# Filing Divorce Next Week - Hope?



## prufrock1

Firstly, my wife and I have been going to individual therapy and have gone to couples therapy in March through May. I know a common reply on here is "don't listen to strangers on the internet, get professional help", but I'm hoping for some perspective, and just to try and get my thoughts on paper.

My wife and I met when we were in our first year of grad school. I was 27, she was 24. I had no had any serious long-term relationships prior to her. 

Personally, I was raised in a conservative religous household. My parents were both school teachers and I had a rather typical upbringing for a middle class family. My wife was raised by her grandmother and stepdad mostly--her mother was an alcoholic who was married seven times and died when my wife was in college. Her dad was not involved in her life. She has no close family relationships except for her stepdad who she calls dad.

Sexually, I was essentially a virgin, for both religious and self-esteem issues, but watched a lot of pornography. She had been in a few short-term sexual relationships and did not have the self-imposed celibacy that I had. 

She pursued me in the initial part of the relationship and eventually I decided I liked her too. I was not incredibly physically attracted to her, though, even from the beginning. At one point early in our dating, I confessed to her that i still had feelings (read: sexual attraction) for another person in our class, and I was having trouble deciding who I should pursue. At that point, she probably should have dumped me, but I felt bad and reversed my statement as best I could. Within a few weeks, I told her I was still having these doubts and she asked if I was dumping her and I said yes, and went home for one night, before waking up and begging her to forgive me. This was a rocky foundation for the relationship.

From there, we went into serious dating and sleeping with each other most nights at her apartment. When the semester ended, I invited her to move in with me. My family advised against it, even offering to pay for an elopement. We declined and lived together for about a year and 1/2 before marriage. We were wed in 2010. At each major step of marriage (proposal, picking of rings, writing vows, planning), I was not 100% excited about the prospect, but I didn't stop it either. 

Once married, I took a job in a small town far from home and she came with me. We struggled financially and moved back to our "hometown" where we met. In 2012, she became pregnant with our first child. We still struggled financially, moved again, and I got my first good full-time position and we decided to have a second child. I was laid-off about a month before the baby was born, and we moved a second time back to our hometown for another position for me. All this time, she was pursing a masters degree and got a good job in the hometown when we moved back. For the first time in our life, we both had good jobs, and could see a stable future. We bought a house and got a mini-van.

During all this time, our sex life wasn't great. We somehow grew apart emotionally so that any intimate moments were we were connected emotionally were few and far between. She struggled with body image and "feeling attractive" throughout our marriage. After the second child, she worked hard to get in shape and dropped down about 50 lbs to where she was petite and very attractive. She says--and I admit--I failed to convey a sense that her new body turned me on. 

Last summer (2016) she began to get more looks from men, and she admitted to me later, that it was a huge confidence builder for her, and a dopamine release. The looks eventually led to her having a kiss (she says only a kiss) with a man at a conference last August or so. 

A few weeks later, I came to bed and she was laying there sobbing, and all she could say was that she wasn't happy. At that moment, I should have battened down the hatches and focused on the problem but I dismissed it as a passing phase.

In November, she got very upset with me one night when she was in our living room twerking to some hip-hop music (she has joined a hip-hop cardio class) and I was not paying attention to what were apparently sexual advances. She got very upset with me, and we got some wine and talked and the whole dating fiascos came up. I said that still time in our relationship still bothered me, and she said it did her too.

We got busy with kids and holidays and I don't remember much going on until after Christmas when she was constantly on her phone and smiling and acting childish. I got curious and she was texting with me. Later I learned she had started an online-dating profile on Tinder.

I was very upset that she had entered into these EA's and she said she was just doing it to feel appreciated and get a dopamine fix. I said she was "ruining our family so she could feel pretty". This upset her very much. Still though, I did not take the issue seriously.

A week later, I discovered a PA due to some loose ends on her part. It was almost like she wanted me to find out. She says it was a person she had been texting and they met one time behind my back. I got extremely mad and she apologized but said that she was not that sorry because I was not treating her like someone I desired and she needed someone to desire her. I felt (but didn't say) that this was true. 

Her solution was to propose an open marriage where she could get her needs met, and presumably, I could date and have sex with people I desired more than her. I was hesitant but she insisted it would be good for both of us and our marriage.

We then entered a crazy period of me changing jobs to a new firm, me online dating, she online dating, we both going out at night to meet people, me going to counseling and her going to counseling. I eventually said, I did not thing the open marriage thing was going to work, for fear that I or she would become attached to someone we were seeing, and wanting a relationship with that person. I had read about polyamory, but I'm a fairly traditional person, and I was skeptical of its health, especially in a marriage with children involved. 

