Marriage imploding but I desperately want it to survive

[Deflatedhusband]

First time on MN. A married dad (early 40s, 3DC - 11, 8, 5) who has known DW for 15 years and been married for 13.

The punchline is on Sunday evening she told me she was desperately unhappy in the marriage and wanted out. It came as a complete shock to me in some ways but in hindsight we had been having a very tough time in recent years.

Marriage has become functional, basically all about the kids, no romance. We both love each other dearly (I certainly love her and I think she still loves me) but she says there is an emotional void and she doesn't think the marriage can ever meet it. She said she had been suicidal frequently in recent months. She has suffered from
Depression but she said the suicidial thoughts were more driven by the emptiness and loneliness.

I fee awful. I feel that I have let her down massively and have been blind to her needs. I think (and she has said so) that I am a hard working, reliable husband and loving dad but I have clearly fallen well short on the emotional support for DW and I am devastated that I have let her get to such a state. She has repressed a lot in recent years and now it has spilled out.

One added complication is that it appears now that she has developed an intense online relationship with a man in another country (where she is from originally). We share the same computer and on Monday evening I logged on to check my email and her account was open. I casually looked at it as I was shutting the page and there were loads of email of a very graphic detail from a man I had never heard of before.

I was stunned and quickly scanned some of them to find pretty much pornographic language of what they wanted to do to each other and it sounded like they had been sexting etc.

My wife is a refined Cambridge postgrad and this guy appears to be a very working class tattooed chap. Someone I would have never expected her to go for. But I guess I have let her emotional tank run dry and this guy is filling it.

She also had booked a flight to go see him.

After I pulled myself together late on Monday I asked her if there was anyone else and she completely denied it. I then asked her about this guy (naming him). She was pretty unrepentant and said she had met him online and he was filling a void but she would never actually want to be with him.

Up until this point she and I have known each other's password and pins - that has now all changed. At least she has changed hers. I know they are still in contact and that is killing me, even though I brought this on myself by my failure as a husband.

I asked her if she would do marriage counselling and she said she would so hopefully we can pull back from the each. She has cancelled the flight (I think) which is something.

The thing is I really love her and I am devastated I have let her down. I want us to work and repair, even if it takes a long time. I don't know where she is at. She had always been a little dubous when it comes to the compete truth. I am not sure if the counselling is just a ploy to give her time to sort out leaving.

I really hope it isn't. We are still in the same house, things are surprisingly civil and cordial, and the kids have no idea.

I am not sure why I am here really. I have nowhere to turn I suppose. Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks for listening.

I think you need to take control here.

Get Christmas over with and then tell her that a trial separation is the way forward. She can go and meet her new bloke if she wants. I actually agree with you that she loves the idea of this man. If she ever met him, I think she'd realise that she doesn't love him.

At the moment she is having the best of both worlds and has no incentive to change her behaviour.

Use the separation to think about what you want, not about what she wants. As you have found, you cannot fix someone else and you may find that you prefer life on your own.

Am I just being a fool here?
Yes you are.
You are being her doormat.
You can never ever ever fix your marriage whilst she is engaged in an affair with another man.
As with all cheaters, your story from the beginning reads like the 'cheaters script'
Re-writing history, blaming you, blaming mental illness, etc....
It's ultimatum time.
She either calls it off with him and puts all her energies into fixing your marriage or she can feck-off!
Seriously, I cannot believe you are still there, allowing her to walk all over you.
You've tried. You really have.
You've given her every opportunity to end things with him and work on your marriage.
What has she chosen to do????
Carry on her affair!
Completely disrespecting you and her own DC.

You cannot carry on like this.
You deserve better than your wife is willing to offer.
I'd be seeing a solicitor to see where I stand and what the outcome of a separation would look like.

Stop being shat on.
Time for you to take control of your life now and do what is best for you.

The other option is to ask for an 'open relationship'
See how she likes a bit of her own medicine!

