Keep talking to your husband. Be as honest with him as you can. Talk to him. REALLY talk to him. Your feelings. Get him to talk about how he feels.
Having what you call a sham marriage does nothing for you, your husband, nor your son.
Can you really say that you did your all out best to try to make it work? I'm not sure you can. Neither of you.
Do you think that OM would be a better father to your child? Is that what you are looking for? I know your not, but it is something that has to be thought about. You imagine a life with OM, you can't keep him out of your sons life. Is he THAT good? Good enough for your son? Is he the one that you know you can rely on? Aside from all the "good" feelings, is he going to be there in the difficult times? Stand by you? Look deep inside. Be honest and truthful with yourself. If you say he IS the one, then so be it. If you only want to find out if he is, that is something ENTIRELY different.
As long as a decision is reached between your husband and you. AGREE to what is best for you, him and your son. Not just you up and going off. It sounds like you and husband might be at that juncture of deciding. But he may want to fight for marriage. He may not at this point.
Maybe your husband will finally see it. I think I do now. That is why I am dropping my rope. I don't WANT her here if she is not going to try and feels like it is hopeless. No use. Makes us both unhappy.
Prayers to you, wdid. Thank you for opening yourself to us.
I feel like I started to ramble. I am sorry if it comes out that way.
Last edited by hopeful4her; 06/14/0803:31 PM.
Me 47, WW 38 SS18, D15, D10
Good Bye Girl. No longer SAYING she's moving out. GBG moved out 8-1-08
"I have now decided to enjoy life instead of figure it out."
hopeforus- NC is the only way I'll ever know if I can make it with H. I know this deep down, but it is painful to leave a feeling I feel like I never have felt before. Maybe it is too late? You said a marriage with lies in it is no marriage....there will always be lies in my marriage or at least a lack of shared details. No man could handle hearing what I feel about another man and how we did/said/feel things I NEVER felt with him.
Just an observation and not a slam although it may feel that way....Don't you think your husband has a right to know those details so he can make a decision for HIMSELF? Is it ok to come back to your husband and not share your inner most self with him there by robbing him of the chance to make decisions about his own life? Do you think by your statement that your husband could never handle your feelings for OM that maybe, just maybe you're selling him short and THAT'S why there isn't the intimacy in your marriage you crave?
Look, I'm not slamming you. Far from it. I can just imagine how scary this must be for you. You've made a decision (I think) to end it with OM and you're settling for less than what you "want" (OM) and you're afraid that if you tell your H your feelings that he'll leave and you'll be without a H AND OM.
Do you think if maybe you could share with your H those inner most feelings you have that maybe that would bring you emotionally closer together?
Again WDID, I'm not slamming you. I don't know you other than what you post here. But why not be HONEST with your H? Why not give him the opportunity to show you he can be emotionally there for you? Why not try your best to save your marriage completely? And I mean complete honesty. If that honesty ends your marriage, so be it, but at least you'll know that you gave it your best shot.
I read a passage in "Not Just Friends" and it said that one of the key's to recovery after an affair is for the wayward to tell the betrayed EVERYTHING they want/need to know. Open yourself up totally to your spouse. And when that is done, the luster of the OP suddenly isn't what it seemed. By sharing your intimate thoughts with your spouse you take the "fantasy" out of the OP and amazing things can happen then. If you share those feelings with your H and he can't handle it and the marriage ends, at least it's not a marriage based on lies which will never be the marriage either of you want or deserve.
But the first step is NC. OM may seem like your "soulmate" right now, but until you go NC for a good period of time (try 6 months to a year) you'll never know if your marriage can make it or not.
Again WDID. Not slamming. You are helping me in my sitch. If I seem a little touchy its because I just feel like a marriage will never even have the chance at recovering as long as an OM is in the picture. It's not fair to your H and it's not fair to OM and it's not fair to YOU.
Edited to add: I just read your last comment about OM being mad and going to a movie with the "girl" friend. Another website I read on frequently talks about a large number of affairs end when the OP finds someone new. If he was so desperately the one for you would he have moved on already? I know you said she's just a friend....but we've all heard that before haven't we?
Last edited by Hope4us; 06/14/0803:42 PM.
