Managing it all. Being happy & fulfilled. Affairs.

[Arewethereyet3]

Our relationship started being less sexual after our 2nd child. It was never the best sex I'd (or I'm sure she'd) had. We work well as a team. At the time I'd come out of a heavily sexual relationship-where the girl I was with was extremely highly sexed-as was I.

Now, we don't even sleep in the same room. I snore and come to bed late. She likes to go to bed early. We don't excite or may not even fully find each other attractive anymore.

Things have been going really well for us both with our careers but we have really grown apart and barely even manage to encourage each other anymore.

I've had a few affairs since our children were born. - they completely took me unawares. I just got chatting to a lovely woman who was passionate about food and cooking, it got late, I walked her home and we tore each other's clothes off outside her flat. I was clear that I only wanted sex. She said she was ok with this, but after about 6 months, she told me she'd fallen in love with me. I called it off-there was no way I was leaving my partner (we've been together 16 years, but not married).

Things were ok again for a while but then I found I really fell for a woman I was working with. We had great sex and really enjoyed each other. So much, that I was on the verge of leaving my partner for her. She however called it off and said that she wished she hadn't gotten involved-it was all too much at a time when she was mourning her brother's death and my situation.

My partner has clearly picked up that all is not well with us; probably knows that I've been unfaithful and right now thinks I'm just selfish and not giving enough time and thought to her and the children.

Neither of us want to rush into a situation we both regret. It'll be me that has to go. We have all our assets tied together, still show signs of fancying each other, still enjoy the comfort we get from coming home to someone after a hard day and knowing that there is money in the bank, good food on the table, happy confident children.

I cannot bare to leave my kids and I've seen how she struggles (as I do) when dealing with them/work etc all alone.

Yet, we both miss intimacy. We both miss sex. I have been seeing someone else. Typical cliche-she's much younger, sexy, extremely intelligent and beautiful. I don't want to start all over again-as flattering as all this attention is. But, it's not just an ego trip. It's not just sex. This woman offers a whole new experience and we only have one life.

I had a health scare a few years ago and it has made me realise how short life is to be unhappy or cause unhappiness.

My partner and I are unhappy with each other. There was a time when we were in love. Part of me felt as though I'd compromised on the sex issue-but I found sexy women difficult to cope with full time. No doubt she compromised a fair bit too.

We both love our kids so much and they will be taken care of however which way we go.

I don't want to trap my partner into accepting me as a man who has affairs. She wouldn't let that happen anyway. I don't even want to be a man that has affairs. I just want a good sex life, with passion and intense lovemaking. How do you sustain that over the years?

Is it wrong to deny yourself this?

We've been in this limbo for 6 months and there is no obvious direction to go in.

I'm not looking for advice I don't think. Just want to have a frank, open and honest conversation with someone going through the same.

If you're going to senselessly judge and transfer all your own frustrations with your partner, please don't. I'm not interested. If you intelligently want to share some ideas and experiences that are relevant, mature and 'modern' you're very welcome....

I got to page 4 and couldn't , just couldn't do any more which is why I copied and pasted. Sorry for all who have to read all over again but I did feel it needed reiterating - then deleting.

OP - I won't judge you, but I think you need to be more decisive. Be a man. Make a decision.

We all have to make choices in life. I would say that home life seems reasonable and you get your sexual needs met elsewhere. You have made this choice for yourself but I think your wife has the right to know and to make that choice for herself too. I know there are many marriages which function in this way and many wives who tolerate or even 'accept' this way of life. You say your children are happy and confident but you risk all this if they were to find out that their daddy is having affairs and you could really damage the security that they now have. Could you cope if your wife started having affairs to find a man she found sexually attractive again as she could well be bored with you in bed too. Could you imagine how tangled life will be if you both lived life as you do? Long term relationships are tough for us all. It's hard to keep the flame alive and needs to be worked at. Yes, life is short but your actions could emotionally destroy the very people you claim to love. You have some hard choices to make. You probably won't get everything you want. I do think you need an honest talk with your wife to try and work out a way forward that could provide more happiness for all of you but be prepared for a lot of anger from your partner.....you know what you have done has not been pleasant, it's not going to get any easier and your wife deserves a say in how your actions are going to affect them all. It's her future, and her life is short too. Perhaps she deserves the chance to decide that it's too short to put up with a man who has affairs.