I don't think marriage counselling can possibly work whilst one of you is still engaged in a relationship elsewhere. I'm assuming the counsellor is aware of the fact the other relationship is ongoing?

A friend of mine went through marriage counselling whilst his wife continued her affair (although he didn't know it at the time) and I consider that to be one of the most fucked-up things anyone I know has ever done.

At the moment your wife has no incentive to resolve the situation one way or the other, she can have both. And you appear to be engaged in some kind of pick me dance assuming all the blame for this affair when I can't actually see what it is you've done wrong.

I think you need to focus on what you need if this marriage is to have a future. And I think get better informed of the power dynamics of affairs - Not Just Friends is often recommended here.

Thanks for the speedy and helpful responses. As I typed my comments this morning it really struck me how messed up the situation is.

I think there is a large part of desperation on my part. I really love her and I always will but I fear I am now being a doormat. I have always known the current set up is unsustainable but I was hoping she would wind down the affair as we worked on the counsellkng/rebuilding. This week it has started to dawn on me that this is not the right course. I did not want to drive her away but this is breaking me.

Deflated - so sorry to stumble across your thread and see what you're going through. Like others I honestly don't think you (singular) can save things if your wife won't give up on the online affair - it would only be possible to save things if both of you were prepared to work on the marriage properly, and it seems she isn't.

One thing jumped out at me upthread from one of your earlier posts: "I work 40 hours a week as an engineer while my wife is stay at home (her choice)... I make dinners, tidy the kitchen, put on laundry, help the kids with homework, do the taxi service to party. I view that as help." I know that one of the big worries for a lot of men where the marriage has evolved along traditional lines into career husband and SAHM is that on divorce they will not see their children very often. Can I suggest you keep a diary of helping the kids with their homework and the other ways you are present in their lives so that you can establish a reasonable amount of contact (I don't think, given your current set up, the courts would go for 50-50, nor, given the life the children have been used to, would this be fair on them, but you do sound like an involved father, and hopefully you can work towards a manageable solution.)

Have a think about how a separation could work. The children should not be disrupted so it is in their interests to stay in the family home.

Don't just blindly assume that you should be the one moving out.

I'd be suggesting to her that she finds a flat to rent nearby.

Thanks for your thoughts. Focusing specifically on the impact of divorce on interaction with our children, I don't think I could bear seeing my kids less. I love coming home to them in the evenings and being with them on the weekends. I have no desire to have a load of "me time".

One of my fears about divorce is that I would restricted in how much time I could see them. I love helping with their homework and being an engineer I do all the maths tutoring. I would happily have been a stay at home dad but my earning power was/is higher than my wife's.

It sounds as though you want the marriage to continue more for your children than for you and/or your wife.

I would try to detach a bit. Tell her you aren't going to go to couples counselling any more for now as you need to get your head straight about what it is you want. Then maybe get a bit of therapy for yourself to understand yourself a bit better so you can make brilliant decisions going forward.

Reading between the lines, it seems the love went out of this marriage quite a while ago. You were quite happy for her to play a housekeeper role.

Personally that would be more than I could take, I know I wouldn't be able to survive long term in a situation where my partner was having an ongoing affair. It would break me.
And that is how I would explain it to them - I understand you need this person in your life, but it is not something I can be a part of for my own mental health and well being. It's not an ultimatum, it's telling her you can't and won't be a part of it. What she chooses to do then is up to her, but for all your sakes I hope you stick to you guns and get/continue (?) with individual counselling.

Stiffened, You are right re the love going out and I hold my hands up completely on that. It's why we got into this mess and it will haunt me for the rest of my life. I can see in hindsight how she didn't feel loved. I knew things weren't great but I completely misread how bad.

I have started doing individual counselling as well and my wife said she will do the same in the new year.

On the children issue I would say I want the marriage to work for all of us. I was just talking about the kids in the last few posts because they are a consideration in this mess but primarily I do want this marriage to continue/heal for my wife and me.

