Long story very short, I have not been in love with my DH for about the last 5 years. He drank very heavily when we first met and it got worse after we had our first DS. He used to come home hammered on a regular basis and was utterly useless with our DS as a baby. He is withdrawn and emotionally crippled by a hellish, disfunctional childhood. I have encouraged him to seek help for his emotional problems but he has never wanted to.
He is socially very shy and is either withdrawn and very antisocial with my friends or has in the past, got totally plastered and hideously embarrassed us both.
He has lied to me endlessly. At first he was just covering his drinking tracks but more recently it became almost an obsession. It got to the point where he told me absolutely NOTHING about work, what he did outside of work or his family or anything at all.
Yet he would ask lots of questions about all the things I had been doing.
In the last few years he has made a huge effort to change. He has tried to be a better dad, laid off the drinking and done his best to be more involved at home.
The problem is, I'm just not in love him any more. I don't fancy him, I don't want to sleep with him and I despite trying desperately I just can't bring all those feelings back. I told him at the time when he was drinking that his awful behaviour was making me fall out of love with him but he carried on. There are only so many times you can watch someone collapse in a heap, or have your children find them face down on the floor in the morning before you stop loving them and just feel empty.
I have tried so hard, have channelled all my energy into my marriage, raised our 3 DC (I am a SAHM) and do everything at home. I have always supported him in everything.
We have tried counselling but in the end I felt that all she did was enable his behaviour and point the finger at me for not responding to his recent efforts by leaping into bed with him the way he wants me to.
Now I have told him that I can't carry on. I am so unhappy I can hardly breathe, the idea of spending the next 30 years of my life with him is more terrifying than being by myself.
So I told him, and he's absolutely bereft. He's crying and begging me to try to fix it. He loves me completely and I am so utterly heartbroken to be doing this to my family.
I always thought that I could just live with it. That I could go through the motions and keep all the plates spinning. I thought that the price of my happiness was too high, I couldn't hurt everyone so badly.
But now I'm so desperate I realised that I'm more scared of the dead-inside person I'm going to become if I stay. I have started to have feelings for someone I know and am realising that the likehood is I will probably end up cheating at some point. I don't want to wait until our situation is twisted and toxic before we part.
So I have to be strong and try to steer us through a separation that he doesn't want, probably a divorce and all while trying to make sure our children don't suffer too much. He's not a bad guy, we've just grown completely apart.
Thank you if you got this far, I think I'm just looking for some reassurance that I'm not a selfish and hideous person and that somehow we'll all get through this. 