I just ended things with a good man. I feel sick.

[SeamsLegit]

13 years, our kids 12 and 8. A calm home with plenty of laughs. As I said, he's a good man. Kind, reliable, dependable, funny. But we haven't had sex in over a year, the attraction is gone for me (he hasn't changed physically) and his drive has certainly disappeared. Feels like we are roommates. Talked a few times, he is content with life as is. I did spell out things I want... passion, romance, excitement, affection. He has definitely put in an effort, complimenting me, buying me things, defrosting my car on icy mornings - but when he puts his arms around me in bed it feels wrong. He's upset (disappointed in his words). I feel anxious, nauseous. Is that a sign I made the wrong decision?? I'm 40, he's 50. The house is mine, but I don't want him to feel scared, anchorless, worried about the future. I have suggested separate rooms, cohabiting and co-parenting. He doesn't think it will work. I don't want our kids not to see him every day. I don't want him to feel excluded - he is family to me, I love him, I'm not IN love with him. I feel like I've been hanging on for things to get better for a long time. But I also feel selfish for choosing ME over our family unit as it is.

History, my mother divorced my dad and left to travel the world when I was a young teen. Definitely affected me, my life derailed, I stopped going to school, wasted the potential I had, did things I shouldn't etc. Although I was young and really, older men shouldn't have done those things - but no force etc. I feel resentful that my mum left at such a young age, my dad obviously had a hard time adjusting, things weren't great for a while - although I have minimal memories of that time. Great relationship with my dad now, recently not so great with my mum as although we were besties for years, now that I am caring for her due to ill health, I am narky and impatient a lot because she didn't look after me when she should have!

I suppose I'm scared I'm doing the same thing - but I'm not going anywhere. I'm very aware that life is short. I don't want to have regrets!! But I don't want to hurt any of my family either. Any advice is welcome, although I guess posting this before I dropped the bomb last night might have made more sense. It just bubbled out of me lying in bed, like I couldn't hold it in any longer.

Now I'm in work, and tearful. I haven't told anyone irl, I'm trying to be resilient

Morning Seams

I’m by no means an expert but you have some fairly hefty trauma to unpack from your childhood and caring for a parent who has neglected you is going to bring that up hard and fast!

Is therapy a possibility?

Passion, romance, excitement...life is not a mills and boon novel and your (now ex I guess )partner is 50. You're 40, with two children. You don't want to have regrets, but splitting up your young children's family because your life isn't exciting enough is likely to be a huge one.

As the poster above said, you have a lot of childhood trauma and influences from your upbringing, plus what looks like a highly unrealistic expectation of what married life and attraction within marriage usually looks like (read about responsive desire if you haven't already). I suspect without addressing the psychological factors behind you making this decision you are going to seriously regret it

I would love a bit more passion romance and excitement in my marriage. Our sex life is rubbish. But I honestly don’t think at this point it’s worth ending the marriage. I feel like you’ve gone for a pretty extreme measure. As others say, have you had therapy? Alone or together? I think if you’ve not burned your bridges you should slow down any big decisions. Life is short but not that short for most of us, there are likely different times ahead for you and that could be with your DH or without but I’m not sure you have to leave right now do you?

I grew up with parents who stayed in an unhappy marriage because they believed in a family unit with marriage for life and one family home for the children. I grew up resenting this however I am 36 in a sexless marriage for nearly 10 years because I don't want to break up the family, it's more valuable for my happiness to be together than break up the family for hypothetical soulmate and fantastic sex that may or may not happen. I am happy with my decision because I believe that being a parent means you put your children first. I am in many ways following my parents footsteps and see the value and benefits of their sacrifice for me and my siblings. It does seem like you are following your mother's model of putting herself first.

To be brutally honest, there is no queue of amazing eligible fantastic shaggers just eager to take on a 40 year old with her 2 kids and ex. At least leaving for an impressive career or even travel is more understandable and noble than separating for sex to me. It just feels very lowly reason to put a good man and 2 young children through. You're now off your husband but feelings change. This is likely a midlife crisis of being around age your mum and or children were the same age as she left. I think therapy might be good. It helped me come to term with my marriage, parents marriage and childhood.

Long term relationships are not generally full of passion and va va boom, unfortunately. Usually, like life in general, pretty mundane if I’m honest, with windows of passion and fun.

you don’t need to make any quick decisions, so if you can get therapy for yourself then maybe marriage counselling after that you can fully know what decision you need to make. If that’s leaving your marriage then that’s fine op, life is short!

you need to be able to be happy alone to be able to move forward, good luck op

Basically I think you're unrealistic and reliving your mum's trauma. I'd advise you to appreciate what you have and seek therapy. Hopefully your husband will take you back.

On the one hand, I believe that you have the right to happiness and to end a relationship that isn't working for you.

