I feel the need to write….
I just left a comment on someone’s page about how I feel about affairs…. my opinion is that affairs are cowardly & selfish & should never happen. But I also don’t think it’s someone else’s duty to please us to the point where we won’t stray. It’s not my husband’s job to ensure that he can read my mind in order to know without question or without me saying a word, that my needs are being met! How about I take some responsibility there… how about if he’s dropping the ball on my emotional needs I say something. How about if I’m feeling insecure about something I tell him…. how about I be a grown up. How about I have higher expectations of myself that go beyond allowing myself to cheat on the one I claim to love? How about me forcing myself to be honest with myself about who I am and they type of love I bring to the table in my marriage – how about I not learn how to put things out of my mind so that I don’t feel guilty when I should. How about I lose sleep over betraying my love. How about I think about what’s going to happen to my children when my spouse finds out I cheated and care about someone else’s future more than getting laid or being told how fucking awsome I am….
I don’t understand why people cheat. I have read more articles on this than I ever thought I would to try to understand and they all say the same bullshit. “I didn’t feel valued at home so I strayed” or some form of that cope out excuse. I don’t buy into it at all……
My reality was stripped from me in a manner that a child is forcefully stolen from her mother’s arms….. I was stripped of my reality without ever having an opportunity to fight for the world I lived in. My world was TAKEN from me without my consent & there’s nothing that makes that ok.
I will not ever ever ever say ‘yea, I totally understand why he/she would have an affair”…. I will never be ok with someone who lies, decieves & feels entitled to take what is NOT theirs to take. You want to feel like A MAN????? Than man up & DON’T cheat… it is the most beautiful thing you can offer someone – honesty & accountability.
My husband disconnected from me during his emotional affair – imagine if I’d cheated too because he wasn’t paying enough attention to me…. he certainly wasn’t fulfilling my emtional needs, so what if I did too…. imagine a world where people shit on their loves whenever they felt like it because they felt the right to do whatever the fuck they wanted. What kind of world would we live in? I can’t respect anyone who says I cheated on you because you didn’t pay enough attention to me. pffft fuck ok. whatever.
If Not Just Friends Than What 
What happens when you have the same conversation over and over and nothing changes?
I don’t like affairs or think they are right…
I was cheated on and my heart was ripped to pieces…
I’m the type of person that said…I 2puld never cheat…that’s not me…I will never do that…
And after having the nth conversation and getting the same reply..my walls went up….
Few weeks later made a friend…yes my boundries were out of whack and I should have known better…
There’s no excuse for cheating none…but we’re all human and there’s no one sin bigger than another …or a mistake that cannot be forgiven…
Yes Is unfair if you were never given the chance to hear what’s wrong and sometimes…nothing is wrong.
Sometimes we are selfish and tired of always giving and giving and giving and no one ever gives,back.
Sometimes thinking of your own happiness and needs might help your partner wake up and smell the roses or move on.
Affairs are wrong and they hurt so many ppl…but so are fake marriages where everyone’s pretending and no one’s really happy.
And you know what?
The kids pay the price….
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So you had an affair?
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Yes. In the middle of trying to break it off.
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Yes we are all human….. But we don’t all cheat. I disagree regarding no one sin is bigger than the other. There are sins that are lesser than others.
What is a fake marriage? One where ppl are not honest?
Kids pay the price when parents become selfish and put their own needs in front of the kids. Sometimes ppl just fall out of love and if done the right way a child can get through that without being destroyed. But only when parents still give more weight to another’s happiness.
Of course this is all just my own opinion and I certainly am not attempting to change anyone. Only speaking my mind.
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All sins are equal but agree that not all sins have the same consequences.
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All sins are equal is your opinion, many would not agree. 😉
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I’m ok with that. We don’t all have to agree.
