Just saying hello.

[prometheus]

Thank you for the welcomes. I appreciate your posts very much.

Well i will have to start keeping a copy of what i post because i have forgotten exactly what i have submitted. :0

I know that i have not said anything about me or the situation that i find myself in, so i may as well start with

that.

I am:

male
48 years old
Married October, 1994 (our relationship began in 1989)

My wife is 46 years old
My eldest son turned 18 this month
My daughter turned 12 in March
My youngest son turned 5 in January

I have worked at the same place for all of that time. I began working there just before my wife fell pregnant with

our first child.


I joined this forum with a view to getting some support and guidance from a community that obviously has a lot of

collective experience and interest in relationships and marriage. Probably like many who post here, i do not have a

lot of people that i can turn to for help or even just to be listened to. I have tried some counselling (not much)

but i have not seemed to derive much benefit from that. It is probably the setting at counselling more than

anything else at play there though.

Like all marriages, ours has had its share of ups and downs, mishaps, wounds and injuries. For instance, my wife

has had a physical affair, i have had an emotional affair, we have both harboured resentment and anger towards each

other. I have never been one to dwell upon that very much though.....until lately that is.

Knowing full well that our relationship was very troubled, i wrote a long letter to my wife in August of last year

asking her to "please not give up on us", to please accept that i wanted to work with her to improve our life

together. I also owned a lot of my own bad behaviours in that letter, to show her that i was mindful of at least

some of the areas that she was unhappy about, and that i am committed to changing them.

Her response devestated me and rocked my world. Basically, she said that she did not want to continue being married

to me. Her feeling was that i was asking her to continue putting up with more of the same. This is not what i

said, but i accept that that is the way that she feels; i won't be able to make any lasting reforms, and that in

five years time we will be back where we are right now. She wants to move on with a life without me in order to

explore what else life has to offer. Selfishly, perhaps, i do not want her to leave.

That is enough for now i suppose!