To ask if you’ve regretted leaving

[CalmReader]

Hi everyone,

I’m really hoping for some perspective and maybe to hear from others who’ve been in a similar situation.

My husband and I are in our mid-30s. On paper, everything looks great — he’s a genuinely lovely man, a brilliant dad to our daughter, we get on well, rarely argue, and we’ve built a nice, stable life together. There’s mutual respect, we co-parent well, and we’re kind to each other. From the outside, it probably looks ideal.

But the truth is, I haven’t felt any romantic or physical attraction to him for years. If I’m honest with myself, it’s probably been gone longer than I’ve been willing to admit. There’s no passion, no intimacy, and I have no desire to be sexually close to him. He feels more like a good friend or a relative than a partner.

We’re currently separated but still living in the same house, in separate bedrooms, trying to figure out what comes next. I keep wondering: can attraction ever come back after being gone so long? Is it something you can rebuild — or once it’s gone, is that it?

He’s a good man, and I don’t want to make a decision I’ll regret, especially when we have a peaceful home and a child involved. But I also can’t ignore the fact that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a sexless, loveless marriage at this age. I want more than just companionship — I want to feel connected, desired, and alive again.

I suppose I’m asking: has anyone else been through this? Did the feelings ever come back, or was it better to walk away?

Thank you for reading.

No most definitely not, there is no way he would do that!

My husband came home from work in the mood. I shied away. There’s only so long this is going to continue before everything majorly goes to shit.

Do you think you’d be happier apart?

Honestly not sure. We went through a really shit period but about a month age I threatened separation and he instantly cheered up his mood.

The house is much better but…for me it’s a little performative. And I just can’t get ‘those’ feelings back. Like I don’t even want him to kiss me, and he’s starting to get pissed off and hurt.

It’s going to come to a head at some point. I am constantly horny, constantly, but not for him.

Could you take DC with you. It would give you time to see how it is just you and her? I am older than you but have felt the same for a long long time. Do I wish I had left? I really don’t know. I may have been happier but may have regretted it.

OP your marriage sounds must better than mine was, but 25 years after leaving I regret doing so every day. Sometimes love is only sleeping.

I think it's not a bad shout to have some time on your own.

But if you can't, how would you feel about a cosy evening in by yourself, or being out at the theatre with your friends, compared to a lovely meal out somewhere with him? Which would you prefer, in your heart? Say it was to be the last evening of your life and those were the choices. Which one grabs you the most?

Have you had any changes in hormonal birth control since when you met him? Eg were you on the pill when you met him and later stopped taking it? Or have you started taking hormonal contraception during the marriage? Or changed type?

The pill can influence who we’re attracted to. So if you are on any hormonal contraceptive I’d say to come off it.

Make an effort to see you husband doing things where previously you felt particularly attracted to him, whether that’s doing physical strong things, being dominant at work , or whatever it was that made you hot for him in the first place.

If you fancy him most when he’s dressed up then organise a dinner date. If you fancy him most when he’s hot and sweaty and dirty from working in the garden then organise some alone time then.

Don’t break your family up over this. Your children will suffer most and it’s not a good reason to break the promise you made in marriage. For better for worse, for life.

This sounds like my relationships with exDP. I sort of fell into it because we got along really well? Plus it was a weird time for me (Covid) and maybe I wanted the security of a stable relationship with someone decent. He was never the right guy for me. Consequently, after about a year, the relationship completed killed my sex drive. I had zero attraction to him. None whatsoever. We lasted 18 more months because I couldn’t admit to myself that I wasn’t attracted to my ‘perfect on paper’ boyfriend then we finally called it quits. No regrets - we weren’t right for each other. No kids involved so there wasn’t that layer of complication. I do think you need to be brave and go after what you want in life - you’re only in your 30s.

i know you don’t want to, but If I’m honest i would consider the possibility to have subtle, protected anonymous one night stands. Obviously he would need to know and be ok with it and would be open to him to do so also.
or its leave. You’re too young to settle for a sexless life. You’ll grow to resent each other and it will end regardless. Sorry.

I left and it's the best thing I did.
I didn't have children at the time so know that's very different but I couldn't have stayed my entire life feeling like that.
I was married to the ultimate "good man" Kind, funny, hard working, he had a great job, we had loads in common and enjoyed an amazing life. BUT it was completely devoid of any passion whatsoever and I suspect he was asexual.

I reconnected with my childhood boyfriend and we both left our relationships for each other. That was 9yrs ago, we now have 2 small kids, half the income i used to have BUT absolutely completely madly in love. Despite young children the attraction is still as high as it was on Day 1.

We’ll said!

Sounds like a sure way to break the marriage up…..

I don’t regret it at all. It was lonely when dad was younger but now shes due to go to high school I feel a bit more freedom I was miserable with my ex.

