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Trying to find a reason to get out of my marriage


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Now, let me say, on a conscious rational level I don't want to get out, there's a part of me that knows it's not going to be for the better. But I keep stewing about things and I can't stop. And I think that's happening because there's an underlying desire to get out.

 

Some backstory for the new people:

 

Several years ago, my wife asked me about my stance on pornography, which she asked on the auspices of no-judgement, trying to be understanding, trying to make us closer type of way, which in retrospect I think was designed to get me to open up about it so she could pounce. And she did. I told her that I did use it from time to time, that I thought it was fine in moderation. That it wasn't a replacement for her, and didn't cause me to view her poorly in anyway. Nothing too outrageous. Fairly common outlook. This ended up being a sticking point in our marriage for about two years, as she morphed to being "understanding" to zero-tolerance, porn is cheating, "here's every article I found on the internet about why porn is bad," etc.

 

God, in retrospect I wish I had just kept my freakin mouth shut and pulled the "Yes dear, you're right dear," routine from the beginning, but I honestly thought she wanted my opinion. Essentially she wasn't gonna be happy until I agreed with her. Which I conceded, I do think it can be hurtful to some women, and you shouldn't do things to hurt your partner if you can avoid it, which I try my best to do. But her constant unsolicited nagging on the subject really put me off to her and I didn't treat her the best. And I regret that. And I have apologized.

 

Now, I'm not saying she was justified, I don't think cheating is ever justified, but she did eventually go off the deep end a bit. She ended up having an emotional affair with one of my coworkers she met at a party of mine. I could probably forgive something like that, except for the fact that I knew about it from almost the beginning, told her that was especially egregious, due to the fact she was she was sh_ting in my proverbial bed and making my job exponentially more difficult. You cheat with someone at your own job, you can take responsibility for that and take action, quit, transfer, whatever. You cheat with someone at THEIR job, its a whole different ballgame, and extra crappy. Anyway, she really wasn't curtailing this as quickly as she should have, but she cut him off eventually. I don't know if she did this as part of some revenge plot, she denies it, but it sure feels that way.

 

She also seemed checked out. I eventually picked up on this, and decided to seek marriage counselling, where she admitted that she was checked out and planned on leaving me when it became expedient. Now, I didn't go to counselling because I thought it was going to work. I had no idea if it was going to work and was actually quite pessimistic about the whole thing in my mind. I went because I wanted to be able to say I took every reasonable step before calling it quits. Forgiveness wasn't even on my mind at all, I was in firefighting mode and figured if things got better that would take care of itself. In general I'm pretty good about not holding grudges. So we went to counselling, until it hit the point of diminishing returns.

 

Anyway, things seemed to be getting better. She told me she felt a weight was lifted from her shoulders. That she wanted to make things work. And it seemed to be, until I accidentally stumbled on something on her phone.

 

Turns out she had been texting a different guy for months, a mutual acquaintance of ours. I only caught the tail end of it because she deleted everything else. He sent her a book recommendation on how to open your relationship, "The Ethical Sl_t", which she bought. His final line to her was something to the effect of "If he doesn't agree to this, you know what to do". To me, that obviously means divorce, but she claims to not know what he meant by that. She also claims that they were just friends, but that he was a confidant and helped open her mind.

 

I was INCENSED. Not because she bought a book. You're curious about something, fine, buy whatever book you want. I'm not going to be a book censor. I read stuff about all sorts of things that I don't practice. But I told her, in no uncertain terms, that if she wanted to pursue an open relationship, she was going to have to do it on her own, and I would grant her a divorce immediately. I was STUNNED that someone with such a strong and extant zero tolerance policy on pornography being "cheating", and wanting to be the literal "only girl in the world", would consider something like this for ONE SECOND, thought it was completely hypocritical, and told her so. Finally, we got to a place you wanted, and now you pull this sh_t?? I could tell she was a bit upset that I wouldn't even consider it, but I told her that I know who I am, know it would inevitably end our marriage, and I'll be freaking damned if I'm going to fake understanding on this and then have a multi-year downward spiraling argument about it. She eventually agreed, knowing it would destroy us, to drop it.

 

Fast forward a couple years, and things appear okay on the surface. We're not arguing much, there seems to be less power struggles than before, less control. Things SHOULD be fine. But I still have a burning resentment in my heart. I try to give her the benefit of the doubt, that she was confused, lost, maybe having a mid-life crisis. That it was partly my fault. Those are the words I tell myself when I feel this way, but it's just not working. My trust in her is a sliding window, day by day thing. I cannot unequivocally trust her on a blanket level. I feel like I'm just waiting for her to slip up one day and say she wants a divorce, and I will immediately agree without a moment's hesitation, weather she means it or not. This is, obviously, not where I want to be. My rational side wants to be a forgiver, to love my wife, but I feel like my anger has gone on too long and that I must really want out. And I don't know what to do about it. I know I don't want to beat dead horses, but I can't do nothing either.

