Julie8580

I know that I got married "for better or for worse" but the fact is that I was 22 and didn't know what that meant. We had a priest at the wedding who may as well have been a rabbi or voodoo for all it meant to me. At the time, i thought, Well, maybe one day I'll believe in god and I will be glad we had a religious ceremony. I know that marriage is a work in progress, after all, I have been married for 6+ years and the honeymoon ended long ago! I think my issue is that I am so quick to patch things over and pretend like everything is okay because of my need for a safe and comforting home life. I grew up in a house that was not comfortable, my parents were always fighting and my mother made impossible demands on me. I did see a therapist last summer who told me that in his opinion, for me, commitment meant confinement, probably because of my relationship with my mother. And so now I have to figure out a way for me to be happy in a committed relationship. I have to make commitment mean something other than confinement. I agree, Camber, that we have a disposable attitude towards everything these days. I am trying to work on this, I have been working on this for the last 2 years, I would say. I am not leaving him any time soon, but I also don't want to just pretend like everything is going to be fine just because we're married. And to the person who suggested I share my fantasies with John? Well, I have hinted at things, but he was non-receptive. He was disgusted that I have been with women before. He makes fun of me when he finds out that I masterbate. This is not the kind of person I feel like I can really share with. I am still on the fence about whether or not to be honest with him about what happened last summer. I did get tested immediately and was cleared so no, I did not pass any STDs to him. It was one night and we used protection and I was tested before getting in bed with John. My girlfriends all tell me not to tell John because it will just hurt him and it's in the past. But I do agree that he has the right to know what kind of person he is married to. In my mind, I think that if I tell him, the marriage will be over because infidelity is a deal-breaker for him. but the reality is that the marriage will be over because I cheated.

Oh dear! Well, I think the best thing you can do at this point is just delete it from your mind and pretend it never happened. Maybe block him from your email account so if he does respond you won't see it? I wouldn't try sending an explanation, I think that might just make it worse. Sounds like you are well on your way to being over it, so I'd just get back on track and whenever you think about it, just Delete, Delete, Delete!

I agree with most of the comments here, except the cologne part. If you have good hygiene, you're going to smell good. I have known too many guys who use too much cologne and it is a big turn-off. I'd rather smell a guy's squeeky-clean smell than a too-heavy or yucky cologne.

It is helpful to hear that the grass isn't greener on the other side, because I know that is a lot of what i'm thinking about. It's just that I have never dated, and I just wonder. I don't think I'm bad looking but still, it is hard to imagine getting attention from other guys - which is why the guys I mainly think about are from my past. I am trying to think of the way I used to feel about him, and have things really changed? I think I basically grew up in the last five years, and am starting to think that maybe there is more to my life. The religion thing is a big one for me. He is more conservative than I am, and also pretty conservative in bed. I once asked him what he fantasized about and he could come up with nothing. Nothing! I have so many fantasies that I am realizing may never be fulfilled. I am not planning on making any decisions until I get into therapy and go at least two or three times. I also do not want to talk to him about it until then, but I know he is going to start to wonder what is going on. I am so thankful that we do not have kids at this point! I can see myself being the kind of person who stays in a marriage until the kids are off to college. This is what my parents did. Also, I did find out in highschool that my mother was having an affair, and it made me hate her so much. We have since patched over our relationship, but pretty much just buried any hurt - that's the way we do it in our family. But a lot of the self-hatred I have is due to the fact that I am doing the same thing that my mom did and it just disgusts me. There is a difference though, I mean in my mind, anyways. She was having a long-term affair, whereas I just had a slip-up after a lot of drinking one night. I realize both are cheating, but for whatever reason, there is a difference in my mind. I think what I am starting to realize is that I don't deserve to be with John. He is that needle in the haystack and the fact that I don't cherish his love - that just tells me that he deserves better. I'm sure he could find some christian woman who is more social than me and wants to start a family.... and I will probably end up living a wild and crazy life for the first year and then getting really, really lonely. They say that divorce is kind of like a death, but it's gotta be harder, IMO. Because one person, or sometimes, both people, are given the choice of divorce - and with a death, there is no choice, so you just have to deal with it. How can I possibly choose to go the route which I know will hurt me and this person I do still love?

Sounds to me like she's not "over" the relationship. I think her behavior is pretty normal, and typical of someone who still thinks about you a lot. She may be depressed but the best thing you can do at this point is continue to be honest with her, and try to keep out of contact. Don't lie about seeing other people to spare her feelings, it will be easier for her to move on if she knows the truth.

I agree that it would be best for me to get some space. Last summer left the state for a week and we had no contact. I liked it. It was hard when I came home and we pretty much decided to go to counseling and work on it. But after each counseling session, it seemed like it was easier for us to be so optimistic. I am definitely going to start seeing a pro, but not for the next three weeks. Until then, I guess I need to start thinking about moving out. I do have one friend here that I could ask if I could stay with her for a while, but I'm not sure. Another option is for me to start sleeping in the spare bedroom, but I know that is not really giving us space. My goal for therapy is to figure out what I want, and how to tell John, and be honest and to not just go back to the way things have been. Is it really true that the chemistry disappears over time? If that's the case, I feel like I should never get married. Or maybe there is something wrong with me sexually, like maybe I'm "oversexed" or something. I do feel that there must be something wrong with me to be willing to risk my marriage by flirting with some guy over email. And, by the way, I have stopped talking with that guy, at least I haven't emailed him in about 10 days, which is a long time for us. I think we both realized that our attraction for eachother is too strong for us to remain friends, and neither of us wants to risk our partners getting hurt.

