Thinking I have fallen out of love, having lots of regrets

[wishingiwaslucky47]

I don’t know what advice I’m expecting but this might be long.

I think I may have fallen out of love with my DH (married 28 years, have 3 kids). I love him but I don’t think I’m in love with him. I still think he is a good looking man, but if I never had sex with him again, I wouldn’t bother. Maybe that’s just an age thing, as I’m peri menopausal and currently on HRT.
We married very young, met each other from school, I’ve never been with anyone else, but throughout all the relationship I’ve always liked other people but have never acted on it. I always “fantasise” about having relationships with other men, and my life being totally different.

I’m not a very successful person, didn’t do well at school, didn’t have lots of friends at school, but have a fantastic group of friends now. My parents were alcoholics, I was never paid a lot of attention from the opposite sex when I was younger so I’m thinking now, that I married him to get away from my parents, and I strongly believed no one would ever pay attention to me (I have very low self esteem).

I know he loves me BUT he did have an affair about 10 years ago which I’ve never really got over, I’ve always thought I’m easily replaceable and that just confirmed if for me. I stayed because I wasn’t working, and I didn’t have anywhere to go and there would have been no way he would have moved out.
I think he regrets the affair, but I think he lied about how far it went (he said it was more of an emotional affair and they only kissed the once, but I think went much further).

He is good to me, we don’t have any financial worries, we live in a lovely home, and he’s great around the house.

I just can’t help these feelings I have of having all these regrets about how my life has turned out and wished I had lived life a bit more and had more relationships and a bit more life experience.

I just feel so guilty. I would never act upon my feelings with anyone else, because I have been cheated on I would never ever do that to him.

Does anyone else have these thoughts? Is it normal for me to feel like this? I wouldn’t say I’m unhappy well not too much, just more having regrets.

Gosh that is a hard one to answer and I have just split up with my husband of 24 years so maybe I am not the right person to answer this.

I do however resonate with many of your regrets. I was the child of parents who suffered ill health, my father died when I was 12 and I became kind of a carer for my disabled mother, I am an only child. I also didn't get lots of attention from boys at school and although this changed I never felt good enough for anyone. I met my husband aged 27 and we married when I was 32. Looking back I am certain I married him because I thought he was my last chance. I also didn't achieve well at school and have so many regrets for just settling. There are so many things I should have done but didn't and now never will.

I think your lack of sex drive is very normal re peri menopause and being together so long. His affair has of course hurt you and affected the physical side. Do you think couples counselling might help? Have you sat down and told him how you feel? It's possible he is also feeling similar. I don't think there is one person on this site who hasn't honestly fantasised about someone at some point.

Do you work, have children etc? Did you begin to feel like this after the peri menopause? I do believe it does the weirdest things to our brains.

Sorry to be so unhelpful

I don't know if this helps at all but I would say it's worth bearing in mind that you can't live multiple lives and every life decision you have involves pros and cons.

You could make very different life choices if you started all over again and you'd just have different benefits and different regrets.

Take a look on the thread on AIBU about working for the next 20 years to see that a lot of us that have done the whole 'career thing' spend most of our time wishing we were at home.

Honestly I think only a select few can maintain feeling 'in love' with someone for a lifetime.

One of my favourite phrases is "the grass is greenest where you water it"...are there things you could do as a couple or on your own that would add more variety to your life? It's never to late to have goals...what can you aim for now that would make you feel less regrets?

I think it's unwise and unrealistic to expect a partnership to bring everything to our lives: stability and excitement, a good partner/friend and an amazing lover, a confidant and a mystery, etc.

I am a man so maybe my view is different do you still go out on date, treat yourself with nice clothes that makes you feel good? Have try going shopping together, go on spontaneous weekend. I feel you may both need some excitement. I hope I make sense and i don’t sound patronising. I hope you get sorted take care

Thank you everyone for your replies. I appreciate you taking the time to answer me.

We have 3 kids 20, 13 and 10. Without going into too much details (don’t want to be recognisable as I think my SIL uses this site), we have to rely on our oldest to look after the little ones if DH and I want to go out, and he is unreliable. It isn’t so easy to ask other members of the family to babysit the younger 2, so we don’t get too much time to go out on dates or shopping etc. We try to go to the gym together a couple of times a week (again depending on oldest being available).

I do treat myself to make me feel better about me, but it doesn’t last long. As I said i have very low self esteem.

I have receive counselling in the past for me. About 5 years after his affair, I had really bad depression. I hated myself for staying with him because I was so weak and pathetic. I didn’t want to be here anymore and because if my children, I went to the doctor who recommended anti depressants and sent me to counselling. It didn’t help, even the councillor said She had never known anyone with such low self esteem, and had put it down to my childhood.

I have felt this way for a long time, even before I entered into peri menopause.

I feel really guilty thinking this way, and I can’t help but think if my childhood was a lot better maybe just maybe I would have liked myself a little bit more, and I wouldn’t have been so eager to leave the house.
I left home at 17, married at 18.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just in a feel sorry for myself stage.