I have been dating someone he not my child’s father but I am now at the point where I don’t even want him to touch me. He knows this and seems to be trying harder im distancing myself I have tried to tell him twice but he just brushes over it like I didn’t say it. Love spending time with him but zero attraction i do not like the way it makes feel. Luckily did not move in or anything so I know I could not live like this so glad I kept my everything separate. It is tougher financially but still better.

Ending a 2.5yr relationship with no kids is completely different to breaking up a family. There are a LOT more considerations.

I’m glad your risk paid off - but being unfaithful isn’t something I’d brag about. What you both did to your ex’s was awful, most people couldn’t do that.

I married someone who is lovely but for whom the sexual attraction side was never that strong, and I totally lost it after kids. I made some stupid choices, had an affair, separated from the lovely man, and then reconciled. We had a short lived revival of our sex life (make up sex I guess) but now…we’re back in ‘loving friends’ mode. I am simply not attracted to him. (It doesn’t help that the affair sex, of course, completely eclipsed everything I’d ever experienced.)

I feel in my heart that sex with DH is never coming back - for many reasons. But, we are in our late forties with two DDs late primary/early secondary, and neither of us want to divorce. We love each other, partly because we survived. I have made an active choice to forgo a sex life for the privilege of seeing as much of my girls’ childhoods as I can, and although we haven’t talked about it, I think he is on the same page. I did the 50:50 thing when we were separated- I hated it. I hated not being there when they needed me, and you can’t arrange their crises so they happen on mummy time. My DH would not contemplate me being with someone else inside or outside the marriage, and so this is the sacrifice.

I am happy. It’s a different type of fulfilment to having a relationship that stimulates, in all senses of the word. But, after many mistakes, I have found other, quieter types of fulfilment within the boundaries of the life that I unknowingly chose for myself when I married my partner. Motherhood, female friendship, dog ownership, swimming.

Having said all of that. If I was in my early thirties, and this was happening to my relationship already, I would be making different decisions. OP if your children are young there’s a window for you to change the trajectory of your life with least amount of pain and it might not open again for decades.

@snowdrop2011 It doesn’t help that the affair sex, of course, completely eclipsed everything I’d ever experienced

But can you honestly say that if you'd got into a relationship with him, had a child, worked full time, washed his pants and slept next to him snoring for 10 years the sex would have remained earth-shattering?

I think it’s something only you can really know

Well, we were very compatible in terms of taste and he was much more liberated in bed so there was that. I genuinely don’t think DH and I are well matched and we never were.

BUT I’m positive that (as a PP has mentioned) that it was great also because it was dangerous and that’s linked to some trauma/CPSTD issues. I don’t regret breaking off the affair and I’m so thankful I didn’t destroy my life for him despite incredible pressure from him to do so. He showed me who he was eventually- someone with zero boundaries and a capacity for cold cruelty. He was in a sexless relationship as well and I think he had a lot of issues with disgust that would have returned if we’d made a go of it as a real couple. (Although we would have not been living with each other for another 10 years while our children grew up so maybe that would have extended the natural lifespan of the passion a bit.)

I know now what I was and am still missing in my marriage is true intimacy, and I mistook sex for that - easy to do in the pressure cooker of an affair. At the time it felt like an unreal fusion of making love and fucking. I look back now and it was probably just fear and grief.

Even if I’d reversed time and agreed with my DH to have an open marriage or a discreet agreement to look the other way it would not have fixed things because it wasn’t just sex I was missing and the old oxytocin trap always kicks in.

What attracted you to him originally?

@OhBow thank you! Yes, I really resonate with what you said. My home life was pretty dysfunctional, and then my exDH provided me with another "home" which then also proved to be dysfunctional. And right now I am feeling so lost and adrift without that.

That really makes sense, that I need to find that sense of home within myself before I can truly have an adult to adult relationship. It's why I haven't rushed into anything with the new guy I like, as I know I have more healing to do.

I feel such a lot of guilt sometimes about the effect our separation may be having on the dc (although to be honest they seem like they are happier than when my ex and I were together). And I feel so pulled back sometimes towards the familiarity and comfort of family life. But even if my ex and I both continue to work on and are healed (sufficiently) from our trauma, I know a relationship with him would never involve the degree of emotional and physical intimacy that I would want.

It seems a lot of us have to face the choice of keeping the family together, and therefore sacrificing our need for intimacy if we don't have it with our partner - or leaving, potentially finding the intimacy we want in a new relationship, or staying single, but then having to face the heartbreak and problems of a split family.

Sorry, forgot to quote the post from @OhBow in my above post!

I was in exactly this position for many years, and in the end, I decided we should separate. That was three years ago and I'm still figuring it out tbh. We live separately but we are friends who co-parent amicably and I still have no romantic attraction to him whatsoever - but for whatever reason, I seem unable to get out there and find someone else. I think I don't want to hurt his feelings.

I do love being in my own house and waking up alone (well, with my cat and dog!) and not having to worry about having an extra person to look after tbh.