 Re: A year out from dday as a WS (EA)...
[QUOTE=daisygirl 41;880215]Hi tm84
How long have you been married?
5 years in September
What was your marriage like before?
In the beginning, it was good but tough because my wife had a difficult time finding work when she moved to the U.S., as well as adjusting to all the changes that come along with leaving your home country, job, and family. She has also had a hard time making friends here.
Would you care to share the particulars of your A?
My EA was with someone I met online who lives outside the U.S. (I also met my wife online). I knew my AP before I "met" my wife. I lost touch with the AP shortly before getting married and didn't hear from her for almost two years. By the time we reconnected, things had begun changing in my marriage, I crossed an emotional line with the AP and we started being sexual in our online chats. My wife figured that something was going on and began saying things like, "Your girlfriend is looking for you", when a chat window from the AP would pop up. I completely missed the cues my wife was sending and jumped on the "we're just friends" bandwagon and things went south from there.
Last summer, my wife was going through paperwork on my computer and found emails, sexual photos from me to the AP and vice versa. That's when things got really bad.
What is the reason for your dwindling sex life? Was it like that when u were courting?
The reason(s) for our dwindling sex life are varied, but I'll try to keep it short: My wife had much less sexual experience than I had and I'm much more sexually driven than she is. My AP began filling some of the needs I had from afar and I began feeling bored with my sex life at home. In the past, I'd had sex partners who were more on my level as far as sexual appetite and I began comparing my wife to them and my AP, which wasn't fair to my wife. My expectations were out of proportion to the reality of my current relationship and I didn't know how to deal with that in an effective and, in hindsight, non-damaging way.
On top of that, we were not very good at communicating about the issues. She began pulling away, I pulled away because I was in the "fog" and didn't know how to deal with finding solutions to our problems and things continued downhill. There's more, but it basically boils down to a lack of understanding and selfishness on my part and bad communication from both of us. | 