We all make choices in our lives and all of these choices have consequences, as someone else said, you could have made different choices and have different regrets
It’s what you do with your life going forward, if you really want to change things, then change them,

Can you do an course or something with the OU. Something to help your self esteeem to grow?
Maybe go back to therapy, if your counsellors said what they did about self esteem and you haven’t gone on to work through it and try and improve it, then it’s going to be very difficult for you

You can’t change the past, you can change the future.
Don’t believe in the sunk cost fallacy

Your feelings are your feelings and they can't be wrong. Maybe try to stop apologising for them and feeling so bad about them. You need some space and time to start to think about yourself and what you might want. Can you look for longer term counselling or psychotherapy? Although you are upset about your feelings, I think it's healthy that you are finally starting to think of yourself. I'm sorry your childhood was so damaging x

Thank you. The councillor I saw told me I was a tough nut to crack, but I didn’t think it made any difference to help me. Maybe she was just the wrong type of councillor I seriously can’t see my self esteem rising.

Don’t get me wrong, my life is good, it’s just these feelings I have about me.

It sounds to me as though you're unhappy with yourself. That may also include yourself within the marriage, but it may not. Until you do a little bit of work on yourself you won't really know that.

Do you work now? What identity do you have outside of the marriage?

talkingboutwhat I’m a carer as in work with vulnerable children. I’m not sure what you mean by what identity I have outside the marriage?

I guess I am unhappy with myself, but I don’t know how to make myself happy with me. I have read some self help books, you know the ones that try to help you with your self esteem, where they say you should think positively about yourself and name your good points. Well the only good points I can think of are I’m very very loyal (think this is why I’m feeling so guilty about my feelings towards my husband), I always put others before me (I guess that’s the Mum, wife and carer side coming out in me), I love helping people (is that the people pleaser in me?)
I can’t honestly think of anything else, and even if I did, I would always think there is someone there to take that away from me, and I would believe the bad things, they are easy to believe rather than the good.

Let’s face it I married the first male who paid any attention to me, and as I said I really did think that no one else would bother with me, because I’m so ugly (and I do genuinely believe that), and now I’m just thinking why do I feel this way, why couldn’t I have had other relationships, why did I have to settle down so early.

We've been led to believe that putting others before ourselves is a virtue, but it really isn't. Doing that all the time just means that there is nothing left of yourself.

And in all honesty, wouldn't those who love us want to put us first sometimes, before all of their own wants?

The first step is to look at those who rely on you, and sort out the difference between those who truly depend on you, and those who find it easier to rely on you than to do things on their own.

Then look sort out all the needs and wants of those around us. Yes, your children's needs should be prioritised. But their wants? They should get in the queue along with everyone else's, INCLUDING YOUR OWN.

Caring for vulnerable children is a wonderful thing to do, but it must be very emotionally draining. I've also noticed that it is easier to focus on other people's problems rather than our own. It's a guilt free way of running away from our own problems. And that can work, for awhile at least. Eventually your own problems get so noisy that they refused to be drowned out anymore.

You genuinely believe you're ugly. Do you want to feel ugly? Do you want to feel beautiful? What would you be willing to do about it? Simple things like a great hair cut, and a session at a cosmetics counter where they can teach you how to use make up effectively is a relatively simple first step to feeling better about yourself.

The second step is harder, and that is finding people who genuinely believe you're beautiful. Because everyone has a beauty, but not everyone can see that beauty.

What would be your guilty pleasure? Is it curling up with a good book (and I use 'good' very loosely!!!!). Is it a long hot bath? Is it climbing a mountain or swimming 10 lengths of the pool? Perhaps sitting outside at night and staring at the stars with a glass of wine in your hand? What would give you some peace and serenity, even if only temporarily?

My guilty pleasure is reading, so I've bought a cheap secondhand kindle through Gumtree, bought 6 months of Amazon Kindle Unlimited, and am merrily trying out different authors and genres which I've never looked at before. I love it!

'I just can’t help these feelings I have of having all these regrets about how my life has turned out and wished I had lived life a bit more and had more relationships and a bit more life experience'.

Hi. I could type all day in answer to your problem but instead I'm going to tell you this... I am now over 50. I have slept with more than 100 men. I am stating this as a very sad fact. I would give anything to change places with you and to only have slept with one person.... but you have what I could never have. Do I have 'regrets about the way my life has turned out'? Yes. Having lots of relationships IS NOT THE ANSWER. You say you are 'weak and pathetic' to stay after he had an affair. But I have left people because I am too 'weak' to be able to deal with their infidelity. Your problem is not with the relationship, but you are focusing on the relationship instead of yourself. Take the spotlight off your marriage and focus on yourself. A good way of improving your self esteem is to start exercising. Get involved with people less fortunate than yourself in some way. There are many life experiences that do not involve a significant relationship, and your life is NOT OVER. In fact today is the first day of the rest of it. Love C.x