Your posts seem devoid of any real emotion. You mention you have no moral compass and doubt anyone who has. You say you have no sense of duty. You aggressively challenge people who point out that your behaviour is intrinsically wrong and accuse them of being uneducated or of projecting their own issues.

The only thing you can change in a relationship is yourself. Your current behaviour is clearly making neither you nor your wife happy. Your affairs are a symptom of your unhappiness, not the cause. Unless you can begin to accept your role in this - and by this I mean the behaviours listed above which are classic narcissistic behaviours - and begin to work to change the behaviours you are exhibiting then nothing will change.

My prediction would be that if you left your wife that this pattern of behaviour would continue. Like I said your affairs are a symptom, not the cause and unless you start to deal with the cause I cannot see how you will ever find what you are searching for.

What a lot of assumptions you are making wildbill

^Offred
You are deluded if you think your current situation will carry on as the children grow.^
I said I would think it will carry on in the same vein with reference to the dc ages as in we will always behave as a family with the children because we are. As they grow they will need to spend less family time together and we will therefore spend les time together.

Your X husband is in a bedsit and you in the family home with new boyfriend visiting all nice and cosy...for you.

Yes I'm aware of where h is, thank you and none of this is nice and cosy for any of us. He has to deal with being in the bedsit but he is only there to sleep and has complete privacy and freedom. I am in the home because ATM I'm the one who does the childcare and he's the one who works but it means I have no privacy or freedom - I have to arrange babysitting to go out and everything I do is scrutinised. It is not necessarily cushy.

Your xH will meet a new woman at some stage, he will no longer want to live in a bedsit. He will no longer be coming to yours for breakfast and tea. He may eventually go on to have more children as is often the case nowadays and his finances will change.

I hope he does meet a new woman! I'd be really happy for him if he did! Things weren't right with me and I very much hope he won't revert to just being perpetually single like he had been when he met me because that's miserable. Him getting a new gf would hopefully be a sign that he may be letting go of the issues that he had with me which have also made him miserable unnecessarily.

He may want more children too, he may want to become less involved in this family although I doubt it because he's very committed to the children and I can't see that he would want to stop coming for tea while they were small. It is very important to him that we eat as a family. When we split it was this that he was worried about - being marginalised from family life.

As for the bedsit well we had a number of options and this is the one which currently is best for everyone. Other options I preferred better such as me moving out with the dc. He didn't want to spend time lonely in the house and have contact weekends.

You may have to go back to work.

Err yes I hope I do go to work as I've spent a significant amount of time (3 years so far since the twins turned 1) and money (around £7k of my own income) retraining while the dc have been small.

Unsure of what your point is here and I've already discussed with h how we will work that out as a family. I'll hopefully be able to command a relatively decent salary and it will hopefully mean he can reduce some of his hours to spend more time with the dc.

You encourage the O poster to separate so his partner can be 'free to find happiness' but you haven't really done that with your xH. Let your XH be free to find happiness. You can co-parent well and amicably without sharing daily meals together. Seems you can't quite let go of the security blanket......He should be in your kids lives but not yours.

He isn't in my life, he's in my kids' life. I'm not sure why you think me and h haven't done that. As I said it is him who was very upset about the possibility of missing out on eating with the dc and the bedtime routine. This arrangement was basically set around his desire to be as fully involved with the dc as possible.

You seem to think it would be superior of me to alienate him from the dc more than is actually necessary. I don't hate him and yes it is tough him being around so much and I'm sure it is lonely for him in the bedsit but this is an arrangement designed primarily to suit him and the kids.