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Porn is not cheating. But, if it isn't okay for her. You are not compatible.

 

She is a big hypocrite. She goes off on your occasional porn, yet she has cheated with two men. Unbelievable. She also sounds quite vindictive - cheating with coworker.

 

 

You need to seek and attorney, and find someone you can trust. If you are not happy, you are not happy.

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It’s interesting that you both pretend that things are ok when they’re not ok. I think things could get better for both of you if you both stopped pretending. Maybe you could reach a compromise. Or maybe you will simply discover that you’re not compatible. Either way, it would be liberating to simply be honest about what you want and need.

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You need to seek and attorney, and find someone you can trust. If you are not happy, you are not happy.

I've always thought that unhappiness didn't necessitate divorce. Emotions can be temporary. But this one has festered.

It’s interesting that you both pretend that things are ok when they’re not ok. I think things could get better for both of you if you both stopped pretending. Maybe you could reach a compromise. Or maybe you will simply discover that you’re not compatible. Either way, it would be liberating to simply be honest about what you want and need

I don't really know how to do that. If I bring up polyamory she'll just say it was a momentary flight of fancy and she didn't even read the book. I could probably get her to admit that the idea of having non-sexual "dates" with other people sounds appealing on paper, but that it isn't practical. She's said as much. I'm fine with our current arrangement. She seems totally fine, loving, happy. There's just this backward anger I can't shake. I've already told her in no uncertain terms I was pissed about everything that had gone on, and she apologized and called her actions "stupid", but that didn't fix things.

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I would just be honest that you are not happy and you are not sure how long it will take to be not mad.

 

I can tell her I'm not happy. I don't think it's right to fake that you're happy when you aren't. But if the premise is that I'm going to eventually "not mad", which I hope is the case, then I don't know if I want to bring up the drama. Maybe I'll do the individual counselling and if she asks what it's about, tell her.

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I do see how she just wanted to ensnare you in a trap. I also think that she may have designed it to justify her behavior that had already been ongoing.

 

If that is so, I would just leave her. It is too vindictive of a way of being than I would want in my life.

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I don't really know how to do that. If I bring up polyamory she'll just say it was a momentary flight of fancy and she didn't even read the book. I could probably get her to admit that the idea of having non-sexual "dates" with other people sounds appealing on paper, but that it isn't practical. She's said as much. I'm fine with our current arrangement. She seems totally fine, loving, happy. There's just this backward anger I can't shake. I've already told her in no uncertain terms I was pissed about everything that had gone on, and she apologized and called her actions "stupid", but that didn't fix things.

 

I don't understand why you would bring up polyamory. Is that really the issue that you are struggling with?

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I don't understand why you would bring up polyamory. Is that really the issue that you are struggling with?

Not really. I mean I'm still pissed about that but it's not an ongoing issue. I mainly said that because you were talking about compromise. There's nothing to compromise about imo. I think it's more about me just being able to let go.

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...

 

Fast forward a couple years, and things appear okay on the surface. We're not arguing much, there seems to be less power struggles than before, less control. Things SHOULD be fine. But I still have a burning resentment in my heart. I try to give her the benefit of the doubt, that she was confused, lost, maybe having a mid-life crisis. That it was partly my fault. Those are the words I tell myself when I feel this way, but it's just not working. My trust in her is a sliding window, day by day thing. I cannot unequivocally trust her on a blanket level. I feel like I'm just waiting for her to slip up one day and say she wants a divorce, and I will immediately agree without a moment's hesitation, weather she means it or not. This is, obviously, not where I want to be. My rational side wants to be a forgiver, to love my wife, but I feel like my anger has gone on too long and that I must really want out. And I don't know what to do about it. I know I don't want to beat dead horses, but I can't do nothing either.

 

I think both of you need to try to understand the other one better. I think she thought that after marriage the guy only thinks about the girl her married and this is in conflict with your choice of "self satisfaction". A lot of men don't only think of their wives and her finding this out has really dipped the love she had for you. Once you two started fighting about this then she started checking out. I think she justified it to herself that her actions were then ok because what you did she considers cheating. To resolve this she needs to understand that men use it as a tool. There is no emotional connection, heck they could be mannequins. And if she really feels like it is cheating then she is welcome to the same videos. There is a mental effect of using it though, it will lower how attractive a guy finds his wife and in turn how he treats her. If she uses it too then she will also feel less about you.

 

But this video hurdle needs to be cleared and you two need to be on the same page as what is acceptable or not. You can't just passively say yes and not mean it. That's like her passively saying yes to not talking to other guys. Even if the end agreement is that you're still going to watch, there needs to be a deal as to what's fine for her to do.

