TL;DR
I am in a loveless marriage but torn about ending it, mostly because I fear condemning her to a life of solitude.
I am a 49 year old man. I’ve been married over 21 years and have two kids, 20 and 18. Yes, that’s a fraught time for couples in modern America but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier for me to process my situation.
My wife and I get along fine. There is no major drama between us. But our relationship is basically platonic. We haven’t had sex since 2013 and for several years before that sex was only happening once every few months.
We don’t kiss or make out, we don’t snuggle in bed or on the couch, we don’t hold hands when walking around. We do frequently hug or peck each other on the cheek. We have a kind, respectful and relatively supportive relationship with each other. We are friendly but not really friends. There is family love between us but romantic love is long gone.
We have done a pretty good job raising kids together and have generally been a good team. She has been a home maker and supported me in building a strong and lucrative career. As the kids get older though and they are on the crux is starting their own life, it feels more and more like they have been what has held us together. In fact several years ago we both reaffirmed our commitment not to split up for the sake of continuing to provide our children with a stable and loving home.
But now, I am facing the prospect of spending the rest of my life without true companionship and affection and it’s really bothering me. On the one hand I know that being paired up with someone who is not incompatible with me, someone with whom I have successfully partnered for most of my adult life, is nothing to sneeze at. There is no guarantee that if I gave that up I would ever find it again.
On the other hand I am LONELY. Really lonely.
When considering divorce, I have a mixture of excitement and dread. I won’t bother with the reasons for excitement but perhaps can elaborate on the reasons for dread.
Obviously I dread the consequences to myself. Might I end up completely alone for the rest of my life, not even having what I have now? Would the financial repercussions of divorce sentence me to a life of struggle? Will my kids hate me?
All of those things weigh heavily but perhaps what bothers me most is thinking of what would happen to her. I would be very generous with any support that I would provide her of course, especially considering that she gave up her best years to support our family while I built a career. But I still worry that she might not be able to live out her golden years with dignity. I worry that she would not find someone else to make her happy. She is 5 years older than me and it makes me sick to even think of this woman whom I do love being alone because I left her.
The fear of ruining her life and basically pulling the rug out from under her at age 55 is the single biggest factor making me hesitant. She is a good woman. She doesn’t deserve that.
But then I think “what makes me think she can’t find someone else? Just because she doesn’t seem attractive to me doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be to someone else”. There are men out there who would love to find a kind and sweet woman like her.
You might be wondering whether I have discussed any of this with her. Yes and no. As I mentioned before we did have a frank discussion a few years ago that led us to commit to sticking it out for the kids. And more recently we had another discussion where we talked about the fact that there just didn’t seem to be anything between us except a very platonic love and general ability to get along. We also considered the fact that as we get on in years it may very well be that the things that work well between us might just be the most important ones.
But still, the next 25+ years spent in abject loneliness? 25+ years without love, companionship, complicity? At least if we start over we have a chance to find that?
What do you think, people of Reddit?
Submitted April 29, 2022 at 03:00PM by PushinFifty https://ift.tt/wZ41NsW
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