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Post by Venus Erotes on Apr 24, 2017 18:56:52 GMT -5
I think you ought to keep your own place & get into individual counseling. A midlife crisis is a lot like any other growth spurt: painful, needed, healthy, leading to deeper authenticity if done right. YOU need some clarity, brother. I don't see that coming from W, who has (understandably) her own agenda & motivations. Your heart is like a ping-pong ball, bouncing all over the place. No one outside of you is capable of telling you what is right for you. A therapist (if they're good) can help YOU decide what you want, what your heart needs, what your truth is. I wouldn't recommend looking to W for that. I wouldn't recommend "caving" just because of parental pressure. Yeah, the kids will cry - on the inside, & often on the outside. This back & forth seems more hurtful than helpful. This is just my opinion. Your choices are, obviously, up to you. But I really think you need a trusted sounding board to help you clarify, for yourself, what you are feeling & thinking & how YOU wish to proceed. Good luck with the whole enterprise, What she said. I'm still fairly new here, so I'm not sure what you've talked about in the past with the GF, but I am 10000000%%%%% behind you getting into counseling before you try to resolve your marriage issues. You can't fix anything until you fix yourself. The same can be said of your wife. Get the kids into counseling too. They are going to have a lot of highs and lows and they need to know their feelings are normal, and that none of this is their fault, and that you do love them. I don't know if your wife is in counseling, but it would be good for her too. Yeah, yeah... I'm a counseling junkie. I am very aware! Good luck and I hope you find the happiness you've been looking for. |
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Post by Venus Erotes on Apr 24, 2017 19:00:18 GMT -5
Full disclosure? I will ask my psychiatrist friend about this No I am not a patient but maybe I should be Yes - you should be! |
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Post by Venus Erotes on Apr 24, 2017 19:11:56 GMT -5
This entire thread is heartbreaking.
I applaud your desire to help your children.
What your kids need is time with you. Explanation from you that it has nothing to do with them. That you wish mom and dad could stay together but how it wouldn't be fair to either of you.
Make sure they know you love them to the ends of the galaxy.
Make sure they know they are welcome to stay with you ANYTIME.
Be there for your kids.
They need to feel your love. Don't feel like your W can just handle them. Be with them, get your time in with them. That's what will help them through all this.
Oh I wish you luck. What a roller coaster!
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Post by McRoomMate on Apr 25, 2017 10:35:04 GMT -5
So, are you back with the Wife then? I may have missed this part somewhere, but, I thought that you left the W, got your own place (w/fwb), then, broke off with fwb, went back to wife, then, broke off with wife and back to fwb. Now, back with W - no fwb? Hope you're doing ok McRoomMate If this confuses me, it must be doing a really doozy on you. Thank-you lyn Of course this is confusing. I basically said to myself - no I promised to myself - I will do EVERYTHING to save my marriage. The risk is "Staying together for the kids" - My W said definitely NOT that. I tried really hard and it was not that hard to remember when we fell madly in love. Unlike many couples here, our SM was based on life getting in the way more than an aversion to sex. My W and I are already kissing and holding each other (I am still not allowed yet back in the house due to risk of me "flip flopping" again - which is a valid concern. I just read too many Mid Life Crisis disasters about H leaving with the Mistress and then it was a disaster. I definitely fell madly in Love with my new girlfriend and I believe her too. She said over the week-end that she sensed I still was not ready to let go of my family. She begged me not to go back but agreed to leave and we broke up. I felt good on Sunday when we broke up now 48 hours later I am feeling horrible and depressed in side - I still function about 70%. My W and I have agreed on focusing on INTIMACY and OUR COUPLE. She laughed (in a happy way) that I said this would involve SEX at least 21 times a month (prostrate health too to consider LOL). She really did try more than once to have intimacy with me over the past months and I refused. So I am not going to refuse I am going to initiate. We have still 2 children at the house and 3 grown -ups in college and beyond. I just could not live with myself and I sensed it deeply if I did not try everything to save our COUPLE and thus Family to stay together. I sincerely believe that this is really WITHIN MY POWER - I have to make the effort for regular sex and daily intimacy. I am opting for "fake it til you make it" and that the Feelings will re-kindle after a few months of regular sex and intimacy daily. She is willing too. BOTH of US are willing and know we both made mistakes. So my girlfriend is back with her ex-boyfriend millionaire family / drug addict