No, you didn’t rush things; he spent 6 years trying to wear you down. You settled for “maybe this is all I can have.” Read this comic strip - though written from the other side of things - the next time you think about settling.
I don’t mean you need to find the Perfect Prince Charming who’s sexy and wealthy and awesome and saved the planet the other day. I mean you need to think about your romantic patterns, maybe even see a counselor before you start dating again. It sounds like perhaps you need a little work on your self-esteem.
These are the type of responses I need to hear, thank you. They hurt very badly, but I need honest harsh answers. I cannot keep him in this limbo, he gets his hopes up and then asks me if I feel better, and I have to figure a way to let him know I still feel the same, it is so fucking sad and not fair to him, I am truly breaking his heart. Can you think of any way at all whatsoever or anything I could say to him to help him better understand or to feel less pain?
Just an opinion on my part, I don’t claim any credentials outside of being kind of old and made lots of mistakes in life. It is not your fault that you are wired the way you are wired. You don’t have any moral obligation to stay in a marriage that you are not happpy in. However, becuae of all the good qualities you mentioned and the fact that you did willingly marry him I would feel you have some responsibility to make an honest attempt to save it.
Nearly every woman I have ever met will admit to some great love affair that she kind of holds as a standard. The strategy I use is to stear the lady the other way so she has almost nothing to relate to and then let her discover who own new fantasy.
An example might be your hot love affair was mostly in an apt, nice music, some funky mood lights and candles etc. If thats the part you remember then thats the part he needs to avoid.
Maybe you have never been shown the stars, or the moon, or a harbor at night. Walking down the street can be romantic as long as your heart is in the right place. Both of you can find new sides to yourself that you were never aware of. Just get real honest with each other and make a concious effort to put yourselves in situations that are conducive to good honest communication from the heart. New romances can start like that.
I don’t really think there’s any way you could put it that would really make much difference. He’ll just have to work though his feelings. But on the plus side, according to what you’ve said, he’s a desirable guy, so he’ll find someone else who really loves him in a romantic way. You’d probably feel even worse if he was some pathetic guy without a lot of prospects.
And he has some responsibility in this too. He should have known better than to pursue someone for 6 years. If you’d wanted him, it wouldn’t have taken so long. Sounds like someone had been watching too many romantic comedies or something.
Anyhoo, I’ve been through something similar but it was with my daughter’s father, not my husband. He didn’t get over it for years and years and years. And I felt so guilty for so long too. But there was nothing I could do to make anything different. It does suck.
Originally Posted by Happyturtle View Post
Can you think of any way at all whatsoever or anything I could say to him to help him better understand or to feel less pain?
I think brutal honesty is the kindest way to do it. It will make sense to him and not leave him with lingering doubts. It will also be an important lesson for him to grow with.
Thank you for your response. I understand what you are saying and I think you are onto something, I have considered before that I may have low self-esteem or that I have always needed a man to validate me. I am currently seeing a counselor and will definitely continue to do so. If I were to get into another relationship it would need to go VERY slowly. The only silver lining I feel of this situation is that I have learned a lot about myself the last 2 years as far as what are my fundamental needs and wants in a marriage if I were to ever get married again, though I cant really see myself getting married again, or maybe not even living with a man again, it just changes everything so much.
I am the one that was on the two week break from my H to decide what to do. It has now been a week since i’ve come back home, and I told my H last night I was going to move out. For the week leading up to it I still felt off, but had so much guilt I couldnt bring myself to separate from him. Finally, I was no longer able to live this way (avoiding sex, kissing, etc) and I could no longer lead him on, so I drank a full bottle of wine and let him know I still felt unhappy and I was leaving. This has been the hardest thing we have ever gone through, but I know it is best for the both of us, although I will miss him so so much. We both deserve passion in our lives and true happiness. As terrified as I am to be a broke, lonely, 30 yr old starting over (I have MA and a good job, but this will definitely affect my finances), I feel relieved to be taking steps forward towards possibility, and through this experience I have learned invaluable lessons about myself and what I will and will not settle for. Thank you everyone for your honesty and guidance along the way.
Thank you, definitely not easy. He just came home and asked if I was still moving out. I said yes, he started sobbing Just hope I can keep the courage to go through with all of this, I cannot stand causing him so much pain. Such a good guy, doesnt deserve any of this, but also doesnt deserve to live with a woman that is not passionate about him. The guilt I have is enormous, but I am hoping this gets easier each day.