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Oh darn I forgot your original question. My thoughts on if you have the same conversation over and over and get no where is to a) change the conversation b) change how you feel about the same outcome or if all else fails c) realize you’ve done all you can and nothing will change so you leave 😦
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Then leave ur marriage if ur so unhappy. Why stay miserable and then become the same thing u once loathed. Do that harm to another woman that had been done to u before. You can tell me all the reasons your AP gives u, but it does not make it right. He’s divorcing right? What about you? Listen I’m not judging your lifestyle and choices everyone makes mistakes or does things they might regret (or not). And regardless of divorce, staying in a unhappy marriage, fighting, affairs coming to light are equally harmful on children.
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Agree
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I don’t think people who have affairs are horrible awful people with no good in them – god no, not at all…. I think that affairs shouldn’t happen, and I think that if you have an affair, it’s on you, not your spouse or the other person. You have to live with what you’ve done… but I don’t think it makes you or anyone, my husband included a shitty awful horrible unforgivable person. I think it means you needed to grow spiritually & become more self aware. I hope that your affair has done that for you… I truly mean that.
My husband is changing every day now because of what he did to our family. It doesn’t mean that I don’t hate what he did, I do! But I don’t hate him.. I love him, and he was willing (and continues to be willing) to do what I NEED him to do in order to heal our relationship. It took counselling for him to realize that doing what HE thought was what we needed, was in fact totally not what we needed… but he’s got it right now & we’re healing…
We had a ton of good, no amazing years behind that affair though, and I really wanted to see if we could get back there… had he not changed his ways, I would have left him.
I’m only just trying to say that I understand your anger and I do truly honestly & sincerely wish nothing but the best for you & your journey through this xx
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Thank you…both my husband and I are working hard to see if we can work things out…
I came out and confessed to him what I did…
But there’s so much more to our journey…so.much pain and so much miscommunication.
Trully I really am past what people think of me…I’m a good person that makes mistakes and that changed due to pain.
Is not my husband’s fault…not my affair just as it was not mine when he did what he did.
He has figured our why…and he is in therapy 2 years later….
Why I made the mistake…I’m still trying to figure it out…as I am struggling to end and cut contact with the OM.
Is not a good spot to be in…I don’t like myself very much.
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Are you still involved with your AP?
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Yes. Unfortunately the guilt of being the catalist for his divorce and very intense emotional attachment is messing with my judgment . I am detaching myself…the guilt is killing me. He asked I don’t abandon him.
Don’t be too harsh please
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I don’t want to say anything to make you feel badly… not at all.
Do you love him? Why not leave your H if he’s left his W? Especially if you’ve been trying for a long time to work things out with your H…. just curious, you don’t have to answer.
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I fell in love with the OM.
I still love my husband and he has tried very hard to earn my trust back.
But there are things in our marriage that are missing and I asked and asked…
He is going though therapy and getting help right now…
I want to give him a fair chance since he has been very graceful about my mistake. ..
There’s a little more to the story as well…
Also the OM has told his wife he was in love with me and she is divorcing him…I am not sure he doesn’t love her still.
The OM also has had an emotional affair with another woman and he seen others before me…
He has not planned to fall for me or me for him…it happen and is a bad situation .
I do not think I would ever be able to trust him.
If you read my last blog entry…ypu might be able to see more of my emotional state.
Thank you for not being mean.
I struggle with whom I have become and how much pain has changed me.
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I will read your post for sure 🙂
And of course, I would never be mean to anyone who’s sharing their soul. I imagine no one on this planet has the potential to make you feel worse than you’ve made yourself feel. I don’t envy your position.
I can’t help but agree with your thoughts on your AP. I hope for the sake of truly giving your marriage 100% effort you’re able to stop seeing the OM. IF that’s what you truly want.
If you continue to see him, I don’t see how that won’t totally complicate what sounds like an already truly complicated situation.
