Feels like an eternity (Mindsin - part. 3)

[mindsin]

25 -

I will answer your questions, but first let me give you a bit of back story.

My "hobby" started in 2006 and I remember the 1st time I got caught. It was a simple text message that I sent asking for a girl's hourly rate. She saw it on my phone. I said that I was simply curious but I never actually did anything.

The next couple of times I got caught was a similar thing (text or e-mail), except I confessed that I've been going. I lied about the frequency and the details.

The final time was in 2011 when she saw an e-mail thread I had with an independent escort negotiating services. There were words said in that thread that were very hard for her to read.

The below section may sound like I'm blaming my wife, but please keep in mind that I'm simply telling you what my thoughts and feelings were. Regardless of what I was feeling, infidelity was not and is not an excuse. Much of this (or all of this) could have been prevented had I simply been able to communicate better with my W.

Rewind back to 2005. My wife spent much of the year living in Asia on a business assignment. I was home alone. For the first time in my life, I was responsible for myself and my home. All the responsibilities required to keep up a houshold fell on my shoulders. I feared the thought of it, but after a while, I felt good about it. It even got me motivated enough to start losing weight (I was heavy my entire adult life). I lost about 60 lbs that year. I looked and felt great.

We never had a good sex life. In fact, there was one period where we went almost a year w/out having sex. Her reasoning was that she is not a very sexual person, and doesn't really care about it. She said she's also not the kind of girl to initiate intimate contact. This is what she said, but deep down, I felt that maybe it was because she wasn't attracted to me physically.

So after my wife came back from Asia, I was so excited to show off my new self. While she was happy for me and thought I looked great, nothing really changed in our sex life. My W herself is someone who seemingly is obsessed with her physical appearance so I thought that was the answer. It was not.

I've learned recently that my love language is physical touch. All I wanted was for my W to touch me, without me being the initiator. Just once, I wished I'd come home from work, and she'd greet me at the door and just put her arms around me and kiss me. Things like that just never happened.

I don't really remember the 1st time, but I do remember it was at a local massage parlor (you know the ones with blacked-out windows and a single neon sign that says "open"). I don't know what it was that made me walk into those doors that fateful night. But I remember feeling incredible during the hour I spent there, and guilty and confused on my drive home. I was hooked after my 1st visit. Massage parlors soon turned into escort services.

2007 was a milestone year. My grandmother (who raised me from birth) passed away and later that year, our 1st child was born. To this day, it kills me that she was never able to see my son. I thought that I would be able to stop now. But I simply couldn't, and I didn't have the courage to talk to my wife about what was going on. I was living a lie. This is the way it went on until 2011, after she found that e-mail. Back then, she said she was leaving me, but never followed through.

Over the next few years, the elephant in the room was never really talked about. She started occasionally, and then frequently, poking comments (usually in a sarcastic manner) at me about my past. "Well maybe one of your massage girls would like that". "I guess that's kind of like when you were seeing escorts". It got to a point where it was almost friendly joking banter. For example, she would make one of her remarks, and I would reply, "Wow, are we really going there?" She'd reply, "Oh yes my dear. I've got more where that came from."

I hope that back story gives a little more insight to our marital dynamic.