I'm going to try and keep this as short and succinct as I can because looking around, I can see that some of these "getting my thoughts out" threads can explode in to heavy confessionals. (Good opening paragraph, but didn't keep to that promise...)
Too Long Didn't Read Version
- Married my first love after being together for eight years.
- Sex life not great. Living together proving difficult.
- Shortly after our first year, I cheated with someone who just felt right despite initially telling myself I could keep our interactions platonic.
- All the "bad stuff" I buried for the sake of my relationship over the years, the sacrifices and compromises have risen to the surface and turned ugly.
- I feel it's over and I need to grow alone. Feel I married for wife's sake not mine.
- Going into marriage counselling (delaying the inevitable) this week. Largely just hoping to mediate a situation where I keep the house or at least don't end up living with my parents again.
Background
- I'm 27, my wife is 26.
- I met he almost nine years ago at the beach through a mutual friend.
-We spent a few months just as friends, and when a very brief relationship I had going on broke up she offered to take me out to the cinema to brighten my spirits. It turned out well, as we agreed the following morning it was more of a date and so something started.
- We were each other's first love. First proper kiss (my previous relationship was a bust in that department, she was terrible and I was only trying something with her to shake off the being alone-ness that dominated my early teens). First physical love.
- After one year together, we went to different universities 300 miles apart. We endured the hardships of long distance for three years through our shared determination/stubborness.
- Upon graduating, I turned down a job where I was to come back home and hopefully build something with her. Turned out the job market in my chosen field was slimmer pickings back home, and her being a mummy's girl meant she wasn't willing to move away with me.
- This led to me having a major period of depression which she ultimately helped me out of. At the end of it - and this may be where the problem started - I proposed. Because I felt I owed her. I was very fond of her and my probably still broken brain thought this was the woman who could support me for the rest of my life. Because, what, I can't support myself? After six years together (albeit a lot of time physically apart) it felt logical at the time. Logical, but not emotionally justified?
The Union
- Post-proposal, we bought our first house together. A combination of my savings and her good job worked out a good combination. Moving in together provided its own challenges, of course.
- When she said she wanted a garden, I provided. We laid a new lawn, setup borders. It looked good. She then lost interest in its maintenance and it fell to me. I'd have rather concreted over the whole thing for parking.
- She constantly harps on about how we should work as a team. So, the household chores are split between us. Despite the fact they're largely falling on me, she still can't do the simplest things.
- Example? I load the laundry and hang it on a Monday, so she can iron it on a Tuesday evening while I work late. Does she do it? No. I get in at 10pm and there's the laundry still hanging on the clothes horse for me to do on Wednesday.
- Bathroom needs cleaning every fortnight. This is the one thing I haven't wavered on because it is the smallest room in the house, while my weekly tasks include pretty much every other room. Typically, the bathroom only gets cleaned by her when the ****roaches protest.
- My job means I am mostly the one to cook meals in an evening. When I ask "What do you want tonight?" I get the same apathetic "Whatever" which gives me no inspiration and no assistance.
- The sex is barely existent. She's always been protesting she's shy, that it feels weird. No oral. Barely ever anything manual. I always initiate and it's always lacking in passion. Anytime I said anything, she'd just pull her sad puppy eyes and I'd say it doesn't matter.
- But I keep it all nicely bottled up, because who else could possibly want me? I'm not particularly good looking, not physically impressive and a massive nerd. Few girls go for that, she did. Part of me thinks the "Who else would have me?" attitude was her reason for marrying, but she has insisted in recent weeks otherwise.
The Trigger
- So, a few weeks ago a girl who had just resigned from work to something new starts showing an interest in me. We have a scary amount in common. She's practically my twin, as messed up and weird as me. And we start texting. A lot. A colleague says we're clearly both smitten, but I laugh it off. I've got my wife, and we'd only just had our first anniversary.
- But we end up on a night out alone together. We play a few games at the arcade, we have a drink and talk for hours. We go to a restaurant and talk for longer. And then we admit it, we're feeling something. One thing leads to another and we end up having a very enjoyable make out and fumble in my car. And we gel on that level as well. It's smooth, effortless, comfortable, despite the confines. Neither of us had ever done such a thing before.
- Wife finds out, the next day. You can't exactly get in at 5am on a Sunday morning and have her not be suspicious enough to go through your texts. And she did. And we hadn't been subtle, and I should've had a stronger password than my wife's name.
- So I do the only thing I really know how to do. I panic. And lie. I do what's right for everyone else, ignoring what could be right for me. I say it was a one off, it meant nothing, I can end it and we can fix us.
