My husband loves me but it's not enough

[forevermore]

I am not sure if I'm going through a midlife crisis. But I want to leave my husband. I have two children in primary school and we have been together for 16 years. I am nearly 40. My husband shares 50% of childcare bills and until recently 0% of the thinking (I recently downed tools as it were). I feel bogged down. Don't look forward to coming home just work and workout. I am becoming more focused in my attractiveness to other men and don't care that my husband says in fantastic and he treats me well. I just want to feel butterflies again. I don't want sex with him and I don't feel that he's my protector. I just want to feel like a woman. What is that even. I have been to counselling and been feeling this way for over a year. We have had a great relationship for 14 out of the 16 years and he is my first and only love. Have i just grown up? How do i make this last. I wanted to grow old with him. But now feel lost/depressed/scared of a life alone (I have never lived by myself and it would be sooo hard financially). Any advice on moving forward appreciated.

I meant 50% of the childcare AND bills

I think hitting 40 can do that to you. I turned 40 last year too and didn't realise how much I'd started looking at my life and wanting things to change.

The difference is for me, I looked at how improvements could be made and worked towards making changes to improve things, rather than just chucking in my lot and giving up.

Tbh, things have never been better since hubby and I worked towards the ideal, but with each other! We realised that it was little acts of kindness that were missing initially and these things made a huge difference.

When was the last time either if you ran the other a hot bath and set the other up with a glass of wine (for example).

I'd advise having a chat with your hubby and work towards having the perfect marriage where you are both the best you can be together to face the world.

I have told him how i feel spoilt that I've never had to make such an effort before and now feel exasperated at the prospect if having to 'work at this'. Just want to run away. Also feel the grass is greener which of course it may well not be.

Have you had some interest of other men as it is this that can spark these feelings?

My first wife was the same as you and ended up having an affair and losing everything. She has rebuilt her life though but she by her own admission is no happier than she was before.

Relationships are mundane on the whole and take huge effort to keep them alive.

Yes I think interest from others was the spark but that would only work if was receptive. I have had interest in the past but been totally unfazed until recently. Interesting your wife is no happier. Makes me think (or confirms my suspicions) that the problem lies within.

Interested in the fact that he share 50% of childcare and bills but 0% of the thinking. What does this mean for you? Tell us more....

Has the counsellor been helpful?

If the grass seems greener on the other side, your own lawn needs attention. Gardening can be fun, not work. If you can't be arsed to, then don't be surprised that everybody else's gardens seem so much nicer, they didn't get that way by being left to fend for themselves.

The 0% thinking comment was my original starting point of feeling fed up. Wanted someone else to organise remortgage/holidays/find childminder/organise days out/notice when school shoes needed replacing the list goes on. He now has picked up some things I have decided (no longer could be arsed) not to deal with and it feels too little too late. However I also haven't been the model female companion (would go get a facial rather than cook dinner) but always felt justified due to highly stressful professional job and never having asked him for money (which most women I know who are sahm have to do). I felt it's either or IFYSWIM.

Anyway roll on to now and i eventually felt I lived with my nanny (albeit one of the best kind)/friend. Didn't feel any spark and looked forward to letting my hair down at the weekend and flirting at bars which is a vicious circle because you then become more detached from the mundanity of homelife and start to fantasise about a great exciting 'single' life.

I know what you're feeling i think. I'm a similar age and stage and felt very unloved and neglected. I made the mistake of forming a friendship with someone else who seemed to offer what I was missing. it went beyond a friendship. The outcome has been that we decided to part and try again with our families. I am heartbroken now from two difficult relationships. I am committed to working to do what Joysmum says, and my dh and I are trying to understand what we need in our marriage and to work towards building it again together. It feels hard but not hopeless. I would urge you to try to do that before you create a crisis by falling for someone else. For me it took the crisis before I realised what was wrong in my marriage. You can already see what is wrong, so why not include your husband in your thinking and see where you can get to ? At least then you will have tried all you can. It's not easy, but especially with children it is probably a good thing to try. I have been surprised by how receptive my husband has been to change and already things have improved although it's early days. I realise you may not want to try these things, and I know that I might not have listened to someone telling me, but the pain I've experienced makes me wish I'd done things differently.

Yes I wrote my DH off as emotionally inept and unsophisticated (compared to men I haven't when out) which I am now ashamed of. He see serves more respect. He has worked hard at being a great father and did his best at being a husband. He has surprised me in showing some insight in how I feel regarding grass is greener and I rose an eyebrow in admiration (not trying to be patronising or say I myself am sophisticated in such matters - clearly not) but I had boxed him into the nanny role and realise there maybe more there thatvi need to tap into. My wish is that incould stop comparing. It's hard when you start, to stop.

Sorry for typos (smartphone). But I hope you get my drift.

it's very hard. I too thought my husband had the emotional intelligence of an amoeba, but actually that's proving to be wrong. He doesn't understand things the way I do, and I need to be much more willing to tell him what I'm feeling, maybe a few times, before he will understand, but once he does he is willing to respond. The comparisons will be false in any event, as you have not shared the daily grind and highs and lows with the other person who looks so much more appealing. If your husband turned up in your life now without commitments and with time to be flirtatious and intense, you would probably find him just as attractive. I don't know where we will end up, but I do know that I've to give both of us a chance to make it better.