At that point, I thought were were done seeing other people and working on our relationship with a counselor. We were going weekly but things still weren't great. We were stuck in counseling on the issue of why I couldn't be more affectionate and tender and "a good boyfriend". We were recommended the Love Languages and that line of counseling. The problem with those is that even if you know your partners langauge, you still have to learn to "speak" it, and have a desire to learn and practice and that will has to come from within. I just wasn't able to muster the effort, apparently. I really let Mother's Day go without much ceremony, and that was very upsetting to her.

A couple of weeks later at the end of May, and after I had been on a few weird first dates and some odd sex, I met someone that I clicked with. We had good sex the first night, and I arranged a second date the next night. Something changed inside of me, and I wanted to pursue a relationship with this person, and I wanted to keep this desire secret from my wife. 

My wife and I had been using aliases and holding ourselves out as unmarried in our encounters, but I had told a few people I was actually married. After three times seeing this Someone, I told her I was married and had kids, and expected her to break up with me, but she decided not to. I also represented to this Someone that I was not still interested in reconciliation (Obviously I still am) with my wife, but that we were on good terms as parents and still lived together.

In mid June, my wife became ill and had to go to the ER for a CT Scan. I attended her and while she was waiting she asked me "do you love her", and I said I had stronger feeling for this Someone than I ever recalled having for her and she said that she guessed we were getting a divorce. Before that moment, divorce had not been the plan. We were in an open marriage, and working on our own problems with some expectation that we would be monogamous again at some point, if it worked out that way. 

I did nothing to say that I didn't want a divorce at that time, but was not excited about a divorce either. I still loved her, and I still wanted to maintain the life we had established and the lifestyle we were building into. We both love our children deeply. We are both each other's best friend, still, I think.

A week or two later, she just happened to meet her Someone who lives 4 hours away. Though July and August, she would spend weekends with this Someone, and I would see my Someone whenever we had time. In September, she decided to introduce her Someone to our kids and told me that they had talked about him eventually moving to our town. 

About three weeks ago, I told my therapist what was going on, and that I still wanted reconciliation on some level, but I still loved my Someone too and didn't want to hurt her. My therapist said to do what I would want to tell my kids I had had done 20 years from now and to listen to my heart and not my head, and I said both of these tests indicate that I should end the extramarital relationship and focus on the marriage. I did that and told my wife. She said she was still going to pursue her Someone because she still didn't feel I could give her the passionate relationship she desired and wanted. I said I could (but thought I was not sure if I ever could). 

For some reason the fact that she didn't end her extramarital relationship at that time caused me to flip-flop. The next day I told my wife that I was wrong, and that I was not sure I could ever give her the passionate marital desire she wanted and that we should end it, and she was very mad at me for jerking around her emotions and said that if I pulled such a reversal again, we would not be friends and she would become adversarial in the divorce. 

Recently we had a brunch with both of us and our Someones and the kids. Things went well. I could see us all getting along. 

My wife is not convinced that I should continue seeing Someone because she doesn't think I'm passionately in love with her if I could so easily dump her (like I once dumped my wife). She says if I keep seeing her, she is going to seek full custody because I am not stable.

My therapist agrees with me that I need emotional space to learn what I want. This is what my wife says as well. To create such space, I need distance from the Someone. I told her i needed distance and she was very upset, and she is now trying to understand.

So, all that said, should I say anything to my wife now about my desire to reconcile? I think I should focus on my career (oh, also, I just got fired from my job last week for a mistake I made in June right when I began dating, so my wife basically thinks Someone messed me up in the head, and cost me my job and is greatly affecting our whole family (I was primary breadwinner). 

Does anyone see hope for reconciliation? What do I need to do? Can I do it, given I continually disappoint my wife when asked to commit emotionally and passionately to her?



My wife was on


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## GusPolinski

Geez.

Just divorce already.


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## NoChoice

OP,
This whole scenario sounds convoluted. The bottom line is that you both need to grow up and decide what you really want out of life. It seems you each feel that the other is incapable, or at least unwilling, to supply what the other needs so why continue? You have a "Someone" and she has a "Someone" so where does that leave the marriage? Marriage is difficult when both parties are committed and earnestly working at the relationship, this situation has no chance of success.

I also believe it is time to move on from this confusion and indecision. Your children need stability and guidance and it seems neither of you can do that for yourselves, much less them. Perhaps you should both make a decision and then stick with it. Your kids deserve that much.


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## Bananapeel

You are both setting bad examples for your kids. That's not the type of relationship they should envision as normal or healthy. Just pull the plug on it.


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