Leaving a good man - Update - now I'm having an affair

[LucyH28]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/a1791303-Leaving-a-good-man
I posted a few weeks ago and about issues with my husband and received a lot of really good advice. The situation is now even more of a mess and although I don?t deserve it I was hoping people would help talk some sense into me again.

I ended up sleeping with the other man, on several occasions. I know full well what an awful person that makes me. The first time I felt horrendously guilty but not enough to stop me going back and to be honest I can?t believe how relatively easy it has been for me to cope with doing this. It's so out of character for me.

I've developed really strong feelings for the other man. We've stayed up talking most of the night each time and lying there in his arms and waking up with him has made me so happy.

I know this sounds backwards but I had been trying the counselling with my husband still but we didn't seem to be getting anywhere with working through either of our issues. I know that having an affair won?t have helped! However last weekend I told my husband it was over and he was upset and said he loved me and didn't want that but then he started looking at flats within 15 minutes! Then on Sunday morning I was staying at a friends and I woke up feeling like my heart was literally breaking in my chest. I then told my husband that maybe there was a little bit of hope but that I needed him to fight for it. He has no fire in him at all and I?m not prepared to fight this time like I always have in the past, which is why we have ended up here.

He?s now trying a bit harder but I look at him and I feel like I love him but I?m not at all attracted to him and I feel in order to move forward with him I would have to force myself to fancy him again. I've ruined it for myself by sleeping with the other man as I find him incredibly attractive and it?s a horrible comparison. The sex was amazing and I can?t even remember the last time I had anything half decent with my husband so it?s clouding my thoughts.

I've called things off with the other man but he is all I can think about. I just don?t know why I can?t find the guts to end my marriage. I would never tell my husband about my affair as it would devastate him, he?s always loved that we've only slept with each other. Although a terrible part almost wants to so the decision to end it is taken out of my hands. I just don?t seem to be able to deal with the guilt of ending it. I keep coming back to the fact that I loved my husband so much and I can?t understand how it all ended up like this. Everyone cried at our wedding as they knew how in love we were, I used to feel like if I lost him I wouldn't even be able to breathe anymore. I?m really struggling to deal with how much my emotions have changed and it?s making me doubt myself for wanting to leave.

Lucy are you actually 28? If so, please read the link i posted carefully. I think you're wasting both of your times because you don't want to admit you need to leave someone who you love.

Congratulations

I agree to an extent Chubb. I've known couples where they had counselling together but one couldn't attend ( for work reasons) once, and the other went alone.

I think you need to separate the initial cause of your marital problems from the affair. They are linked but separate, and feeling the guilt from the affair is distracting you from the fact that this marriage was over long before you started your affair.

It's not asking too much for your partner to take responsibility for his ED. Three years without sex is a long time to expect someone to go without sex without even being allowed to talk about it because it piles on the pressure. He has to own his own part in this marital breakdown.

It's not asking too much to be with someone who desires you and makes you feel desirable, someone who takes equal responsibility for the relationship's problems and someone who thinks you matter enough to not let you go with not even as much as a whimper.

I wouldn't blame you at all for checking out of this marriage.

However, you've muddied the waters considerably by having an affair. You'll have to examine your own motives and frailties about that and work through them. The guilt for the affair is yours alone. Your H's behaviour is justification for you ending the marriage, not having an affair. At some level you obviously realise that because you've knocked it on the head.

In your shoes I would end the marriage and continue with the counselling alone.

For the love of god leave. You were actually a child when you married. He had issues. Unsurprisingly it hasn't worked out. Go. Go. Go.

There's really nothing else to say. Trying to sustain this is cruel on both of you.

As part of the pyschosexual therapy course we had to have 2 sessions on our own so in mine I was honest with the counsellor about everything. She said we couldn't continue with pyschosexual therapy and we needed normal couples counselling which is what we have been doing since.
I do blame my husband in a lot of ways for our marriage going down the pan like it has because i know how much effort i have put into trying to save it. However I know that doesn't excuse my affair that's my fault alone. Noone deserves to be cheated on.
Whatever happens I will never tell him. It would completely devastate him and he doesn't deserve that. As others have said I would need to deal with my guilt over it. If we do break up and I told him I'm worried it would damage him so much that he wouldn't find someone else to be happy with.
Yes I am 28. I have read the link and a lot of it hit home. I know this should be easy. I've cheated on my husband so I should leave. That's what I always believed about cheats before this happened. It doesn't feel that easy though!