Good luck. I hope you are able to move be past this and find internal peace. The rest will fall into place once you learn to love yourself again. Xo
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Thank you much
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You articulated my thoughts better than I could have. I tell my husband all the time that he should be pretty grateful that I don’t turn to someone else to build up the self-esteem he shattered – all the needs that supposedly got filled by this affair were not needs I could have accurately anticipated and I shouldn’t have had to. I knew we were in the midst of a marital low, but it never occurred to me that we wouldn’t find our way back up or that the consequences during that time would be him having an affair. I don’t think that was me taking him for granted – I think that was me believing in love and marriage. And we are in another marital low, thanks to his affair, and I wonder if this is what he wanted – me trying to anticipate his every need…to be whatever that stupid useless whore was…so he could put me first? But now I just have to put him first because he has decided he’s ready again? Love certainly isn’t fair, and I may not have started playing if someone had explained the rules to me.
You are absolutely right – men are adults and their biology is not so different than ours that our needs matter less. His needs got met and now mine never will? Says who? I don’t want to play. I hate this game.
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You need to have your needs met…no mater how hard we try to give and give and make them happy we need that as well.
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Oh boy do I feel your pain…. I’m so sorry… and yes, it’s not fair at all.. it’s total bullshit and I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve written.
I completely understand where you are at. Have you guys gone to counselling? We did… it helped. Well let me rephrase that.. it helped my husband to realize why he did what he did…
I wish you well & healing vibes xo
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Thank you.
To answer about counseling – he has gone individually since January and his therapist just two weeks ago said that he had reached a plateau with her and suggested they start maintenance sessions and that we begin couples sessions. We found a therapist and start next week. He seems to understand “why he did what he did” and she agreed, but I feel a bit less clear, though she said that I may never understand, as it may never seem like an acceptable or logical path to me so I may just have to let go of trying to understand- also because he is very much not the same person he was during that time for a number of reasons. I am most bothered by this, I think, and how we both know prevent him from reverting back to that person. I was much less concerned with those issues when I felt like infidelity wasn’t a potential consequence. However, now I’m on high alert and I feel like I can’t trust him to catch those changes that put him on the slippery slope to an affair, and while he did end it without an ultimatum, I feel like he got a chance to try out something else and decide to come back and that makes me angry (while others try to make that like a positive – like he chose me). I hope that we will work through some of this together in counseling. I want him, I think, but I’m so afraid I really want the man he showed me he is not capable of being.
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Omg I totally understand that – so many times I’ve yelled “oh so you go have your fun & when you’re bored of it, you want to come back to your perfect boring predictable life”… yea, I agree — doesn’t feel like much of a prize being the winner here does it…. arg, I totally agree on how it feels.
Couples therapy helped us a lot. I hope it does for you too.
Sounds like our marriages/story is so similar to the NEVER expecting this & being completely blindsided… I would love to say I trust him now… but I don’t… I’m not sure I’ll ever fully trust again. I hope I do, I loved feeling completely vulnerable to him & our love – I miss it like crazy… but it’s not safe yet, so I just keep going, an dhonestly feeling a bit better every day – with the occasional set back! (usually a trigger of some sort).
Any time you want to vent, email me at tonya4040@gmail.com. I am only an email away!
Good luck next week 🙂
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Oh boy, I am not sure I am the person to reply to this but I am going to jump ff this cliff anyways. I would say that I completely agree with most everything that you wrote in your post. The affair lies at the feet of the one who strayed. It also has no real “excuse” because as you said you should just leave if you are unhappy.
Here is my problem. You are looking at this from a very rational point of view. I have often said exactly what you say here before things went off the deep end for me.
It is very damaging to have the person who you love the most in the world reject you and make you feel like they no longer love you. It is not that easy just to walk away. This is why many people stay in shitty marriages. In my case I really believed that she no longer loved me and I really did not want to be with out her. What happens is your mind distorts reality and you make decisions that you would never make in a normal rational state. Because you are no longer in that state of mind. You have drifted into fantasy land where you talk yourselves into things that when you look back are the most absurd thing in the world.
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I hear ya…. I just don’t agree. As I said , during the time in my marriage when I knew something was wrong, and I felt very disconnected from my husband I didn’t have an affair. It never even crossed my mind. I felt taken for granted and a even fearful that he wasn’t into me anymore. I didn’t seek external validation. I have higher expectations of myself.
