Marriage is a very special thing, and should be saved for someone you are having sex with.
Facetiousness aside, I think in 99%+ of cases a person’s spouse needs to be their sex partner. Even if you’re married and by choice not having sex, then your spouse should be the one you’re having not-sex with.
This is not a moral stance on my part, but merely a sense that doing otherwise tends to have unwanted and unintended consequences. There are people who deny that marriage is primarily about sex, providing interesting counterexamples and so on. I believe those counterexamples are either extreme outliers or just plain messed up.
This doesn’t work in reverse - I think “no sex outside marriage” is wrong for a lot of people. But I think being married to not-your-chosen-partner is nearly always a disaster waiting to happen.
I delayed divorce and got screwed over for my troubles. I had moved out and taken a second job to afford my own place. My wife and kids got my primary job’s paycheck. My wife wanted to keep things that way until the kids graduated high-school and she said she’d “sign whatever papers” for the divorce. I had my attorney write up a shared custody agreement to cover the time until they reached 18.
When it was time to sign the papers she got her own lawyer and went for my jugular. I’d been set-up and our previous verbal agreement meant nothing in court.
My advice is to get the divorce, even if you remain amicable and cohabit.
I don’t think there is a right decision. I would just ask yourself what decision would make you beat yourself up more 10-15 years from now.
Which would you regret more: Would you regret that you made the decision to end the relative calm you have now and potentially disrupting the family life you seem to be okay with, or would you regret that you spent another 10-15 years in this agreement when you could have been out pursuing your own individual interests?
Let’s assume that you decide to keep things as they are now. What if your wife decided a year or two from now that she wanted a full-on divorce? Could you live with that? Would you feel like you had wasted 2, 3, 5 years of your life? Would be bitter about it, and would that make a divorce worse in the future? Keep in mind, your children may be at college or adults by that point, but they’re still going to experience emotional shock and they will have their own opinions about this. Delaying divorce won’t prevent that. It’ll only prevent you from seeing it up close.
On the flip side, let’s assume you decide to move on with your life. Are you 100% comfortable with your efforts to save the marriage up to this point? If you made the decision to end the marriage now, your children will have an opinion about it and you’ll observe their pain more directly. Would you feel like you needlessly disturbed family life?
A few thoughts…
I do not advise pursuing an open marriage. I don’t care if there’s an unspoken agreement to see other people - someone’s going to get hurt, or if nothing else, someone’s ego is going to get bruised. That’ll get ugly, and depending on the state, you might be on the hook for civil damages. Just a bad idea that I would avoid doing at all costs. If you wanna see other people badly, get a divorce.
Also, I agree with what others have said. As you get older, passion is less of a thing. That’s not to say it’s not important, but that’s not the foundation of a relationship. That said, it does depend on the individuals involved. If one person wants and needs more of a physical relationship where the other couldn’t care less, that’s difficult to resolve. Maybe a counselor could help there - I don’t know.
I’m no expert on any matter involving social interaction, but it sounds to me like most of your marriage is thriving. You’re living together peacefully, maintaining a household, and so on, and that’s a very big part of what a marriage is. OK, maybe your sex life sucks. You can’t have everything.
I got married later than most of my friends, had a child 2 years later, and was divorced within 5 years. I didn’t want a divorce, but my wife felt we had become roommates. Within a few weeks of my moving out she was dating her boss. It didn’t last, but that didn’t matter, the damage was done. It was a rough time for me, but within 6 months I had hired a lawyer and started the divorce process. It was very amicable (she didn’t want to hire her own lawyer so my lawyer handled both parties). We split everything 50/50 and worked out a custody/visitation agreement I could live with.
A year later I was officially single and remained single for 15 years. I dated some, but mostly enjoyed my new-found freedom. I could what I want,when I wanted, with whomever I wanted. After my daughter graduated high school and started college I started dating seriously and was ready to settle down. I went to a personal counselor and he helped me work through some of the bad feelings about my first marriage. I met my second wife and remarried. I guess the moral of the story is that everybody, and every situation is different. My advice would be to meet with an impartial professional who can talk to you about your situation and help you determine what is best for you. Your kids are old enough to handle whatever you decide to do. Don’t feel like you don’t have a few different options. You do.
I should also mention that after the divorce I traveled around the world, both for business and pleasure, sometimes taking my daughter with me. That would never have happened if I had stayed married since my wife had no desire to see the world. Sometimes you just realize you married the wrong person. It’s great that you get along with the your wife so well now, but think about what you could be missing out on.
