Another awful weekend with DH..now want to look elsewhere

[Anxiousauntee]

Our marriage, despite my numerous efforts to try and find ways to deal with his unreasonable obnoxious behaviour, feels like it is truly over. Due to cost of living issues, I cannot afford to move out but I’m effectively a single woman now and will be taking steps to become this officially with a divorce.

Throughout our marriage he has continually gaslighted and emotionally abused me. I have now finally started to feel more human and like a new woman. Reading other threads and posting on here has helped me become this. All despite his best efforts to freeze me out sexually or to make me feel undesirable and un feminine.

Does it now sound bad that I’d like to set up a dating profile and start to consider new relationships? There is no way back now for us as a couple, but on weekends like this I crave intimacy and touch or even just raw sex as I’ve been without it so long. Is this wrong?

You've jumped a few steps on the road to intimacy. Sounds like in your head you are planning divorce and in your head you imagine a new and better man - one that is willing to date a married person house-sharing, found online, will just be a total dick at best tbh, you'll get very poor offerings and would have to drop to v low standards to find someone willing (not worth it and nothing like you imagine).

Start the actual divorce proceedings first, you can do that while still under the same roof if needs be. Selling your home will put you in a better position than moving out right now - depending if living conditions are tolerable. If you disengage and grey rock, there's nothing for him to gaslight on. If you do any housework on his behalf, just stop doing it.
Divorcing and separating are not times for dating, it's a time to focus on sorting your life out and focusing on what's best for DC.
The sooner you make things official, the nearer you will be to a time when you can date, so don't hang about, get the ball rolling.

Problem is no decent man will want to date someone who’s married and living with husband

which puts you in the murkier pond of ENM and Feeld and other married men

approach with caution ⛔️

totally get your sentiment
but what you want isn’t easily accessible without a fuck ton of drama

I get it, but an affair is not the way. You need to tell your husband that you want to divorce. Tell him as soon as you can, tomorrow ideally. Then focus on yourself and DC navigating through the divorce. After he's moved out and things have settled, start dating. The divorce doesn't need to have come through, but your husband needs to be living elsewhere and everyone understand you are no longer together.

For perspective: think back to this time last year. I bet it doesn't feel like that long ago. You were probably just fighting through bad weekends and trying to work out what the fuck to do. Well, in that time again, you could be completely free. If you start proceedings now. Or, you could be exactly where you were then, where you are right now. It is in your power to make this change!

@Anxiousauntee

I think people who tell you to go through divorce first, work on yourself, wait for a relationship - don’t quite get how it feels to be in an unhappy relationship without a human connection. And I think they don’t understand that one may crave a physical connection BUT not a relationship.

And, of course - the actual divorce takes time. Mine took over two years.
My FWB helped me get through it. In the sense that i had an escape from the stress and arguments. I am able to separate sex and emotional attachment - so it worked for me. Made it easy to not be thinking about divorce all the time.

So - in your place - i’d try looking around and see.

Lifes to short go have some fun ! Treat dating as a hobby!

@Anxiousauntee My marriage crumbled he had an affair and unfortunately, due to Covid we had to live together. I was certain there was no coming back from what he put me through- so once jabbed I jumped onto online dating, found a nice guy and did the deed on date three.

I wasn’t looking for a relationship I just needed a sexual experience and I knew at that point my marriage was dead.
I have no regrets, in fact I’m glad I did it.
If you want to go out and meet someone for that purpose I say go for it.

More than one DC?
I always find it amazing that even when knowing (by your own admission) that the relationship is bad, children - plural - are brought into it. One, possibly - before everything goes to pot - but more than one? Daft. And irresponsible.

Go date.
Go have fun and forget the miserable marriage.
You owe him nothing.
Be discreet...married men manage it so I am sure you can.
It is no one's business nor is it his.
Be safe, happy, have fun!

If you put off dating because "He might get nasty or whatever" who is still controlling you?.
Get real this advise to wait.. for what.
Your free

It doesn’t sound like you have officially separated at all. Having an argument and one spouse saying this isn’t working and we need to separate isn't carte blanche to sleep with whomever you want them. But it seems you want to have to cheat and have an affair - which is what it is called on here often when a guy sleeps with other women after checking out of his marriage.

I'm going to go against the grain here.

I was in your situation, had told DH i wanted to get divorced. We had to live together still as at time no way to finance the split.

I started online dating as a way to get out of the house and have some company as my friends were often busy with their own stuff.

I really enjoyed my time. Met lots of different types of people and just saw it as a way to socialise. I didn't sleep with any of them and I wasn't looking for The One. I never went on more than 2 dates with each person.

When I wanted sex I had some fwb situations that saw me through.

Once DH moved out, I started looking seriously and eventually met my now DH.

Wishing you luck.

I completely understand, being only early 30s and stuck in an unhappy relationship with no intimacy myself. I still think that encouraging an affair is very bad advice. The OP should inform the husband that she is done, and they should sort out their living arrangements. Then she can go after men for relationships, FWB, one night stands, whatever. The problem isn't that she wants to look elsewhere, it's that she doesn't seem to want to inform her husband first.

Don't be daft, do you think relationships can't sour after multiple DC? Did you miss the part about the gaslighting?

My own relationship went to total fuck after first DC. Through the fog of it, I just about managed to realise that I better not have another DC and figure my way out of the situation. But it wasn't easy because I had always wanted, and we had always planned, multiple DC. It is very difficult to fully adjust to the fact that your life is completely different to your plans, and that your partner is actually a completely different person to the person you've spent 10 years with, that he's not just suffering some sort of post-baby stress. You think: let's just keep going a little longer, things will go back to normal, time is ticking... Two, there is pressure from everyone to have a second. And three, there is a sort of... fog that descends on you when you're weeds deep in an unhappy relationship, especially with abuse and gaslighting. It's easy to come to believe what the partner tells you. That YOU are the problem, the bad mum, the incompetent bitch. And you think maybe with a second I'd be better: maybe I'd not make those same mistakes, maybe I'd be able to do it all right now I know what I'm doing. Of course it's a trap, there is no such thing as getting it right with these men.

But yes, carry on blaming women for being abused, why don't you.

I met my FWB on bumble, we were both looking for a relationship at the time and he was also on feeld looking for a FWB in the meantime. We dated for a bit but then dialled it back to friends, then gradually warmed it up a bit to FWB!! He’s a lovely guy, but has some MH issues that make dating hard for him. It works for both of us, getting some physical intimacy and a friendship without the pressure of a full on relationship.

Give it a go, plenty of men out there who’d be happy for some good sex. I haven’t met any predators or wrong uns, just a few who wasted my time arranging a date then ghosting on the day, which is annoying and frustrating.

i would recommend bumble as women send the first message so you don’t have to fend off weirdos and don’t say you’re just looking for sex, maybe go with “something casual” so they feel that they have to at least make a bit of effort to get you into bed.

As long as your husband is fully aware that you are separated and divorcing in the near future , and now therefore both living together for convenience as single people, and that you intend to date, then its not an ideal situation but you are being honest. Anything else where he has no idea you are seeing other people is cheating and there is no justification whatsoever for that, no matter how bad you feel. It’s only remotely OK if you are completely honest with him. Nothing makes betrayal OK.

OP Just do whatever you need to do to make yourself happy.