It bothered me at first when she said it was over, because I refused to believe it. Now, nearly a year later, I realize it was for the best. We truly were roommates at that point. We’re now good friends and we are both much happier.
A question from a never-married…
Presumably you all started with some sort of passion in your marriages? At what point in your relationship did that fade?
That’s a great question, but I’d really appreciate if you could start another thread for that. I feel that question will fill many pages of discussion all on its own.
I think it’s true that this is the default end of most marriages. If you’re lucky then your innate sex drive matches that of your partner. I think if that was the case in mine then I’d have a different outlook. But my concern is not because I’m comparing my marriage to the marriage fantasy. I’m glad I got married. How would I have known how I’d feel after 20 years of marriage unless I did it? My concern is that maybe I have a case of the-grass-is-greener.
There’s no marriage I look at and think I’d like to switch places. Most long-term marriages seem to be like mine–two people who get along reasonably well but without much spark.
I think if I got divorced I’d have a series of long relationships. I don’t think I’d ever get married again. But I wonder what it’s like to start over at 50 in the dating world. Would I be lonely? Would it be hard splitting the kids over the holidays? Would I look back and think “Man, I never knew I had it so good.”?
I’ve never regretted my divorce. My husband was (is) a wonderful man, there really isn’t any major negative I can put on him, but we drifted and became ‘roomies’. I made the call to split (he was ten years older and I think therefore more reluctant to start over) but, many years later, we are both in much more rewarding relationships and still on very amicable, if only occasional, terms (we live 300 miles apart, which may have something to do with that lack of contact).
Life is short and, being and atheist, I feel I need to make the most of the life I have here and now. Am I worse off financially? Sure! If I’d stuck to the same house-buying path I started with him, there’s no doubt I’d be living in a much bigger house now, if that’s important to anyone. But I get MUCH more daily fulfillment from my current partner – it helps that we’ve both had long term relationships and are trying our damndest not to repeat the mistakes of the past, the biggest one being apathy and lack of communication when you’re unhappy.
Of course, we were childless, which made the decision easier. I’m not sure I would’ve made the same decision had we had young children.
Not quite my marriage, but pretty close. It’s been six years now, and I have no regrets. We were together for 15, in case that matters.
I have nothing to add except to tell the OP I am in the exact same position as well…exactly.
I’m 44, been with my wife since I was 21 and I love her dearly, but there’s no passion in “that” department.
As a matter of fact, there isn’t even a department anymore.
It’s a tough situation, we’re great friends, she’s a good women, doesn;t cheat on me, she just has no interest in being intimate.
I don’t cheat on her either…I’ve thought about it but have too much self=resepct to actually do it.
Half the time I sleep downstairs and she sleeps upstairs, and we’ve settled into our ‘routines’.
Not that this helps, but this thread makes me feel better knowing I’m not alone.
I too am in the position at the moment. We’re not divorced. We’re in our late 40s and have a 12 and 13 year old.
I sleep on the couch in the basement.
There’s no intimacy.
We get along OK as roommates, usually, but not always. There’s no screaming arguments or physical abuse.
I’ve been considering leaving for a while now, and I know she has too. There’s a bit more complexity in here in that I did cheat. And I got caught. The thing is, I got caught years after I ended a brief fling because I left my email open, and she snooped. I had ended the fling myself years earlier because I didn’t want to get caught. I just never thought of deleting all the old emails.
We went for counseling. It helped briefly, but there’s a lot of pain and, yeah I’m to blame for it. It takes two to tango, though. I was tired of giving everything for not much in return. Now neither one of us goes out of the way.
I think we’re both in it because it makes better sense financially, there are no major fights, and we have kids who depend on us. Apart from that: blah.
We weren’t married, but might as well have been. I moved across the country to be with him. He’s 20 years older than me and although there was passion when we met/started dating, I think he fulfilled more of a parental role in my life. He doted on me, gave me everything I wanted, let me have my way in everything. If I’d have stayed, I’d still be living in a very nice house, I’d still be traveling, I’d still be eating in nice restaurants, I’d still have my nice, doting, giving friend and I’d still rally to make sure we had sex once every week or so (it lasted about 5 minutes and by the end of the relationship I realized I was totally pretending to be into it) But at the end, I realized that the “stuff” didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Sure the friendship was great, but I was miles away from my family and dear friends, and the ability to make my own life for myself.
After 5 years with him, I’m now back home, broke, and living in a friend’s basement, but I honestly, truly could not be happier.
p.s. This thread makes me sad.
My first marriage turned into “best friends living together” and we both found other people who we had a better romantic connection to (we had an open relationship). So after 15 years, the last 5 of which there was NO sex, we decided that we could have the exact same relationship that we currently had, but not live together, so we got a divorce. We’re still very close friends and I’m remarried. He’s in a relationship. We’re both happier. Splitting holidays for our son isn’t that big of a deal and half the time what ends up happening is my ex comes and spends the holidays with all of us as a big family.
I was married for 18 years (male here), the last 5 or so of which was just as you described. For reasons mostly due to my non-marital personal issues, my wife announced one day that she was moving out. She intended this to be a trial separation, but I decided I was done and got a quick divorce. (I had once forgiven adultery, but I could not forgive perceived abandonment)
It was exhilarating. It also upended my life WAY more than I would have imagined. What had been a steady, easy, and successful rise through life, spiraled out of control. At the same time, against all received wisdom, I fell in love and re-married.
