Fallen out of love

[lbmum]

Hi everyone. I am so upset right now and am wondering if anyone here has been through what I am going through. I have been married for almost 15 years and for most of it we have been very happy. However, a few years ago I started to realise that I felt differently about my marriage. I didn’t want cuddles or attention from my husband. Then I would start to notice other men when I hadn’t before (just looking). I have left these feelings too long now and I am now in a position where I know I don’t love my husband anymore. I don’t want him touching me or kissing me, yet alone have sex with him. He, however still wants the physical closeness as he loves me. He instigated a conversation with me recently about how he still needs me physically and I told him I didn’t want sex. But the expectation is still there. The problem is, I am desperate to be loved and to love back but I know it’s not with him. I keep asking myself how this has happened. I don’t want to make it work, I don’t enjoy spending time with him and I feel violated when I let him be intimate with me. I feel very trapped as my mum lives in an annexe in our property and would be homeless if we split up. I have three children too. I feel very alone as we also relocated to another county 3.5 years ago and I still miss my good friends. I just don’t know where to start. For my own wellbeing I am certain I want to separate and give myself the chance of finding happiness again maybe one day. But how can I tear my family apart and make my mum homeless just because I fell out of love with my husband. I feel like the worst person in the world and just want to cry all the time but of course I can’t because my husband hasn’t a clue about how I am feeling. I don’t know where to start. He has asked me if I still love him and I told him I love him for our past and our children but I am not in love with him as I was before. He still took that as a positive though. I have been trying so hard but I just don’t want my husband’s attention. Please, is there anyone here who has been through this or am I the only one? Thank you.

I would say that if you leave, please don’t do it in the hope of finding someone better. Some people do, some people don’t, and unfortunately the older you get the more difficult it is.

I do not regret leaving my marriage. The years after the split have been the most difficult of my life but also the happiest ones. But finding the right person is not easy or dependant on what you do or don’t do, it is all about being at the right place at the right time in the right frame of mind to start and grow a relationship (both of you). Some times that is difficult when you have care responsibilities either for children or adults, less disposable income or you are living in a small place where single available males are almost... extinct.

Leave for you own good and welfare, but not in the security that there is someone better for you out there because he may or may not be.

It's not just that you don't love him anymore, you are physically repulsed by the idea of being intimate with him. This isn't a situation you can continue a moment longer.

Do you really think this man is so heartless that he would make your mum homeless immediately after you split? Surely he would give her time to get herself sorted somewhere else, right?

It's time to go either way. You BOTH deserve the chance to find love again. Or at least, not to continue living in a cold, sham of a marriage.

I do think that divorces are like weddings (if no abuse is in the equation):

1)You plan the life you want to have
2) Take actions to be able to afford it/save for it
3) jump when you are ready.

It doesn’t need to be perfect, but having a less bumpy drive as you start your new life does always help.

OP, this is me too. Been going on years, neither of us ever talk about it, terrified to break up the family. I think we're waiting until the children leave home. It's truly awful and paralysing. I'm so envious of people who are brave enough to have the conversation and amicably separate. I totally understand you.

Me too. You are definitely not alone. I can relate to so many of these posts/replies.

I am also paralysed by the fear of having the conversation and doing anything about it. I posted on MN a little while ago and got good advice ... but I’m struggling to even know where to begin dropping the bombshell. We both ignore it, the lack of sex and intimacy. The fact we never do anything together. I don’t know if he’s in denial about it or completely oblivious (although how he can be is beyond me as we haven’t had sex in over 5 years and have slept in separate rooms for about double that time). I love him, but I’m not in love with him.

I too envy those who are brave enough to have the conversation and get on with splitting up. Hugs to all

Thank you everyone who has replied to me. I am broken and don’t know where to turn. To those of you who said I need to get out I am inclined to agree with you. I cannot stay in an unhappy relationship with a moody man because he isn’t having sex from me. But can I really destroy my children’s and my mum’s lives? I just don’t know. X

You need to be absolutely ruthlessly honest with your husband here. Tell him how you cannot stand the thought of sex with him, how that's never going to change. He's probably living in false hope things will turn around at some point. You need to tell him the truth.

To do that without taking concrete steps to end the marriage is just massively heartless and cruel.

I'll never understand people who want to end relationships but just push their partners to the limit to get them to do it instead. It's cowardly.

@ibmum

Carrying on like you are is destroying your DH's life. You are making him a miserable man. If you have any respect left for him you need to own your feelings and end this.

You are not going to destroy your children’s lives, it is not that bad on this side of the fence. In fact, I have found is easier for children to live with happy but separated parents than in a household full of resentment. You really do not want them to grow up thinking that the kind of relationship you have is the norm.

If it helps, it is far more difficult to take the decision to leave than dealing with the consequences of it. I bet that if you leave this loveless marriage, in a years time you won’t be asking yourself why did you leave but why you didn’t leave sooner.

Divorce is not the domain of cowards, it takes quite a lot of guts to leave. People who get divorced are not throwing the towel in or failing, but breaking out of unhappy situations to make their lives better.

The only thing that I suggest is to stay if you are prepared to put all the work and effort needed to revive your marriage or start putting your ducks in a row to leave (you don’t have to leave today, you leave when you are ready).

I'm sorry to be blunt but you need to sort this out and now. You have not been fair to your husband at all.

You say you keep asking yourself how this happened. It happened because you've done sod all about it for years. You actively CHOSE to ignore the little niggles you had years ago. You noticed these feelings then but failed to act upon them when you might actually have been able to work at your marriage and sort things out.

You have now got to a position where you know you want out but are still not being honest with your husband. You are stringing him along and that's not fair. You didn't say "no I don't love you any more and want out" you gave him a glimmer of hope by saying "i don't love you in the same way as before" (which is not at all the same thing).

You loved this man once. Now show him respect, tell him the truth and leave this marriage. If that means things are going to be financially difficult, well, sorry, but that's life.