I don't kow if I can do this.....
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I don't kow if I can do this.....
| Tue, 12-30-2003 - 11:03am |
How do you try and make a marriage work with a man your not sure you are in love with? H is a good guy but I've never had romantic feelings about him. How do I tell MM that we need to end it so I can be a normal person again. A good wife, a good mom. MM made it so hard for me to be with H. But the guilt of breaking up my family is SO overwhelming. I love my son so much that I would stay with H if I knew it would be better for him. We don't fight. I just don't love him. I need help in the worst way. I don't know whats worse. The thought of leaving or the thought of staying. This really doesn't have to do with leaving H to be with MM. It has to do with "doing the right thing". Do I make it work for my son? Can I survive my marriage? Any help?

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I've answered three times. with long posts, and the system deleted them.
I suggest you go to therapy to try and figure out what you want and to help you with your choice.
Jazzdiva
But you're in a great place. You can do it!! But only if you want to, and only if you want to for the right reasons.
I'm an old one here, and only came back today for a quick look & visit w/ old friends. Your post caught my attention. I hope I can help.
A question that came to me my first day here turned out to be about the best question/food for thought... Here goes:
1-"WHAT IS IT ABOUT YOURSELF, YOUR INNER SELF, THAT YOU LIKE WHEN W/ THE 'OTHER MAN' THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE W/ YOUR HUSBAND?"
Then, find time to REALLY contemplate this. Think about it, and think about it again another day. It is harder than it sounds.
Then, ask yourself any of a number of follow-up questions:
1- This "thing"... is it really impossible w/ your husband? Really!?
2- This thing.. is it not your responsibility, ultimately? ...and w/in your control?
3- This thing... is it reality based or fantasy based?
4- This thing... did you EVER have it w/ your husband? (how is it that you came to be married in the first place?)
I have different experiences than some on the board, but I do have my humble opinions. There are common threads w/ almost all the affairs reported here, and the recoveries. One thing is that seldom is the "real" reason for the affair a lack of love for the existing spouse. We have holes that we try to fill w/ the wrong things. What's your hole?
I also feel that children are almost always better off in their natural two-parent family, so long as there is no abuse going on... (hitting, verbal, alcohol, drugs, gambling to excess, cheating, etc).
I think you can make it. I am rebuilding, too. You're in a good place here. You can make it.
I think we need to love ourselves, first. Your two men are surely different, as my two women are.
But my love for my OW was fantasy-based. And I was not/am not healthy myself. Still working on me. It was "me" that led to the affair, not my W. We have to look to ourselves for what is missing. The affairs are 99% of the time filling a hole with the wrong thing. We then rationalize that the OM/OW are so much better than what we have, often as a justification.
Yes. I love my wife. Does she make me crazy sometimes? Sure! But who wouldn't!? Interesting you mentioned the personalities; my wife is somewhat uptight & formal; my OW was lively spirited and fun to be with. But, my wife loves me. She shows affection differently than the OW would, but does that make things less real? No. Just different.
I'm going to make an assumption/guess. Tell me if I'm WAY off base... Your OM "loves you for who you are. He loves the good and the bad..."
Who you are with him- is that the "reality" secretpal, or the "fantasy" one? Is he in love with the "real" you, or the "you" that you want to be? Can't you be that "you" w/ H?
He loves the good and the bad- my guess is that H gets to see "live and in person" more of your "bad" than the OM has ever seen. I'll just bet that it may be 'you' who are two different people w/ two different men. I hope I'm not being/sounding harsh, okay? I care. I'm just trying to help you root this stuff out. Am I right, that the OM sees you on your best behavior (most often), but that H sees you after grocery shopping, between two loads of laundry w/ burnt toast smoking the kitchen and the boy wanting attention???
Think about the "you" here.... this process has really been helping me.
I married H because he was a decent man and at the time I needed the security in my life that he gave me. We have had many issues over the years. He's very disapproving of everything I do. The TV I watch. The music I like. He talks to me like I am an employee of his. I would beg and plead with him to pay some kind of attention to me. I would beg him to take me out to dinner alone. So we could be a couple. In 3 years we hadn't been alone. He ALWAYS insisted that our son be with us. I can remember all the nights that I cried in bed because he didn't want anything to do with me.
The answer to your other question makes me cry. MM makes me feel important. I feel like a woman when I am with him. I feel alive inside. He think I'm beautiful and he lets me know it. H always had a problem complimenting me. It was like it would make him weak if I knew that he desired me. There were times that I was so lonely that it was crushing.
How do I stop loving MM? How do you know if you are making the biggest mistake of your life by leaving or staying? My appointment with the relator is tonight. I am supposed to make an offer on a condo down the street from H. The papers are waiting to be signed at the lawyers office. I agreed to joint custody of our son. My H was grateful to that. I did it because he is a great father and a out of guilt. He's a good father to our son but has always managed to make my daughter feel second best.
Thanks riverguy. I know I have issues. I need to get rid of the anger and resentment.
So what I fear is not that H knows the real me but MM does. I can laugh around MM without feeling out of place. MM think it's cute that I take an hour bath every night and read true crime in the tub. H thinks it's rediculous. H has very disapproving eyes. H is very uptight.
First of all, you can't look at your marriage honestly while you're still in the A or grieving at the loss of it. If you go back and read my posts from this past spring, you'd see that I was struggling with the same thing -- how can I love my H again? How can I love him like MM? The reality is you can't....it's 2 different relationships, 2 different men. But you HAVE to give yourself time to grieve the loss of the A. I loved my MM very much and he loved me but it was a 5 month affair -- not 8 years (or 15 in my case) of every day living. It's the beginning stages of love where everyone is happy, "perfect", and you light up when you see him/her. It's when the "in love" stage ends that real love sets in and you have to work at it. And you have to work at it -- it doesn't just happen. You have to listen to him, communicate, do things alone and with friends, build a life. But the voice of experience here will tell you that it's incredibly hard while the OM/OW is in your heart and in your head. Don't do anything like sign those papers and divorce him until you've REALLY worked on the marriage -- outside of the affair and outside of grieving it. If you do this now, you'll never know if you could have made it work.
9 months ago I didn't know if I wanted my marriage to continue...mainly I felt that I loved my H -- but didn't know HOW I loved him -- how familiar does that sound?? And how fair was it to him that I was wanting someone else, missing someone else, thinking of someone else all the time? But as I began to come out of my fog, as my H and I worked on the marriage -- and he dug in there and worked as hard as I did -- I realized that I DO love this man. Is he perfect? heck no, but neither am I and neither was XMM. We're finding our way back to one another -- but it involved BOTH of us working on it. And me in therapy too..
I hate to see anyone rush to end their marriage until they've gotten thru the worst of the grieving because if I'd left 9 months ago, I'd have missed out on what is becoming a very good marriage and I realize how blessed I am.
You have to let go of your past -- and that's hard, I know -- to become the person you're meant to be -- Carrie Bradshaw......Time WILL make this easier on you and you will be able to let go of the pain and the misery of the A and build on your life if you let yourself heal. I didn't want to let go of that final hope of reconciling w/XMM for quite a while so I know about not wanting to let it go, but eventually, you'll be ready. Because your only option is to live your life in misery, pining for someone or something you can't have.
I'm not saying you HAVE to stay with your H -- just give yourself time to see if that's really what you want to do. I could barely pick out what I was going to wear each day in the first weeks, 2 months after the A ended -- so don't make this life-altering change this quickly.
B
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