Hi all,
Also experiencing a relatively similar situation. Been married for 10.5 years, the last two, we lived apart because I was in grad school and she stayed behind to maintain her income so I could stay afloat during school. After coming home in December the week before Christmas, it became apparent to me that I no longer loved my wife. This marriage has not been without its difficulties… Five years ago we were in a very similar place, even resulting in some time apart. The major reasons for that separation were our complete lack of compatibility in terms of spirituality (her a Christian, me an atheist), my lack of attraction for her and ultimately a lack of passion in the bedroom. We decided to give it another go at that time and never sought counseling and merely put a Band-Aid on these major issues and seemed to be doing quite well even through my first year of two in grad school. Last New Year’s we conceived and in September welcomed our first and only child into the world after trying for 10 years. As my time in grad school was coming to an end the reality of coming back home to a completely different life was staring me in the face and caused me to really think about what I wanted.
Fast forward to today, I am only three days into the separation now… I am like every other person who is going to this before me second-guessing, wondering if I’m going to regret this for the rest of my life. My wife is an absolutely amazing person, as I was explaining to someone tonight she is in 11/10 wife, but as a lover, for me, we do not mesh at all. The worst part about all of this is that I feel so god awful for is the amount of pain that I’ve caused her. She does not deserve it at all, she deserves to be happy and to have someone who meshes with her in every way…
It is comforting to read how many of you do not regret your decision … I would just like to get to the point where I don’t feel like my life is full of regret, But I do a knowledge that it will take time
Hang in there Emergency, things will get easier. I have been moved out and in my own place for 1.5 months now, and it is still very hard to deal with the guilt of doing this to my H as well as the pain of knowing how much I will miss such an amazing man and friend, but I am not into him romantically, and that will forever be a problem that I am nipping in the bud right now for the both of us. I actually just got off the phone with him, he called me to discuss how we want to file for divorce as far as assets, etc. and I started crying. Even though he is vehemently against the divorce and wants to stay together, and I am the one initiating this whole situation, it is still very painful. At the end of the day though, I feel good knowing I have saved us both an incredible amount of pain for years to come, and that I am being true to myself. You will get through this, just keep listening to your gut and your heart and try to spend little time over-analyzing pros/cons with your mind.
I know a number of people who are divorced or unhappily married and all of them have terrible tales to tell. One or both partners is an awful jerk - that sort of thing. I’m soon to be divorced, but I am not divorcing because my marriage is bad. It’s nice. We have a nice life and he is a wonderful man, but it’s just not enough. I feel terrible about this. So terrible that I worked for ten odd years - we’ve been married for over 20 - to get past my feeling of not-enoughness. It didn’t work.
I decided to end the marriage when on a flight recently we ran into a lot of bad turbulence. People were freaking out around me and my instant (and then abiding) reaction was to just shrug. I didn’t want to die - don’t get me wrong - but I also sort of vaguely thought, Well, I won’t have to do this anymore.
I’m an atheist, so I do not have the comfort of a later life. This is it. And on that plane, I was thinking Eh, whatever.
I don’t want to live that way anymore. It feels like being on a treadmill, just going through the motions. It’s soul-killing after awhile. I know that sounds extreme - after all, he’s a great guy and we have a nice life together - but we are roommates and I want more.
Some have asked on this thread if it was always this way. In my case, the answer is yes and no. I knew his limitations when we married but he was such a nice guy that I thought my love could help him grow. Always a mistake to want to change your partner, but at 20 I didn’t know any better. We did love each other - still do, in fact - but after awhile it wasn’t enough.
To be honest, that’s what scares me more than anything. More than being alone or financially strapped. It’s that love isn’t enough and that paths do diverge and no matter how much you respect and like one another and no matter how good the communication is, sometimes the relationship just runs its course.
I started this thread 3 years ago and I have about 2+ years to go before making a decision. I’m not doing anything until the kids are all out of high school. Being with them makes it worth it for the time being. But afterwards, I can’t see why I would stay. There’s nothing specifically wrong. It’s just that there’s just not enough of what I need. The only reason I would stay is to make everyone else happy. I feel bad knowing that I’m going to let everyone down, but I know they’ll eventually get over it. My biggest concern is trying to minimize the emotional impact to the kids.
I think I posted earlier and it did not go well (IIRC, I was mostly encouraging people to work things out, if possible, instead of immediately hitting eject).
I am probably headed this way, also.
I still wonder, though, if anyone here coming to this conclusion has actually tried to work on the relationship or at least communicate the issues?
Marriages are not magical. You don’t just get hitched and everything gets communicated telepathically. Perhaps there is no point in getting married in general. i’m not completely opposed to that line of thinking. But I also think there are close to zero marriages that really burn passionately and people have some amazing enduring connection. They all require work. So when I see people talking about being married to “good, but boring” (or however you want to call them) spouses, I wonder why they got married and if they’ve ever really made an effort to communicate their own needs and expectations from a relationship.
I see where I made my mistakes and what my answers are. Probably too late now, but if I had upheld more of my end then my wife would have fit me better, and that would NOT have required trying to “change” her or anything like that. And I wouldn’t have had to “change” for her, either- just prioritized differently and/or did things that met her needs. I don’t think people just naturally fit any sort of relationship, and people are all different. I think a lot of times your boring spouse probably thinks the same way about you, and maybe you are both wrong.