You don't have to leave your marriage because you have had a fling. I know many marriages that have survived and, where the other person was told, the marriages have actually become stronger. Though in this case I think you should not tell him as he is fragile.

You do need to leave if in your heart you truly believe you have done 100% of everything possible to make it better.

I know it's not easy, lovely. It's really really really hard. And there's no such thing as you've done this so you should do that. That's not what I'm responding to. I'm trying to let you know that many many many people leave people they still love. In fact probably the majority. It doesn't make you a bad person. Your affair is a way you've been acting out because this relationship doesn't sound right for you for the rest of your life. If what you now need to do is to go through an effort to test and realise that, it's fine. But you are talking about 'forcing yourself to fancy' someone again. These phrases sound like you're desperately trying to do what a good person would do. But you're not a bad person if you leave. I just want you to know that.

I really don't see any value in reading what 'Sugar' has to say on this. She's a US fiction author- why should her opinions on anything carry more weight than anyone in RL or-even- MN! There's loads of stuff like this on the web and it's all essentially commercial.

Tessa6 I appreciate what you are saying about people leaving people they still love and it helps. A big part of me feels that love should be enough and that as long as you love someone you should do everything possible to stay, especially when you are married. Without trying to make it all about me I guess it scares me so much to break my own heart by leaving the man I love. Obviously the idea of breaking his heart doesn't make me feel good either.

I hate the thought of not having children with him and growing old with him but I also hate that we've become just friends when I'm still quite young.

I realise how weak and selfish I am being here and I'm not trying to shy away from that.

Lucy you have done what a lot of people do or would do in a sexless marriage, don't be so hard on yourself, you haven't murdered anyone!
Be honest with him, tell him everything you have told us. You know it's over, it was good once, people change. If your heart is a little broken that's an indication of the loss of what was good; some things were good, but outweighed by the things that were not right for you.

I know what you mean, it's really really hard. It's okay to make it all about you! It's your life! It's your thread! There's a very vague masochism in some of what you say which is always a red flag, especially with someone young has ended up in a long term relationship with someone older. I wonder what your parents' relationship was/is like?

I know, I've been there. You're neither weak or selfish. You're strong and generous probably, which is even scarier. You are already mourning your relationship from within (at our wedding this happened...I was so in love with him....). That means you are getting the worst of both worlds. You have all the sadness of it being over in your heart and all the guilt and claustrophobia of it being ongoing in your life.

Sometimes, these things are a bit clearer to people outside of the relationship because they don't have all the heart-rending baggage and emotional ties, so it seems kind of superficial or unkind to the person in it, but sometimes the person in it can't see it clearly because the emotional ties and debt overwhelms them.

Re-read your original post and try and imagine it's by someone else. Don't think you know what you'd advise them?

If I could end your marriage for you now, without apportioning blame, promise everyone is going to be alright and happy and them magically transport you through time to a year from now when all the practical nightmare will have passed, what would you say?

Love isn't enough, Lucy.

Love should be our servant not our master.

Every woman should enjoy a healthy sex life, if yours is dead, move on.

Lucy you are neither weak or selfish.
You can't be weak to have cope for years with ED and no sex. You can't be weak to have tried for so long to keep your marriage afloat.
And you can't be selfish either because otherwise you would have left a long time ago. You wouldn't have pushed for joint counselling. You wouldn't have tried so hard not to put any pressure on him (and tbh if it means you can't even wear nice undies, that is taking quite far).

You HAVE tried. Tried a lot and for a long time. But even after a LOT of trying things haven't changed and have wore you down.

What I have noticed though is that you seemed to have tried, suggested things, gone along with his proposals, talked... And what has he done re his ED? He has blamed YOU and ... has he tried to go and see his GP, gone to see a counsellor on his own at least, done anything at all to help his issue, one that has some effect on him but also on YOU and on his relationship to you??

I do get that you still love him. And that leaving because you don't have sex, because of an illness he has feels mean.
But it's not. Not when the person who is ill isn't doing anything at all to improve things. Not when that person puts all the responsibility on his partner to make things OK for him (in your case, saying that you shouldn't even mentioned sex at all).