Unfortunately, nothing you will do will save this marriage.

It can only be saved if both parties are 100% committed and wanting to work it out.

Your wife isn't. She's carrying on her affair. Nothing you do now can save this marriage because she doesn't want to save it.

You alone cannot save this marriage. You need to sit her down and tell her that after the holidays you will be separating and rolling the ball on divorce proceedings.

OP - why would you put up with this? She is being utterly selfish still continuing this online relationship?

You deserve better, tell her you want a divorce. I hate to say it, but she clearly doesn't want this relationship to work

Some practical advice rather than just tell you to leave-
Try and communicate with her - ask 'what would make you happy right now' 'do you want to talk about it'
Demand she cut contact from this online affair else she is out the house
Stop doing the practical stuff around the house so much - she prob takes that and the money coming in for granted
Insist she do this individual counselling pronto - new year is too late - if she's depressed or such she needs it now

The bottom line of rebuilding any marriage after an affair - emotional, physical whatever - is no further contact with the other party.

Without that nothing can be done. Without that, everything she says and does is meaningless. Without that there is no way forward.

She doesn't love this man, she doesn't even know him. Tell her to look up limerance.

She really needs to grow up and stop messing you and your family about.

I think an ultimatum is something you are going to have to do. She is carrying on with that guy because she knows she can.

Something along the lines of "Either you pack it in with him, giving me proof of than including access to emails etc, or you will have to leave"

Make it clear that she will be the one leaving as she is the one who has checked out and is cheating. The thought of losing everything may focus her mind somewhat. Ask her outright if he is worth losing her family and home over because that is what she is currently risking. She will kick off because she wants her comfortable home life and her fantasy man in the background, but you must stand firm if only for your own self esteem.

If she chooses to leave then she was only ever there for convenience and it will be for the best in the long term. But hopefully she will realise just how foolish she has been.

The line she has been using in defence of still carrying on with him is that he pulled her out of the tail spin she was is when I was nowhere for her emotionally and that she fears that if she gives him up that she will slump back into dispair and that she doesn't think I can meet her needs.

I have been telling her that I believe I can and that I am 100% focused on that, having failed before and not being really aware of the depth of the problem.

Her response to that is it's a bit late in the day for that. Where was I for her over the past few years?

I have tiptoed gently around making ultimatums as I don't want to push her back into a place of loneliness but with the interaction with him going well beyond emotional support I have reached a breaking point.

I certainly don't want to blow up things over Christmas but I appreciate the very clear advice given here by MNers. It is sometimes hard to see the obvious when you are in the eye of the storm. Thank you

But if she won't let him go to give you the opportunity to fill that void what future does she see for you as a couple?
I think you need to be very clear with her and yourself as to whether you can maintain a marriage on that basis.

she doesn't think I can meet her needs
Well then there's your answer.
Unless you are prepared to play 2nd fiddle so some other bloke on the internet this needs to end.

I'm very glad you've reached breaking point.
Get through Christmas then take action to extricate yourself away from this cheating nightmare woman!

I've read the whole thread and completely agree with Bogeyface's post.

If she doesn't think you can meet her needs and she needs this man to be emotionally ok, then in fairness to everyone she should leave you and be with him. (Like others I don't believe that's actually what she wants).

"Where was I for her over the past few years" - that's fair but it's in the past and can't be fixed now. If she thinks that your efforts now are irrelevant and your relationship is unfixable then again, she should just leave. She needs to decide, is it fixable with you or not. If so then ditch the OM. If not then leave.

The message to be giving her is she doesn't get to have you and him. It's one or the other. I would be making an ultimatum. Agree perhaps not just before Christmas but straight after.

Good luck

Do you truly believe that you were not there for her at all? Or, as I suspect, is she rewriting history in order to justify what she is doing?

