I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, I'm just trying to seek out some insight from anyone who may have some. Also I
apologize for the wall of text. It turned into many more words than I was intending, but details might make it easier to provide insight.
Background: My wife and I have been together for 11 years, married for the last 4 of those. We have two young children together, aged 1 and 3. She is the only woman I've ever had sex with, and we've been together the majority of our adult lives.
For the last several years, we've both been progressively less and less happy with our relationship. Aside from the period where we were trying to conceive our kids, we've barely had sex in several years - and in the last year, only twice (and both times she wasn't into it, which ruined the experience for both of us). She has felt like I was emotionally absent, and has been progressively denying me any and all forms of physical affection (not just sex, all of it). I, being hurt and rejected by this, have been less and less inclined to spend the time and energy being present for her emotionally - which sort of created a vicious cycle where we had less contact, so I wanted less quality time, so she wanted less intimacy, so I had less of a desire to spend time with her.. and so on. About 7 weeks ago, she came to me and said she wanted to be separated because she felt that she had been putting so much energy in and that I was simply not able to be the man she needed to be happy. She said that she felt we both needed to be separate to work on our own individual issues, and that maybe in the future if we could each fix ourselves we might be able to get back together as two new people. Then she told me that she needed the option to, if she met someone in the future, not feel bad about pursuing a relationship with them - and she told me that she could have sex with another man and not feel bad about it, as long as there was just sex and no love - but if she felt like she was falling in love with him that she'd know we needed to divorce for good. She also, in a bout of anger during one of the fights that this precipitated, told me that she wouldn't even care if I had sex with another woman - but it would hurt her deeply if I were to be romantic/buy flowers/be emotionally involved with another woman. Due to the kids and mortgage/$$, we have to stay in the same house for at least the next few years regardless of what happens, so I've moved into a new bedro om in the basement.
Before that day, I would have never worried she would cheat - even when we had gone a year without any sex at all. But since she told me that, it was all I could think of. I know she has a few male friends and she insists they are nothing more, but it's hard for me to even imagine her talking to them now without feeling like they are cheating or planning to cheat. In my shock and panic after she decided we needed to separate, I peeked at her facebook messages a few times and saw that she was talking to some dude who I had never met, sending him little heart emotes and being generally very loving and they were deleting their conversations regularly. I confronted her about it, and she got really mad that I was snooping (to be honest I felt bad about it too, it's fair to be mad about that), and she insisted that there was nothing going on but that he had been trying to get with her and she shut him down - and even though I believed her (she's a very honest person by nature), I s till have a hard time getting over what I had seen. He lives in a different city and there's no way they could have gotten together to actually do anything, so I know there's no chance they actually had sex or anything.. but the idea that she was meeting her emotional needs from another man really ate at me. Fast forward a few more weeks, as I started to adjust to the separation and come out of my crazed mental crisis that it brought on. The more I considered the situation, the more I began to accept that our marriage had been unhappy for a long time for both of us. The fact that she had been so adamant about being able to potentially see other people in the future weighed on me constantly, even though I'm mostly certain she hasn't actually been looking for someone it really chewed me up.
One night, after she and I had had yet another fight about it all, I decided in my anger to put myself on a dating site to see if there was anyone out there who might actually like me how I am. After so long of my wife insisting that she had done everything right and that I was 100% the root cause of all of our marital problems, and after so long being denied affection I had felt like I was a completely unlovable, unattractive person and my very masculinity had been stripped away. I just wanted to feel like a man again, and I never ever would have considered it if my wife hadn't insisted that she wanted to have the option to do so. She insisted though, that she wasn't looking for it but rather she wanted to be able to say yes if someone asked her out in the future and made her feel good about herself again.
So after a while, I met someone on there. We've never gotten together in person, just talked online, on the phone, and via text, but we have an amazing amount in common in ways my wife and I never did, and it's been a very long time since I felt this excited to get to know someone. I'd be lying if I said I didn't also want to have sex with her, especially considering how long it's been since my wife was willing to be passionate with me, but I'm old fashioned in that I feel like you should know someone well before you jump into bed with them. I very badly want to meet her and see what happens, because I don't remember how long it's been since I felt like this. I figured since my wife had initiated the separation, and since she was the one whose idea it was, and since she insisted that she needed the option to be with other people that it might be OK. So, I made a date with her - but when I told my wife that I was going to be going out (to make sure she could be home to watch t he kids), she lost her mind and we had the worst fight we've ever had. Even though I tried to be evasive (I didn't want to lie to her, but I didn't want to just flat-out tell her that I was going to date another woman), she saw right through me and when asked about how we met I told her I had put myself on a dating site. She called me all kinds of terrible things, said she hated me, said I broke her already-broken heart again, called me disgusting and acted like all I wanted was to find some **** to bang. That's not it at all, I mean - I have physical needs for sure, and they haven't been attended by my wife in a long time, but there was a lot more missing from our marriage than just sex. I just feel like honesty is important, and I didn't want to be sneaky. My wife was incredibly hurt that I had been actively seeking out companionship in that way. I cancelled the date, and removed myself from the site to ease my wife's mind - but I'm still secretly in contact with the new w oman, and I'd still really like to meet her and see what happens.