 

For you, I think you need to ask her how you can tell when she's no longer trustable. How can you tell she's picked up another guy and what causes her to start doing that? Without this trust you're just waiting to hear about when she's going to do it next and then you're going to get hurt.

 

Unless these two issues get resolved you'll be living a waiting for divorce marriage as long as it lasts. The open relationship thing is just a guy taking advantage of the state of your marriage to get her for a night and her falling for it. You should tell her that about that guy.

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In most states, you don't need a specific reason to file. (Irreconcilable differences.)

 

If for unstated reasons, you're just not ready, I highly recommend you stop being an enabler.

 

In a mature way, let her know where your going, and what kind of wife and marriage you'll have there.

You never know, she may want to come along.

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Porn is a very bad idea for a marriage. Spiritually speaking Porn causes major unrealistic expectations and its actually said to be a sin in the bible. Once she became your wife, things that made her uncomfortable should be respected. HOWEVER, her cheating on you is a major deal breaker and the bible also says that's a deal breaker. I think this was over years ago. She disrespected you in the worst way. Porn is one thing but seems to me she places rules on you she won't follow. Unacceptable.

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What would need to happen for you to be able to trust her again? Does she know how deeply your trust has been broken?

 

One way or another, for your own health as well, it would be good for you to address this and resolve it. My grandma once advised me on what she called 'heart blockages'. It's literal as well as figurative, as this kind of prolonged low level stress and keeping the heart from fully opening can indeed cause heart issues . It's what you described- keeping your heart in a tight fist out of fear. Fear of getting hurt again.

 

For yourself, regardless of what she does or doesn't do, and where the marriage goes next, you could try a regular practice that encourages 'opening your heart' and letting go. Hopefully I haven't lost you in sounding too fluffy and not factual enough yet. This is something humans have worked on in many different ways for ages and in practically every culture in some way. You pick what appeals to you - could be a gratefulness practice, some spiritual practice or religious , meditation, service and reaching out to others, growing your other relationships outside the marriage, you get the idea.

 

And then you will have a better idea if you really want out of this with her, and if that makes sense with a calm mind, or if you do really want to just let it go. It's up to you and not an easy choice for sure.

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What would need to happen for you to be able to trust her again? Does she know how deeply your trust has been broken?

Yeah, I think she does, and she's sad it's come to this. I will say this. There is absolutely nothing she could say that would fix it. No amount of apologizing or promising. Even if I thought she was being 100% sincere. Because when push comes to shove, when the marriage is at the bottom of it's ups and downs, I don't believe she will be able to suppress her internalized justifications for whatever she's doing at the time, and just do whats right regardless of circumstance.

One way or another, for your own health as well, it would be good for you to address this and resolve it. My grandma once advised me on what she called 'heart blockages'. It's literal as well as figurative, as this kind of prolonged low level stress and keeping the heart from fully opening can indeed cause heart issues . It's what you described- keeping your heart in a tight fist out of fear. Fear of getting hurt again.

That's the trick, isn't it? There's a part of me that doesn't want to trust again, because I don't want to get burned again. I've heard plenty of people say "Well, every marriage has it's problems, nobody's perfect", and I totally believe that is true, but it's getting very hard to just eat that and accept it. Part of it is the actual betrayal, talking crap about me to her work girlfriends, talking about this guy to them, not listening to the (very) few of them that said this was wrong and she needed to knock it off (she had people openly encouraging her to have an affair), hatching plans behind my back then coming home and acting like everything was fine, more lies of ommision forcing me to be a detective in figuring out our relationship problems because she wouldn't tell me (I will give her points for going to marriage counselling with and opening up when I finally figured out things were not as they seemed). I also feel like she was deliberately vindictive and trying to hurt me, and that really does hurt me, while I have hurt her, not once was it with malicious intent. I definitely feel like there was malicious intent there.

 

My thought was, well, in time, this will all fade away and trust will come back. And there are signs that may be happening. I used to have very negative self talk about her when I had time to myself on a daily basis. And that isn't happening nearly as much any more, but it's not like that has been replaced with positive self talk about her. It's been a couple years now. How long is this going to take? If I had a crystal ball that said everything would be fine a year from now, that'd be one thing. But I don't.

 

For yourself, regardless of what she does or doesn't do, and where the marriage goes next, you could try a regular practice that encourages 'opening your heart' and letting go. Hopefully I haven't lost you in sounding too fluffy and not factual enough yet. This is something humans have worked on in many different ways for ages and in practically every culture in some way. You pick what appeals to you - could be a gratefulness practice, some spiritual practice or religious , meditation, service and reaching out to others, growing your other relationships outside the marriage, you get the idea.

 

Well, I don't consider myself a spiritual person, but that doesn't mean I think of things associated with spirituality (meditation, even prayer) can't work. Any resource would be appreciated. Thanks.

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