- So that's what I try and do the next day. Although as far as my wife was concerned I ended it the previous night by text that's something I can never do. And, christ, it hurts to let this wonderful other woman out of my life. She encourages me to do the right thing, to delete her entirely as I literally never have to see her again. And I do it. And it hurts. And I crash into the lowest point of my life in a long time.
- And my wife makes excuses for me. Diminished responsibility, I was feeling low about work and her not being around so much. And I play that as the card that keeps me sane: I went crazy.
- I even tried to use that as the justification to her when we parted. That my wife had seen me at my worst and accepted it. That this girl had fallen for an idea of me, when that's probably the me I want to be. And could be, if I didn't keep clinging to the need for a mother figure to get me through life.
The Fallout
- So I embrace the misery, I resign myself to my bed in a world of self pity, longing for what could've been. And wife stays supportive for a time. And then she gets bored with it. I'm abandoning her emotionally, we can get past all this. I made my decision. I hate to say it, sweetheart, but I made my decision the moment I kissed that girl and I've been trying to fool myself into thinking otherwise.
- So the animosity grows, tensions heighten and we grow more distant.
- And then, last night, she pulls the biggy:
"Do you know how much I have compromised for you?" she shouts in the latest flare up.
"Probably not as much as I have for you." I retort.
"I ironed your pants!" she protests.
"That's the best you've got? I made countless trips to you at University, you made a handful in return. I turned down a perfectly good job to come back home and build a life with you. I have been patient and understanding in the bedroom. I have compromised on living five minutes away from your mother. I have become house husband and chief cook to keep you happy. And the best you have, which by the way I backed down on eventually, is that you had to iron my pants?"
There's been tears, there's been fights. I know I didn't crash and fall into this girl's arms for comfort. But neither of us is willing to move out. "This is my house, I've done nothing wrong" she says. "This is my house, and half your stuff is at your mother's anyway," I bite back. It's a painful circle I want out of, but I can't pull the trigger.
So now we're going a marriage counsellor on Wednesday, in an act I'm calling in my own mind now "delaying the inevitable". I've kept too much buried over the last few years, married for her not for me and the **** has hit the fan at maximum velocity.
I went to my dad with this issue, and that just messed my head up even more as he said he "settled" with the first woman that came his way. He had one objective, to procreate and continue the family name/line and that just made me feel even more worthless. And I don't want kids. Always been somewhat hesistant, but like with everything else I went along with what my wife wanted, because "Happy wife, happy life."
Any and all comments wanted. Short and concise, huh?
Too Long Didn't Read Version
- Married my first love after being together for eight years.
- Sex life not great. Living together proving difficult.
- Shortly after our first year, I cheated with someone who just felt right despite initially telling myself I could keep our interactions platonic.
- All the "bad stuff" I buried for the sake of my relationship over the years, the sacrifices and compromises have risen to the surface and turned ugly.
- I feel it's over and I need to grow alone. Feel I married for wife's sake not mine.
- Going into marriage counselling (delaying the inevitable) this week. Largely just hoping to mediate a situation where I keep the house or at least don't end up living with my parents again.
Background
- I'm 27, my wife is 26.
- I met he almost nine years ago at the beach through a mutual friend.
-We spent a few months just as friends, and when a very brief relationship I had going on broke up she offered to take me out to the cinema to brighten my spirits. It turned out well, as we agreed the following morning it was more of a date and so something started.
- We were each other's first love. First proper kiss (my previous relationship was a bust in that department, she was terrible and I was only trying something with her to shake off the being alone-ness that dominated my early teens). First physical love.
- After one year together, we went to different universities 300 miles apart. We endured the hardships of long distance for three years through our shared determination/stubborness.
- Upon graduating, I turned down a job where I was to come back home and hopefully build something with her. Turned out the job market in my chosen field was slimmer pickings back home, and her being a mummy's girl meant she wasn't willing to move away with me.
- This led to me having a major period of depression which she ultimately helped me out of. At the end of it - and this may be where the problem started - I proposed. Because I felt I owed her. I was very fond of her and my probably still broken brain thought this was the woman who could support me for the rest of my life. Because, what, I can't support myself? After six years together (albeit a lot of time physically apart) it felt logical at the time. Logical, but not emotionally justified?
The Union
- Post-proposal, we bought our first house together. A combination of my savings and her good job worked out a good combination. Moving in together provided its own challenges, of course.
- When she said she wanted a garden, I provided. We laid a new lawn, setup borders. It looked good. She then lost interest in its maintenance and it fell to me. I'd have rather concreted over the whole thing for parking.
- She constantly harps on about how we should work as a team. So, the household chores are split between us. Despite the fact they're largely falling on me, she still can't do the simplest things.
