Hmm…so here I am, in the club no one asked to join. (*insert in the club, we all fam gif here). Let’s start from the top.
My husband (WH, 35) and I (BP, 33) have been together for 15 years, we’re conquered long distance, hard times, good times and everything in between. Then, on October 1st he told me he had developed feelings for someone else. A friend of his, who I know and encouraged him to be friends with. I’ve never been a jealous person, so their friendship didn’t ring any alarm bells for me.
Apparently, he started to feel disconnected from me at the beginning of the year. Instead of saying anything he tried to "work on it himself," in his own words. Shockingly, this did not go well for him…
Instead of communicating his needs, which i’m not ever sure he can correctly identify even now, he told me things like: I want to do more things together, which we did, and I though we were having so much fun. He said he wanted to be more casually physically affection, which we did, and again, I thought we were both enjoying.
Turns out, we were trying to solve two very different degrees of issue. His drift from me continued until he developed feelings for an entirely different person.
If you’re thinking this is finally when he told me, you would be incorrect. He actually told 4 other couples about this prior to coming to me, including his parents. What he hoped to gain from these conversations is still a mystery to me. In fact, it wasn’t until his AP told him that she reciprocated his feelings and cut off communication that he knew this was fucked.
Now, he’s laid all this information at my feet, and I’m just staring at it like "what the fuck do you want me to do with this?" He can’t promise me that he’ll want to be romantic again because all he sees when he looks at me is shame and guilt - like, okay. He’s currently staying with a friend, which is fine, but I can’t tell if that’s more for his own benefit or mine - i think he doesn’t want to have to face me and my hurt and pain.
Some boundaries we’ve established are:
1. A twice daily check in, which he leads, and I follow. Casual, how are you, how is it going.
2. If you want me to show up to couples therapy there is to be no contact with the AP and full transparency.
3. We agree that we want to try and untangle what the fuck happened here.
He’s in IC (as am I) and we are in couples counseling to determine if there is anything to salvage here. I’m certainly guilty of the pick me dance here, and i’m trying to break the habit - thought it’s hard.
As always, hindsight is 20/20, and I can see he’s been struggling all year, despite not being able to say that to me. In May, I went on a weekend trip and when I came home he told me that he had tried to solicit sex on the internet and got scammed out of $500. At the time, I was upset but saw it for what it (or what I thought) was: a cry for help. I encouraged him to seek individual counseling and he did. We even discussed this incident with our couples therapist until we BOTH agreed that we felt reconciled (lol).
So now here I am, blind sided again and going through the motions without truly knowing what I want out of this. I want the marriage I thought I had, and maybe did at one point - but we’re at rock bottom now. I was shoved here, unfortunately, but that doesn’t change that I’m here.
[This message edited by stayg0lden at 3:07 PM, Thursday, October 15th]
