All though this is my first post, I've been lurking here for about 4 months. I've read DB and reading DR. Here is a quick synopsis of my sitch:
M 16 years Dated 2 years before 2 kids DD-11, DS-4 H-42 W(me)-41 D-Day 7/2004 * 6mnths pregnant H – online EA starting in Aug. 2003, spent 1 month with her while in another state with service. Returned home @ Thanksgiving, continued contact with her. Went back for another voluntary 2 weeks of service which he spent with her. In between the 2 visits, I got pregnant with DS. I never knew anything was wrong. OWH contacted me in July of 2004 and dropped the bomb. OWH said that OW was pregnant with WH child but lost it. I have emails and chats that support this. WH said she was just trying to keep him hooked in and that it later turned to blackmail, although I don’t see any evidence of that. TRICKLE TRUTH to the point that I still don’t believe I know everything.
He went NC with her. MC for 1 year. Thought things could get better. He tried, not to the level I expected. I was already damaged goods, as my parents split up over infidelity, and I don’t speak to my own father. He came from a family where they do not show or verbalize love, although his family is very religious and intact.
3 years since then, a lot has changed. I’ve lost 40 lbs, been spending a lot of time with my best friend (we both have bad marriages and her husband and mine have been best friends since college), I turned 40, and got outsourced from a job that I had almost 20y ears tenure with. I can see that I have been pulling away from him for quite awhile as I think he has lost any motivation to work on making the marriage better. As a result, I’ve become even more angry and bold with my statements to him as well as my actions. FF to 4 months ago, he all the sudden tells me that we should separate. I got the ILYBINILWY. He starts to look for a place to live. I start DB and GAL and 180. He tells me he has to find his own path, so I say he has to leave.
He has been gone for 4 months. Within the past 2 weeks he says he loves me and wants to come home and misses me and the kids. Says he thought I was just not in the R anymore and was coming to grips with that. Now he knows I am committed.
So here I am and I've been reading the SSM post and am wondering if this is really our issue.
Before we were married and in the beginning of marriage, we were very sexually active but never "verbal" about things. As time went on, work, children, school, etc. our sex life dwindled to next to nothing, then the A on his part. After the A and MC, it got better but again it dwindled to next to nothing. Then the separation.
Now I see I have another chance to reconcile our R but H seems very "stand offish" regarding being intimate (even kissing me). Granted, he has only been home for a little over a week but I am wondering if I should initiate? Or would that come off as looking desparate.
Also, we have both been VERY RESERVED in this department, so I think I need to work on that as well but don't know where to start.