As I said earlier and I stand by this whole-heartedly, if you cheat you on your spouse it is on you. It’s a sign you need internal growth both of self awareness. Sorry, I know you cheated and that will likely offend you which is not my intent. I don’t think you’re an awful person and only wish you the best but I don’t think that everyone chooses to cheat and break their vows. What an awful world we’d live in if people didn’t learn from their mistakes and grow into better humans.
Cheating is never ok. If you are unhappy, as hard as it is to leave, leave. How do you feel justified to destroy another persons reality? I honestly think you’d be better off saying to your spouse, honey if we don’t reconnect I’m tempted to cheat. Either way (split or stay) you’ve just asked your spouse for input and allowed them to make a choice they should have the right to make in whether or help you through your journey to self awareness or leave because they’re not able to deal.
Sorry. I mean no disrespect. It’s just my own opinion.
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You did not offend me at all and I mostly agree with you. I had an affair and it is 100% on me. I have never blamed my wife or my marital problems. Did they contribute to my weak mental state? Maybe. In my case, it was such a slow decline (15 or so years ) you don’t see it coming. It starts at something small that you think will help you. Then it moves on and on slowly until you have removed yourself from reality.
I did try to fix my marriage the best way I knew how and my wife told me many times I might be better off having an affair. While she did not mean it and I never even considered it, it made me feel like she did not want me.
I did not want to leave because I loved her, my kids, and I still hoped for some resolution. I was so far from reality I thought I was helping my marriage by what I was doing. It did not last long and then it devastated me.
I agree that cheating is not ok, but people do a lot of things they think are right only to later understand they were not based on a whole different perception.
People and relationships are complex and there is never a perfect right and wrong in most situations.
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Morning! It just seems to me that only people who cheat seems to have this way of saying ‘yea it’s wrong but…. And give a reason as to why the did what they did’. I don’t agree that there’s any reason even losing touch with reality. And I kind of doubt that you ever truly believed you were helping your marriage by having an affair. I bet that if I’d talked to you during that time and you allowed yourself to be honest with me but mostly to yourself, you’d admit you were having an affair because it made you feel some sort of validation that you felt you weren’t getting at home. This isn’t a reason to cheat. It IS a reason to leave or to at least tell your spouse how their lack of attention and statements make you feel. Instead of choosing to turn to external sources turn inwards towards your spouse to seek the reassurance you need. You know?
I’m not perfect, I make mistakes too. I don’t expect perfection from anyone but I do expect to be given a choice when it comes to my life and if things are being done behind my back that have the potential to destroy my entire reality I should be in on it.
Sounds like our circumstances were completely different. I had no idea there was anything ‘wrong’ with my marriage. I was blindsided by an emotional affair and it’s changed everything about my world.
I wasn’t given any say in it and my husband can’t ever say the things that led him to do that are the same as yours.
I’m going to read more of your posts. I read a few last night.
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Again I agree. It is kind of funny because I am not trying to justify my affair. You are right that I should have left instead. And you are right that the OW attention did make me feel good about myself, like I was wanted again. But that is not really why I had the affair.
If you read from the beginning of my blog you will see the main reason I started the blog was to find out why.
Another thing I will point out is that I know I did not feel like myself while doing it. If you read a lot of other blogs on here you hear that over and over. The cheating spouse was not themselves and it seems that when they woke up and stepped out of the fantasy they are devastated by their actions. Again this is not a justification for anyone’s actions but more an observation. When someone thinks so little of him or herself they do grasp at anything to be valued. Is it 100% intentional to go and have an affair? I know mine did not start that way. I just started trying find some attention that I thought would make me feel good but wouldn’t hurt my marriage. And I had tried and tried to get that attention from my wife. However…
An affair is a choice and while it may take a little time to develop, there still has to be a conscious choice. I know my marital problems developed over years and I struggle to believe that either of us made conscious choices to make our marriage worse. No they were just small problems that built on each other. My affair also built over time as I did not look for an affair. Attention? Yes, but not an affair. Once it got to a point I did have to make a choice and I chose wrong.
