So, I'm an old timer -haven't been around for so long no one would recognise me but have NC anyway. Sorry but this is going to be longer than a very long thing..
Starting at the end:
DP is away on a stag weekend so I have put the DDs to bed, poured a glass of wine and been mooching on Facebook, as you do. Ended up seeing the recent wedding photos of the uncle of my very first BF. This chap is in his late 50s. When I lived in Norwich as a teenager he was in his late 20s. He had a horrendous drink problem and was massively obese. Really really bad. He never had a job that I knew of nor much in the way of an education and to say he was no looker is being kind. I do not say this in order to portray myself as superior; merely to set the context.
I heard through friends years ago that this chap had totally destroyed his liver with drink but had got married and had a son with severe SN and was on a waiting list for a liver transplant. Then, later, his wife died of breast cancer. Anyhow, he shortly thereafter met another woman and their beach front wedding photos that I saw tonight, in which he looked healthy, slim and happy, supported by his joyful little boy, are nothing short of miraculous. No idea what the liver situation is but he is clearly healthier and dry. This is all good.
But it has made me wonder why the hell, if someone like him can find not one but two wives, I have never really managed to sort my life out like a proper groiwn up.
To cut a long story short I have been with DP for 10 years. He is 10 years my junior. We met when I joined the firm as account manager and he was in my team. He was very young and sweet and had an absolute bitch of a girlfriend who used to play him like a violin. He used to tell me how she had cheated on him yet again and I used to console him. I was new to London and there was a lot of socialising with clients so we were out in bars a lot and always ended up alone together at the end of the night.. It turned out that she had self esteem problems and needed to have a few blokes on the go at all times in order to feel sufficiently attractive. In the end after she had dumped him yet again for some passing fancy, we started a fling, she tried to get him back, he wisely rejected her and we went on to fall in love, and have 2 beautiful daughters who absolutely idolise him and vice versa. Marriage was never an option. He is totally against it and I have never felt the inclination.
We still love each other and are best friends. But, inevitably the spark has dimmed,. especially recently. I found out last summer that the ex girlfriend had tracked him down on Facebook and they had been corresponding secretly. She was married but was 'bored' and 'needing to feel alive again' in her words. Turns out she was leaving her husband but needed a 'transitional' relationship to make it easier for herself. This only matters because she was his first love and we would never have got together if she had not been such a horrible cow to him. He stopped it but it has damaged the bond of trust between us. It is apparent that we have let things slide and maybe fallen out of love a bit but have promised and talked and tried to work on the relationship.
Anyway, I find myself here tonight, finally craving that security that I have scorned and scoffed at all my life. I want a man to declare that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me and to feel the same way about him, I do love DP and I think I love him in that way. If he asked me to marry him I would be so tempted. But he won't, and even if he did, my instinct is that we are near the end of the road and his heart is no longer in it. I genuinely do not know if my heart is in it. I feel bored sometimes and fantasise about alternative lives. But he is gorgeous and has women throwing themselves at him at work.We work in different departments now but I see the secretaries flirt with him, twirling their hair and laughing uproariously at his jokes and oftentimes sending me daggers. I can't imagine setting him free and having to watch as one of them finally manages to get her claws into him. That's not reason enough to carry on though, is it?
And yes much more important than my ego or my happiness - DD1 and DD2 need their daddy and would be utterly devastated if he left. DD2 has mild SN and he is her rock in life. I thought I would be devasted if he left too. But he has been in Amsterdam since Thursday and it has been fine without him here. I talk in terms of him leaving because if anyone was going to leave he would be the one. He has told me this.
So what the fuck do I do? Hang in there or do the sensible thing and then consign myself to a life of internet dating?