My preferred option in the split was to move out with the dc (he owns the house) and split their time between households as I had concerns this way might be confusing for the dc and I personally wanted to move on from him and have privacy.

This way seems to be working very well though. The dc are not confused and although I still find the lack of privacy difficult he's been very respectful so far of it.

It must be quite an unhappy way to live bill this idea you have of relationships between men and women being some kind of war.

Heyday and chacha. You make very accurate, dispassionate and sober points. You are ofcourse right. Offerd and Wildbill, thanks for posting...

The stuff I'll take away from postings here are:

My partner needs to know all ASAP (well, have me confess-like I say-I think she already knows-she's not stupid)

It is over - truth around this will kill it (even if we do still work well as a team and are still-at times-attracted to each other. We've just not slept together for over 2 years. We'll both be scared though of the uncertainty)

I'll then need to move out. It'll need to be nearby as I take them to school regularly and taxi them around to activities and read to them at night/do homework....and share the cooking...

I reckon I'll try and afford a place where both kids can stay and we share the time

(Fuck, this is depressing....but, honesty is the maxim here, right?)

Problem with this is-she gets everything-the children, the time to just be there with them always. She gets the house and all that's in it and the equity in it. - hoping to use that for school/uni fees if we needed to.

All of this out the window coz I wanted sex, intimacy, compassion and we no longer desired each other as much for a majority of the time. So, I looked elsewhere (consciously or unconsciously-it's irrelevant)

Life's a bitch, huh?

What I know is that there are no winners from this and it's my fault. Not entirely, but I'll take responsibility for most of it.
We will struggle to find as good partners as we were for so long-maybe not-who the hell knows...?!

Like an old friend of mine-we may end up never meeting anyone else and becoming best friends again in our 60s as we manage children and grandchildren etc

Was this all because of sex and betrayal? No, it was a part of it. It was all because as we developed and grew, we grew apart. Our interests diverged. Our social lives did too. It all became about duty, logistics, annoying habits...and this is just when we had time to speak to each other. Work took it's toll. Our respective families have done their best too to be crap 'parents-in-laws' (we are not married.) The biggest thing was though-we stopped talking about the stuff that used to matter to us. One significant thing I remember was when I got this fantastic job opportunity and she just lost interest in it and me doing it. That resonates deeply. This may have been the turning point. This is what led to the affair where I felt I fell in love and was ready to leave. That was over a year ago now.

This man is in his 40s - things haven't been right for a while now - what should he do,

Erm, how about leave the marriage instead of choosing to cheat?

But still you make no mention of how you are going to change your behaviours. As I said before, none of these grand plans you have are actually going to change the cause of your unhappiness - your entrenched negative behaviour patterns. You talk about responsibility but none of what you listed even begins to scratch the surface of the enormity of what taking responsibility really means.

I am in counselling and have been for some time. I have a lot of self-awareness now and am addressin some past demons with my own parents.

My Cllr is also looking into possible top end group heterogeneous sessions-something that is difficult to find and once found, hard to get into

Rome wasn't built in a day. If you know of any other measures chacha, please share.

Also, once this busy period is over for me with work-about the next 6 weeks-I aim to spend some time on my own in quiet solitude to sort all of this shit out

Good news. Good luck with it. My only suggestion would be not to make huge, life changing decisions which will affect you, your wife and your children before you have spent the time to figure out what you want out of life.

What happens in a few years when your shiny new girlfriend becomes familiar, boring, pedestrian? Do you think you will stay faithful?

Do you think the women on here, many of whom have been cheated on and indeed have cheated, are completely clueless as to the dynamics and mechanisms of a cheaters mind? Not at all. The collective knowledge and wisdom to be found on here about infidelity is mind blowing. That's because intelligent women tend to research and find out about things. That may be a surprise to you, but it's true. And a lot of what you are saying, thinking you are so original, modern and iconoclastic, is part of the script. You aren't an original, you are painfully, boringly unoriginal.

