You're cherry-picking messages to fit your agenda. It may make you feel good to feel like you're winning an argument today, but it's going to bring you to grief.
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As I think I've said several times already, I have already told her that. At this point, she doesn't want to know the details. Neither of us is "happy" about the situation.
Humor us and tell her again, and this time explain that you aren't happy with this arrangement you've had and you want to have a happy sex life with her instead.
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Oh, I think I see the logic. If I divorce, fool around, and then remarry, it would all be clean and kosher, and I'd have my integrity, and if that hurt the kids and my wife just as much, it wouldn't matter because I kept my integrity and honor. Don't you see we're working through a problem? Sure, we are essentially divorced in the sense of intimacy. And so, as some of you have suggested, my marriage is a sham. Well, if we got divorced, is that the way to fix it, just because it then semantically eliminates the applicability of the phrase (your marriage is a sham)? No marriage, no sham. Got it.
No, you haven't got it and you know better than to say so. You've just wasted your time building a pro-divorce straw man and then knocking it apart because you don't have an easy answer to the actual question, which is why are you so afraid to confront your wife and do what it takes to take control and responsibility for your own life? There is no easy answer to that. It comes down to fear. You were right at the edge of breaking through it awhile ago. Now you're retreating. The thing is, I think you'll probably get there in the end. But you're prolonging your own pain with this.
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I don't understand the lack of focus on the actual problem, rather than on our IRS and property legal status as indicated by paperwork filed with the government. If you are having a loving sexual relationship with someone, and you cheat on that partner with someone else, you don't keep your honor and integrity intact simply because you are not married to that person. But as I understand it from some people on this forum, the marital status is what makes the difference. I don't agree with that.
The only person on this forum who has made that argument is you. It's your strawman, you built it, and you can deal with it however you see fit, but it has nothing to do with the advice you've been given here. We're advising you to insist on a real marriage, an honest marriage. You have let your fear of confronting your wife over the years convince you that you have to help her hide what your marriage really is. You hide the details of your infidelity from her because she doesn't like to deal with the truth of what the two of you have made your marriage into. She camouflages your marriage as a happy link between lovers for outsiders because she doesn't want to confront her own feelings of shame over what you two have made your marriage into. In exchange, if your story is to be believed, she looks the other way while you have unsatisfying sexual affairs on the side. How generous the hand of the queen.
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Well, now, which way are you trying to make the argument? That sex is not recommended for 15-year-olds? Or that casual sex among 15-year-olds is OK because theyre NOT married? And they therefore keep their honor and integrity intact?
And to put on my international smugness cap, I find it a curious mixed message about "sex out of wedlock" in America. I hear that everyone should wait to have sex until marriage. And then I also hear that it's OK to have casual sex with multiple partners because you're not married.
This is why I deliberately didn't address the whining about teenagers having sex. It has nothing to do with you or your marriage. It's a red herring.
If you were 15 and had the judgment and faculties of a 15-year-old, it would matter what people say to 15 year olds and I *might* engage in the argument you're trying to start about that. But you're not, and it doesn't, and I won't.
I kept my mouth shut when DanceQueen suggested the passive-aggressive strategy of shaming her with little asides in front of company. I probably shouldn't have, so now I'll say my piece. I don't really recommend this. I did it for years, too. All it does is pull other people into an uncomfortable situation for them without giving them the information they need to make a judgment--you're essentially using your friends and family. Now, talking in depth to your friends, family, therapist, pastor or whoever about your problems would be different, but the thing about these little "joking" moments is that a man who is already struggling to assert himself and get out from under a woman's thumb should probably avoid passive-aggressive strategies like this altogether if only to help him break the habit of whining and passive aggression. And before you take offense, remember that I've been here and when I talk about whining and passive aggression, I'm describing my own behavior. Whining and passive aggression are not attractive in anyone.