I could see continuing to cohabit at least until the youngest goes to college, simply because it’s not that long and if you wait till then to establish new households, you have a lot more flexibility. The other issue is college costs: two households is more expensive than one.
But I’d take the kids–especially the youngest–to family counseling right away to make sure everyone has the same expectations.
No sex is a pretty big deal because it means you’re also missing out on the physical and emotional intimacy that go along with it. That’s one big difference between your situation and one where the passion has merely gone out of the marriage. Take it from someone who was unwillingly and unhappily in the no-intimacy situation for a lot of years.Your youngest has three more years at home. Are you OK with three more years without intimacy?
The answer is not an open marriage. How open could it be without your youngest knowing? And what kind of example of marriage do you want to set for your kids?
OTOH, there’s no getting around it: divorce is hard on kids, even amicable divorces. If you or your wife decide to leave, you’ll need to put a lot of time and care into making it as painless for your youngest as possible.
Side note: if you stay, your wife should have a room of her own, not one she’s borrowing from your son.
I had a similar experience, though mine was on a much smaller scale.
When your spouse is not emotionally invested in you, then what you essentially have is a 50/50 business partner who is legally entitled, at a moment’s notice, to take their half and sabotage your half, and they have your signed permission to do so. You need out.
Just because you personally bear no ill will today, doesn’t mean she won’t, tomorrow or a year from now.
Everyone does not have the same expectations. Guaranteed. Even if they thought they did.
I would strongly advise against family counselling at a moment like this. It stirs up everything, and right now things are not good but at least stable. My opinion: divorce first, then family counselling.
Note: I say that because clearly this couple has no thought of reconciling their marriage. If people are considering staying married, that’s different.
Again, have you two discussed seeing other people as a trial balloon while remaining married?
I’m not sure if that will solve the problem, or cause new ones though. But it could be something to try until the kids are old enough that they are all grown up and you can get the divorce you are wanting.
But I’m certain your wife, just like you, would want to be in a passionate, romantic relationship with sex. You guys just don’t want that with each other right now.
Seriously though. If things are good right now they can only go downhill over time, IME. Take her out to dinner. Talk about how you want to get a divorce and that your primary concern is that the kids prosper. Tell her you’ve researched area divorce attornies and read reviews, and that you want her to look over your short-list to see who she likes.
I agree. If you see no path forward in this marriage, then holding onto it is only going to make things worse. As the child of parents who “stayed together for the kids”, my advice is don’t. Trust me, they’d rather that you were both happy than that you were hanging on until they left so that you could be happy. You are taking risks for no good reason at all.
Staying together for kids can make sense, when the kids are very young and their world would be shattered by a divorce, as long as staying together isn’t actually worse for them for other reasons. It doesn’t sound to me like that fits here.
And if there ever was a time for “Get it done now while she’s in a good mood”, this is it. Hostile feelings make honest people lie, and make kind people do terrible things. DAMHIKT.
I would argue that it is the foundation. Not that everyone has to be sexually active at all times, but that the feelings for each other and commitment to each other are the ongoing basis. The reason I say this is that marriage allows people to assume immense legal power over each other. People who love each other don’t seize that power, but people who no longer love each other do so all too often.
IMO a marriage without love and affection is simply a stupid business risk. If you don’t think so, consider how many single entrepreneurs want to enter into marriages of convenience just in order to gain a business partner.
yeah… my wife does not want to be in a passionate, romantic relationship. I can guarantee that. She just wants someone to validate and emotionally support her. She really has no physical drive at all. She has said she has no sexual fantasies at all, ever, and thinks I’m just a sex crazed guy when I suggest that sexual fantasies are the norm, not the exception. Even for women.
My sex life doesn’t just suck, it doesn’t exist.
My wife has said I’m free to date other people. I would, except right now that would be awkward. Maybe in another 6 moths to a year. Maybe more. We’ll see. We just recently openly acknowledged to each other we will never really be together.
If she has decided against a romantic relationship with you, then what’s in this for her? I say if there’s no pleasure then it must be business. How is the marriage a good business deal for her? Is it a good business deal for you?
If she has decided against a romantic relationship with you, then what’s in this for her? Why is she sticking around? I say if there’s no pleasure then it must be business. How is the marriage a good business deal for her? Is it a good business deal for you, considering how much power you signed over to your business partner?
My ex was simply preparing her plan to grab as much money as possible and get out.
