Name changer, and long.
Mid-40's and been together with DP for just over 10 years. I have two kids from previous marriage, now late teens.
DP and I have a good life in most respects, and have come through some difficult stuff with my exP and with kids growing up. However, sex has always been an issue - he was a late starter and had very limited experience when we met and we have struggled to establish/maintain a satisfying sex life with me generally wanting more practice. We've tried counselling, together and individually, and made little progress.
A couple of years ago he asked me to marry him, and I agreed and we identified a date. As the date grew nearer I realised that I couldn't marry a man who wasn't much interested in sex, no matter how well we might be matched in other areas of our life. So we didn't marry, and carried on much as before - generally OK with occasional spats of anger and frustration, and occasional forays into getting physical, beyond hugs and cuddles.
A while back DP seemed more distant, turning away from me in bed, staying up late on the pc etc. Turns out he was back in internet touch with his 'first love' (from nearly 20 years earlier) and, eventually he told me this, told me it ws doing him no good, and said he wouldn't be in touch with her again. All this explained his behaviour at the time, and I never questioned that he'd do as he said, and break contact.
6 months later, more odd behaviour, and I discover that although he did break contact for a while, he got back in touch with her again and that they were in very regular contact. In the meantime the no-sex thing came to a head and I decided that separation was the best option and we had a few difficult months trying to unpick our joint life, and I was fairly distressed.
It was only when we ended up in a solicitor's office discussing the option wrt the house that the seriousness of the situation seemed to strike home and we began to look at how we might move forward without separating, including how to deal with the sex thing.
Cutting a long story only slightly short, the internet relationship came to an end, and there's been some progress with the sex. However, DP remained very coy about his correspondence with his ex (now married, with kids and far, far away) and he obviously struggled with breaking contact, and I also knew that he held her in some high esteem, first love and all that.
I was already pretty angry at the deception - that for a period of over a year, all the while we were struggling to find solid ground in our life, he was expending hours e-chatting to her and keeping this from me. And then I 'found' the correspondence, which he had sentimentally filed away, and which seemed to confirm things that I had suspected for years - that his discomfort was not so much with sex, but with sex with me, or perhaps, more accurately, with sex that was with anyone other than her. As I read what he'd written my world shifted big time - 10 years struggling with someone who was clearly still deeply attached to someone else, or at least the memory or image of someone else...
So, there's been no contact between them for over 6 months, and he has changed a fair bit, he's probably finally over her, but I just keep falling apart - have I really spent a decade in love with a man who was still in love with someone else? And what kind of fool does that make me?
Can anyone make sense of this? Any advice?