What I think you have to understand is that, at least in my case, I felt so little of myself that I did not think I could live without that attention, that validation (as you put it) but I also loved my wife tremendously but believed she was no longer interested in me.
Please understand I am not trying to justify my or anyone’s reasons for having an affair. I have said it many times, there is no justification for an affair. Nothing will ever make it right. However that doesn’t mean I don’t look for the path of thoughts, feelings, and decisions I had that led to the affair. I look at the circumstances around it so we can prevent that cycle from ever reoccurring. I do not blame her for the lack of attention. I think if I had done a better job as a husband I might have been able to change how she viewed herself and me in return but that is something I can only fix now. Depression can make people do things they normally would never do. It changes who you are.
Hopefully this makes sense as I am on my phone and cannot proofread this.
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It does make sense. Gotta love the phone hey lol. What would we do without our hand held little computers 🙂
My husband didn’t have sex with anyone else. He didn’t even have an emotional affair as defined by what I’ve read. He had a secret friendship with a woman who told him how awesome he was over and over and over again. A woman he knew would have slept with him at any moment if he said lets go there. He made consistent efforts to keep it hidden. Had he put that same energy into his marriage that he put into hiding her, well you see where I’m going. Through counselling he’s discovered that he felt like he didn’t get enough attention from me. (Tho now he says that looking back he sees that I did give him lots of attention but he was greedy and wanted more). He never trusted me not even once to tell me that he was scared I didn’t need him. Or that he was scared I would think he was weak if he admitted to me how important it was to him to feel like he took care of me. I’m a very strong independent woman…. But I am evolved enough to know that I love being taken care of and it doesn’t make me weak to admit that. Instead of taking a chance on me he chose to turn to an external superficial source that offered nothing of substance because he only took from her and never ever gave back. He only took from me at that point too and never gave back. So at the end of it he’d turned into someone be who gave nothing and only took : which will never make anyone happy.
I was destroyed by his deception. And we are still broken. It’s our amazing years together before all this that has held us together. I don’t understand feeling so insecure that a compliment from someone you don’t even have any real respect for can make you feel good.
I think that sometimes people are just selfish.
I’m not suggesting that’s what happened with you. I’m just at saying that in my personal experience with this, it happened because my husband was not really very evolved with self….. And that’s why he made the decisions he did. It wasn’t that he didn’t know whether it was right or wrong. It was that he hadn’t reached a point where what mattered was how HE felt about himself. I can’t be the reason he makes good choices. It has to come from within. It has to be about owning your truth. It has to be about holding yourself to higher expectations. It has to be about being able to be honest with yourself and still being able to love who you are.
I agree with all the things you’re writing and sharing. I’m just choosing to be a cheerleader for self growth and owning our mistakes without feeling the need to attach the ‘but here’s why I did it’
I’m not suggesting at all that’s what you’re doing tho so please don’t take it that way 🙂
I’m a big believer in the idea that we all have issues. Mine is classified in the abandonment camp while my husbands is the identity camp. It took his deception for him to look inside himself and see his own weaknesses. So for that it’s been good and he’s way more self aware because of it.
Sounds like you’ve learned a tremendous amount about yourself and life through your personal experience as well 🙂
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I couldn’t agree more. If you didn’t start at the beginning of my blog. You should. I will give you a lot of insight in the path that I took and it seems that many take. But you are right that there are selfish people who do not care about anyone but themselves and are just looking to get their next “fix”.
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Just read your first post. But it’s way to soon for me to try to be compassionate because if I’m being honest I really read a lot of reason why you you had an affair that have more to do with your unhappy wife than yourself. But again keep in mind it was only 6 months go my life blew up.
Question for you. How do you think you would handle rebuilding your marriage with your wife had it been her who cheated? Would you still watch her, admiring everything about her peaceful trance of sleep?
Would you be able to not think about her being with someone else?
How would this be different for you if the love of your life destroyed everything you knew to be real?
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How do you think you would handle rebuilding your marriage with your wife had it been her who cheated?
