should i stay or divorce?

[sonato]

i married my H 8 years ago, i was a virgin. i thought i love him, but i never enjoy having sex with him. i thought i don't like sex, he thinks so too.

for 8 years i gave him sex as wifely duty. he did everything correct, he loves me very much, but i have no urge to want him to touch me, in fact, i hate it. the weired thing is, emotionally, i like him as a person, even love him as someone close. come to sex, i had never had passionate love making. the problem is with me, not him.

we tried ways to arouse me, but none works. my body is dead to him. i didn't understand, we just conclude i am a person who dislike sex.

finally, i have an affair. my lover and me fall in love hopelessly. i finally know what is love making. i have never felt so connected before, and the strong loving feeling, i have finally tasted love. sadly, i finally know what i felt for my husband 8 years ago was not true love. when you meet the correct person, you don't need vibrator, erotic films etc to feel aroused. you feel aroused even without seeing him.

my lover has fallen for me to the extent that he wants to divorce his wife to marry me. we are mature adults, late thirties, we think we know what we are feeling for each other.

is it really true i don't love my husband? could anyone who's been there done that tell me what is going on? is it better that i divorce?

[wedge]

Have you sought a professional's help on this? This is a sticky situation IMO. You're experiencing something new with this OM, something you're experiencing with your H. If you do end up living with OM for good, would you be confortable to think that you built a relationship that was founded on lies and deceit?

My two cents.

[sonato]

my own opinion is i don't think my relationship with OM is built on lies and deceit. i look upon it as i have found my true love.

i know i am not after sex, as in sex with someone new. at first i thought i was. you see, i have another suitor who is very handsome, better looking than my OM, he is also in love with me. at first i had some feelings for him too, and even consider having sex with him. but after i discover i truely love my OM, i rejected this other suitor.

i am scared myself when i discover how deeply i have fallen for my OM, but also happy too.

do you really think professional help will help? IMO, i feel that my problem is i don't love my husband, i have feelings of course, but not real love. you can't force love right? so i don't think counselling would help.

i suppose i will keep my vows and stick to my marriage i think. it hurts me very much just to think of my H coming home without me. i do care very much for my H.

[cat03]

Love is not a feeling, it is a desicion. You are confusing the fireworks of a new-found love to a more sound, strong based love that happens after the newness and the lust fades.

Falling in love and being in love are different things, many cheaters have felt they've found the one, they felt something they hadn't felt in a while--they forget they had the same chemistry when they were first dating their spouses.

Love has 4 seasons:

Infatuation or Attraction
Power struggle
Cooperation
Synergy
The first phase is often called the honeymoon. The second is where people make the most growth, but it is also the phase where most break-ups happen.

Breaking up in the second phases is like going to the gym, putting your workout clothes on, and then leaving before you lift any weights. You never get a chance to grow or get any benefits from the experience until you actually start to lift the weights.

Most break-ups happen because people do not understand the 4 phases of relationships. They enjoy the first phase, but as soon as they start to “work” in the second phase they bail because they do not understand that completing the 2nd phase leads to the 3rd and 4th phases, which is where real relationship enjoyment occurs.

When someone bails during the 2nd phase then they never got the growth and they must repeat that struggle in their future relationship until they finally make the growth so that the issue doesn’t come up any more.

Another common occurrence with people who don’t understand the phases is they get to the 2nd phase of power struggle, and instead of breaking-up or growing-up, they just give-up. They remain in the relationship, but never progress through the power struggle phase. This results in all the people who are in miserable relationships.

Another common reason people break up in the second phase is because the phases are cyclic. They get to synergy (the 4th and best phase) and then as they continue to grow a new opportunity presents itself and they are attracted to that phase with their partener. Once they grow through that phase then they redefine their relationship at this new level which results in a new power struggle. If people don’t understand that this is just a phase between attraction and cooperation then they might be frustrated that they are in power struggle again, which could lead them to give up.

[sonato]

thanks for your post and what you wrote definitely make sense. i hope you could also help to shed some lights regarding my relationship with my H.

you said i might have felt the same way with my H in the early stage. but i am sure i did not, because i had never had fireworks with him the first time we had sex. sex with H is going through motion for me, many times it felt like rape. i tried vibrator, i tried watching porno before sex, my body is still dead to him, is so pathetic.

i did research before, all those sex therapy and tricks. to me, they are all so pathetic. do you need all these if you really love that someone?

love and lust is one body, i love my brother too but i have no lust for him. lust is what differentiates love and kinship love. lust is cheap only when it is a one night stand. when you are in love, lust is a signal that the relationship is complete in my opinion.

i have developed synergy and cooperation with my H, but attraction is not there in all these later stages. i have made the decision to love him before that is why i am at these last two stages. but i am not enjoying it anymore, because the attraction factor is not there. i guess i have almost reached my limit. yes, i can continue, but am i happy?

you might say that attraction will fade and die, i do not think so now. i used to think this way, because of the way i feel towards my H, that was why i "decided" to continue to love him. all these years, til now, my H is still so attracted to me, because i am the right one for him. he did not "work" for me because i finally realise that he is not the right one for me, strictly speaking.

when we make wrong choices in other areas, people don't think it is a big deal. like taking the wrong course, taking up a wrong career, no big deal, just change to be happy. but when we made a mistake in choosing a spouse, we like to come up with reasons like feelings will die anyway, stick to it, continue to love him because love is a decision etc etc.....

there are indeed couples who feel in love their whole life. if there are people who feel this way, the only reason we can't is because we did not meet the right one. of course, no everyone is lucky enough to meet the right one in their lifetime. just my thoughts.

[cat03]

but when we made a mistake in choosing a spouse, we like to come up with reasons like feelings will die anyway, stick to it, continue to love him because love is a decision etc etc.....

there are indeed couples who feel in love their whole life.