and I just sent her one email to see if she was OK / no response and she posted her profile pic of her druggies boyfriend and then promptly unfriended me. So I have got to try and save my Marriage now. Trying by COUPLE - intimacy / sex / etc. I am spending the week alone to meditate on this. If by Friday night I am still of the same heart to go back to her - I can go back. I am also getting no-addictive tranquilizer from my Psychiatrist friend tomorrow to help ease the pain inside. I see from reading it "normally" takes about 3 months to heal from a broken heart. I am sad to see my new girlfriend go - I broke up with her - but I had to for saving my marriage at least giving 100% before giving up. The risk is of course after several months - the Marriage does not work - but importantly it will not have been because I did not try with all my heart to save it. So big time sex and intimacy with current wife - even with broken heart from breaking up (my decision) with my girlfriend. Time will tell. I am going to give it everything I got. I also promised myself I am going to go a solid 6 months for this before coming up for air and re-evaluating. I even did a review of all the times I fell in love in my life since I was 18 and it is about 9 times but about 1 time a year when I was not in a serious relationship. So if it does not work with my W - at least I know from my own freaking track record that I can fall in love multiple times and sometimes it works really good. |
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Post by Apocrypha on Apr 25, 2017 11:11:33 GMT -5
Thank-you. Very very much appreciated. I made a conscious decision to do EVERYTHING in my power to fix my marriage and restore it to a LOVING AFFECTIONATE HAPPY COUPLE - I can honestly say with 100% sincerity that I did not do this yet. Failure? Yes that is possible, but only when I can say with complete good faith that I tried everything, WE tried everything. I am very confident that BOTH of US are very strongly committed to WORK and REBUILD. We have re-made contact and both of us are so serious now about this for OUR COUPLE FIRST and then the wonderful family we have created shall benefit from this, but unquestionably it is the PURENESS MOTIVATION of OUR COUPLE that must come first. Out of the ashes cometh the Phoenix. Blessings to All! McRoomate, this is a hard thread for me to read because I see myself in your resolve, and I know how that ended. There are a few things I noted from the beginning of this thread, the way things get framed - that lead to magical thinking. The words we use matter. They shape our ideas into forms that aren't always effective in the situation. When we say things like " save the marriage", it becomes tempting to view the marriage as a separate thing from the two individuals in it, and their behavior and feelings toward each other. "Saving" it, implies a state of jeopardy, rather than a beginning state of total loss - like a house with a kitchen fire, rather than a house that has been burnt to the foundation. A marriage - at least Western concepts of it - is a sexually intimate union. You, on the other hand, do not have a sexually intimate relationship with that woman. You aim to do the work, to rebuild or restore that sexual union, with the assumption being that the default state is restored and active. It's reasonable to understand why anyone might think that after most of their adult life sharing space with someone, but being separated and dating has a way of jolting one's perspective. The default state between two people is NOT one of intimate sexual union. It's not a simple matter of tightening the loose wire and the whole machine springs to life again. It's more akin to duplicating cold fusion, or the "conditions for life" in a primordial pond and hoping something happens. Doing all the work, if you are lucky, claws you back up to zero. For Mrs Apocrypha and me, that took well over a year of steady counselling, to get to a place of the appearance of relative forgiveness and empathy. It did NOT "restore" sexual intimacy. My odds of eliciting that reaction were about on par with anyone else, or maybe a bit less, rather than a "last man on earth" situation. Understand your limits - or that there can be limits, when embarking on an "at any cost" commitment. There is always either a place to fall back to in a relationship, or a way to reframe it. Each will come with a cost. When I realized "restoring" wasn't going to work, I reframed what I felt our relationship was, and embarked upon my second relationship with my spouse, with different rules and expectations around intimacy. After several years of difficult learning, this failed too - and I realized I'd begun to take pride in the amount of hard work I could put in - in my capacity for pain and humiliation. So, what's your everything? How do you know when you've tried everything? Suppose she says, like Mrs Apocrypha, that she needs to explore her sexuality with others, so that she has her own sexual spark with which to share with you? That it's either that, or steady on as is. Are you able to do that? Suppose she, or you, decide to explore an unusual sexual kink. Suppose she gets off on you being denied? Suppose one of you "tries" an affair, to make things liveable. How far are you going to go? You can both want to "save the relationship", like it's a separate thing from the two of you - but it really comes down to how each one of you feels about the other, and behaves toward the other. |
