We aren’t in the marriage though. I have a friend who was unfaithful to his wife. They tried to work it out. For years. For the sake of the kids. Then she said she couldn’t do it anymore. He moved out. And back in within a month. I don’t know if they will make it forever, but they’ve both decided that what they have together is better than what they have apart. And the kids are gone and they are still together. I wouldn’t have laid odds.
IF they BOTH want to give the marriage a try, then marriage counseling and giving the marriage a try is worth the effort. It might not be successful - but a marriage - and a marriage with a child - is not a kleenex. Its at least a handkerchief. And ones that were embroidered by your grandmother with your monogram are worth trying a little bleach and some soaking. But they are BOTH going to need to admit that their behavior was disrespectful of the marriage. Not take MORE blame, but accept blame.
If it turns out that either one of them really doesn’t want to be there any longer - him because he feels like the woman he married is not the woman he is married to and he needs to have some sexual attraction to continue to be married - she because she can no longer trust him - then its best to divorce.
Either one of them can decide to leave. They both need to decide to stay. I - personally - think its worth at least a little time and distance to see if staying is an option.
But can you trust that the confession is the whole truth? Can you believe it won’t happen again? Once Humpty Dumpty falls, you can’t put him back together again. Once one lie is exposed you have no way of knowing what’s real and what’s not.
Ugh, what a disaster. I can’t imagine anything more hurtful than cheating on someone because you find them so physically unattractive that you have no interest in having sex with them, and then telling them. She almost certainly already felt awful about herself after the weight gain, and then to throw this on top of it… Yuck.
I do think both people in a marriage are responsible for maintaining the physical romance of the relationship, which includes taking care of their appearance and health, so I don’t discount your unhappiness with your wife’s weight gain. I think you had a valid complaint in terms of the effect it had on your sex life and overall relationship, and had she been unwilling to examine the causes and explore possible solutions, no one would have faulted you for ending the relationship (or working out some sort of Dan Savage-style extramarital agreement).
But I think you killed your marriage. She might feel awful enough about herself right now to want you to stay, but I can’t see how anything I would define as a loving marriage could survive this situation. Being the bad guy and ending things might be the kindest thing you could do for her at this point.
I REALLY REALLY hope you never experience what I’ve been through. There’s nothing quite like sitting in the middle of your life and discovering your Whole World revolves around the decisions of a spouse that’s growing away from you. Everything you’ve built. Everything you made together. The kids, the house, the pets, the…well - Everything.
I hope you don’t find yourself happy, then utterly blindsided by your spouse. You’ve got a great big head-o-steam built up there. Good for you. You’re a great person for it.
Now, try to imagine being in a different place. Where your spouse isn’t there for you, doesn’t respond to you, doesn’t return your calls, doesn’t listen to your concerns, and HASN’T…for AWHILE.
You’re great, you’re communicative, you take no prisoners. Good for you. Try losing a father, two cats, two jobs, having two infants to raise, having two of your OTHER parents have life threatening sickness and have both spouses deal with clinical depression. It happens. Sometimes all at once.
I’ve been there. I was the one that stayed put. Thank God my wife opted to get help, Thank God we decided to stay together. But I tell ya, there were one or two moments where a coin flip could have decided our fate.
And in the middle of that, I can’t say I would have stayed faithful, had it lasted much longer. That must make be a slimeball in your eyes.
No, because he is asking for advice about saving his marriage on a message board. This isn’t someone running to first because that’s what you do. This is someone standing on deck wondering if he’s going to tell the manager he has a pulled groin.
Because believe it or not, it wasn’t her fault. When we finally started talking again we came to the conclusion that it was the WORLD that was shitting on us, not the marriage, and that she had some seriously unaddressed baggage. She’s much more grounded now, and our marriage is much better for it.
But it’s a counterpoint to ‘spouse did what? Dime that motherfucker out!’
Don’t think you could EVER see a situation where a person might stray? Never say never.
But that’s something for the wife to decide and we’re not giving her advice. I feel like you (and others) are arguing that once someone has cheated, the marriage is over. And I’m saying that that may be the chiseled-in-stone truth in your relationships, but there’s plenty of empirical evidence that shows that it’s not true in every relationship.
The only question is whether or not the OP’s marriage is the former or the latter. But I can tell you that divorcing the wife is NOT going to answer that question.
A thousand times, yes. It’s so very true. People cheat because something is missing at home. We had a thread once that asked “Once a cheater, always a cheater?” I’ll say what I said there: If you cure the disease, the symptoms go away.
Well, this here is kind of a key point. You talked about your problems and resolved them. If talking had failed, your other grown-up, honest option would have been to leave. There’s no good reason to cheat; you already have two viable options to choose from, both of which are honest.
Obviously I’m not saying anyone should bail at the first hint of trouble. And people have varying tolerances for how long they can put up with avoidant behavior or unresolved issues. Time can certainly be necessary for a couple to get to a point where they can effectively talk and work through things. On the other hand, if someone has already reached their breaking point WRT unresolved issues, I can’t see how it could possibly be better to be dishonest and cheat, rather than being honest about your needs not being met and leaving. If your spouse refuses to meet your needs, you can get them met elsewhere, but there’s no good reason not to be honest about it before you do so (whether that means leaving or opening the relationship, if both partners can agree to that).
Of course cheating is a symptom of larger issues. But being dishonest, and undermining the trust in a relationship, when you’re already at a point where communication and honesty have been so corroded that no one is asking for what they need and/or no one is listening, only compounds the root issues, it doesn’t solve them. If things are that bad and you no longer want to either talk, or give it more time, the relationship is already pretty stone cold dead. There’s no good reason to hold onto a corpse.
