My husband and I have been married a long time (for me): 15 years (!), but we’ve always been a rather low-behavioral-engagement couple. I’m not super into physical-romantic closeness, and neither is he. Furthermore, he wasn’t taught to celebrate things like birthdays or anniversaries, but its been largely ok with me throughout the years because I’m compulsive enough enough to plan things (whether or not he’s participating), and because I really just thought I wanted a best friend/ partner, without the performative trappings of a traditional relationship (mas o memos).
That said; we’re monogamous, and I moved away from my friends, family, and job to support him and his job. We had kids and we moved to a house his parents bought for him with an odd floor plan (way too close to his very socially active family), and he snores, and I I couldn’t sleep, and eventually I moved upstairs while he moved downstairs, so now it feels sometimes like I’m co-parenting in the same house with him. This has been ok; I love being with him even if I don’t always feel fulfilled. He does feel like my best friend, and we’ve always been able to make *it* work, but since I don’t sleep in a bed with him, we have about an hour a day together sans kids, when we generally watch tv, before he poops out. We have sex maybe once every three months. This feels low to me, even though I’m a low-sex drive person (I think), and I do sometimes engage in fantasies about other people that seem to fill in the cracks of our marriage.
Recently, I’ve met someone who I’m unusually attracted to, and while I feel like “normally” I wouldn’t indulge an outsider, Ive been lost in limerence. I’ve literally felt like it’s unbelievable that my husband finds me sexy or interesting. I don’t even find myself sexy or interesting, but the idea that someone is really turned on trying to gain that level of intimacy with me is so beguiling. It (the idea that someone wants me) has taken hold of me, and it poisons how I view my husband’s interactions, so that I think it obvious that my husband doesn’t want me.
I want to be a good, loving best-pal partner, but I also relish the idea of feeling desirable and desired… I’ve talked to my husband about wanting more sensuality, connection, and just…attention, (leaving out the specifics of wanting to be intimate with someone else), but it’s as if he’s paralyzed (or apathetic). He doesn’t do anything… and while I understand we are both complicit in our own relationship, i just feel so…unmoved right now, and like I need something more.
I love my husband and I don’t want to leave him, but I dream about being desired by other people all day long now. I have no friends or family close by anymore- it’s all HIS life and support system, and I am feeling trapped and guilty and duplicitous…and horny. I want my limerent object and they are amorphous enough to represent the fulfillment of every desire that occurs to me, and the further I indulge the idea of a different life, the further I feel from my present life.
It’s my anniversary with my husband this week, and normally I would be planning something celebratory because I love celebrations and planning ahead. That said, my husband does not celebrate…anything… and I just lack the energy to make more plans this year that he doesn’t care about and (for the first time), I don’t care about. It feels bad to not care…my husband is sort of starting to understand that there is an issue between us, but not enough to uh…make a dinner reservation. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m co-signing our divorce by giving up the ghost that we should celebrate our anniversary, but at the same time, he’s so...ineffectual. Normally, I would just suck it up and try to plan the sort of night I would enjoy, but this year, I just can’t imagine a way we could celebrate that would fulfill the connection I want. But it’s bad not to celebrate?
So, what would you do? Shine it on? Break it off? Or try and communicate through the same issues that we’ve tossed around for years? I don’t want to divorce, but I do yearn for a clean slate, and the enthusiasm that comes with it…I knowwwww this is my issue (hi! I’m the problem it’s me), but I’m too exhausted to see the solution. Little help?
