Feel so utterly worthless after this experience

[crazyafterall]

A lot of this post is just getting it off my chest I suppose as I feel it is eating away at me horribly so hopefully this will help.

I am a longstanding lurker and poster NC because I am totally ashamed.

DH and I are in a sexless marriage. After trying to get him to have sex without feeling like he was doing me a great big favour for 3 years, it has finally reached the point where I don't want him in that way either and we are left with DC and a warm friendship and mutual respect.
I have suffered from mild MH problems for a number of years which must have been v difficult for him to put up with. It has left me unable to work and I am on AD. Sometimes I feel since taking them I have been in a kind of dream...I am 34.
We are on what could be described as a "break" at the moment while I get my head together about what I want to do and what is for the best. DH still wants me and thinks we should stay strong and together for the DC.

The way I chose to deal with this crisis point is by having an affair/ fling with a younger man I met at a sports activity I do. For 7 weeks I became totally besotted with him, although we only saw each other once a week and he was always quite cold and distant, I felt a real emotional connection with him and over the weeks I became very attached. He was quite a selfish lover, but I absolutely loved the sex with him, it was so different and wild. He was so attractive to me and I really fell for him. Like a total fucking fool.

He ended it last week as he feels like it's all getting too much and "it has to come to an end sometime". I feel, like me, that he was developing feelings and it just wasn't part of the plan for us. I found myself sobbing on the phone like a teenager whilst he said there was nothing left to say. The final and worst humiliation was when I asked him could we please end it on a positive note and could he not thing of anything to say to make me feel better -via text- and he patronisingly listen off a reel of good things about me and how we had had great sex and a laugh.

A fucking laugh. Right. I think I was iin love with him.

I could just crawl up for a month under a blanket. I feel like that bob dylan song " a corkscrew to my heart". If this is what guys are like out there I can't be single again I will be eaten alive. I feel so blank.

What is so strange to me is that my friends tell me I am beautiful. I look in the mirror and I see I am tall, blonde v slim with even features but I don't feel worthy until a man gives me validation and lusts after me. I feel hideous and unlovable. Good to fuck but no more. Apart from DH who just sees the friend and companion.
I don't know what i am going to do.
Thanks for reading.

I feel, like me, that he was developing feelings and it just wasn't part of the plan for us.

That's not what I was getting I'm afraid.

He said he had trained himself not to fall for me. I just don't understand... There was obviously more details to our meetings but I don't want to write a novel.

It's all so depressing.

I think that he had fun sex with you and then the novelty wore off.

I think that the affair was a distraction from the problems in your marriage and that you owe your husband an explanation and a chance at happiness.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Besotted isn't love. It sounds like the om did the right thing actually. You don't sound in a fit state emotionallyto have a rrelationship, let alone an affair. Have you had therapy- with your h or alone? Could be a great help to you

I begged DH for couples therapy but he won't go.

From the little you've said, maybe your h isn't that good for your mental health. Maybe therefore therapy alone could be beneficial. Your situation sounds pretty unbearable

"a warm friendship and mutual respect." it doesn't sound to me that the husband is creating an unbearable situation. The sexless relationship is not ok, but the solution is not to have an affair.

I know only to well how it feels to not feel loved or sexy, id like to believe that beauty is being confident and loving yourself but unfortunately i put all of my value in how men feel about me.

My relationship too is sexless, infact everything you have posted apart from the affair is what i was coming here this evening to post. I think you harked back to the excitement of a new relationship and longed for those feelings, i think you loved the feeling this man gave you but he could have been anyone and you would have felt the same, i often wonder how exciting it would be to have someone hold me and and genuinely feel excited and enthusiastic to see me, rather than tired and bored of my body and my mind. i smile for my partner and keep trying to initiate things subtly without pressure, he wont have sex with me unless i go the whole 9 yards and get dolled up in lingerie and other bullshit. but i just feel that part of our relationship is going to need a lot of graft to be restored.

I have a question, do you think you could stay with your partner if the sex returned or is that part of the relationship well and truly dead in that sense? And it was my understanding that you were on a break when you slept with this other man rather than it being an affair?? If so then maybe it can be worked through, if it doesnt work, dont be scared of being single, just beware that some men are the same as they have always been, snidey bastards that like sex, try and avoid those ones!

My heart goes out to you. I was where you are now, about three years ago. I was in a marriage where the last time we had sex was on our honeymoon, five years on we were "friends" and my confidence and self image was on the floor. Like you, I was considered attractive, slim, fashionable, but to me I was nothing. I used to drive home at night howling.
I too had a fling, although in my case I had already moved out when it happened. He was amazing in bed, sexy, fun, younger than me, the works. It ruined me when he ended it (by text.....).
But. Three years on I thank that man with all my heart. He taught me that I was a sexual person again, with needs that are valid. The hurt he caused reminded me that I was REAL, and the sex told me I deserved to be desired.
Since then I've found someone who does desire me, and who loves me.
Please don't stay in your marriage, it will destroy you. Take the experience you've had, smile at the great sex, and rind yourself that you can have love and sex and happiness, it waits on the future. But as long as you stay in your current situation that door is closed.

Thank you so much I am reading I'm just digesting it all

I'd have to agree with the ladies suggesting some counselling I think. Whilst I'm hugely sorry that you're in a painful situation and a sexless marriage, having sex with another man doesn't sound a lot like "mutual respect" or any sort of "affection" for your husband if I'm honest. I do firmly believe you need to do what makes you happy, but maybe you could address your marriage problems with some finality first? How would genuinely feel if you found out your husband had been doing the same as you have?

I'm really sorry OP you sound in so much pain.

