This is pretty long, but I want to get the full story out. TLDR at the bottom.
Some background:
My wife (28F) and I (32M) have been together for about 8 years, and have two young children together.
My wife has really struggled since having kids. She feels like she wasn't ready, and feels like she missed out on a lot of life experiences by having kids when she did. She also suffered from post-partem depression, especially after our second.
I was not as emotionally supportive as I should have been since our kids were born. I felt like I was caring, because I would take care of her practical needs, like cooking for her, or taking on a greater share of the childcare. But I didn't give her the affection she needed, for some reason I even struggled when she would directly tell me that she needed me to tell her "I love you" more often. Life was hard for me too, and I guess for some reason I just didn't have it in me to give her affection, even though I love her.
She also tends to snap at people when she's frustrated (or hungry) and just because of her personality and culture tends to get into spirited arguments much more than I do. Sometimes I would feel like she had been rude to me, and so I wouldn't feel like being affectionate for a while afterwards, even though she would be totally over the thing that made her upset (or sometimes she wasn't even upset just talking passionately and loudly).
I've never been an especially romantic person. I actually like romantic gestures, but I tend to overthink them and then don't follow through. This has always bothered my wife.
Since having kids, I got in the habit of sleeping on the couch instead of in our bed. I tend to stay up late, and since our kids would sleep in the bed with us I just got in the habit of not coming to bed and falling asleep on the couch.
Overall, our romantic and sexual connection got to a pretty low point.
What happened:
A few months ago, my wife finally had enough. She told me she wanted to leave me. After talking, we decided to take a break. Because of the pandemic and our kids, it wasn't easy for her to physically leave.
Around this time (I guess shortly before this), she also had reached out to some random old friends, because she was horny and wanted someone to sext with. One of the guys she ended up developing a real connection with, in part because he gave her a lot of positive attention. Eventually they ended up doing a lot of sexual things over a video call.
One night, after putting the kids to bed, I went to our room and realized she had locked the door. There was something about being locked out that really made it hit home that I was losing her. I knew that she had been talking to other guys, but I don't think I knew the extent of it yet.
I came to realize that all the little things that had been preventing me from giving her affection, and from not putting real effort into our relationship (rather than just effort into the practical side of taking care of a family), all those things were not important. I could be a better person at this, and I actually wanted to be a more expressive, romantic person. It suddenly seemed possible for me to actually try and work to build a marriage that could last.
But at this point, my desire to fight for our marriage was just smothering to her. She still wanted to make things work, but also felt like she had already made up her mind to leave. We went back and forth about taking a break, getting a divorce, or really give things a shot between us.
Eventually, after an argument where she said she needed a break, but I told her how hard it was to give her space when we were stuck in the same house, she decided to go to a hotel nearby for a couple nights. Right before she left, she assured me that she wanted to be with me but just needed a little time away from me.
When she got back, things were still weird, but we were mostly trying to make it work. But a few days later, she told me that the guy she had been sexting with came from out of town to the hotel, and they had sex.
I was deeply hurt, but not that surprised by this. She said she felt like we needed to get a divorce, but I told her I still wanted to fight for our marriage. Things were again weird for a little while, with back and forth about what we were doing.
Again, it got to a point where she said she needed space, this time she decided to go to a hotel back in her hometown, for a week, because that is where her friends are. Including the friend she had sex with. She told me it didn't mean she wanted to leave me, and still wanted to give us a shot. She said she would probably see the guy, and promised she would try not to have sex with him. But she didn't want to promise that nothing would happen, because she says she doesn't ever want to break a promise. I told her I didn't know if I could take her back if they did have sex.
The week she was gone was torture for me, wondering what was happening, knowing that she was hanging out with this other guy. I could barely sleep, couldn't do my job, would lose my patience with my kids.
After a few days there, she told me that she and the guy had fooled around, but stopped short of having sex, because she didn't want to risk losing me. But she said it was also getting harder to resist.
At the end of the week, I drove to where she was to pick her up. At the hotel, I told the guy at the front desk I was there to see my wife, and gave them my name. He looked it up in the computer, and he then was confused for a second and asked if my name was the one I gave him, or the name of the other guy. It was one of those moments that really made me feel how messed up the situation was.
After getting to her room, my wife soon admitted that they ended up having sex the night before. It was a tough night, with us talking about breaking up, but again at the end saying we still want to try to make it work.
For the next week after she got back, it felt like our marriage had the potential to get to a better place, but my wife was still struggling. She had been pretty checked out as a mom since this all started, and found it really overwhelming to be around the kids. She soon decided she need to again go back to her hometown. She planned to be there for a month, and really get a real break from her life as a wife and mother.