You are saying you want children with this man. You want a family. You aren't even 30yo. How are you going to do that if you don't even have sex some time to time? Are you also going to have to give up on your dream of having a family and children?

A big part of me feels that love should be enough and that as long as you love someone you should do everything possible to stay, especially when you are married

Yes I did think that too. Even before I got married actually. That sex wasn't that important after all. That my love for him was enough to get us through.
It's wrong.
Something inside me died as I tried so hard to make things right. I lost a lover, a close partner and quite a few years trying to get hold of a dream. It's like trying to hold water and seeing slip between your fingers. You can't do it all on your own.

I realise how weak and selfish I am being here and I'm not trying to shy away from that

At 28 you should be having a lot of good sex and looking forward ton starting a family. Ignore the po faced, people who aren't getting sex in a marriage will usually find it elsewhere and generally find the sex before they move on - but it is time to move on.

I have written how I was in a similar situation once. My then partner was my best friend- he was everything to me. The split was reasonably amicable- I left- though I think he was very hurt. I did still love him when I left but felt it was self-preservation. you dont have to stop loving him to leave.

It was the family thing that finally flicked a switch in me. I realised that there was no way I could get pregnant unless I was incredibly lucky and was able to get pregnant on one of the very few times a year that we had sex. I had a close friend with fertility issues and it made me think. If we were struggling to get pregnant and having to have sex at certain times etc it just wouldn't be possible as it would be too much pressure.

Just to be clear we did have sex occasionally just very very occasionally and at the point when I realised I'd had enough we were up to 4 months.

The counselor thinks that the PS therapy would solve my husbands issues. However I said to her that I had a lot of doubts especially around why wouldn't it happen again if we TTC. She said that we would probably need to use Viagra to get pregnant, that just makes me sad.

He claims he went to his GP a couple of years ago and was told that it was my fault for putting pressure on him for sex which is why he told me I needed to stop mentioning it. I wasn't some kind of nympho by the way I just couldn't deal with weeks and months of my husband making no moves what so ever.

I asked him to try Viagra years ago but he refused. He now says that the GP told him it wouldn't work for him. Either he didn't go to his GP or this GP is a total idiot.

This communications sounds terrible on his part. There's a huge chasm at the centre of your relationship and it's not just sexual. It's that he takes the topic of the table instead of front and centre where it should be. If there's one thing (other than having sex!) that defines whether a relationship can go the distance it's that big problems can get disputed and resolved between the couple, not swept under the carpet and lied about.

I'm not condoning the affair but 3 years of no sex from the ages of 25-28 would've been torture for me.
Of course you were left vulnerable to the affair if he wasn't making an effort.
If he had spent as much effort in trying to fix this issue you'd have been a lot closer. It would have been a journey for the both of you.

Thank you for all the responses by the way. I didn't expect to get anywhere near the number of constructive and helpful posts that I have. I think I just need to find a way to process the fact that you can leave someone you love, as plenty of people have mentioned.

I am ashamed that I had an affair before leaving but I think that's what it's taken for me to realise how bad my marriage has become. I never would have done this before our sex life died, I couldn't have been any more in love. I honestly didn't even look at a man in that way until the OM came along and reminded me how lovely it was to feel attractive. I know a better person wouldn't need someone else to make them feel attractive but I did.

Or sometimes, what it takes is to do something out of the ordinary to actually realize how bad the situation is.

A friend of mine was in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship. One day through work she met a guy who thought she was fantastic. She had an affair and realized how bad her relationship was and that she wasn't as ugly and stupid her then H was saying.
An affair and an OM who 'cared' for her was what it took for her to leave.

Your affair and an OM who wanted you is what it took for you to realize that it is OK and necessary to have a sex life. It's not that needed someone to feel attractive. It's that you needed someone to show you how bad the situation is.

Hi, I know ED can be very hard to live with as a partner. Those who haven't experienced a long term relationship with a partner who has this won't really understand what you've been through.

BTW, having ED is one thing. It doesn't stop the man to be affectionate and caring. It doesn't stop cuddles. It doesn't stop him to give you an orgasm. It doesn't stop him to have some sexual live with you. It stops him from having an erection and be in you. All the rest he can do.
Has he tried?