Oh, I agree, which is why my advice in the first post was for them to go to counseling ASAP. I was just pointing out that divorce is a better option than just sticking around if they’re not actually going to get to the root of the problems, since Chessic Sense’s default position was that the cheater should stay and the wife decide whether to divorce him, when really they both have to commit to a lot more than just sticking around if they want to have a hope of fixing their marriage. “Her mercy” is not going to cut it when they can’t even talk about a 150 lb elephant in the room. Sticking around without getting to the root of that will probably be more harmful to both them and their daughter long-term than just divorcing now would be.
FWIW I agree that counseling should be the first step here; it should at least edify if both parties are willing and able to work on their issues. However, they’re both really going to need to take a hard (and realistic) look at their problems, and figure out if staying together is even the best option. It’s not just about them, and staying together “for the children” often does way more harm than good. It’s not like the kid wouldn’t notice the tension in the house; and that shit has some serious impact on a developing psyche. At this point, “I don’t want a divorce” isn’t the best reason not to get one. If their relationship doesn’t, can’t, change on a very fundamental level – meaning both parties need to bring it – it’s really the only realistic option.
Yes, and that’s easy to say from a clinical distance, it sure didn’t seem so clear cut while I was in it. Like I said, I was faithful, but I sure could see the compelling benefits to straying.
You are in a relationship…you’re unhappy…you don’t have any communication. You go home and feel nothing but stress, and unhappy, and crap. Your spouse is not there for you…then someone else who is new, and shiny, and attentive, and sexy, and makes different noises, wakes you up.
It’s emotional, not logical. And my first reaction to DTMFO is ‘wait, you just may find yourself in a similar situation, and it may not feel QUITE to clear cut.’ It may be the person is stuck in an unending rut, and the affair finds them first, because the rut is comfortable.
The relationship didn’t get there overnight. It doesn’t get resolved overnight, either. Sometimes the infidelity, or it’s discovery, is the catalyst that starts the ball rolling to one conclusion or the other. But the Cheat-er? Well, until you walk in their shoes, until you feel neglect*, realize they might not actually be the ‘bad guy’ in all of this.
= all bets are off if the person really is a dickhead. You know where I’m going.
We aren’t birds. When we make certain commitments, we are obligated to use some modicum of self-control, which we are completely capable of. I know it feels really good, but this is life, not a romance novel. You gotta give yourself a good shake and snap out of it when you start something like this.
If you want to be able to do what ever you want without controlling yourself, staying single is a perfectly valid option. The only other option for those who don’t/can’t have self control, less preferable but still valid, is to get yourself out of the committed relationship before you do too much more damage.
I understand why we have such a high divorce rate, given all the “she squeezed the toothpaste from the middle? Get rid of her!” comments seen here. From the OP, just to refresh everyone’s memory:
She should have figured out something was wrong due to the lack of sex correlated with her weight gain. He shouldn’t have done it. But here we are, and her request seems reasonable.
Might I also remind everyone that women usually don’t come up in such great shape after a divorce (fiscally, that is.) If both parties are dedicated to correcting their mistakes, their kid could see that sometimes relationships take work, and sometimes you make mistakes, but can recover from them.
I wonder what the marital status of the divorce fans is. There is a certain segment of the Doper population who claim that marriage kills sex - demonstrably untrue for many of us - and I wonder if there is overlap.
What I’m finding as I get older and look around is: The Nuclear family (2.5 kids, dog, Man, Woman, married and happy for life) isn’t as completely common as you’d think. ESPECIALLY if you use the SDMB as a representative example.
Well, I have been there. I was in a relationship where I was horribly neglected, used, and taken for granted. My attempt at a solution was talking with him (or trying to), and suggesting compromises (which he would either ignore or dismiss out of hand). It never even crossed my mind to cheat. Hell, I was still trying to come up with solutions when he dumped me – which was how I found out that the reason he wasn’t sleeping with me (at all) was that he was sleeping with the girl he dumped me for.
I’ve also been tempted, and realized that that was my wake-up call that I wasn’t happy and wasn’t invested enough in the relationship for it to be any sort of real relationship. I left immediately. I did not cheat.
So, I stand by what I said. If someone is making me so utterly miserable that I would rather be with someone else than talk or wait it out, it’s time for me to go.
The cheating was wrong, full stop. No matter how little you are attracted to your wife you do not have a right to cheat.
Having said that, I really don’t get the people who are acting as if a 150 pound weight gain is no big deal. An already big woman gained that much more weight? She’s most likely weighs 2x or 3x as much as what she “should” weigh. That’s a BIG change. Yes, yes people can say “BUT THE WEDDING VOWS!” and there is truth there. I’m sure a good many people on this board are divorced for loads of reasons. Plenty of people could point their fingers at them and accuse them of not honoring their vows. It doesn’t say “In sickness an in health as long as it he doesn’t do drugs!” or “Til death do us part unless she works too much and I feel neglected!” Rarely is there only ONE reason for a marriage to break up
Regardless of what other people think is right or wrong and what wedding vows mean you cannot make yourself be attracted to her if you are not. For most people sex is a big part of marriage and to be expected to have sex with someone that you have zero attraction to is pretty unreasonable.
It will take her a very long time to lose 150 pounds if she ever does. If you are able to get past that and commit to her again and she is willing to forgive you then I say get thee to a marriage counselor RFN.
Otherwise I’m not sure what is left for you. I hate to jump on any divorce wagon because that is a BIG BIG step, but you also need to be realistic about what you are both capable of.