I have been with my wife for 14+ years and we have children together. Our life is setup well now, except for one area, sex. It's always been an area of mismatch between us. Now I'm thinking of ending the marriage for another woman. I'm entering mumsnet knowing you are going to judge me and hate me, and perhaps this is what I deserve. Please at least try to be polite in your attacks. This isn't easy for me even though I'm the one causing all the pain.
The story of our downfall starts with me. When we had children together, I did not step up as a father and house worker for the first 2 years and sex and even emotional connection essentially froze for us. In addition, I was absent, neglectful, a work-a-holic, bad at setting boundaries with work. What she got was the broken left overs after a pretty tough work week. What I got was her totally spent from being with the kids all the time, day and night. She was cruel to me, I was absent and detached.
At that point in the marriage, we were exhausted and fighting the whole time, she was hating how little support I gave her, and I was focused purely on bringing home money for our large mortgage. I could see we were heading for a divorce after some particularly bad fights, sometimes in front of family, and doubled down to save the marriage and chose to hold my tongue after every lashing. I've since spoken to her about this time, and she swears divorce was never on her mind, and she would have continued that existence forever, even if I hadn't of improved.
I changed jobs, made time for her and the house, learned a lot of how hard it is to raise kids and run a house and the exhaustion was more fairly spread, although my career took a hit from the job move. After 2 years of me working on the family, she started to open up, talk to me like an equal again, and we occasionally had sex. Perhaps once a month.
For reasons I don't know why, we were so foolish, we had our first chat about libidos and sex drives at this point in our marriage, a house and multiple kids in. My wife revealed her ideal amount is once a month if things are going well. And for her it was real work to have to do it more than that. Mine is multiple times a week. We settled on once every 2 weeks as the compromise. By this point, I'm a more skilled house worker, the kids are a bit older, we're sleeping more, the mortgage isn't cripplingly high and life is better.
In the back of my head however, I completely panicked. I had no idea she could go a month without sex. I honestly thought missing sex was due to me being a terrible husband and father which partly I worked on to save the marriage, but partly I fuelled my sex drive into the marriage and improving myself. Now in hindsight, the flags were there before we got married that her sex drive was low compared to mine. Early on, it was once a week, I didn't raise it however. The sex quality was easily the best I had ever experienced with anyone, so once a week didn't seem as big a deal. Of course now it's become essentially a chore for her and the frequency has dropped. Of course, all the exciting elements have been stripped back to the least possible while still allowing for orgasm for both. If I raised my concerns, we fought, and sex went away. If I didn't fight, sex was infrequent and there was peace in the house. For years I chose peace.
I don't know when exactly this started, but eventually I started looking for sex hookups online, and discovered a few things. I'm not as attractive to potential sexual partners as I used to be, I'm old and a weirdo online looking for sex. Humbling and slightly humiliating but fair enough. I also discovered many of the women online who want sex, at least where I was looking, have really serious issues and as I got more desperate for sexual attention, I found myself lowering my own standards to try and have sex. I was successful in convincing a few online women to meetup, but when it came down to it, the guilt and the obvious mismatch in the kind of sex we wanted made it impossible for me to go through with it. For example, one woman desired a married man and that turned her on. I played along initially, but I didn't enjoy the idea of cheating on my wife and she started to sense it. Another woman was young and liked me to be as old as possible, yes she was attractive, but I found the whole thing creepy. Another woman was extremely aggressive and wanted me to completely abuse her, I half played along to my shame, but we both figured out that I'm actually completely harmless and am just not a sadist. I enjoy when my sexual partner enjoys sex, so it really made no sense. Even in my frustrated horny state, I had the intuition that if I practised harming women to relieve my sexual tension, I would over years become someone really bad. So I continued to seek online for women who wanted sex, but continued to not follow through when I realised there was something really wrong.
Eventually I stumble on a woman who I really click with. It's a slow burn at first, and we just chit-chat about life. Chit chat over time becomes more emotional and flirty. Flirty becomes sexting, and sexting became nudes. I was floored when I saw her, she's beautiful, and apparently she fancies me as well. A couple of embarrassing points, she's 11 years younger than me, and she even has some similar features to my wife. I didn't plan for that, and it's not the reason I'm with her, but it's worth mentioning, so you can judge me even more.
We have recently made our emotional affair physical, which I see now was possible because we were both vulnerable with each other before we had sex. We have a lot in common, sexual desires, but also outlook in life, some overlap in our anxiety and neediness. We're not quite in love yet, but it's clear we have strong feelings for each other.
She however doesn't have children, and if she wasn't with me, I think she could find someone just like me, but younger and without a family already. She however seems still keen to have me, and honestly from my side, I'm keen to have her. There's only so much I will push her away.
We're still figuring each other out on big things and it's slower going because of the affair context. There's only so much time in the day to figure each other out, and maybe in this time we will discover a boundary of the other which is unacceptable and this will fizzle out. The biggest decision I will need to make is whether I'm willing to go through the whole creating children phase again in order to have her. Almost certainly if she doesn't desire children, then I will be all in. And even if she does desire children, I suspect for her, I could be convinced. This time round, I know how to be a supportive husband and father. I know to prioritise the family. I think because we had the sex drive chat early, even if sex dried up for years because she was looking after children, I feel confident I could raise it with her as a need and we could negotiate it back eventually. She's open to discussing sex as a need. I see now, discussion about sex with my wife is a such a fragile topic that we both leave more hurt than when we started.
Other things worth mentioning, we do both have some childhood issues which will likely mean we both suffer from low confidence issues. I think we have both struggled to state our needs in relationships clearly as needs. That eventually has resulted in us being unhappy in our separate relationships and ultimately cheating. I think we have to each accept the responsibility that we created a situation with our partners partly because of our weakness to negotiate for a need that we felt was important, it's really not the fault of my wife for example that I don't have a lot of sex. I could have left her years ago when the cost to her and me was lower, but I didn't. I think I'm now old enough and mature enough where I can do that with a partner and state my needs, and I'm really of the opinion I need to service my partners needs. I've never treated my affair partner as a young woman or patronised her, but one worry I do have is that she's still figuring herself out. We're both people who by definition didn't get their needs met within a primary relationship and now wish to convert the affair into a real relationship. We're going to face so many more hurdles than is necessary to be a couple, and yet, when I talk to her, it feels right. I should be less hopeful, but I think she's worth it.
I don't really know what to expect from MN. I've read a few threads on this topic of mostly women laughing at these stupid older men chasing after younger women. I can't believe I'm the guy at the end of this joke, I'm most annoyed at myself for having gotten myself into this situation. So there you have it, yet another sad story of a middle aged man doing middle aged man things.
I know I won't get sympathy here, but it is true I feel terrible. I don't exactly have the biggest circle of friends anyway, but for a topic as dangerous as this, I literally have nobody I can confide in.