Camber, I wish I could give you some insight, as it does sound like we have similar situations. Maybe she is wondering, as I am, if she can be happy in her life without the passion that you two once had. I find myself weighing the pros and cons, and it makes it that much harder to make a decision. With John, I have found a rare-soulmate, and I think that if I could get rid of my desire to be with other men, I would be perfectly happy. I wish I could have some medical procedure that would rid me of that desire. Also, a huge issue for me is that I have been in this relationship since 19, and I have never really been on a date, so there are a lot of questions. When I met John, I couldn't believe that someone so "cool" and "popular" would want to be with me. I had a terribly low self esteem, after a string of bad experiences with highschool boys. Now, I feel like I'm a "grownup" and maybe I could meet someone else who would be a better match. Then there is a big part that wonders if John is the best partner I could find. I would imagine your wife is thinking some of the same things. I would also say that maybe what you remember as mind-blowing sex, she remembers as not so mind-blowing. It is such a difficult situation and I'm sorry that you are on the other side of it.

Thanks, Goldfish. It is a tough situation. The problem is that I don't know what I want. I have heard lots of "spice it up" advice, but none of it is really appealing to me. It's like trying to force chemistry where there is none. I know he is still attracted to me, but the last few times we've been intimate, my mind is on someone else. I think that is a bad sign. I do want to have kids "someday" but not soon. He has been asking for kids for the last five years. He is Christian, and I am realizing that I'm an atheist. He wants to baptize our kids, and I don't want to raise them as Christians. I think he doesn't understand that I do have beliefs, that it's not just that I don't believe in jesus christ. I love him but there is no chemistry. When I spent time with my friend I've been flirting with "Jason", I felt alive, like a woman, I felt attractive and awake. I don't know that I ever felt this chemistry with John. I usually do climax with him, but it is always the same way, and it got old about seven years ago. I think that if I stay with him, I will just be accepting this lot in my life but I fear that eventually I will stray. Last summer I did stray, I never told John, and I am dealing with the repercussions - Guilt, self-hatred, depression, denial. The thing last summer was kind of a disaster, it happened when i had just been laid off and I was extremely unstable. It was pretty much a 1-night stand. Now that I've said that I am sure a lot of people aren't going to be sympathetic at all to my situation. I should have filed for a divorce last summer, i guess, but the best I could do was get us into counseling which just didn't seem to be doing anything. Again, it is just so much easier to pretend like everything is okay. I just don't want to wake up when I'm 45 and realize I'm not living the life I wanted. Isn't it better to realize this now?

This is my first post ever. I have spent the last few days reading a bunch of the threads and it has been somewhat helpful. I called my health care provider and the soonest I can get in to see a counselor is three weeks. I'm having a difficult time right now so I thought I would try posting. This is a complicated situation, it's almost too overwhelming to try and sum it up in one post. I'll try. I met my husband when I was 19. We immediately fell in love and were spending every day and night together after the first week of dating. I met him only a month or so after I broke up with my first love, who I had been with for just four months. I'll call my husband "John." Okay, so John proposed to me the summer before my senior year at University and I accepted. I remember being a little hesitant, but not wanting to break things off. We got married 2 years later. We started living together officially about a year into our relationship. About a year later, things started to feel stale in the bedroom. At the time, I didn't think it was that big of a deal. We have been married for six years now, and together for nine, almost ten years. He wants to start a family, has wanted to for several years. I feel that I got married too young and I don't want to make the same mistake with getting pregnant. I have started thinking about other men, men who I've been intimate with in the past. That's limited to 2, maybe 3 guys. One of whom, I have been emailing with and we've always had a flirty kind of relationship. He is also married. We met up a few weeks ago and there was a clear attraction but we just talked. We live in different states and I don't think we'll see eachother again any time soon. I am no longer attracted to John. I love him, and I can picture us growing old together, but it scares me that I am 29 years old and having sex only a couple times a month. And it's not that I don't want to have sex more, but my husband just doesn't do it for me anymore. We were in counseling but I always felt that we were kind of putting on a happy face for the counselor. John said he didn't think it was helping, but then, he doesn't really think we have any problems. I know he is tired of being patient with me. It is kind of scary to me that he seems happy with how things are going, maybe he is in denial. If we weren't married, if we didn't have a mortgage, I would definitely break up with him just to give myself some time and space to think about what I want in my life. But because we are married and I can't afford to move out and pay the mortgage, I feel totally stuck. It is hard for me at home because I can tell he wants to "make up" and yeah, that would be so much easier to do. We had a huge falling out last summer and he has referenced it, saying, "I hope you're not going to have another quarter-life-crisis, like last summer".... but the thing is, the feelings I had last summer were real and they weren't ever resolved since I'm feeling the same things now. Okay I know this is getting long, and there's really no point that I'm getting accross. I don't know if I'm asking for advice, but it does feel better to get it out there. I made an appointment to speak with a professional but like I said, it is going to be three weeks. I am afraid that by the time three weeks rolls around, I will have re-buried these feelings because it's easier that way and I will cancel my appointment because I don't want to deal. I know I must sound really immature, I mean, even when I read these words, I'm kind of rolling my eyes, and thinking, "Just leave him already!" but the reality is that I am not that strong. I have never broken up with anyone, and it is difficult to think about hurting him and living my life without him. We have a very comfortable life together, we know just what to do for eachother to make ourselves feel loved and safe. I can see myself living this way forever, but always in the back of my mind, I'm going to be thinking, "Is there more?" John is the kind of an every man's man. All my friends love him. My family loves him. I do fear that I will always regret losing him because I honestly can't imagine there is another guy out there who is as thoughtful and sensitive and generous as he is. Thank you for listening, and I would love to hear anything from you. I'm sorry these thoughts are so jumbled, but maybe some of it makes sense.