On the other hand, in a long term marriage (or even just partnership) with kids involved, I think there's a huge difference between, "I could do with a bit more excitement" and "I'm actively unhappy" and I'm not convinced that ending the relationship due to the former is really the right response. The reality is that we hear men saying this all the tim eand most of us are dismissive and scornful of their irresponsible approach that inevitably means more sex with other women and less time at home supporting their family. You say you're not going anywhere but is that really true? If you want this passion and excitement, you're not going to get it at home while looking after the DC.

If you broadly love him and have a good relationship, surely it's on you both to put the effort in to see if you can get things back. No relationships are perfect all the time. Everyone has tough times but most of us try to move through those.

I think you’re going to regret this as well.

You’re being unrealistic in your expectations of a long term relationship. It’s like you describe in the early days, but that doesn’t last.

It’s good that you say you love him. I see “in love” as the feelings you get in the early days. Not 20 years in.

Passion, romance and excitement is a bit knackering when you’ve got jobs, children, responsibilities. It doesn’t mean it can’t exist but it’s unlikely to be achievable as the front and centre of your existence. Have a hard thing about what is realistic, and what you want from your life not only in the short term, but in the medium and long term too.

I’m not suggesting you stay and be miserable but have a long hard look at the grass on the other side and really make sure you know whether it is greener.

You've left him because you feel like you are room mates, but want him to stay in the hose in another room, essentially making him a room mate?

If you are to make the break and you want passion and romance in your life, then you need to make a break. I presume you are going to be looking for this with someone else and you expect him to live under the same roof as you while you do this.

I don't mean to sound harsh or 'judgy', I'm just being honest as to how it sounds I don't think you have thought this through. I possibly think you need to speak to a professional re your upbringing. Could you not try couples therapy?

You could just feel like this towards him because there has been no intimate contact for a year. Again, there are therapies and medication that could help you out here.

passion, romance, excitement, affection

What do these look like to you? Sometimes we have to be really clear what we mean when we say we want more from a relationship, not because of the old men-are-simple trope but because (a) it's subjective and (b) can be a lot of pressure.

I can't tell you whether you've made the right call or not, I don't know. What does your gut say?

When I made the wrong call with a relationship, I couldn't articulate why I just knew, undeniably, in my gut that I'd made a terrible mistake.

If you don't know what your gut says, what you really want, then I suggest you get some prompt couples counselling to help you both make sense of things - and this is what I'd have suggested before, too.

Your relationship seems to have a lot going for it and that he's made an effort works in its favour. What efforts & changes have you made?

Attraction can wax & wane over time.

However, even if you're in a perfect relationship you can leave if you're unhappy and don't want it anymore, so don't stay because you feel you should.

Change is clearly needed, but if this is change in your relationship then you owe it to both of you to work these out in therapy.

Couples counselling will also help you to work out - and feel OK with- your decision to end things.

Hi OP.
There are many parts of your post that I could have written myself.
I'm 42 and was married for 18 years. 2 DC 10 and 12. I left my husband in October and am now renting my own home and co-parenting 50/50. Every day I wake up feeling sick and anxious about the future but in my heart I know I did the right thing for me. Yes, the loneliness will take a LOT of getting used to, and even though it was my choice, I am grieving for the loss of companionship, stability and friendship...but that's not enough to remain in an unfulfilling marriage.

Like you I started to feel like I didn't want to 'sleepwalk' through the rest of my life simply surviving. Over the last 10 years we'd have discussions periodically about our lack of intimacy. He just got used to the idea that I have "a low libido" but I know this isn't the case. I just went along with it. At some point I realised I do deserve at least moments of passion amongst a busy life and a partner that makes me look forward to the future, not dread it. My husband tried to be loving but it felt like my brother hugging me. The spark died a long time ago. I couldn't bear him coming near me. Some people describe it as "the ick". I felt like an awful person for making excuses not to have sex, excuses for my lack of interest in intimacy with him, my low mood, iritability at my life etc. We used to sit at opposite ends of the sofa every night, drinking wine and blanking out the elephant in the room. I slept on the sofa most nights in the last 6 months of the marriage and when I look back, I used to sleep in a different room quite often years ago in our last house for the same reasons.

I think when you know you know.

The catalyst for me leaving came when I started having feelings for someone I worked with. I'd known him for 3 years and last July, we admitted how we both felt. I knew then that if I was having deep feelings for someone else, and even imagining a future with a different person then I definately needed to make the break. My husband was not the person I was supposed to be with anymore. Things didn't progress with the other man, as we both decided that it would be the wrong thing to do to begin a new relationship. We need to focus on rebuilding ourselves individually and being there 100% for our children (he also separated from his wife for the same reasons). I am single, living alone and despite feeling adrift at the moment, I know it's right. I'm going through grief but it will ease and eventually pass.

