Frequent poster; name change for this one as I don't want it to be linked to my other posts as they have a lot of identifying info. Help
me, Mumsnetters. I’m at my wit’s end with this problem.
Sorry this is so long.
I’ve been with DH for 20 years, married for 15. We have one DC who is nearly 7. Our sex life has never been great and has been non-existent since we had our DC seven years ago. Our sex drives are completely mismatched to be honest. I don’t know if mine is average or high, but I’d say his is bordering on non-existent. We did do sex therapy through Relate about 10 years ago and it was some help, but now, although I'd like to have sex, I don't want to have it with him.
Other than this, our marriage is so-so. He’s reliable, steady, a reasonably good dad in a day to day way, but happy for me to bear nearly all of the ‘mental load’ and admin of our family lives. I’ve said on a number of occasions how unhappy I am to have to do most of the organising and remembering things, including all our finances, all our holiday planning, nearly everything to do with maintaining our house, school uniform, homework, dealing with any problems that come up etc etc. He makes vague promises to step up and then backslides.
Having said that, I wouldn’t have any worries about him taking care of DD solo and he does a perfectly ok job when he does. Also, he actually does more than most of my friends’ husbands…
We rub along okay together but don’t have much to say to each other. I am increasingly finding it impossible to imagine getting old with him and I'm having persistent fantasies of living by myself (obviously with DC half the time or whatever we agreed – we both work in education so there are a lot of holidays to divvy up). We are older parents so DC is going to reach university/job age not long before we retire. He is getting increasingly grumpy and stuck in his ways and is unbelievably tedious about politics. He’s only early 50s!
I went to see a solicitor recently to find out what my options are and we could split, no problem. We are lucky to have good jobs, equity in the house, etc and could afford to run two smaller households. As long as we communicated well I don’t think DC would see any massive change in lifestyle.
I have two problems. One is how do you discuss splitting up with someone who doesn’t really have relationship conversations and who is going along (apparently) quite happily? I tried starting a conversation last night and got nowhere much. He was all ‘oh I’ll try harder to do all that organising stuff’. He doesn’t mean it and it’s not the main issue, although I do feel resentful that he’ll talk this great talk about equality etc while doing a half arsed job that basically means I can’t take my career any more seriously unless I outsource even more stuff than I do already. Frustratingly, he has good admin skills when it comes to things he's actually interested in.
The second is, is the sexless marriage thing ‘enough’ to divorce over? I feel like it should be. I’m late 40s and am struggling with the idea that I’d have to be involuntarily celibate for the rest of my life. I don’t think I’d even mind if I was single and not having sex, as long as it was an option if I wanted to.
Do I give Relate or similar one more go? We’ve done that several times in the past and it was helpful, but I wasn’t thinking of leaving the marriage then. I honestly can’t see how we’d have the necessary conversations without a third person in the room making us. I find DH very difficult to talk to about anything important. I never feel he’s really listening and I feel the things he says are just to make me stop bringing the topics up. I am also worried that I’d feel terribly guilty as his mental and physical health is not great and he hates change and our families will probably not be very supportive of my decision. I’m certainly not explaining the sex thing to them and if I tell them he's got barely enough energy to hold down a job and be a dad and certainly not enough to be a decent partner too, I think they'd just assume my standards are impossibly high (are they?)
I think I know what I have to do but I’m not sure what/how to do it and I'm going round in circles. Help!