Boring marriage but easier life

Pretty questionable benefits, I'd say. The day my mum left my dad was the best day of my life.

He's nice. You like him. Your life is comfortable. My advice would be - make your marriage and your own life less boring!

What on earth could you do alone, with less money, in insecure accommodation, that you can't do now in a good, stable marriage to a nice man? If your DH works away a lot, you could not guarantee having DC 50% of the time. He might end up with EOW custody. You'd be a single mum without the space, income, security and spousal back up you had before. Not a recipe for happiness, freedom or excitement.

Have some fun together - go to some shows and gigs and weekends away. Make some plans. And liven up your own life - get fit, do a degree or train for a new career. Don't expect a man to provide the entertainment in your life and don't expect a long marriage to thrive without big effort at times.

You are bringing up what I hope are lovely children. The job your DH has may have always been with travel away from home, indeed if that was the case before you married, was something you knew about.

Boring yes, but does not seem a reason to separate.

Do you think the alternatives are better, though? Modelling a divorce, or a blended family? In this instance I don't think they are, particularly.

But long relationships wax and wane with energy levels and sex drives. It's not a uniform entity. The op mentions childcare and I expect, if they are juggling small children and busy work schedules, this is a typical trough. A life long marriage spans decades of different phases and rolling with them is part of the deal. Obviously domestic abuse aus a deal breaker and no one should be telling anyone to stick around and see if they can ride that out. It's a completely different question.

She's existing in a relationship primarily because her husband works away a lot. That doesn't sound like a happy relationship to model to her young children....

Depends what you value in life I suppose.

I could never live the way you do. My relationship was abusive so it's different, I left it and lived in a homeless hostel with DS, eventually got a council flat.

I don't have much spare money, but I would never trade in my life for a mortgage and fancier lifestyle. I would never accept less in a relationship. But I'm used to this life now and I don't need anything material as I've never had it anyway, so I guess I don't miss what I never had in that sense.

If you're happy I don't see a problem. It's when husbands are horrible or not pulling their weight that I think it becomes a different issue.

Exactly. If her husband feels the same, OP might find herself in that position involuntarily.

We can all see the dissatisfaction, but not really any sense of whether OP wants to change things in their relationship beyond keeping the financial stability.

I know many couples like this, especially older ones with kids left home and retirement on the cards ...most lead seperate but happy lives, the occasional dalliance ( mostly from the woman!) , no boat rocking just living ok lives .

OP you say you don't have much of a sex drive at all, so could this come into why you don't feel as if you fancy your DH.

Single life is hard.

If you plod along nicely enough and aren't unhappy then maybe that's what marriage can be like for the long term?

Stay put! Struggling financially is miserable. Carve out a life for yourself. A friend of mine is leaving her husband, a perfectly nice but dull guy. Her life style is about to fall off a cliff, she’s in her 60s so has no chance of meaningfully changing her financial outlook. I think she’s nuts!

Where does it say the op doesn't love her dh anymore? I'm just seeing that it isn't thrilling and particularly lustful.

Not much in the OP's post about how her husband feels about any of this? If I realised my partner didn't fancy me, love me or want to have sex with me any more, and only stayed because I was helping fund their lifestyle, I would leave. There'd be no point staying. It's not a meaningful relationship any more.

It's also quite hard to disguise any of that, so I assume the penny is slowly dropping for the husband.

In other words the OP may think she has a dilemma over whether to stay but ultimately it may not be up to her.

There's a difference between staying in a boring marriage vs a bad one. You're friends, you plod along OK, I think that's fine.
I think staying in a marriage where you're miserable, arguing, not being nice to eachother is wrong.

I get you. I think the crucial thing is do the kids pick up on any unhappiness or lack of affection?

If you’re bumbling along fine and all friendly with no arguments there’s something to be said for boring but with no drama. Then reassess when they’ve left home and make a plan to work towards that now.

My DH is a workaholic who travels a lot and is unaffectionate unless he wants sex! We still have sex because when we get in to it I enjoy it. But I don’t really have a sex drive at 48.

He is kind, funny and a good Dad who works hard. I guess I could do worse!

I’m not really seeing any red flags of why you need to leave.

When I got married, the vicar held up a white taper candle (representing marriage) and said that when the top is lit, you see the glow down through the length of the candle. Then he snapped the candle. He explained that now, when the candle is lit, the glow will only go down to the snap—the candle beneath the snap will not glow. He said that you need to work on our marriage, and keep it burning until you burn past the snap. Once you’ve burned it down past the snap, the whole length of the candle glows again.

You’re in a season of juggling careers, children, and running a house. This is your current snap in your candle. Burn down past it. Try to set up some time to connect—maybe a date or a meal out. It’s not romantic, but sometimes I have to put sex in my husband’s iPhone diary when life gets super busy and hectic.

I think you need to sit down and decide what exactly it is you want, rather than listing the negatives.

If you were not as you are, how exactly is it that you want to be? Sometimes we look at a marriage and think it is no longer exciting, but do not ask whether we actually want it to be exciting, and in what way.

Relationships change and become something very different from what they were to begin with - that is life. You cannot have imagined that would not be so.

This thread confirms what I already knew: a lot of women stay in unhappy marriages as they feel financially trapped. I find that incredibly sad. You get one life (as far as we know). I think it’s hard to advise when we don’t know how bad it really is. You say he’s ‘grumpy’. That may seem like a minor concern but my ex h was incredibly grumpy and moody. He was also a very negative person, always nit picking and having little digs at me. It really got me down. There was no excitement. He never wanted to do anything and just sat bemoaning the state of the world and watching the news. That may not be your situation, but I honestly couldn’t put up with my personal scenario. I left and haven’t regretted that decision for a second. I do struggle financially at times, but I’ve re-built my life and everything I have is now mine, even if that isn’t much. I don’t have to share my space with a negative, miserable drain on my happiness. I re-found my zest for life. By all means, try to improve your marriage before you call it quits as it won’t be easy financially, but if you find it not worth saving, start getting your ducks in a row and put a plan into place. I wish you the best of luck whatever you decide OP.

marriage isn’t always going to be romance and fireworks. Sometimes it may feel boring and like you are just plodding along. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to divorce.

are you friends? Are you working together to raise your children?

are you fighting? Is the household tense? Do you dread him coming home?

I would try to work on your marriage. You made a lifetime commitment to him, for better, for worse. So try to recapture the fun and closeness that you once had. Working away and having children can be challenging, so it’s not so surprising that you’ve let your own relationship slide a bit. However, your marriage is the bedrock of your family, so nurture it and value it. It sounds like there are no major problems, so it would be a bad idea to divorce and put your children through that.

As a child of a parent that decided to stay in the bed, i wish she had not.

Yes OP, I do wonder if all the Just Leave people are wealthy or just have no idea how expensive housing is. You can forget about social housing, private rented is terrifyingly expensive, most private rents are not covered by housing benefit limits and landlords have their pick of tenants and are able to pick those that are least risk ( so no low income part-timers). Buying is obviously really expensive too. then there are the high prices of everything else, food, utility bills, and kids don't play out together on the streets anymore (in most places) which means entertaining them is more expensive and time consuming.

No-one really seems able to understand that its not fear of being alone that keeps many in marriages but just ridiculously high cost of living and our fucked up and inadequate housing market.

However, back to your post. If your husband is also unhappy in the marriage, you need to be aware he may decide to leave you. You'd be best to increase your hours so that you are in a better financial position if he does.