Oh, I am sure I would have a hard time with it. It would all depend on the circumstances, but if she wanted to stay I would let her as long as we had a specific path of healing. I know it would be hard and I would struggle. If her affair was the same as mine then I think it would be a little easier because the person would be unknown and it was short lived. However, I don’t know if I could do it if it was with someone I knew.
Would you still watch her, admiring everything about her peaceful trance of sleep?
I would be able to do this. I know I would be able to do it because for the hard years of our marriage before this I would do it. I would add though millions of self-doubting thoughts would stream through my head. I used to sit and watch her and wonder why I was not what she wanted. What I could do to be what she wanted. I used to just watch her peacefulness and hope she was dreaming of me, but knowing she wasn’t.
Would you be able to not think about her being with someone else?
Oh, I know I would and it would eat at me. We have a small part of this already in our marriage from when we were dating and it still eats at me today.
How would this be different for you if the love of your life destroyed everything you knew to be real?
And are you sure that did not happen? I think what you miss is that I had virtually no self-esteem because of our relationship. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year I slowly deteriorated. I believed that she no longer loved me and she was the only person that has ever loved me, ever. This took a toll on me. If you keep reading you will find out more about it.
This is in no way a justification for what I did, but more an observation that we were not doing well before this all started. I tried everything I could do to make her love me and it just got worse and worse. I still blame myself for all of it because I should have done better at communicating it to her instead of just trying to fix it myself. But it is hard to tell someone that you think doesn’t love you that you need them to love you because what if they do it just because you asked not because they want to do it and truly love me.
I was broken. I am still broken more than anyone knows. Am I going to recover and be who I was? Nope but neither is she. We both have to become who we are going to become and see where that takes us. All I know is that I have always loved her and I hope we can make it all work out. But I know there are no guarantees.
Thank you for your questions and comments. You would be surprised how much they help me. It give the two of us things to talk about.
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Hi again,
Thanks for replying – can I ask a couple of more? In case yes here they are:
1 – Why did you assume the things you assumed about how your wife was feeling, why didn’t you ask her if what you thought was in fact how she felt?
2 – Why make her unhappiness about you — Respectfully I mean, why not leave it in her court that her unhappiness had nothing to do with you? I understand being a fix it kind of person, but when you felt you couldn’t fix it, why assume that it was you? (I hope that makes sense, really not trying to be rude with this, just not sure how else to frame the question)
3 – How did you self esteem suffer so greatly because of your marriage – did she ignore you 100%, or tell you over & over how she didn’t love you or want you or need you etc…. why did this happen to you?
4 — totally looking for your opinion on this, as this is about my situation:
My husband said that after 10 years of marriage he felt like I no longer needed him – so he found a co-worker who was extremely needy with work questions but also had a thing for him – and always did…. he knew it, and I knew it. For the 1st 10 years I basically had no life outside of work & our marriage/kids. i was really happy. But then, I got a new job and it changed the time I’d spend doing nothing/everything with him at home. I kept him involved in my life as much as I could but I definitely enjoyed this new job and was very happy still. This was the change that he says sent him looking for external validation…. because I was giving a lot of attention to my new job & instead of every asking me about the change or telling me that he felt like I wasn’t paying enough attn to him – he got it from another woman….. I was never even given the chance to try to make it an easier transition for him – he just went out into the world and found some meaningless relationship that helped him through that time…. eventually when he felt better about it all (self esteem being a big one) he stopped it… I didn’t find out about it until 3 years after it stopped… it lasted 2 years…. I know I’ve given a coles notes version here and it’s very different than your situation sounds…. but yea, what’s your opinion on this…..
thanks for answering my questions 🙂
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1 – Why did you assume the things you assumed about how your wife was feeling, why didn’t you ask her if what you thought was in fact how she felt?
I did ask her continuously about her feelings. The biggest problem I had was that she could not tell me she was happy in our relationship. She also asked to leave me a couple of times. Then her she began sleeping to avoid. She would sleep and sleep just so she did not have to deal with me. As you read my blog I go into more detail about how these feelings grew. There was a lot of rejection and avoidance on her part and I know I did not do a good job communicating what it was doing to me.
