(my wife and therapist) wanted me to join for one session. Unfortunately I got a really bad feeling about this therapist and didn't connect with her at all. I'm pretty sure she answered her pager/phone 2-3 in the middle of this session. A serious lack of professionalism from my eyes. Molly kept going for a few months but it then fizzled out. It's now around early 2010. In my mind I had zero answers, I thought we took our last resort in seeing a therapist and then that failed to truly help us find what I(we) was looking for. I've never met a girl like this(my wife) who is so incredibly closed off emotionally and sexually and is so scared of being vulnerably to me. I think to myself how lucky a stereotypical "normal" girl would be to have me….a guy that wants to share emotions and talk a lot about them. This also makes me feel like less of a man as my wife acts like a stereotypical guy and I'm here acting like a stereotypical girl. Add into that that she is so independent and doesn't need to(at least acts to) rely on me for anything and it really has me depressed. At first I think my depression is a combo of being burnt out at work(been doing it for 4-5 years at this point) and my relationship issues but as time passes I think that deep down it is the huge unfulfilled hole in my body from my relationship. Lack of emotional connection, lack of deep strong sexual relationship, lack of activity from my wife to show she cares about us, continuously being scared that I'm going to eventually cheat if my marriage doesn't get fixed. I'm a person that truly understands we only live a short time on this earth so I'm always trying to be self reflective and self aware while trying to make myself better as a person and better as a son/husband. Every book I own is a self-help of some sort(leadership, entrepreneurship, taxes, etc etc). I understand my personality and I know if I don't have a completely fulfilled life that I will eventually seek that elsewhere, and this scares the crap out of me. At this point in time we are both almost out of our 20's but we are still fiercely social all of the time with friends/partying. Unfortunately my personal biggest issue happens sometimes in these situations. Alcohol takes over my body. I'm not abusive/violent or anything like that but I get really flirty with girls. In typical fashion, my wife doesn't communicate enough to my how much this actually hurts her. A few instances she would bring it up but a large majority, not. At this point I'm aware of this problem but I also understand why I'm doing it, which I've communicated to my wife(because of unfulfilled marriage). I've pretty much given up the fight with her about lacking all of these things in my life because at this point we've been fighting about the same things for 6-7 years, we've seen therapists…yet little to know changes. This attitude brings us through 2010 and 2011. MY CHANGE OF MINDSET - Focus on being a husband, not what she hasn't done for me During January 2012 I have a blossoming friendship with a great guy friend who I respect very deeply and he helps me understand that I need to stop focusing on what I want my wife to do and to start focusing on what I can do, as a husband, to make my wife's life as good as possible. Him and I take a trip out of town and end up talking about this all weekend. I'm now in a different mindset and feel guilty that I wasn't a better husband for my wife the last few years. When I get home, I explain all of this to my wife. I tell her that I need to focus my attention on what I can do for HER, not continuously fighting and bickering about how/why I'm unhappy. I'm at full buy-in on this idea. I know immediately that I need to get some reprieve from business, so, for the first time at my company, I finally made a few manager positions to take some things off of my plate. I focused on helping more on daily chores around the house that my wife had been complaining about. I stopped believing in my idea of "I work my butt off building this company for our family, I'm very successful and we are better off financially than any 29-30 years we know….how can she expect me to then do all of this typical "wife" stuff at home; dishes, cleaning, etc. Not to mention I'm already extremely handy around the house for the "guy stuff" and can build and fix anything that needs it and I enjoy doing it." I am now starting to feel a bit better about life and want to continue being a better husband as much as possible. MY CHEAT NOTE: This next part("me cheat") my wife did not know about until about 24 hours ago(live time, not timing in this post) It's now July 2012, my really good friend from above has invited me to a golf/boating outing on a lake up north. Both of us know this will be what we both call a "therapy session" as we are both very open to each other and enjoy helping each other in life. We are both successful business owners and share many of the same ideals in life(god, our roles and business owners, our roles as husbands). We arrive up north at the resort and get our stuff put away in the cabin. We decide to have a beer on the deck and relax. 5 minutes later to woman come over to speak to us, I stayed on the deck but my friend met them in the yard and BS's with them for a few minutes. My friend came back, told me a little bit about them(they were about 20 years older than us, had a lot of money). My goal for the weekend was to just relax up north and didn't want to even communicate with strangers so I told him to just ignore them so we could relax. Later that evening we started drinking pretty heavily and decided to go to the popular local bar/club. We drank all night, talked to girls all night, had a good time. Both him and I get very flirty/social when we have drinks in our system. Well the end the of the night came and we were wondering how we were going to get back when all of the sudden we ran into these 2 women at the bar, the same 2 women that he had talked to earlier, the ones staying in the cabin right next to us. Perfect, give us a ride! When we got back to our cabin, the girls came in. My friend was bombed and was annoyed by one of the girls so he want to bed, locked his door and passed out. So at this point it was the 2 girls and myself. One of them suggests skinny dipping in the small private lake behind our cabins. I'm bombed, I of course say yes. Once out of the water, we are chilling on beach chairs. One of the girls leave so its just me and the other girl sitting there. She starts playing with me a bit and then I start playing with her a bit. No intercourse, just hand play. I get upset, walk back to cabin. I woke up and felt like complete ****, one because of the hang over and two because I have cheated on my wife. Hell I didn't even remember the girls name. Note: I know that was detailed description of the cheat, but I wanted to give you guys a clear picture of how things like this can happen. I decide that it is better for my relationship with my wife if I only burden myself with this knowledge. I can use this experience as a catalyst for change, true change.