Suck it up.
Your children don't deserve to have their lives ruined because you aren't " happy"
If your life isn't terrible then just put up with it and stop going out and flirting with other men.
I don't know why we feel we are entitled to an amazing life - as long as it's ok then that's fine.
Probably not a fashionable view but try and focus on what's right in the marriage, there are lads of women who would happily swap with you. See if you can improve things rather than implode your family

If grass is greener on the other side, it means you need to make an effort to care for your own lawn.

Madeamess. That line about if my husband turned up now .....really resonates with me. It's associating him with the 'daily grind' that makes me think I need OUT. When i really need to face reality and start to enjoy all we have worked for. But again easier said than done once you start to check out.

Hoppingreen. I hear you. But I also come from a broken home. My mum was terribly unhappy and it affects me to this day. So I think I need to be happy for DC to be happy. It's how I find that happiness within that I struggle with. And I don't think you need and abusive husband to finally find yourself unhappy - although I am grateful that a picked a good one which can be down to sheer luck when you're young.

so find ways to do the things together that aren't the daily grind. We had let ourselves become consumed with doing things for and with our kids and work filled the other gaps. We are now planning a weekend away, weekly times where we go out for breakfast on a saturday, or to see a film, or to do things we like doing together.We sat down two nights this week to catch up on a TV show together. Another night we just sat and chatted - not about the kids or the jobs that need doing in the house. I need to see him as a man who I can be attracted to again, and not just label him as the co-parent and worker. Again, it's not that easy to make these changes, but I think that although you may not initially want to spend that kind of time with him, once you start doing it, you will find it's surprisingly enjoyable. Take him to the bars and go dancing with him this weekend!

I'm not unsympathetic - my parents actually stayed together when they shouldn't have but they actually hated each other and it was not a great atmosphere to grow up in.
I find that if I fake an emotion for long enough it starts to become real if that makes sense? That probably makes me sound like some sort of psycho but I find I can choose how to feel about things at least on the surface and after a while I discover that it becomes the reality.
It's got me through a few crises

It sounds like you're more fed up with the 'daily grind' than with your husband OP. Perhaps you could consider changing your job, cutting your hours, retraining - a new focus might renew your enthusiasm for life.
Alternatively, new interests, new hobbies, new friends, new places to see... I'd be wary of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You might find that your husband is one of the good things in your life. Either way, flirting in bars is just superficial nonsense. I remember it well, it was fairly crap, and I reckon you're just mourning the passing of youth.

Remember the wise words of John Mortimer:

"People will go to endless trouble to divorce one person and then marry someone who is exactly the same, except probably a bit poorer and a bit nastier. I don’t think anybody learns anything."

You're just going through what everybody does. It's okay. If there's an affair of some kind involved you're not mentioning, you should because that changes things.

Ultimately, I've known people who've stayed in the situation you describe and people who've left and the only thing that has determined how happy they are in the end is how much they commit to their decision, believe in it and treat people as they would wish to be treated as it plays out. It is the ambivalence that will destroy you and the nagging unhappiness being focused on that makes you unhappy.

It sounds to me like something drastic needs to be addressed in yourself and your marriage to go on, think about what you would do if you were free. Think about what you would actually do if you were single and wh it appeals to you. Then ask yourself, honestly and truly, why you are not doing that now in your life. You may find you are focusing on your DH being the problem because that is the easiest thing to find fault with. But really, when we reach 40 and sense the last half of our life arriving, we freak the fuck out, rightly, and it's that which is driving you half-mad and needs facing. With men we snort and call it a 'mid-life crisis' But the truth is it's an existential nightmare for anyone, the sense of 'this is it' and 'i'm definitely going to die'. The things which make us feel alive become particularly tempting; travel, freedom, risk, falling in love. And everyone understandably has moments of aching doubt, regret and yearning because we only get one go round and once things are in place in some way; job, family, house, it can feel suddenly empty again.

"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing" Sylvia Plath

As my friend wisely says, 'the grass often looks greener on the other side of the fence because it's fertilised with bullshit.'

Twinklestein, that quote is scary!

absolutelylost you have a wise friend! I've never heard that before, but it's so true. Tessa6 you are right - it is an existential crisis. it's all that you describe it to be. It's feeling a huge sense of loss for the what might have beens. It's madness really. forevermore is any of this helping?

my husband has just done this to me after 13 Years and 2 dcs. didn't give it a try as others have said just gave up.

although we couldn't live how it was it wasn't the only solution. its heartbreaking having your dcs crying for their other parent and you are powerless to fix it. and its not for them to know all the ins and outs.

dont get me wrong I believe we have one life and should be happy. sometimes there is no going back. sometimes its the only way. but I would want to know I'd give it everything I could before I walked away. at least then I can tell my dcs when they're older I tried as hard as I could, at the time in the ways I could, to keep our family together.

I'm afraid I don't believe the grass is ever greener. its just different grass.