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Post by novembercomingfire on Apr 25, 2017 11:16:33 GMT -5
Thank-you. Very very much appreciated. I made a conscious decision to do EVERYTHING in my power to fix my marriage and restore it to a LOVING AFFECTIONATE HAPPY COUPLE - I can honestly say with 100% sincerity that I did not do this yet. Failure? Yes that is possible, but only when I can say with complete good faith that I tried everything, WE tried everything. I am very confident that BOTH of US are very strongly committed to WORK and REBUILD. We have re-made contact and both of us are so serious now about this for OUR COUPLE FIRST and then the wonderful family we have created shall benefit from this, but unquestionably it is the PURENESS MOTIVATION of OUR COUPLE that must come first. Out of the ashes cometh the Phoenix. Blessings to All! McRoomate, this is a hard thread for me to read because I see myself in your resolve, and I know how that ended. There are a few things I noted from the beginning of this thread, the way things get framed - that lead to magical thinking. The words we use matter. They shape our ideas into forms that aren't always effective in the situation. When we say things like " save the marriage", it becomes tempting to view the marriage as a separate thing from the two individuals in it, and their behavior and feelings toward each other. "Saving" it, implies a state of jeopardy, rather than a beginning state of total loss - like a house with a kitchen fire, rather than a house that has been burnt to the foundation. A marriage - at least Western concepts of it - is a sexually intimate union. You, on the other hand, do not have a sexually intimate relationship with that woman. You aim to do the work, to rebuild or restore that sexual union, with the assumption being that the default state is restored and active. It's reasonable to understand why anyone might think that after most of their adult life sharing space with someone, but being separated and dating has a way of jolting one's perspective. The default state between two people is NOT one of intimate sexual union. It's not a simple matter of tightening the loose wire and the whole machine springs to life again. It's more akin to duplicating cold fusion, or the "conditions for life" in a primordial pond and hoping something happens. Doing all the work, if you are lucky, claws you back up to zero. For Mrs Apocrypha and me, that took well over a year of steady counselling, to get to a place of the appearance of relative forgiveness and empathy. It did NOT "restore" sexual intimacy. My odds of eliciting that reaction were about on par with anyone else, or maybe a bit less, rather than a "last man on earth" situation. Understand your limits - or that there can be limits, when embarking on an "at any cost" commitment. There is always either a place to fall back to in a relationship, or a way to reframe it. Each will come with a cost. When I realized "restoring" wasn't going to work, I reframed what I felt our relationship was, and embarked upon my second relationship with my spouse, with different rules and expectations around intimacy. After several years of difficult learning, this failed too - and I realized I'd begun to take pride in the amount of hard work I could put in - in my capacity for pain and humiliation. So, what's your everything? How do you know when you've tried everything? Suppose she says, like Mrs Apocrypha, that she needs to explore her sexuality with others, so that she has her own sexual spark with which to share with you? That it's either that, or steady on as is. Are you able to do that? Suppose she, or you, decide to explore an unusual sexual kink. Suppose she gets off on you being denied? Suppose one of you "tries" an affair, to make things liveable. How far are you going to go? You can both want to "save the relationship", like it's a separate thing from the two of you - but it really comes down to how each one of you feels about the other, and behaves toward the other. In my opinion, your counsel here is excellent. |
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Post by McRoomMate on Apr 25, 2017 11:16:47 GMT -5