This time though, she promised me that nothing would happen between her and this other guy. She planned on seeing him, because he would give her rides as she wouldn't have a car, and she still wanted to see him as a friend. But she said she wouldn't do anything sexual or romantic with him. To get there, he drove to pick her up. My wife said in the car they talked about how they needed to just be friends.
We texted a lot while she was away, mostly working towards being in a better place. But it was so hard for me to trust her completely. Sometimes she would feel like I was checking up on her when I would call at night, and to be honest part of me probably was. It wasn't as bad for me as the first time she left, but I was still constantly worried that something would happen, and hurting from everything that happened before.
While she was generally honest with me about seeing this other guy, it also sometimes felt like she didn't really like telling me when she hang out with him. For a lot of the time she was there, a younger relative was also staying in the rental place with her, which both helped reassure me that nothing was happening, but also made me feel weird that now this guy was hanging out with her family. He came over a couple times to drink with her, or with her and her sister, and stayed over one night on the couch when he was too drunk to drive home. She assured me nothing happened, and I believe her (especially since the relative was staying there), but its still so hard to feel completely sure about anything.
She decided to come home after only three weeks. Partly due to issues with the place she was renting, and partly because she was just ready to come home. When I went to pick her up though, it was hard for her to come back. After 3 weeks of being able to enjoy herself, being away from the kids and the stress of our marriage, going back to life as a wife and mother felt like she was going back to being trapped. But she was still going to come back, and see how things go.
Situation now:
Since she has been back, things have been different, and mostly better, but still hard. What has been great is that she has been a lot better with the kids. She has been able to give them more love and attention. Occasionally she still gets overwhelmed, and tells me how hard it is because she didn't want to have kids when she did. But overall, the time away seems to have been a good reset for her as a mother.
But our marriage still feels so uncertain. I have been much more affectionate, really expressing the fact that I love my wife. I've been going to bed at the same time as my wife every night rather than falling asleep on the couch. She has been appreciative that I'm doing these things that she wanted before, but still isn't over the fact that for a long time I wasn't doing them. She is worried that if she commits to staying with me, things will eventually go back to the way they were and she'll be miserable again.
And in some ways she still feels like our marriage is over, ever since she first made the decision to leave. But every time we talk about it, she'll first say that we just need to divorce, but then she eventually says that she doesn't want to lose me, and that when she pictures her future its still with me. I really do still want to make us work, and she does too, but I know she is also much more okay with the possibility that we might get divorced.
When she got back she said that she probably wouldn't stay friends with the guy, since he had really developed feelings for her, but since she was still going to try to make it work with our marriage, it didn't make sense for them to talk. But they pretty soon started messaging each other again.
One night, this guy was drunk and depressed, and she was worried he would drive somewhere so she called him. They talked on the phone for a few hours until late at night. The next day they talked some more, and he said he needed time before he could really be only friends with her, so they didn't talk for a few days. But again, after a few days they started talking again.
It hurts me to feel like everything that happened between them is still being rubbed in my face.
In general, my wife and I act like things are going to be okay. We talk about plans and our lives as if we are going to work things out. But she wants to keep talking to this guy, because he makes her feel good, and helped her get out of a place in her life where she was miserable. She says they'll talk as just friends, but that she'll still flirt because she is a person who likes to flirt. She says she is not a monogamous person, and has talked about having an open relationship. This is something that I could be interested in under the right circumstances, but don't want to feel coerced into it with a situation like this.
When I tell her it bothers me that she still talks to him, we end up fighting. She doesn't want to feel controlled, and says she wishes I would just get over it. Since she is trying to make it work with me, she wants me to accept that she is still not ready to let go of what she developed with this guy and the ways he makes her feel good.
She knows that this might not be fair to me, but says that right now in her life she needs to be selfish, for her own wellbeing. If I'm not okay with that, I can decide to say our marriage is over. She says she needs to get this out of her system, and let it go on her own time.
Some other details:
When we talk about what we want right, she says she wishes should could go be single, and have fun and sleep around, and experience all these things that she missed out on by getting into a relationship with me and having kids when she was pretty young. She wishes she could do that for a few months, and then come back to me. But she knows I wouldn't wait for her, and since she doesn't want to lose me, she isn't going to do it.
I am constantly thinking about everything that happened, even have trouble sleeping because of it. I am triggered every time she gets a notification on her phone. She feels like I'm always watching and checking up on her. I told her that maybe if I could read the messages they send each other, it would help me, but she firmly refuses, and feels it is an invasion of her privacy.