- Example? I load the laundry and hang it on a Monday, so she can iron it on a Tuesday evening while I work late. Does she do it? No. I get in at 10pm and there's the laundry still hanging on the clothes horse for me to do on Wednesday.
- Bathroom needs cleaning every fortnight. This is the one thing I haven't wavered on because it is the smallest room in the house, while my weekly tasks include pretty much every other room. Typically, the bathroom only gets cleaned by her when the ****roaches protest.
- My job means I am mostly the one to cook meals in an evening. When I ask "What do you want tonight?" I get the same apathetic "Whatever" which gives me no inspiration and no assistance.
- The sex is barely existent. She's always been protesting she's shy, that it feels weird. No oral. Barely ever anything manual. I always initiate and it's always lacking in passion. Anytime I said anything, she'd just pull her sad puppy eyes and I'd say it doesn't matter.
- But I keep it all nicely bottled up, because who else could possibly want me? I'm not particularly good looking, not physically impressive and a massive nerd. Few girls go for that, she did. Part of me thinks the "Who else would have me?" attitude was her reason for marrying, but she has insisted in recent weeks otherwise.
The Trigger
- So, a few weeks ago a girl who had just resigned from work to something new starts showing an interest in me. We have a scary amount in common. She's practically my twin, as messed up and weird as me. And we start texting. A lot. A colleague says we're clearly both smitten, but I laugh it off. I've got my wife, and we'd only just had our first anniversary.
- But we end up on a night out alone together. We play a few games at the arcade, we have a drink and talk for hours. We go to a restaurant and talk for longer. And then we admit it, we're feeling something. One thing leads to another and we end up having a very enjoyable make out and fumble in my car. And we gel on that level as well. It's smooth, effortless, comfortable, despite the confines. Neither of us had ever done such a thing before.
- Wife finds out, the next day. You can't exactly get in at 5am on a Sunday morning and have her not be suspicious enough to go through your texts. And she did. And we hadn't been subtle, and I should've had a stronger password than my wife's name.
- So I do the only thing I really know how to do. I panic. And lie. I do what's right for everyone else, ignoring what could be right for me. I say it was a one off, it meant nothing, I can end it and we can fix us.
- So that's what I try and do the next day. Although as far as my wife was concerned I ended it the previous night by text that's something I can never do. And, christ, it hurts to let this wonderful other woman out of my life. She encourages me to do the right thing, to delete her entirely as I literally never have to see her again. And I do it. And it hurts. And I crash into the lowest point of my life in a long time.
- And my wife makes excuses for me. Diminished responsibility, I was feeling low about work and her not being around so much. And I play that as the card that keeps me sane: I went crazy.
- I even tried to use that as the justification to her when we parted. That my wife had seen me at my worst and accepted it. That this girl had fallen for an idea of me, when that's probably the me I want to be. And could be, if I didn't keep clinging to the need for a mother figure to get me through life.
The Fallout
- So I embrace the misery, I resign myself to my bed in a world of self pity, longing for what could've been. And wife stays supportive for a time. And then she gets bored with it. I'm abandoning her emotionally, we can get past all this. I made my decision. I hate to say it, sweetheart, but I made my decision the moment I kissed that girl and I've been trying to fool myself into thinking otherwise.
- So the animosity grows, tensions heighten and we grow more distant.
- And then, last night, she pulls the biggy:
"Do you know how much I have compromised for you?" she shouts in the latest flare up.
"Probably not as much as I have for you." I retort.
"I ironed your pants!" she protests.
"That's the best you've got? I made countless trips to you at University, you made a handful in return. I turned down a perfectly good job to come back home and build a life with you. I have been patient and understanding in the bedroom. I have compromised on living five minutes away from your mother. I have become house husband and chief cook to keep you happy. And the best you have, which by the way I backed down on eventually, is that you had to iron my pants?"
There's been tears, there's been fights. I know I didn't crash and fall into this girl's arms for comfort. But neither of us is willing to move out. "This is my house, I've done nothing wrong" she says. "This is my house, and half your stuff is at your mother's anyway," I bite back. It's a painful circle I want out of, but I can't pull the trigger.
So now we're going a marriage counsellor on Wednesday, in an act I'm calling in my own mind now "delaying the inevitable". I've kept too much buried over the last few years, married for her not for me and the **** has hit the fan at maximum velocity.
I went to my dad with this issue, and that just messed my head up even more as he said he "settled" with the first woman that came his way. He had one objective, to procreate and continue the family name/line and that just made me feel even more worthless. And I don't want kids. Always been somewhat hesistant, but like with everything else I went along with what my wife wanted, because "Happy wife, happy life."
Any and all comments wanted. Short and concise, huh?
Put the internet to work for you.
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