This is exactly the same as my sitch. My thinking is that if I can be happily married with passion I would much rather have that with my best friend rather than start all over with someone else. I get that H is worried because passion hasn't been really great between us for quite some time.
People ask him how he can throw away the last 10 years of his life by divorcing and his reply is that he is more worried about throwing away the next 3o years. He doesn't want to live in a passionless marriage. I understand that. I just don't think a friendship like ours is that common. Maybe he can have the passion with someone else (it always is exciting when it is new)I think though that he'll end up in this same position again in another couple of years but not with someone he has a great friendship with. What then? Serial monogamy? I think at some point if you really love who you are with, you have to be willing to put the work in to have what you want and we have definitely not done this.
Once again our thoughts about our partners match. My W and I can get on really well and she does enjoy spending time with me, so why is she throwing it all away without an attempt to address the issues we are uncovering in counseling ? In my opinion, these are quite big factors in what has killed our passion, but she just acts as if it is all too late or as if everything that was is set in stone.
Most of us wonder from time to time if we could be happier and know that we could, for a while, but we don't walk away each time this thought pops into our head otherwise we'd always be on the move! Like you, I worry that my W will continue life moving from R to R and then end up on her own. Perhaps she will be happy that way. I think sometimes you can do too much soul searching rather than getting on with things here and now. The basic fact is that life isn't easy.
My current favourite analogy for what is happening is that my W is not happy and has gone off on a search for her emotional pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I tend to think that she won't find it, or at least what she is looking for, as it doesn't exist. You have to work on life. That pot of gold, if it exists anywhere, is just as likely to be right under her nose in our R. However, I guess she still feels she has to undertake the journey and that is what hurts. <sigh>
Max
Me 36 W 37 Bomb (Easter 07) Sep (WAW July 07) "It's over" (end Oct 07) T10.5 years, M2 (before bomb)