I really doubt that it was love, because you've only known him for 7 weeks. I suspect that you've projected all the love & desire onto him that you can't express sexually with your husband. So it was kind of a release for you, but then this guy is now bound up in a lot of complicated feelings, that aren't really anything to do with him. I think the emotional connection you thought you felt with him is something that you are longing to find with someone, and he fitted the bill at the time.

From his part it sounds as if he enjoyed your company & sex with you but bailed when you got too attached. If he's a selfish lover he's no doubt selfish in real life too. He's no loss.

I do think it sounds like you need proper psychotherapy to sort out your own issues, not just CBT or indeed couples' counselling, although you could do the latter too. If you're on ADs & you can't work, you may have had therapy already, but it seems like there's more work to be done. You could explore your relationship with yourself, and you can explore the relationship with your husband. On the one hand you have children and a nice husband & you want to keep it together; on the other, you're very young to submit to a life of no sex, not being desired, & it seems to be leaching to your self esteem. I'm concerned you think that you have so little self worth. It definitely does not lie in validation from men.

I wonder if you make men the be all and end all? And perhaps this is exacerbated by not being able to work. Is there anything you could do part time from home alongside looking after your family? - to give you a life outside your house, and a sense of self other than wife & mother?

He is just not that into you-it was only sex to him. Tell your dh that he must seek counselling or end it-you deserve more. I empathise op.

I'm reading

Nine times out of ten a cold, distant exterior means a cold, distant interior. Don't project hidden depths that you want to be there.

(And no, "nine times out of ten" is not an invitation to think "Maybe this was the tenth time!" Don't assume you are the exception if you know the rule perfectly well.)

None of these terrible, tortured feelings about this rather vacant OM are inherent to you though. IMO you'll absolutely be able to cope sensibly with dating and men again if you get rid of the relationship that makes you feel undesirable and desperate every single day. Not immediately, but probably sooner than you think. Your confidence has been destroyed by being in a sexless marriage and it absolutely has to end.

I'm a bit puzzled by the counselling suggestions if I'm honest. This marriage sounds dead as a doornail to me. If you know different, then by all means seek relationship counselling.

Thank you everyone esp twinkle.

A lot of my self esteem is directly bound up in men's desire for me yes. But I thought this was somewhat normal for women if we are being honest? I have always felt like that. So when DH started to cool off after I had DD I felt unworthy. I had changed a lot physically and mentally I suppose which must have put him right off me. So it's not all his fault.

I don't know if it's dead as a door nail. He still lives me he says and I do have love for him too. But like for a father and carer. There is an age difference which is maybe coming into play.

The other guy wAs very keen at first, lots of compliments, nice talks and we just on so well it's wasn't just sex for me.. He cooled off a couple of weeks ago I think and I think he wants to meet other girls and move on from what we had. He is 24. He did hint at things that made me think he had feelings for me but they are hard to explain here. Needless to say when I was in tears like a fool he said he had trained himself not to have feelings for me. Anyway it's over.

He was probably just feeding me a line of crap

But for 7 weeks I felt alive and felt I was someone

Probably, but I don't really think he's the problem, even though he is absorbing all your mental energy at the moment.

Your DH doesn't seem bothered by the lack of sex, for whatever reason. He refuses to go to counselling about it. But you ARE clearly bothered about living in a sexless marriage and so would most people be. There's a difference between being entirely dependent on men's desire for your self-esteem and having a healthy desire to be desirable to the person you love - which, as you say, is completely normal.

So what options has this man who claims to love you left you with? He is not demonstrating love for you in the slightest. He's actually being very selfish. You are feeling blank and worthless because this OM has just exacerbated all the blank, worthless feelings that already existed.

I'd lay a tenner on your mental health problems showing marked improvement if you were out of this situation as well.

He was just with you for sex.

I think that there's double-standards at play here. If OP was the wife whose husband had had an affair under similar circumstances ("the ow made me feel alive") I think the situation would be interpreted very differently.

I am sorry you feel this way.
Clearly you feel to young to be sexually retired at 31. It is very young to give up on sex and intimacy for the rest of your life.

I dont necessarily think your confidence is bound up in being desired, but in being loved, perhaps? Your husband makes you feel unworthy, undesirable and and unloved, and that is not a good thing.
It is not good for your mental health.

If he does not want to go for counselling, have you considered leaving him?

Maybe its a very big ask to expect a man to fall in love when he knows you are already married, or maybe its a bigger ask when the man in question is 24 and has all the time in world to flirt and fuck as many women as he can, while he still can, or maybe you are too much like hard work for him because he is selfish. Or maybe he thought he could have some fun because he realised that you were vulnerable to a little bit of attention.

What ever it is...he's a waste and you are worth more, save your tears and your energy.

If you are not up to finding out why your husband went off sex after the DC (some men do...they have hang ups) at least tackle your self esteem with counselling. I agree many women only feel validated by male attention but in my experience as you age that isn't always fail safe! you need to love yourself and yes, you deserve to have someone love you.

I think it is possible to stay together and have an open relationship. I think it is possible to love and respect the people you live with and make a family with, without shagging them,indeed even if you are having sex with someone else, but you need to be honest with yourself and your husband.

It does sound like you would be much happier out of your marriage. It's selfish of your DH not to address the problems you are experiencing.

Remember that you felt alive, not that it ended, and that's what a sexually active life is about OP. I suspect he bailed when it became clear you wanted more than a FB.

And why be ashamed, life is too short for having no sex with people who can't be arsed to try. As to what to do next, you have 3 options - do nothing, have lover/s, or dump him. If you don't want to dump your DH, and you dont think he will go for an open relationship then least hassle is to take a lover - I'm sure you'll find a better one next time round. If you need love and commitment too, better off dumping DH.

(and I'd say the same if the sexes were reversed, and do - gets me into no end of trouble with some people on here )