Glad I could help. We're all in a similar boat here, so its good that we at least have each other to encourage one another. My friends, who do have my best interest, tend to lean towards just going through the divorce. Even my parents, who love my wife and my grandchildren, are telling me that maybe it's time. Sometimes even that voice in my head tells me the same thing. But when I look at my kids I find the inspiration to do everything I can to stop it.
This is the only website that I've found that really leans more towards fighting to save the marriage than supporting you through your (or your spouses) decision to divorce. I am appalled at how simple we have made divorce. Even legally. You can download forms from the internet and just sign them in the presence of a lawyer! (Not that I would ever recommend that in any situation) But even through the lawyers, the forms are pretty much in place they just fill in the blanks. Unless you are on top of it (which can cost you money) the lawyers play Mad Libs with your life.
I salute you for sticking in there even after and EA. That cannot be easy.
There was a comedian once (forgot who) who said that "...when men get married we think that things are always going to be the way they are at that time. When women get married they think of how they're going to change us." While he was trying to be funny, I think he hit on a fundamental problem with marriage. You add to that the fact that we have removed the stigma of divorce and made it easier to end a marriage than it is to get married and we end up with the society that we have. However, I also think that we have generations of marriages that were miserable but nothing was done about it. They didn't fix them, but wouldn't get a divorce. So when the stigma was removed and the legal process simplified, people panicked as soon as things started to grow stale or sour. "I don't want to end up miserable like my parents/grandparents/etc." Rather than working to fix it, we rush into divorce and hope for better next time.
Again, I don't know you H or your full story, but it almost sounds like he is going through a sort of "midlife crisis." I know he's not old enough, but I really don't think age matters as much as it used to. People used to get a job right out of high school or college and that is where they retired from. You eventually bought a house and lived in that neighborhood until you either retired somewhere or passed away. Things stabilized a lot earlier then and I think that stability led to a sense of security. It wasn't until middle age that someone was able to look back and panic. Now days (myself included) people change jobs constantly, move around, etc. I think that while it allows to explore more avenues it also causes to view things as more disposable and offers less security. I think that those two factors cause us to reevaluate much more often and the more you reevaluate your place in life the more you start wondering about what it is you missed. I think this causes a midlife crises to come much earlier and more frequently as a whole. But what he's bound to discover is that no matter what a younger woman might be able to offer, and no matter how exciting or "new" it might seem, the truth is that you seldom get any satisfaction moving backwards. By that I mean that the life you used to live is behind you and no matter how great it was at the time, it can't possibly offer you those same feelings today. Think about Christmas when you were a kid (if you celebrated). From Thanksgiving on you could barely contain yourself. It was like the whole world was just bustling with this building energy. Now think about Christmas today. Even though you might see that excitement in your kids and you might recreate all those same experiences, that same feeling isn't there. It can't be. You are a different person than you were then (for better or worse), your world and life view are much larger and you can never compress it back down to what it was.
However, that being said, this doesn't mean that you can't enjoy your life now. You just have to find the things in your life that make you happy. While you can't recreate those old feelings, you can always find new ones. It's like the first step in DR. You have to drop those apprehensions towards change and approach it all differently.
If your husband doesn't see that now, he will some day one way or another. I commend you for trying to see it through so that you can see it with him.
