I am 30 and my husband is 39. We’ve been together for 8 years, married for 6, no children.
This is kind of a two-parter thread so please bear with me (and I will probably ramble).
Firstly, my husband has a low sex drive (or he could be having an affair, I don’t think so but I won’t rule it out entirely). One of his ex-girlfriends back in his college days left him because of his lack of sex drive. To me that always seemed crazy as we had sex at least 2 times a week and that was ample (and I told him as much). I was satisfied and happy in our relationship for 5 years. Then this last year our sex life disappeared and he just stopped touching me, no idea why (no shift in jobs, no weight gain, and relationship dynamic is as it always was).
I tried to initiate but he says it turns him off, I used to try to do things to let him know I was interested (blunt things like when he gets home from work I would be wearing lingerie or completely nude with candles lit). Nothing worked. Then I tried talking to him about it. I have talked him to death on this subject, to the point he does not want to talk about it anymore. He says there is nothing wrong with him medically or emotionally, that he just does not have a high sex drive and I need to let it go. So for two months I did, no initiation or signals or pressure and he came around, sort of. 9 months ago he initiated and we started making love and he suffered ED, I told him it wasn’t a big deal and we could just cuddle, at which point he got very angry and aggressive and what happened did not feel like love at all. It felt like rage sex, and it left me feeling hurt (both physically and emotionally) and guilty.
Since the rage sex he has been disconnected from me. He moves away when I try to cuddle him or kiss him or hug him. When I try to be close to him at all he pushes me away, unless we are in the company of his family at which point he is highly affectionate. But as soon as they aren’t looking or we are alone its like someone flips a switch and he’s once again refusing to be intimate with me. He still talks to me and we discuss things and talk the way I might talk with a friend, but nothing more. He doesn’t respond to me telling him “I love you”.
I have friends I talk to online, some more than others, and one in particular who I confide in quite a bit. We’ll call him M. I met him about 6 months ago (online). He is married, 2 kids (both teenagers), and a few weeks ago I realized that I’ve developed feelings for him, maybe just a crush, but it’s there; I did not (and have not) said anything to him about this. I didn’t expect it to happen, it just sort of did. We talk about all kinds of things from personal to just nothing at all, and we could talk (and have talked) for hours on the phone. I’ve never met M in person, just Skype video chat, typing, email and phone calls.
A few nights ago while we were discussing his triumph with a recipe I gave him (he rarely cooks and wanted to give it a whirl) he blurted out that he has feelings for me. I hung up on him and he called me back, he told me he has felt this way for a while now and that he isn’t sorry for his feelings. I feel bad though. I like him, a lot, and I realize now that I was having an emotional affair, but I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t want to hurt my husband, I love him very much, but I don’t feel like he loves me anymore. He won’t talk about it and I feel very cut off from him. I miss being touched. I miss being told that I’m loved. I miss all of it.
This is such a sh!t situation. I hate it. I know I’m a bad person for this. M is married, and so am I, and he has a family. Logically I know I need to cut contact with him entirely, but I don’t want to because I am so incredibly selfish.
I just needed to vent. If anyone has any advice, please let me know.
I'm sorry you are going through this. But, you likely already know what I'm going to say, because you already gave yourself the best advice.
Cut off contact immediately with the other man. Concentrate on your husband and your marriage and trying to discover what is going on with your husband.
How does your husband know that it is not a medical problem? Has he been to the doctor and been checked? Does he have low testosterone? If he has ED, has he been checked out? Ever tried the little blue pill to get over a perfomance anxiety hump?
Did you ever try more subtle things when you tried to initiate? Flirting or seduction - no pressure on him?
Have you checked how he is spending his time? You sure he's not chatting with someone and having his own EA?
Here's a list of possibilities. Start going through them. You owe your husband and marriage at least that much: Solutions for Low Libido in Men
Stop skyping M. You are asking for a sh!tstorm. Stop being selfish and cut it out.
You know better. How would you feel if your husband were scheming behind your back professing feelings to a married woman with children? How do you think M's wife would feel?
Having an affair complicates everything...and doesn't resolve the key problem...your issues within your marriage.
End it and focus on either rebuilding your marriage or terminating it. But don't take another marriage/family down in the process.
So that would be a big 'yes' to an emotional affair.
Under the circumstances, perfectly understandable. Your reasons are in fact 'cookie cutter'. If there were a playbook for why marriages fail and fall victim to infidelity, yours would be page 1:
Lack of sex and intimacy, turn to someone else to fill the emotional gap.