Hope4us
Me - 49, W 49 S22 & S18 Dday 9/4/07 W claims NC 4/7/08 8/29/09 - Divorce Busted. Lots to work through, but we're going to make it.
I want to just talk for a bit about cheating, the OM, your sitch...from my perspective as having been in your shoes before, made all the classic mistakes, ended up divorced, and now wish I could do it all over again.
These things are not specifically directed toward you, per se. Although they might fit you. But I am also hoping to address anyone who is reading who may be going through anything similar.
Just to recap quickly my marriage, I met my ex-h at age 19, he was 27 with a 2 year old from a previous marriage. I got pregnant the next year at age 20 and we got married. (Then divorced after 16 years).
So right away, I want to say that I think getting married too young and for the reason of pregnancy, in hindsight now, was not condusive to my own personal growth as a person. It stunted my development, and I was already stunted by many childhood issues.
This was the gateway toward me then remaining emotionally immature for many years.
At my current age (41) and finally in a great relationship, I can look back and clearly see just HOW stunted I was in my early married years. I was truly incapable of intimacy, except with my children. I did not really even know what initimacy meant, in all its meaning. I could not really be 100% vulnerable and open to ANYONE, with the exception of my children. So I threw myself into the mommy role, and effectively cut my husband out of the picture.
At the time, I would have never admitted nor realized what I was doing. I thought it was natural that of course you put your children ahead of everyone and everything. But this had another added secret benefit - it kept me safe from experiencing intimacy with anyone, except with my kids. Now...why in the world would I subconsciously sabotage myself, my marriage and my husband like I did? As it turns out, many if not most of us, are terrified of *true* intimacy. We all find secret ways of not giving ourselves to each other.
Does any of this resonate with you so far?
OK - so after being married a few years, I become sex and intimacy starved, and so is my husband. All of this is essentially my fault (by not being open to it), but I think it is his fault or the world's fault or somehow anyone but me's fault. What do I do next? Become vulnerable toward outside advances from an OM.
Next comes the affair.
Ah...the affair. That sick, up and down roller coaster ride, which at the time we mistake for "love".
An affair is never a calm, settling, bonded loving experience. It may seem that way for short glimpsed moments at a time. But trust me - 99% of the time it is a sick, sinking feeling. Of course there is also a thrill involved, and maybe some passionate moments. But we CLING so hard to those moments, in our sex and intimacy starvation mode, that they APPEAR to be way more passionate and wonderful than they actually are. Thus is the beginning of the alien fog begun in your mind...you are actually on a sick roller coaster ride but you put these weird goggles up to your head through which if you squint hard enough, you will perceive a tiny bit of pleasure and it will be magnified 1,000 times so that you fool yourself into thinking that "this must be that spark I was missing in my marriage". Bah!
It is a trick of smoke and mirrors, but the most sad part is that YOU are the one putting up the smoke and the mirrors.
So here you are, you think that you are finally in love again, and you were so hungry for it you throw yourself in that direction. But guess what? If you were not truly open to true intimacy in your marrige, you will not be truly open to it in your affair relationship, either. So it fizzles, bursts, or generally turns into something that you didn't realize it actually was the whole time.
Because...aha!....you finally find out that it is YOU who cannot really give yourself 100%. And due to that, you cannot receive 100%. And this is why you are not able to be committed 100%. To anyone. Ever. Until you look within...
I used to think I was running from my non-spark husband's arms into the arms of a man who was passionately pursuing me. But now I know the following:
*The young marriage while pregnant was not a good way for us to start, and for that alone we should have had counseling.
*At the first sign of my feeling vulnerable to others advances, I wish I had someone counsel me on intimacy and what it really means to give yourself to someone. I wish I knew what I was running from.
*If a kind elder could have clued me in that I couldn't expect to hide behind my children and that form of intimacy only, and still expect to grow up into a mature, fully-functioning woman and wife.
In the end, I found that OM's were only a symptom. Not one of them will ever be the reason for anything. The real reason for searching and being vulnerable to OM's is always because you are hungry for intimacy. If you can't figure out how to have *true* intimacy with your husband alone, then get counseling and and keep trying but make sure YOU are 100% willing to be open to intimacy and committment. It is those two issues, intimacy and committment, not your husband, that you are running from.
