I am in need of advice and a serious talking to.
I am in a 12 year marriage to an awesome partner who I was very happy with and who was my best friend and playmate until he made a mistake I can't reveal for fear of outing and whose guilt about it has changed our life. He has been under the care of a mental health and crisis team for three years since the realisation of his mistake and the lifelong consequences to us both became clear.
He is in many ways the same man I married and I love him to pieces but he no longer feels able to have a sexual or romantic attachment because essentially he feels undeserving and that it is safer not to be close to anyone so that he cannot hurt them. That makes me feel so sad for him to feel this way about himself. He is struggling so much to forgive himself. He is working on this in therapy and has been since therapy started.
At his request we live in separate rooms but still spend lots of time together and function as a couple to the outside world, although he has retreated to a platonic safe space. He doesn't want it to be this way but it's all he can manage right now.
We were loved up and very broodily TTC the two years before the event happened. We are in our late 30s now. I would still love to have a family with my husband if he was better. It is almost like we are in a limbo space.
I don't even want to type this. I have been having an affair that started out as online chat a year ago and have fallen for the other man. We have spent a lot of time together recently and he is now offering me a relationship, children and remarriage one day (as in, asking me to leave to begin a proper relationship). He would be relocating for me eventually if we were able to develop a relationship. I do believe this has meaning to him. He is divorced.
I don't know what to do.
Two friends I have confided in think that I need to give my husband more time to recover because of how happy we were before and that I need to tell my husband nothing for now but just end the affair and tell my husband when he is better so he can decide our future. One other friend thinks I need to move on with my life and separate from my husband, accepting it might not work out with this man but seeing where it leads.
I have just started counselling to get a grip. My therapist is not giving an opinion on what I should do as that's not her role.
My heart is telling me that I cannot give up on my husband and our dreams. He was everything to me and I promised him I'd support him and I still love him. He might come back to me yet. But my head is telling me that I can't let this other man go when I love him and he is offering me a chance at a future I want instead of more years of limbo.
I would be grateful for your advice, even if just to offer a different take on it all.