She has been both brutally honest with me (giving me details of what's happened between her and the guy), but also occasionally lied or misled me. Like not telling me they had sex for a few days after the first meeting in the hotel. Or before they met up in person, I found a tag for lingerie in the trash. I knew she had done sexual things over a video call at this point, so I asked her if she had bought lingerie to show him. She told me no, that she had bought it months earlier, for our anniversary, but never showed me. I knew this wasn't true, but said okay.
She also said the first time they had sex they used condoms, and the second time he pulled out, but then later told me that one time he came inside her. So either they had sex more times than she is admitting (like during the time she promised nothing was happening), or was misleading me about the previous times.
She feels like she is honest with me because she tells me the things that matter, or always owns up to things when she's ready. But I cannot handle feeling like I don't know the truth, and get hung up even on (relatively) unimportant details that I think aren't true.
I couldn't get the lingerie thing out of my head, so eventually (after they had sex and I knew about it), I looked on her computer to check her Amazon history, and confirmed my suspicions that she had ordered it after she started talking to the guy. Having already crossed the barrier to invade her privacy, and with poor impulse control from not having slept well for a while, I checked her Facebook messages with the guy. I only looked through a couple days worth of messages, basically from around when she told me about them having sex, but seeing her talk about wanting him to hold her, even after she and I were trying to make things work, was really hard.
I told her about this, and she felt violated by me going on her computer. She even put a password on her phone for the first time right then. This is part of what led her to leave for the second time.
Another thing that's hard, is that my wife tried new things sexually with this guy. Some of it was stuff we had talked about, but never done. I wanted to know details about what happened (because I didn't want to always wonder), but knowing the details also means that I can't help but imagine everything that did. For a while this made me also feel more desperate, like I had to prove that we could also have an exciting sex life. Like when she was away the second time, we tried sexting and stuff, but for her it just felt kind of forced. We've had sex a few times since this all started (and sometimes tried more of the kinky stuff), but we're certainly not at a point yet where our sex life feels natural.
The thing is, I really do understand why my wife got to this point. I was kind of cold towards her for a while. And I understand her personality enough to know that she can sort of compartmentalize having this ongoing thing with this other guy, while telling me she wants to give us a chance.
She had some traumatic things happen in her childhood, her father left, and she went through some serious events at a young age. This obviously significantly affects her relationships and her overall mental health. This is part of why, even though I'm mad and hurt, I don't hold a lot of stuff against her about things she does.
What should I do:
Now, I don't know what to do, but I really still want to make things work. If we didn't have a family, I would say that the best course of action is to just separate for a while, and see what happens. But I think it might be hard to get back together after that. And if we have a chance to stay together, to raise our kids together as a couple, I want to do that. So I really do want to fight for our marriage but I just don't know how to handle the situation.
- How do I handle this uncertainly? My wife is hot and cold about being with me, in so many of our conversations about this she tells me she's done and wants a divorce, but then later also says that she sees a life with me and wants to be with me, and will try to make it work.
- At the moment, I kind of wish I could just become comfortable with her talking and flirting with this guy. I'd rather be with her and work to build a strong marriage, while letting her keep her fantasy that makes her feel good. This is what she wants, for this to just continue and I mostly ignore it. Right now, when most of the time we are acting like our marriage is fine, I can imagine that maybe it will be. But I can't stop feeling hurt by what happened, triggered by her still talking to the guy, and stressed about how serious the flirting gets or about whether they are planning to see each other when she goes back to her hometown. I spend so much of my time thinking about these things. How can I make myself comfortable with the current situation, or is that just a stupid thing to try to do?
- How do I balance trying to fight for our marriage, and "win her back", without feeling like I'm giving up my self-respect? I know I wasn't a great husband for a while, so I have responsibility for getting us to this point, but she's the one who hurt me recently and still is hurting me. I feel like I have to go above and beyond to be a good husband right now, while she still has one foot out the door and is knowingly doing something that hurts me.
- We both really love each other, and want to make this work. I feel, and I think she agrees, that if we can move past this current situation, we might be able to have a good life together. How do we know when that isn't enough, and the current situation just can't be moved past?
I know that was a lot, so thanks to anyone who read through it all, or some of it, and I'd appreciate anyone weighing in on our situation.
TLDR: My wife has struggled since having kids, and I didn't get her the emotional support she needed. She told me was ready to leave, but we've gone back and forth about trying to make our marriage work. She started talking to a guy who gave her positive attention, and when she went to a hotel to get some space from me, they had sex. She still messages with him, mostly as friends but they still flirt, even though she wants still loves me and wants to be with me. She wants to make our marriage work, but doesn't want to feel forced to give that up, even if it it means losing me. It hurts me to know they talk, but still want to fight for our marriage.
Submitted March 26, 2021 at 02:56PM by husband281126 https://ift.tt/3fiZR96
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