(remember, I'm all about self-awareness and improvement). At this point I continue on my mission that I created earlier in the year about being a better husband. HER CHEAT It is now February 4th, 2013(a few days ago), I find out that my wife has sent dirty pictures of herself to one of her co-workers. My wife doesn't know I found out. I spend the next 24 hours figuring out how to confront her about it. Remember, at this point my wife knows nothing about my cheating night(and she doesn't suspect it). She comes home from work on the 5th and I tell her how sorry I am for letting us get to this point and I feel like crap for not being a better husband through the years. I tell her what I found and she starts to break down. She tells me that she started working on a project at work and started a relationship with a co-worker that is in a different state. They have been talking for 4 months or so and she admits(with my prodding) to innoproriate talk and that she then ultimately sent dirty pictures to. It is very emotional for both of us but I try to retain being cool and just try to be the best husband I can be. The next 5 hours we talk about how we both need to be completely brutally honest with each other to save our marriage and that we have a ton of improving. She assures me that she has now been brutally honest with me and before we went to bed the healing process seemed to already start. We hug each other in bed and fall asleep. It is now February 6th, she goes to work, while she is gone I had this bad feeling in my stomach that even after our "rock bottom" talk for 5 hours yesterday, she still wasn't telling me the truth so I started to think/investigate more. My heart starts pounding, I think she might have met this guy at a hotel when he was up here visiting for work. I'm dying inside. I text my wife to come home from work early. She says she'll make it happen. Up until this point I've been pretty calm but my anger boiled. I decided to pack my bags, literally, and wait for her on the couch. She comes home and I tell her to sit down and tell me "EVERYTHING", and not "everything" like last nights "everything", real "everything". She proceeds to tell me that when he came up for work, she went to his hotel room and they got sexual(everything but sex, well they tried sex but she pushed away). I feel intense hurt and anger and tell her I'm leaving. She won't let me leave and blocks my car with her truck. I promise her I'll come back if she lets me leave. TIME TO OPEN UP I drive for hours, no destination in mind. She keeps texting me and calling but I don't answer. I'm trying to think straight…what is the best thing I can do right now. I know this girl deeply, I know she was an extreme emotional communication problem with everyone in her life(me, best friends, parents, siblings). She has no support group for life's challenges, so I decide to text her that if she wants to see me again, she needs to go to her parents house and open up, really open up. She calls me back immediately, hysterical, can't breathe, can't talk. She tells me that I need to be there with her because she doesn't know how to talk to her parents like that, she doesn't know how to open up….that I need to be there to start the conversation because I'm the good communicator/thinker. I know in my heart that she needs to go and start a new beginning in her journey with her parents and her journey with herself communication wise, she needs to talk to them herself. HIPPOCRIT I get home before she does from her parents house in the evening. She comes home and is incredibly thankful that I am home. She briefs me on the conversation with her parents which went well. At this point we were both so incredibly exhausted and fell asleep really early. The next morning(7th) it felt like such a rollercoaster, the first night of the "confession" seemed to end well and we both thought we were on our way to fixing things, then the next day came and more, even much worse, details came out….I had no idea which way was up. We both were on our computers all day trying to research "what to do after an affair type stuff". We talked a lot and agreed we both wanted to stay here and fix it. We both strongly agree that marriage is for life. I continued telling her that communication and openness was the key. Needless to say, my cheat was starting to really weigh on me. I had no idea if it was good to bring it up now. I kept thinking to myself that her cheat has more than motivated us to change so why should I tell her my cheat that might piss her off and in turn lead to less change from her and us, or for her to think her cheat was ok since I did something too(albeit, not as "bad"). I thought about this a lot while both of us researched away on the 8th and 9th. By the end of the 9th(yesterday in real time) I gave in and told her my whole cheat. Not only did I tell her my cheat, but I also told her a couple other instances where I didn't necessarily "cheat" but came close to the line. She thanked me for telling her and climbed in my lap to embrace eachother. I felt like my mind was free(relative to the circumstances at hand). We decided we have a really screwed up marriage and that we failed, but we are still here to be strong for each other. We decided to try and take our mind of things and go downstairs and put in season 1 of Homeland(yes I know we are way behind the times). Then I woke up this morning and decided to write this all out. My goal of writing this all out is in hopes that we can get some answers from TAM in terms of direction/thoughts/etc and also to try and help others out in similar circumstances. I also want to give this letter to our therapist(3rd times a charm?) during our first counseling sessions next Wednesday. Heck, therapists are expensive so might as well give them as much detail as possible in the shortest amount of time at the beginning right? Well, here goes the start of my(our) new journey as husband and wife….. SIDE NOTE: Like the last couple days couldn't be any more emotionally draining...my wife's best friend's father unexpectedly died yesterday and now my wife is being pulled emotionally that way too. | |||
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