I don't know about making a mistake when choosing a couple, but I still believe love is a decision, feelings come and go, it's the commitment that binds marriages when our feelings carry us away from our Ss. My H came back without much feelings for me, he needs to decide to love me again, he did love me with a passion before, and because of my stupid behavior I pushed him away and he distanced himself from me 'til a MLC took me away from me.
His feelings are coming back, he had to decide to start loving me in order for those feelings to come back. We all in this board agree that hollywood movies screw up our view of romance and love.

[runningoutoftime]

Hummmm....

Kind of interesting. I have a friend going through something similar. She has been married for over 17 years (3 kids) and says the same thing about her husband regarding sex and attraction. She fell in love with a married man at work and they had an affair for two years. They were both planning to leave the spouses but she ended up doing it and he ended up staying with his. Since then she just started on antideppressants and seems to be on a crazed search for Mr. Right (i.e. "right" in the sack). The most interesting comment she made one evening lately was that she thought once she got out of her marriage she'd be happier.

Oh well....

I can't say your sitch is like my friend's. Maybe you really would both get divorced, marry each other and live happily ever after.

Although if either of you have kids I wouldn't do that. If it's true love wait until they are grown and out of the house and then go do whatever you want. That's my two cents...

[toughlover]

Lust and attraction are like the booster rockets that help get the space shuttle out of the earth's atmosphere. Once it's out, they're jettisoned. They burned hot and strong enough to accomplish one specific task...but they burned up all the fuel so what remained really wasn't useful anymore.

Attraction and "lust" are the same way I think. It's strong enough to get you together, but it fades and new feelings develop that bind you together even closer but it only happens as you meet each other's needs outside of the bedroom (as well as in) over time.

In relationships, I'd be willing to be that the couples who remain "in love" for their entire M (I've never met any, though) do so because they learned to meet each other's needs.

There's no such thing as magic...only a belief in magic.

Incidentally, I haven't met one couple who have been married any decent length of time that didn't confess, at some point, their spouse could have been a wooden indian for all they felt.

[sonato]

actually i totally agree that love is a decision. because i had been doing that all these years.

however, the starting phase of a relationship, it is not a decision. love is a feeling in this phase, insane, intoxication etc.... and after that you decided to commit, you decided to give up all others for this one alone. this is when decision comes in, and this decision should continue your whole life if possible.

i really think i could do this if i did not sense an important part missing, the lovemaking part.

i do not agree that hollywood movies screw up the concept of love that badly. when i read romance novels, i thought those all are myths, all frictional, i thought sex is just sex, is not possible to reach that kind of passion s described because personally i did not feel that kind of passion before during lovemaking. now, i beg to differ. i finally experienced it, it is exactly as in the novels. i am so touched, i am so glad i could taste love before i die.

i did not feel this way the first few times i did with my OM, but as our love deepens over time, the connection grows too and i reached this heavenly feeling, not orgasm i am refering to, but the connection of the souls.

i do not have kids, so leaving is easy technically. but it kills me too to think of the pain i would inflict on my H, this is the reason that is holding me back.

my OM is a good man, i do not want to write his story here, but i know what kind of man i am involved in. when a man is willing to marry you, to give up what he has to give up to do that, i do not doubt his love any more. he is definitely not after sex, he loves me so much, just like my H. the difference is, i love this man. i feel that i would give up the whole world of other men for this one. i am an attractive woman, i could have a beautiful boy just for sex if i want to, but i never never do that. i am after love.

[toughlover]

How much older is he than you?

i do not agree that hollywood movies screw up the concept of love that badly. when i read romance novels, i thought those all are myths, all frictional, i thought sex is just sex, is not possible to reach that kind of passion s described because personally i did not feel that kind of passion before during lovemaking. now, i beg to differ. i finally experienced it, it is exactly as in the novels. i am so touched, i am so glad i could taste love before i die.

Nobody ever said those feelings weren't possible. I've experienced them and, really, more intensely with a girl or two I dated when I was younger than I've ever really had with my W. Some people crank our tractors more than others. But I also recognize that those feelings aren't magic, or mystical. They're the result of various combinations of adrenaline and endorphins my organs release into my bloodstream as a result of brain stimulation. Kinda fun, certainly more interesting than folding laundry or having to deal with the same person day in and day out.

and i reached this heavenly feeling, not orgasm i am refering to, but the connection of the souls

Well that's interesting because now you're using poetic and symbolic language to describe something that can't be described any other way. I mean, you can't reach in behind my spleen and pull out my soul and show it to me, so we're kind of going off the page here a bit.

And I'm not saying we don't have souls or that your souls aren't commingling, not at all.

But what if this guy is just really good at pushing your buttons and your years of frustration with your H have caused you to conjure up a bunch of nifty romantic ideas that this guy just happens (intentionally or not) be good at tapping into?

when a man is willing to marry you, to give up what he has to give up to do that, i do not doubt his love any more.

Well, I don't doubt he digs you, but what about the fact that he has a commitment to someone else? Do you really want to participate in the breakup of a family? Pardon me but if that's your idea of what real love is then I'd suggest you just do a little more thinking before you go through with this because there may be more to this than you realize and you, and a whole lot of other people, will be suffering the consequences for a long time.

And if you really love him, don't you want him to do what's right, what's honorable, and what will help build his character and make him a better person?

Or is love just pure selfishness?

he is definitely not after sex, he loves me so much, just like my H. the difference is, i love this man. i feel that i would give up the whole world of other men for this one. i am an attractive woman, i could have a beautiful boy just for sex if i want to, but i never never do that. i am after love.

Well we all have some good qualities, some bad.