So I'm torn. Part of me doesn't want to throw away the last 11 years and sacrifice the wholeness of our family, because I know that if I do go date this woman that there will never be a chance of reconciliation with my wife. If that happens, we'll divorce for sure and she'll take our kids, and I'll only get to see them every other weekend or some such. It will devastate us both financially for years. It'll be as though the last 11 years have been a complete waste. Part of me, though, realizes that we've been unhappy for years, and sometimes I feel that maybe the reason it wasn't working with my wife is because we really weren't right for each other - but we had so much time and energy invested that we didn't want to quit despite it. Maybe if it was 'right', it wouldn't have been so hard to build each other up.
I never would have thought that before she decided to separate, but maybe I want to divorce; maybe we're just not right and no amount of 'working on ourselves' is going to get us to a place where we can be good together. I don't know if I can really forgive her wanting to separate or her desire to see other men, nor do I know if she can ever forgive me for wanting and actively seeking to see what it's like with someone else. I suspect that if it weren't for the kids we'd already have gone our separate ways, but for their sake I feel like I'm obligated to stay. But how far does that obligation go? How long should we both endure a relationship that drains us rather than building us up? How good is it for the kids to stay together for their sake, but be miserable and without love? What if I really am the problem though? What if it's not that we don't love each other, but that I'm as broken as she says and I'm incapable of real love?
In this situation, with all of this information, is it really cheating if I pursue a relationship with the new woman? I'm not expecting to find the love of my life or anything. I tried that, and she changed her mind. I just want to feel alive and like a man again - and maybe it's just the infatuation of meeting someone who 'gets my engine going', but I don't remember the last time I felt like I do when I'm talking to this new woman. I don't want to sneak around, I couldn't do it 'behind my wife's back' so to speak, but I know that if I do it openly then I lose my children and any chance of reconciliation - I'm just not really sure if reconciliation is even what I want.
I know there's a lot of questions here, and a lot of rambling and ranting.. I'm really just hoping that I can get some insights from anyone who my story speaks to.
Thank you for your time.
apologize for the wall of text. It turned into many more words than I was intending, but details might make it easier to provide insight.
Background: My wife and I have been together for 11 years, married for the last 4 of those. We have two young children together, aged 1 and 3. She is the only woman I've ever had sex with, and we've been together the majority of our adult lives.
For the last several years, we've both been progressively less and less happy with our relationship. Aside from the period where we were trying to conceive our kids, we've barely had sex in several years - and in the last year, only twice (and both times she wasn't into it, which ruined the experience for both of us). She has felt like I was emotionally absent, and has been progressively denying me any and all forms of physical affection (not just sex, all of it). I, being hurt and rejected by this, have been less and less inclined to spend the time and energy being present for her emotionally - which sort of created a vicious cycle where we had less contact, so I wanted less quality time, so she wanted less intimacy, so I had less of a desire to spend time with her.. and so on. About 7 weeks ago, she came to me and said she wanted to be separated because she felt that she had been putting so much energy in and that I was simply not able to be the man she needed to be happy. She said that she felt we both needed to be separate to work on our own individual issues, and that maybe in the future if we could each fix ourselves we might be able to get back together as two new people. Then she told me that she needed the option to, if she met someone in the future, not feel bad about pursuing a relationship with them - and she told me that she could have sex with another man and not feel bad about it, as long as there was just sex and no love - but if she felt like she was falling in love with him that she'd know we needed to divorce for good. She also, in a bout of anger during one of the fights that this precipitated, told me that she wouldn't even care if I had sex with another woman - but it would hurt her deeply if I were to be romantic/buy flowers/be emotionally involved with another woman. Due to the kids and mortgage/$$, we have to stay in the same house for at least the next few years regardless of what happens, so I've moved into a new bedro om in the basement.