Puppy- I am certainly addicted to this feeling I have never felt before. Om does validate me, you are right. H validates me, too, but I just don't feel for him. I'm not telling him, Puppy. I knew you would say I should. I don't see my marriage as any more of a sham if I tell him than if I dont.
Ahh, I'm hardly the one one who says you should. Seems to be a consensus, WDID -- something for you to strongly consider.
Also, with all due respect, when you say "I don't see...", you are -- admittedly -- not SEEING clearly right now, are you?
You have yet to give your marriage 6 months of full no-contact. Until you do, you will never know what might have been possible to "feel." Why not do that, and THEN -- if you decide, free of influence from your feelings for OM, that you want to end it, you can end it with a clear conscience.
Is 6 months too long to ask, considering all your shared marital history?
hopeful - yes I absolutely would wish for another chance to do it right.
However, I don't know if maybe he and I would end up divorced anyway. I will never know that answer. Would we have just cut our losses sooner, or did we really have the kind of love that could have forged forward? I cheated myself out of finding out that answer. I still wish I knew the answer though, because I did fail myself by not living with integrity and doing the right thing. I have - only in the past 5 years or so - finally learned how to live with integrity (or at least always striving for it above all) - and being that I didn't know how to do that when I was younger, I needed help with depression, etc...well, I dont know if I would have been emotionally mature enough to really commit myself to the effort required to make a marriage work. I was very damaged, needless to say, and couldn't really "get" things, you know? So yes, I wish for the second chance, but I know that my younger self still might have blown it somehow. I was so clueless.
I think you have really hit the nail on the head. This is a problem of lack of intimacy. And the problem is not just with Didi's husband but with both of them. Clearly, she withholds intimacy from him. Many people here are very concerned about her withholding truth. I am more concerned about the withholding of sex. They say without truth a marriage is a sham. I believe without sex a marriage is less than a marriage, I don't know if I would say it is a sham. But then I think the truth people are exaggerating too, because in every marriage there are some things you don't tell the other person, whether it's a purchase you made, or a speeding ticket, or the fact that the kid was lost for an hour in the afternoon. People don't like to reveal their faults to the other.
Do you know of counseling for intimacy? What kind of counselor do you seek out? At Retrouvaille, there is a section on intimacy. It is discussed, both on the weekend and in the Post sessions, but I didn't feel that either went very deep into the subject. How does one get instruction if this doesn't come naturally?
I think you have really hit the nail on the head. This is a problem of lack of intimacy. And the problem is not just with Didi's husband but with both of them. Clearly, she withholds intimacy from him. Many people here are very concerned about her withholding truth. I am more concerned about the withholding of sex. They say without truth a marriage is a sham. I believe without sex a marriage is less than a marriage, I don't know if I would say it is a sham. But then I think the truth people are exaggerating too, because in every marriage there are some things you don't tell the other person, whether it's a purchase you made, or a speeding ticket, or the fact that the kid was lost for an hour in the afternoon. People don't like to reveal their faults to the other.
Do you know of counseling for intimacy? What kind of counselor do you seek out? At Retrouvaille, there is a section on intimacy. It is discussed, both on the weekend and in the Post sessions, but I didn't feel that either went very deep into the subject. How does one get instruction if this doesn't come naturally?
Sara,
Surely you're not equating the withholding of "Oh, I got a speeding ticket" with "Oh btw, I re-initated contact with my boyfriend, and have been seeing him again"??
I guarantee you if you were to ask WDID's husband right now what his biggest issue of concern is, it's honesty and trust. To NOT tell him the truth right now about this is, in my opinion, a HUGE mistake.
Aha! So Puppy doesn't tell his wife about speeding tickets. I'm just saying that I think requiring complete and total honesty in a marriage is not realistic.
I am not here to judge whether Didi should tell him or not. I think it is up to her. I agree with her that he already knows about this affair. He hopes it is gone. But he must know their relationship is not all it should be at this point. He should be worried about her slipping back into it.
My point is that she is comparing a sexual relationship with OM to a non-sexual relationship with H, and the one with H doesn't compare well. Gee, what a surprise! I think if she built the relationship with H up into a sexual relationship she would be on the road to fixing this mess.