ETA: Just to clarify, I guess part of this comes down to a difference of opinion on “passion.” I’ve personally ignited/re-ignited passion in relationships that seemed dead and also seen this in others. Also, most of my issues have come from anxiety or communication issues. I guess it’s entirely possible some couples just don’t have whatever it is to keep things alive and well never find it, and that makes sense.
The following are my views and opinions. If you don’t agree with them, that’s fine. I’m not advocating that anyone change any decisions based on this post. I am not here to judge, debate or justify, only to share.
I have followed this thread from the beginning with great interest because some of the views here are so antithetical to my own worldview that I was very interested in trying to understand.
I can completely understand divorce in certain situations. In fact, I have advised divorce for others a couple of times, mostly because of serial cheating. That said, before we married my wife and I discussed the fact that, outside of cheating or intentional abuse, divorce would simply not be an option for us. We agreed that we would never bring it up as a possibility, even in jest. Ever. Based on what we had seen in other relationships that it seemed once that genie was out of the bottle it was nigh impossible to ever get it completely back in.
I don’t get the concept that “love is not enough to sustain a relationship”. IMHO, love is all there is that sustains. Maybe I define love differently. Love is not a feeling, that is lust or infatuation and neither are sustainable. To me (and my spouse) love is a conscious decision, one made knowing that there are other options. I wake up every day and commit to love my spouse. We both freely acknowlege that there are times where we do not like one another, but we always care. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. If you are indifferent about your spouse, then there is not love. If there is love, the relationship is sustainable.
I also don’t get the concept of “not getting what I need/not being fulfilled”. I believe that if you have to look to another human being to complete you, fulfill you or meet your (emotional) needs, you will always be disappointed. Those are all things that must come from inside yourself. IMHO, if you can not be perfectly content living without a romantic relationship, you are not likely to succeed within one. I love having my wife around (most of the time!) but if by some cosmic wormhole disturbance she disappeared tomorrow and I had to live alone in the wilderness for years, I could do so and still be content. Kinda, sorta the old maxim of “you have to like yourself before you can truely like others”.
Again, I judge no one nor any actions/views expressed in this thread. You must be comfortable with your own decisions made within your own value structure. Once more, for clarity, just because I say I don’t get it doesn’t mean I’m saying it’s not valid, I literally mean I don’t get it. I don’t get string theory, either, but I’m not going to argue it’s validity.
Doctor Jackson, I don’t want to speak for others in this thread, but in my case, at least, I am willing to acknowledge that I made a mistake, and to try to correct that mistake, if possible. My first wife and I got married for the wrong reasons, and it took a lot of years and a lot of hurt to bring that to the fore. For us, even if there was “love” there, recommitting to one another would have made absolutely no sense in the face of clear and convincing evidence that we would both be happier without being tied to one another any longer. Certainly, we could have decided to fight through that and stick together anyway. But why, in such a scenario, would the committment of marriage be more important to hold on to than our individual happiness?
I didn’t get out of my marriage to move on to another romantic relationship. I got out my marriage because I didn’t want to be romantically linked any longer to the person I was married to, and the feeling was mutual. I honestly don’t get why anyone would choose differently. That’s not to say I don’t think there’s a great deal of value in carefully evaluating your relationship (including counseling and whatever else you can do to salvage your committment). But if the conclusion is that you don’t belong together, why is it so important to try to force it to be otherwise?
You’re right that personal happiness comes from within, but it can be difficult to do that when you are in an environment which is not conducive to your happiness. Whether it’s your marriage, job, city, or whatever, the more you are compatible with your environment, the easier it is to be happy. If all you want out of marriage is someone else to be in the house, then it’s pretty easy to be happy. However, if you want to travel and live the high life but your spouse wants to stay at home and save money, it’s much harder to achieve happiness.
Sometimes I think it’s like being in a band. Maybe you joined the band when you were young and it was awesome!! All that touring, making music, hanging around with your band mates was the best. But then as the years went on, you got tired of playing that particular style of music and the touring got old. Your band mates could still be great people, but it’s just not the band for you anymore. You struggle with your decision to leave. You’re a key member of the band. People enjoy your music and lots of people depend on you financially. Leaving will have a huge impact. Do you suck it up and stay with the band or leave to make the music you want to make?
Do you think your kids realize you’re just staying together for them? Before you answer, think back to yourself as a high school sophomore or junior, and how perceptive or non-perceptive you were to your parents’ relationship.
have you guys communicated as to why this may be the current way things are?
Just hope I can keep the courage to go through with all of this, I cannot stand causing him so much pain. Such a good guy, doesnt deserve any of this, but also doesnt deserve to live with a woman that is not passionate about him. The guilt I have is enormous, but I am hoping this gets easier each day.