Cheaters will often say "I have been unhappy for years..." which comes as a real shock to the other person who saw and felt nothing of this. In fact the cheater will often have appeared to become unhappy in the marriage around the same time that they met their affair partner, creating a situation to justify the affair rather than it actually causing the affair. They claim retrospective misery, when the reality was completely different.

I do not accept that the only thing saving her from depression is another person, it doesnt work like that! Depression is an illness that needs proper treatment, online chats about sex with another man are not going to cut it.

I think that you are being spun a line in order to manipulate you. "If I get depressed then it will be your fault......" is bullshit and you are falling for it.

The line she has been using in defence of still carrying on with him is that he pulled her out of the tail spin she was is when I was nowhere for her emotionally and that she fears that if she gives him up that she will slump back into dispair

This is emotional blackmail. If she was a in 'tailspin' and needs saving then she needs therapy. If she has issues with despair, depression etc, then she needs to face that as an adult, take responsibility for it and get treatment.

She is not going to be saved by a man with tattoos on the internet (no offence to anyone with tattoos). Right now he is saying whatever she wants to hear because he wants to have sex with her.

Did she ever meet go and meet him?

Bogeyface, you are right that I am falling for it and I think in desperation recently I was willing to do that but now I realise I can't go on like this.

I do think in her defence that she was unhappy and unfulfilled in the marriage well before he came along and is probably why she went looking for someone in the first place.

I was oblivious to the extent of her hurt before this, although I knew things hadn't been great this year.

LionelRitchie, she didn't go to meet him as I point blank told her not to and she cancelled the flight. She was pretty annoyed with me for that! But c'mon - it was a pretty reasonable request from a husband. If she had gone it would have been virtually impossibly to repair our relationship. It's bad enough as it stands with the online.

I don't have a sense she plans to go see him anytime soon but in part I think that's logistics. He lives in a remote part of a far away country so it's not just a matter of jumping on a quick flight.

Her mum and sisters live in the same country, although on the other side and I do wonder if she might attempt to sneakily connect with him on a trip back home.

You really need to stop taking the brunt of the blame for the deterioration in your relationship OP. Nobody is perfect, and maybe you could have read the signs earlier, maybe she would have been receptive to you making more of an active effort to ensure she was happy or maybe she would have still withdrawn. You can't go back and you can't beat yourself round the head with it indefinitely.

She could have brought the things up she wasn't happy with to you, you can't be expected to be a mind reader. The best thing to resolve these issues before they became a problem would have been communication, she's an grown woman and should have voiced things to you.

Were things OK before the children came along? Did she work then? Do you think she might be missing having her own identity that isn't related to you or the children? It does seem like she has been bored and feeling neglected, but it absolutely isn't on to remedy that with an EA. Forgiving the EA and being willing to move past it is one thing, (I couldn't do it), but her refusing to end it whilst actively working on your marriage is just madness and hugely selfish.

There is nothing wrong with falling out of love with somebody and ending a relationship. Nobody should have to suffer and sacrifice their happiness for anyone else, though I don't think they should cause the other party to suffer the way you are. It's pure selfishness on her part. Someone who loves you would not do this to you. She wants to have her cake and eat it and really doesn't give a shit about how it makes you feel.

She has such a massive disregard for you to do this OP, I wish you could see it the way it looks from the outside. I think you have her on a pedestal and she really doesn't deserve to be there. She's not the person she was/you think she is.

She blatantly doesn't want you, and I really think your marriage is past the point of recovering now. I'd find a damn good lawyer and ask her to move out for a while in the hope that you can realise you'd be better off without her. I think she would realise very quickly the grass isn't greener, though I would put money on the situation repeating itself down the line until she finds someone she prefers and leaves you.

It sounds like the current situation works for her and shes not interested in changing it - she gets excitement, romance, sex and chat with this guy, and money, security and parenting/house support from you.

Only you can decide if that role is enough for you or not, I dont see her offering more than that unless shes forced to though through talk of divorce or similar - she likes the current setup just fine.