Perhaps if you invested in some of the time and effort you have spent on affairs into your marriage and lavished her with the attention etc you have given the OW things might be different. Rather than leaving your wife to be some kind of skivvy bringing up your children. What woman feels attractive and desirable after that?

It sounds like she is thinking of her frailty and you are thinking of yourself. She grew up and changed when she became a mother.

Family. Not frailty.

If you go through life believing you have no control over anything and are a helpless victim of circumstance whilst making spiteful decisions against perceived slights and without taking responsibility you will always be unhappy op.

Your life is what you choose to make of it.

I have a lot of self-awareness now

Pah! Really? From your posts I would not agree with that assessment.

It appears you are one of those people who makes a decision by themselves and then blames other people. What weird narrative in your mind is going in where you choose to walk out on your family and then blame your DP for 'taking your house and kids'?

Why is it so difficult for you to actually behave like a mature and responsible adult?

You can do all the counselling in the world, pay for the most unusual and hard to find niche therapy you like, have all the 'quiet solitude' you want but none of it will improve your situation and your satisfaction with your life because you have built it all on sand. The only way you'll have even the slightest chance of achieving any kind of happiness is by taking responsibility and control.

Look. It is what it is. I'm not claiming as some of you are to be unique/special etc look attach whatever narrative groove your research and experience has me lablled as.

Sling all the shit you can muster. You think a man that cheats doesn't know he's all of the above (and below.)

We can we take that I am a deceiving, low life snake and downright evil bastard as a given and try and build from there...?

Op have only read your original post.
You don't sound "modern" so much as immoral.
Yuk. Your poor partner and dcs.
Do you have any respect whatsoever for women?

Ok now u have a bit of self awareness. Let's step back and look at this.

Lean in and let me whisper ........

ITS NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!!!!!

U have a partner who is out working and sharing the fruits of that work with u! She deserves the truth!

Get up of ur self satisfying belly and sort this out with her! Deal with it like a man!

Your children deserve better.

Next time ur rutting with that wee girl think of your kids because u are cheating on them too!

You need to disclose to your partner OP.

Stop looking for sympathy as the way you've gone about all this is unjustifiable. Starting a relationship whilst in a relationship is incredibly short sighted as I'm sure you're finding out.

Look you're entitled to be miserable and unhappy in your relationship but that doesn't give you the right to shit all over your family.

Start communicating honestly with your partner, that's the only way forward.

Come on OP, don't blame ALL of this on your partner not being super excited about one job. You say that was a year ago - when was your first affair.

Take some responsibility. You wanted some excitement and the easiest way to get it was out the home, and because of your 'lack of moral compass' it didn't trouble you for a second how much it would hurt your wife.

This bit from the OP troubles me: "This woman offers a whole new experience and we only have one life."

You do realise that it is really easy for men to leave their partners for these 'new experiences' (that like all else will become normality after a while), precisely because the wife you are not so bothered on will be left with the children and running a household.

It is just not bleeding fair.

I'm not projecting, I've never been in this situation, but I see time and time again on here how men need something exciting and 'only have one life' and cheat etc. Women are too busy actually looking after their children to even get to the point of thinking about what they might want to do for themselves.

There could've been a point years ago where you could've worked together to both find excitement. Maybe if you'd done more household drudgery (which is what it is), your wife would've been up for more sex, eh? Now you're way past that point.

When did these affairs begin and how old are the children?

Hopeful, I agree. Wanting a more exciting life is something that happens to most parents of young children at some point- both men AND women. The lack of time for oneself, the hard work, the drudgery, the money problems...it all takes its toll. But many can accept that this is the life they've chosen, and that it might get more exciting again in time. It's just that it takes patience from both partners. The OP has not had the patience to weather the more boring times in his life. Perhaps he is beginning to see that now?

There were many times when I thought 'is this it?' and my partner did too. But we've always communicated with each other when we've felt disappointed and dissatisfied with our lives, and I think that's made a huge difference.