Resisting the temptation of another man. Long term monogamy is overrated?

[Tempt8tion]

I know, I know. It’s always a bad idea to have an affair. I have been on the receiving end of infidelity and I know it can totally ruin you. Not to mention DC. So why is my desire to feel wanted and to experience excitement so strong? Long term monogamy really doesn’t make sense does it?!

How can I channel this yearning into something that is not going to wreck my family life?

Does some harmless and very light flirting help? I hardly have any contact with other males and sometime I think if I could just chat purely platonically with other men it would help. I’m just rather bored with DH

Phillip Schofield is a deceitful, self centred, manipulative prick that uses people

Is that what you aspire to ?

You are just bored, find a hobby, join a club and focus on your kids.

(You will be hearing that crap anyway all the time if you become single so the earliest you get into it...)

Nah, just joking, but I have much preferred my life in the jungle than all those years I felt miserable living in a gilded cage.

I think it's v interesting that you feel your dh is also not happy with how things are between you. It sounds like there is a lot of hope to make it better/more exciting though if you are communicating about this. I think you should go to some couples counselling ie relate or similar which would be a safe confidential environment where someone could help you by facilitating conversations that would help both of you to move forward in a positive way so you can both work towards both feeling happier and more fulfilled, in whatever format that takes. People often assume couples counselling is just a last resort for when one party has had an affair, or wants out, but it's not. It can work well for issues like this.

@ffsjudy. I admire/relate to you’re approach: “it’s my stuff and I have to deal with it” . At least you’re owning it, taking responsibility and not acting on it. I think this is what I have/am doing, or want to try to do.

I feel a bit more focussed on doing the right thing and not getting carried away, not that I believe I was going to act upon it by having an affair, but I think I was getting dangerously close to saying something I may regret to DH.

It’s a fine line between being open and honest and doing the “it’s my stuff and I have to deal with it thing”. Going back to an earlier question, maybe I would be decidedly not-impressed if DH was the one writing my post, and possibly would be “it’s your stuff, you deal with it”.

God knows tbh. I still think long term monogamy is overrated and probably not the natural way of things.

Long term monogamy is a ridiculous con

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/women-likely-lose-interest-sex-long-term-relationships/

AnyFucker maybe schofield was a bad example, but can you not see that this is not necessarily a black and white issue, that there are shades of grey here? Like with most things in life?

You need some excitement in your life with DH. He is probably feeling similar.
Kate garraway had an affair with her DH to put excitement back in their marriage, start there.

I like your post Mother and am glad you’ve been happy in the jungle.

I sort of like to dream that I will venture to the jungle one day, without hurting DH or DC ideally, but maybe that won’t ever be possible. I do feel able to focus on other things like DC and hobbies etc, it’s just nice to chat on here with others who may be feeling similar and getting other views too

Interesting issue OP. I'm not sure how natural monogamy is. I feel very little for DH these days. But I have to keep my kids at the centre of everything. Which is why I'm acting like everything is peachy when in reality I actually I wouldn't be that disappointed if I died next week.

What confuses me is the MN standard advice is 'affairs devastate your kids' (completely understand that bit of course!) but that if you are no longer attracted to your husband you must 'do the decent thing' and end it. How is that any less devastating for the kids? I have no answer to that so I'm currently pretending I'm a happy mum and keeping the family unit together. I bitterly regret getting in to this but the kids are real people who rely on me and who love their dad - and he's a good dad. So I just stick it out. I'm thinking of seeing the GP for some anti-ds as it might make the whole thing more bearable.

Totally agree with you @Fithles

There are many opposing views on here, I confess I have posted under different names with related issues and never truly really come out wiser/with a plan. Which is why I just think long term monogamy is not really natural. Isn’t natural human life expectancy around 35years? Ie have children in late teens and raise them to their late teens?

The fact that we can expect to live to at least double this leads us to questioning/mid life crisis tendencies.

I’ve been going round this loop for years and don’t know what’s going to finally make anything change. Like you, I just stick it out and have has times on ADs.

Do you really mean you wouldn’t mind if you died, or did you mean he died? If it’s the former then GP definitely worth a visit.

@Fithles if that's really how you feel about your husband then I'd bet my house that your children will have picked up on that. Children are far more perceptive than we realise and often parents being happy apart is much better for them.
It makes me sad that you feel the best thing is for you to stay in your marriage.

Sorry I misread that as you wouldn't mind if he died.

