Keep Wearing Wedding Band? [Thread #7]

[ForGump]

Gordie, I'm not certain that she knows it. I think she does, since she already suggested a post-divorce living arrangement where we live as housemates, and I said I can't do that. But she may still harbor some view of a future where there is this fluid and frequent co-mingling of our lives. I think some of this will become apparent and have to be negotiated during the divorce process where we have to submit a parenting plan to the court. But I have been reluctant to drive that negotiation forward, because I don't want to divorce and I don't want to help her get a divorce. It is her deal. But at the right time I intend to make it clear, if it is necessary to make it clear, that I cannot do that.

The most basic reason I cannot do something like that is that I just cannot emotionally do it. That is not me. I am not OK sharing my wife (or ex-wife in the future) with another man. It kills me to think about it. It burns a hole in my heart. I don't her to be with another man, and I don't want my kids to have another father figure. I want to be that, nobody else.

I buy into E. Perel's ideas about mating in captivity, the inherent paradox of (not) wanting something you already have. But (like Perel herself says), the solution isn't to give in to those impulses, because that doesn't buy you happiness and healthy relationships either.

I also believe that if I were to crumple to the situation and meekly accept it, if I were to communicate to her, "Gee, honey, OK, I'm so desperate and needy I will accept you seeking other men", that fuels her dissatisfaction with me, as an unattractive, emasculated male.