No good comes from you continuing to correspond with your friend. None. Zero.
As for your husband. If he has always been low drive, then so be it. However, that certainly doesn't mean there isn't an issue behind it.
Low testosterone is the most common issue yielding the symptoms you describe. You can't make him address it, but you can decide what you are going to do if he refuses to address it ...
and leaving him should be at the top of your list.
That said, low testosterone still doesn't explain his treating you like crap.
There are bigger issues at play in your relationship. Nail them down. Identify them. Don't let all of it be swept under and overlooked by having an affair, or worse, having an affair discovered.
Are you sure your husband's not gay? Many such men marry so that they look 'right.' And if he is always 'on' for his family, he must really really care what they think about him.
If you divorce, you must still never see the OM again. No matter how you toss it, your relationship with him reeks and always will. Especially if HE divorces because of you.
Stop skyping M. You are asking for a sh!tstorm. Stop being selfish and cut it out.
You know better. How would you feel if your husband were scheming behind your back processing feelings to a married woman with children? How do you think M's wife would feel?
Having an affair complicates everything...and doesn't resolve the key problem...your issues within your marriage.
End it and focus on either rebuilding your marriage or terminating it. But don't take another marriage/family down in the process.
Are you sure your husband's not gay? Many such men marry so that they look 'right.' And if he is always 'on' for his family, he must really really care what they think about him.
If you divorce, you must still never see the OM again. No matter how you toss it, your relationship with him reeks and always will. Especially if HE divorces because of you.
This was my dad. Gay gay gay but never with men. Married 4 times. Unreal.
If you divorce, you must still never see the OM again. No matter how you toss it, your relationship with him reeks and always will. Especially if HE divorces because of you.
I have friends I talk to online, some more than others, and one in particular who I confide in quite a bit. We’ll call him M. I met him about 6 months ago (online). He is married, 2 kids (both teenagers), and a few weeks ago I realized that I’ve developed feelings for him, maybe just a crush, but it’s there; I did not (and have not) said anything to him about this. I didn’t expect it to happen, it just sort of did. We talk about all kinds of things from personal to just nothing at all, and we could talk (and have talked) for hours on the phone. I’ve never met M in person, just Skype video chat, typing, email and phone calls.
A few nights ago while we were discussing his triumph with a recipe I gave him (he rarely cooks and wanted to give it a whirl) he blurted out that he has feelings for me. I hung up on him and he called me back, he told me he has felt this way for a while now and that he isn’t sorry for his feelings. I feel bad though. I like him, a lot, and I realize now that I was having an emotional affair, but I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t want to hurt my husband, I love him very much, but I don’t feel like he loves me anymore. He won’t talk about it and I feel very cut off from him. I miss being touched. I miss being told that I’m loved. I miss all of it.
This was me 6 months ago.
You must understand something right now!
You are not in love with M, you are in love with a feeling. You are in love with the IDEA of M.
The sooner you realize that the sooner you will be able to pull yourself out of this.
It is not a crush, don't dismiss it as such. It's a very real problem and it's very dangerous. From the sound of it, it looks like he is engaged in this EA full steam too.
You have to stop it now.
I was in the middle of the same situation and it takes WAY more strength than you think you have right now to pull out of it. But you can.
You have to find what it is about your H that attracted you to him in the first place. Hold on to that idea and start to push with all of your strength back in the other direction.
Right now you have the keys to the situation, you can turn it off and stop something horrible from happening. But you have to want to. And you have to face the fact that there is not going to be any comfort coming from your H to help you do it.
But you can do it. It's not impossible and will take just a small amount of effort to begin. The real effort will be staying away from M. If he is anything like my AP, he will not make it easy for you to do that. It took me a full month of falling over and over again before I was able to convince myself that I needed to end this before it destroyed everything.
The best thing you can do is break off all contact and then find something, anything, to help you maintain that conviction. You have to be committed. Don't feel bad for M, he'll get over it same as you.
You're in this fight for yourself right now. You have to win back control of your emotions before you can hope to address the real problem in your marriage. I'm going to be posting about some of the things I learned in the last 2 months of NC. It is amazing what you will discover when the blindfold you've tied around your own eyes is ripped off.
Best of luck to you, I hope you are able to set yourself straight.
Emotional Affair ? 