Before that day, I would have never worried she would cheat - even when we had gone a year without any sex at all. But since she told me that, it was all I could think of. I know she has a few male friends and she insists they are nothing more, but it's hard for me to even imagine her talking to them now without feeling like they are cheating or planning to cheat. In my shock and panic after she decided we needed to separate, I peeked at her facebook messages a few times and saw that she was talking to some dude who I had never met, sending him little heart emotes and being generally very loving and they were deleting their conversations regularly. I confronted her about it, and she got really mad that I was snooping (to be honest I felt bad about it too, it's fair to be mad about that), and she insisted that there was nothing going on but that he had been trying to get with her and she shut him down - and even though I believed her (she's a very honest person by nature), I s till have a hard time getting over what I had seen. He lives in a different city and there's no way they could have gotten together to actually do anything, so I know there's no chance they actually had sex or anything.. but the idea that she was meeting her emotional needs from another man really ate at me. Fast forward a few more weeks, as I started to adjust to the separation and come out of my crazed mental crisis that it brought on. The more I considered the situation, the more I began to accept that our marriage had been unhappy for a long time for both of us. The fact that she had been so adamant about being able to potentially see other people in the future weighed on me constantly, even though I'm mostly certain she hasn't actually been looking for someone it really chewed me up.
One night, after she and I had had yet another fight about it all, I decided in my anger to put myself on a dating site to see if there was anyone out there who might actually like me how I am. After so long of my wife insisting that she had done everything right and that I was 100% the root cause of all of our marital problems, and after so long being denied affection I had felt like I was a completely unlovable, unattractive person and my very masculinity had been stripped away. I just wanted to feel like a man again, and I never ever would have considered it if my wife hadn't insisted that she wanted to have the option to do so. She insisted though, that she wasn't looking for it but rather she wanted to be able to say yes if someone asked her out in the future and made her feel good about herself again.
So after a while, I met someone on there. We've never gotten together in person, just talked online, on the phone, and via text, but we have an amazing amount in common in ways my wife and I never did, and it's been a very long time since I felt this excited to get to know someone. I'd be lying if I said I didn't also want to have sex with her, especially considering how long it's been since my wife was willing to be passionate with me, but I'm old fashioned in that I feel like you should know someone well before you jump into bed with them. I very badly want to meet her and see what happens, because I don't remember how long it's been since I felt like this. I figured since my wife had initiated the separation, and since she was the one whose idea it was, and since she insisted that she needed the option to be with other people that it might be OK. So, I made a date with her - but when I told my wife that I was going to be going out (to make sure she could be home to watch t he kids), she lost her mind and we had the worst fight we've ever had. Even though I tried to be evasive (I didn't want to lie to her, but I didn't want to just flat-out tell her that I was going to date another woman), she saw right through me and when asked about how we met I told her I had put myself on a dating site. She called me all kinds of terrible things, said she hated me, said I broke her already-broken heart again, called me disgusting and acted like all I wanted was to find some **** to bang. That's not it at all, I mean - I have physical needs for sure, and they haven't been attended by my wife in a long time, but there was a lot more missing from our marriage than just sex. I just feel like honesty is important, and I didn't want to be sneaky. My wife was incredibly hurt that I had been actively seeking out companionship in that way. I cancelled the date, and removed myself from the site to ease my wife's mind - but I'm still secretly in contact with the new w oman, and I'd still really like to meet her and see what happens.
So I'm torn. Part of me doesn't want to throw away the last 11 years and sacrifice the wholeness of our family, because I know that if I do go date this woman that there will never be a chance of reconciliation with my wife. If that happens, we'll divorce for sure and she'll take our kids, and I'll only get to see them every other weekend or some such. It will devastate us both financially for years. It'll be as though the last 11 years have been a complete waste. Part of me, though, realizes that we've been unhappy for years, and sometimes I feel that maybe the reason it wasn't working with my wife is because we really weren't right for each other - but we had so much time and energy invested that we didn't want to quit despite it. Maybe if it was 'right', it wouldn't have been so hard to build each other up.
I never would have thought that before she decided to separate, but maybe I want to divorce; maybe we're just not right and no amount of 'working on ourselves' is going to get us to a place where we can be good together. I don't know if I can really forgive her wanting to separate or her desire to see other men, nor do I know if she can ever forgive me for wanting and actively seeking to see what it's like with someone else. I suspect that if it weren't for the kids we'd already have gone our separate ways, but for their sake I feel like I'm obligated to stay. But how far does that obligation go? How long should we both endure a relationship that drains us rather than building us up? How good is it for the kids to stay together for their sake, but be miserable and without love? What if I really am the problem though? What if it's not that we don't love each other, but that I'm as broken as she says and I'm incapable of real love?
In this situation, with all of this information, is it really cheating if I pursue a relationship with the new woman? I'm not expecting to find the love of my life or anything. I tried that, and she changed her mind. I just want to feel alive and like a man again - and maybe it's just the infatuation of meeting someone who 'gets my engine going', but I don't remember the last time I felt like I do when I'm talking to this new woman. I don't want to sneak around, I couldn't do it 'behind my wife's back' so to speak, but I know that if I do it openly then I lose my children and any chance of reconciliation - I'm just not really sure if reconciliation is even what I want.
I know there's a lot of questions here, and a lot of rambling and ranting.. I'm really just hoping that I can get some insights from anyone who my story speaks to.
Thank you for your time.
Put the internet to work for you.
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