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I am not pooh-poohing the great advice I received here. Please don’t be too harsh. Yesterday I decided to pickup my sketchbook again, spoke to my husband about my unhappiness, set an appointment to seek help, did some planning for a business I intend to start, enrolled myself in another language class. I am trying to take small steps into getting better.

Yes, that is the issue indeed. The fact that I don’t have friends to share my other interests with. I don’t do well in large groups. I find it challenging to connect with people that way. Over the course of my entire lifetime, I only had one friend in every country that I’ve lived in. I am still looking for that friend in the country I’m currently living in. I do not intend to hang out with ANY of my husband’s male friends without him. That is inappropriate.

All of my husband’s friends hug me and kiss me on the cheek when they see me. This is a normal greeting here. I have had in depth conversations with almost all of them as well. There is nothing malicious about a hug. There is nothibg malicious about being friends on facebook and there is nothing malicious about thanking the host of a party. It seems like everyone has painted a picture of my husband’s friend as someone who is trying to hit on me or “isn’t against a bit of excitement with a friend’s wife”. We do not secretly correspond, nor do we secretly meet up in private. Even if, say, there is some attraction on his part as well, you can rest assured that he has not and will not act upon it. Nor will I.

First of all, we don’t know if the feeling is mutual. For all I know, he is just a nice person and is genuinely just happy to find someone who gets him. He is not making any moves whatsoever. I am facebool friends with a lot of my husband’s friends and sometimes they send me messages too. All of these communications are not by any means a secret to my husband. I tell my husband whatever I talk about with his friends, even the in depth conversation I had with this friend currently in question. I am aware that marriage consists of other things besides love and passion. And in no way, at any time did I mention I was going to act upon my thoughts.

Everyone in my age bracket speaks English in this country. The language problem is another issue that doesn’t have anything to do with making friends. I am not a SAHM, I work with my husband in their family business. The problem with making friends here is not the language. It’s such a tight knit society that you’ll only ever be welcomed if you grew up with them.

I have dated a few people whom I had a lot in common with, it didn’t work out. I stayed married to him because he is a good person, and as I said nobody is perfect,and everybody’s different. So our differences shouldn’t be the basis of happiness. I know this is my problem, I lost myself along the way. This unhappiness happened gradually, I believe. At some point before getting married we were living together and I was busy with school, he was busy with work. We fell into a routine of binging tv shows like a zombie just to unwind. It wasn’t like this when we got married.

Again, there is the baby sitting issue. We were supposed to travel somewhere on December for a friend’s wedding but we couldn’t do it since my mother-in-law is unwilling to watch our child for a week. We can’t take her with us since the place isn’t too baby friendly.

He is concerned about my needs. Whenever I raise the issue with him, he tries to do something about it. The only problem is consistency.

I have discussed this with him, nothing changed and it has been years

The more I reply to people here, the more I realize that this is not about my husband or his bestfriend. I love going to museums, my husband doesn’t. I like history, my husband doesn’t. My husband loves watching tv shows involving drugs, ghetto neighborhoods and such, I don’t. My dad had a susbstance abuse problem and it’s a trigger for me. We are just different

I am self-sabotaging and self-loathing. I have everything I need. And yet here I am.

I really don’t want to start anything with his bestfriend. They were living together and before I even met his bestfriend I already knew so much about him. He had depression, tried to kill himself, etc. Definitely not something I want to get tangled with since I am so similar, it will just be like going down the rabbit hole. Admittedly, I have issues. And clearly, they are the source of all this mess in my head. Sometimes I feel like my husband is no longer attracted to me since we’re rarely intimate. To married people here, how often do you have sex with your spouse? We do it once a month. Is that normal? Perhaps, my husband also needs to think about whether he still wants to be with me or not

Drinking is a culture in this country. They’re not all alcoholics, my husband enjoys drinking but I wouldn’t categorize him as an alcoholic. I enjoy drinking as well. I am an introvert, and he is an extrovert who has never had any suicidal thoughts his entire life. He loves being around a lot of people and I am the complete opposite. He has never hit me or screamed at me whatsoever. When we have arguments which rarely happens and he raises his voice a little bit he instantly apologizes for it. He is a very kind soul. I, on the otherhand, am a very damaged person. Severely damaged from mental abuse from my parents and previous relationships. I am lucky he puts up with me

Yes, I put it under infidelity because I felt like I was emotionally cheating and it was appropriate to put this issue under infidelity. It is dangerous, I agree. When you keep things to yourself, the urge becomes overwhelming and all-consuming. This is the very reason why I wanted to speak about it, because I don’t want to play with fire

I have thought about going back to my country but I wanted to take him and out child, not divorce him