2 – Why make her unhappiness about you — Respectfully I mean, why not leave it in her court that her unhappiness had nothing to do with you? I understand being a fix it kind of person, but when you felt you couldn’t fix it, why assume that it was you? (I hope that makes sense, really not trying to be rude with this, just not sure how else to frame the question)
I was very young when we got married. We dated for two years in high school and then got married right out of high school. We developed, what now I know is, an unhealthy codependent relationship. I believed my happiness was derived from her happiness and I was responsible in making her happy. I still have a lot of those thoughts. If I am her husband shouldn’t I make her happy? How would I not put it back on myself? The fix it part then comes in and tries to become the things that would make her happy. Could her unhappiness have had nothing to do with me? Sure, but how would I know. I would ask if she was happy she would say no. I would say what can I do to make you happy and she would say I don’t know. To me it looks like it is me, or would appear that way. I want my wife happy to be with me. Not the only thing that she is happy for, but if she cannot be happy with me, why be with me?
3 – How did you self esteem suffer so greatly because of your marriage – did she ignore you 100%, or tell you over & over how she didn’t love you or want you or need you etc…. why did this happen to you?
Yes, all of those happened. I felt like she avoided me more and more as our marriage went along. She would constantly reject me physically until we got into a cycle of guilt and rejection. She told me she wanted to leave me more than once. Every one of these things chopped away at my self-esteem. The only person that ever loved me was constantly rejecting me and avoiding me. My self-esteem was 0 when this all began and is not much higher now. It is somewhat ironic that I wanted the attention to boost my self-esteem but with all the increases I got from the affair they were painfully taken away and then added guilt and shame on top of the lack of self-confidence. I am extremely confident in my external life, but an absolute mess in my personal life.
4 — totally looking for your opinion on this, as this is about my situation:
My husband said that after 10 years of marriage he felt like I no longer needed him – so he found a co-worker who was extremely needy with work questions but also had a thing for him – and always did…. he knew it, and I knew it. For the 1st 10 years I basically had no life outside of work & our marriage/kids. i was really happy. But then, I got a new job and it changed the time I’d spend doing nothing/everything with him at home. I kept him involved in my life as much as I could but I definitely enjoyed this new job and was very happy still. This was the change that he says sent him looking for external validation…. because I was giving a lot of attention to my new job & instead of every asking me about the change or telling me that he felt like I wasn’t paying enough attn to him – he got it from another woman….. I was never even given the chance to try to make it an easier transition for him – he just went out into the world and found some meaningless relationship that helped him through that time…. eventually when he felt better about it all (self esteem being a big one) he stopped it… I didn’t find out about it until 3 years after it stopped… it lasted 2 years…. I know I’ve given a coles notes version here and it’s very different than your situation sounds…. but yea, what’s your opinion on this…..
thanks for answering my questions 🙂
It actually does not sound much different from my situation. I stopped feeling wanted and needed by my wife. In fact, I felt mostly shunned by her and unattractive. I don’t know if you know how it is to feel ignored and unwanted by the only person you love, but it really sucks. I am sure it is not as bad as the pain of an affair, but is painful in different ways. It is usually done over a much longer period of time and as hard as I know I tried nothing worked. Nothing.
I was not really looking for sex. I wanted the attention. I wanted someone to find me attractive. I wanted someone tell me that they wanted me and needed me. I wanted to feel valued for more than the money I bring home or the amount of babies I can make.
My wife has said she just thought it was a normal life stage. She would just concentrate on the kids until they got older then we would find time for us. But unfortunately that would be too late.
Feel free to ask me any questions but it might be easier by email, as I feel these questions and answers will just get longer and longer, as they should. Plus know that you cannot offend me, as I really have nothing left to be offended.
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What’s your email address?
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Bac4sccr@gmail.com
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PS: clearly I need a proof reader lol but hopefully you can piece together my message 😉
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Me too. I am on my phone so I can only see one line at a time. Hopefully you can understand what I mean.
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