My point still stands though, sounds like you could do with talking to someone @Fithles

How often do you have sex with your husband OP? And how does it make you feel? Do you enjoy it, tolerate it, or does his touch make your skin crawl?

It makes my skin crawl. I don't think we've had sex this year - and I try to avoid it. He seems not bothered though. We haven't had much sex for the last decade.

"I just think long term monogamy is not really natural"

And this is an interesting question. I've read a little about tribal (hunter gatherer/early agricultural) cultures. I'm not anthropologist, but I get the impression monogamous marriage was the norm, with polygamy usually being reserved for the leader. Of course the early death rate was much higher than now, which skewed things. However divorce was usually allowed, and where it was the divorce rate was typically about as high as current Western standard, or a bit higher.

Op i think i i understand.my marriage is at a low, i want to separate, he wont leave. He knows we are both unhappy but has his head in the sand. Im fantasising about a guy i see sometimes at work, as he occasionally has meetings here. I dont think he sees me as anything but a colleague, but god what id do to him if there was no comeback

I had an affair, and left my marriage. Now, is it a jungle out there? Probably, but living with someone who thought selfish sex and being friends was enough was slowly killing me.

I didn't leave when I was unhappy because I thought I couldn't choose my own happiness over a stable family home for my kids.

But then the affair showed me just how much I was missing, how much I needed and then I knew my kids couldn't have parents who never had a loving relationship.

But that's the choice. Take the kids away from a stable home and seeing dad every day in pursuit of my own happiness (God how great it would be to feel cared for!) or forsake my happiness for theirs. I kind of made the choice to never put myself first once I had kids didn't I? I'd have left years ago if there were no kids involved.

The relationship boards are full of posts about kids devastated by divorce. I'm not sure whether my kids would notice the difference between 'mummy left daddy because she doesn't love him' and 'mummy left daddy because she loves someone else'.

If he is feeling similar have an opened minded chat as long as you bother agree there are plenty of options these days.
@PermanentTemporary post is interesting, why not try somethings involving others but together. Best to venture with someone you trust. @PermanentTemporary I am sorry about your DH. Your post gave me a bit of a wake up call. Life is short.

Grass is always greener OP.

Being single in this jungle is SHIT!!

Work in your marriage, get counselling, date night, read sex manuals (is that still at thing?)

Do what you have to do to save your marriage.

Being a single parent is shit.

@WanderingLost167 I feel the same, I did the same and now I'm right in the middle of the indecision stage. Staying because of guilt, because DH is making an effort since going to relate and is a good man, essentially.

OP, sorry but no real advice, except I wish I'd told my DH earlier that my feelings were a real threat and got us to counselling earlier.
I would say I felt like you up until last year, then I took that step. All over now and so painful knowing I can't be with OM but it was the thing that showed me what I needed and what I was missing.
I looked to other men for attention and excitement all the time throughout my marriage. Thought it was just normal feelings but then I properly fell for someone and he for me. Couldn't be together though, wouldn't have worked.

I'm still trying to get to the point where my DH understands its over without hurting him or the children more than it has to. They and he know nothing, but they've all seen me depressed, unhappy and I just feel empty. Eventually it'll start to affect the children, when I realised neither of them had seen any affection from us towards each other in years, that worried me.
I'm on ADs and I'm hoping they'll help me to do it calmly, also worried I'll become numb to it and think everything is OK and stay..

By the time you get to this stage, you are unusually past the point of no return relationship wise. reading the dating thread on here would put me right off though. Sounds hideous. There are a lot of couples in this position. Life, when you have kids is boring for many years

Go for it. What's the worse that could happen?

I'd say boring is normal, but if you are actively feeling miserable or you have 'the ick' when you think about him, sex, touching him... That's different.

I'd give anything for just boredom now.

@Tempt8tion

Look up Estel Perel. She is a therapist who has worked with couples for a long time.
She has two books that can be helpful - ‘Mating in Captivity’, and The State of the Affair’.... There are also Ted talks and podcasts....
She agrees with you in a way about monogamy. And her first book might give you some ways of thinking of how to make your marriage more fulfilling for both of you.
Second is about affairs and how people get through/reinvent their marriages. Yours isn’t an affair story, at least not yet - but it’s relevant because many affairs in her experience happen for the same reasons/same feelings you have. And the way those coupes reinvent their relationships is to recognise what’s missing, and trying to find ways to preserve the marriage while giving each other ways to satisfy some of those needs.
It doesn’t mean it’s all about open marriages, it can be ‘licence to flirt’, etc. Sort of what you were saying in one of your posts.