As scary as the future is for me now, it would have been far worse to carry on living a lie until one day our children grow up, move away, have their own lives and we'd have been left wondering what the hell to do now. At least this way I am at the beginning of a new chapter, with my children as my focus alongside my own wellbeing and mental health.

Of course I know that the excitement of a new relationship doesn't last forever, I'm not naive. But I have friends who have been married for many years and still enjoy each others company, still very much love each other and can't imagine being either alone or with anyone else. That wasn't my life and it doesn't sound like it's yours either.

No-one can tell you what's best for you, but I hope my experience gives you some food for thought. I can't lie, my mental health has taken a knock since the split. I am now taking Propanolol for anxiety but as I know that the cause of the anxiety is simply fear of a new future, I know it will pass as I adjust to a new way of life, and I certainly don't intend on being on meds forever. They're just helping me through this transitional phase (I had the shakes every morning and struggled to get through the days).

We should always listen to our inner voice, our gut feeling even when the thing it's telling us is scary. Hope that all makes some sort of sense.

I'm just wondering about the timing here - I would never encourage a woman to stay in a relationship that feels wrong and also is sexless, but I see you are caring for your mother (who basically abandoned you as a child) and stressed and drained from that. Is there any chance this might be making you look at things in a way you might question later? Is this the wrong time to make a decision, basically.

Although having said that, if you are only 40 and he has lost all sex drive, there are genuine problems here.

"Kind, reliable, dependable, funny"

Never underestimate those qualities; fireworks in bed are great, but also transient. Some of the posters here would give their eye teeth for marriage to a man like that.

Please consider therapy before you wreck your family in the pursuit of an exciting sex life - not just for them, but also to avoid looking back with regret at whatever decisions you make now.

This. And, x 1000, find a counsellor to work through the painful past experiences with your parents.

This passion, romance and excitement...where and how are you going to find that with 2 children? You'll be entering the cesspit of online dating and even if you do find somebody decent who you also feel a real spark with, it'll be tempered. You'll have the children at least 50% of the time and you won't be introducing them to new men to begin with...there will be little spontaneity.
Instead of focusing on what you feel is missing from your marriage think hard about the reality of the alternative. I don't think it's worth it.

Not a single mention of the impact on the children.

I don't think anyone has to stay in an unhappy relationship, but I'll never understand how people seem to crash chaos into their children's lives while focusing on their own needs.

How do you see a passionate / affectionate relationship being, as parents to young children, at this stage in your life?
Would you schedule in sex? Once / twice / three times a week / month? Would you both be more spontaneous? Would you go away for the weekend / get the grandparents to look after children now and then?

How did the year without sex start? Did you just stop initiating? Did he? Was there a traumatic event?

Have you and he ever been to couples therapy?

It feels as though you are both looking at a binary future - together / separate - fairly quickly on the back of this. But I don’t know whether you’ve got any idea why you have come to the phase of life you are at? Or whether one or both of you cares enough to to shift it?

You say your husband is happy with things as they are. That you would like more. But you also don’t think the physical side is right, when he puts his arms around you.

When you got together, was the physical a big part of the reason why? Have you taken some time off it before?

Don’t make this a final decision. Take at least 6 months to think it over. There is no external pressure on either of you, so just explore some possible solutions and try not imagine that any of the outcomes will be perfect.

I agree with the first two posters.

Yes, @PrettyPeanut nails it too.

There's a recommended book that addresses this feeling of living with your brother in a longterm marriage.. I can't think what it's called but other posters may know.

Sex life has fluctuated over the years, 2023 we had lots of sex, and he ended up getting a vasectomy (ironically so we could have sex without contraception). The operation, or rather the recovery, was painful for him, and we didn't have sex for about 4 months. We tried once, he couldn't get an erection. About 4 months later we had sex, that was it for 2024. He wouldn't go to the doctor about his non existent sex drive, he didn't go to a chemist, he began filling in forms online for viagra but abandoned them as 'too complicated'.

He has said that surely sex isn't the most important thing in a relationship, and asked how I would feel if I was going through menopause/something and lost my drive/ability to have sex and he wanted to leave me over it. But I would go to the doctor, I would take medication to try to fix it (like I do for my mental health, he is wary of medication in general).

But it has now come to the point where I no longer want to have sex with him (although my sex drive has increased dramatically!) and the thought of him actually coming on to me is rather alarming! I felt undesirable and unwanted sexually for all of last year.

To me it's sounding like you are going through some stuff and need time to process and reflect particular about things that have happened in the past which have had nothing to do with your husband.
I think you're feeling unsure because you are unsure.
Can you speak to him to suggest some time apart to think...suggest both need space to think about the future and what they want. I remember an expression about never making big decisions in a 'storm' and I feel this is a storm for you.
I think therapy etc as others suggested would be beneficial. Good luck and take care of yourself.