This marriage is the opposite. Lots of passion, but highly unpredictable (although I am piecing the essentials of my life back together).
All of this happened within the last two years, and as such, is a work in progress. But I do not regret it one bit. The highs I’ve experienced damn well make it worth it, but I was definitely surprised at how low the lows could be.
I showed this thread to a friend because she was sort of complaining about her marriage of 20 years lately. She did say, though, that she was sticking with a good thing - paid off house, pension, pretty good money, and a familiar routine with a friendly spouse of 20 years. “Throw it all away, break my spouse’s heart, go live in a little apartment, on the teeny chance some geezer my age is going to sweep me off my feet and rock my world? AS. IF. Those people are braver than I am!”
Well, pick my jaw up off the floor, willya? And here I thought I was going through something somewhat unique. I had composed a thread on this a hundred times in my head in the past month, but couldn’t put one together that didn’t read like something everyone would yell “quit whining and get a damn blog!” about.
We’ve been together since 1996, and last October I told her I was done. Enough. Finished. I was tired of us living like roommates, and while I still loved her, I had long since fallen out of love with her.
I only half meant it – I really wanted to just shake her out of the doldrums and reignite something. She swore things would change, and for a day or two they did. But it wasn’t long until we were right back there again, and we decided that yeah, it was over. A week or two later, I got cold feet on the whole thing, and realized that even though I wasn’t happy in my marriage, I’d likely be a lot less happy having to move back into my mother’s basement so I could pay for my wife and daughter to have a place to live. So I told her I wanted us to try again, and really try this time.
And I was more or less happy again for a bit. Things were ok until early January, when this time it was my wife who said that no, I had been right from the beginning, this was a waste of both of our time. We loved each other, and we wanted nothing but the best for each other, but we each knew that we weren’t what was best for each other.
So, that’s where we are now. Unfortunately, we’re kind of screwed at the moment, unable to move on. My wife hasn’t worked full-time in ages, so until she finds a job that will allow her to be self-sufficient, we’re basically stuck with each other. She’s moved up to the fold-out couch in the living room, but little else has changed. We’re keeping up appearances for The Littlest Briston (who is the #1 reason I put this off as long as I did – doing anything that might hurt her is just…not acceptable) and some other family members who don’t yet know and will do all they can to take what we’re determined to make a friendly divorce that we handle in-house and turn it into a drag-out court battle.
To those of you who have stayed in sexless/passionless marriages for whatever reason - have you, or have you ever considered, opening up the marriage to have sex with others?
I’m not looking to start a discussion on the morality of this as an option, there have been many other threads like that here, but interested in hearing from those in this situation on the topic. Looking for answers to questions such as: Have you considered it? Did you ask for it? Did your spouse ask for it? What were their/your reactions to being asked? Would you rather just divorce than travel down that road? Etc…
Personally, If I were in this kind of marriage (which I’m not, thank god) - I feel that if you really love your spouse but aren’t interested in sex anymore (for whatever reason) that it’s only fair to grant this request if asked. Only other option would be divorce.
Even if my wife agreed to that situation it would not interest me at all. For me, sex without an emotional connection would be just ejaculation inside a vagina–a fancy form of masturbation. For it to be a meaningful experience I would need to have an emotional connection with that person. I can’t imagine having that type of emotional connection with two people at the same time.
Ours was open to sex with others for the whole 15 years. It was me finally finding someone that I was really in love with and passionate with that made me realize fully how sad it was to stay in my marriage. I wanted the chance at a real marriage again. I’m now married to that other person and it’s a much better marriage than what my first one had become.
I still see my ex-husband as often as is feasible, with him living 8 hours away. He comes to visit for holidays and so on, for example. But we’re just very close friends at this point and it’s much better that way.
I think it’s fair to ‘open it up’, in theory. But really, I don’t know how anyone does it, and how they work it. Is it ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’? Once the suggestion is put out there and accepted by both parties, for example…then what? Do you call up and say “I’ll be late coming home, I’ll banging this hot new girl I met”. Do you say “can you go to the school open house on Wednesday, I can only get with my new guy that evening”. Do you watch your kids soccer game together and converse about how well your new, uh, friend, is working out in the sack? Or is the subject not brought up at all? . I suppose if someone in the relationship has raging hot pants and not gettin’ it at home, it’s better than the cost and disruption of a divorce. I’m serious, I really don’t know how a married couple can do this, unless both of them just don’t care what the other does.
We were always quite open about talking about who we were dating. Also, neither of us was into casual sex, so it was always someone we were seeing regularly.
married for 7 years to a woman with hangups and no desire to deal with them. Absolutely no intimacy* in the marriage on her part, and I tried my ass off to have calm discussions on expectations (both mine and hers). Things would get better for a few days, then back to “normal”.
She had the “happily ever after” firmly implanted in her, and didn’t understand that BOTH have to work toward a successful relationship. Last time I checked (a while ago) her profile still read “looking for a someone to have perfect precious family with”
It took a relationship with a new, wonderful woman who realizes that intimacy is (almost) everything in a relationship to realize the other one – and not me – was the one who was broken.
*DO NOT read “intimacy” as only sex.
There’s a book for everything. The Ethical Slut, A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures. I’ ve read it and it has good reviews on Amazon.