Thank-you. Very very much appreciated. I made a conscious decision to do EVERYTHING in my power to fix my marriage and restore it to a LOVING AFFECTIONATE HAPPY COUPLE - I can honestly say with 100% sincerity that I did not do this yet. Failure? Yes that is possible, but only when I can say with complete good faith that I tried everything, WE tried everything. I am very confident that BOTH of US are very strongly committed to WORK and REBUILD. We have re-made contact and both of us are so serious now about this for OUR COUPLE FIRST and then the wonderful family we have created shall benefit from this, but unquestionably it is the PURENESS MOTIVATION of OUR COUPLE that must come first. Out of the ashes cometh the Phoenix. Blessings to All! McRoomate, this is a hard thread for me to read because I see myself in your resolve, and I know how that ended. There are a few things I noted from the beginning of this thread, the way things get framed - that lead to magical thinking. The words we use matter. They shape our ideas into forms that aren't always effective in the situation. When we say things like " save the marriage", it becomes tempting to view the marriage as a separate thing from the two individuals in it, and their behavior and feelings toward each other. "Saving" it, implies a state of jeopardy, rather than a beginning state of total loss - like a house with a kitchen fire, rather than a house that has been burnt to the foundation. A marriage - at least Western concepts of it - is a sexually intimate union. You, on the other hand, do not have a sexually intimate relationship with that woman. You aim to do the work, to rebuild or restore that sexual union, with the assumption being that the default state is restored and active. It's reasonable to understand why anyone might think that after most of their adult life sharing space with someone, but being separated and dating has a way of jolting one's perspective. The default state between two people is NOT one of intimate sexual union. It's not a simple matter of tightening the loose wire and the whole machine springs to life again. It's more akin to duplicating cold fusion, or the "conditions for life" in a primordial pond and hoping something happens. Doing all the work, if you are lucky, claws you back up to zero. For Mrs Apocrypha and me, that took well over a year of steady counselling, to get to a place of the appearance of relative forgiveness and empathy. It did NOT "restore" sexual intimacy. My odds of eliciting that reaction were about on par with anyone else, or maybe a bit less, rather than a "last man on earth" situation. Understand your limits - or that there can be limits, when embarking on an "at any cost" commitment. There is always either a place to fall back to in a relationship, or a way to reframe it. Each will come with a cost. When I realized "restoring" wasn't going to work, I reframed what I felt our relationship was, and embarked upon my second relationship with my spouse, with different rules and expectations around intimacy. After several years of difficult learning, this failed too - and I realized I'd begun to take pride in the amount of hard work I could put in - in my capacity for pain and humiliation. You can both want to "save the relationship", like it's a separate thing from the two of you - but it really comes down to how each one of you feels about the other, and behaves toward the other. Thank-you Apocrypha Very much appreciate the sharing of your story. With your "Second Relationship" (I liked the way you put that very much - it is something new and different not restoring, the old one is gone, it is the new 2nd version at least), If I may ask did you and Mrs. Apocrypha succeed in intimacy and sex on a regular basis? Call me nuts but I think WE can do this and I have 100% the intention to do it and the will power and the feelings - well, I think the love will grow organically from the neglected roots that God willing will stir again from the almost daily sex and every day intimacy (holding her every night, sleeping naked, holding hands, morning kisses, lots of cuddling, etc.) |
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Post by Apocrypha on Apr 25, 2017 11:39:20 GMT -5
With your "Second Relationship" (I liked the way you put that very much - it is something new and different not restoring, the old one is gone, it is the new 2nd version at least), If I may ask did you and Mrs. Apocrypha succeed in intimacy and sex on a regular basis? Call me nuts but I think WE can do this and I have 100% the intention to do it and the will power and the feelings - well, I think the love will grow organically from the neglected roots that God willing will stir again from the almost daily sex and every day intimacy (holding her every night, sleeping naked, holding hands, morning kisses, lots of cuddling, etc.) For quite a time, while we ran Marriage 2.0, we had more regular sex. Eventually I had one of those M. Night Shymalan endings where I realized the whole endeavor was something else playing out entirely. @mcroommate, as I understand it, you have ALWAYS had 100% the intention, feelings, and willpower to do this - this being have a sexually intimate relationship with your partner. Of the two of you, was that really at issue? What's different in the facts on the ground? In my case, we had these things in our relationship: - lots of celibacy - periods of "duty sex" - eventually she used to put her arm, and later a pillow over her own head - her affair -removal of wedding rings - family counselling - for years - more celibacy - months (posed as "no pressure") - holding her every night, sleeping naked, holding hands, morning kisses, lots of cuddling (posed as "non-sexual intimacy at first, but later weaponized so that the expressed desire for this was code for "I don't want intercourse with you") - eventual celibacy again, though otherwise a communicative and amicable relationship. - sleeping in separate beds -hot/cold wavering - I tried my wedding ring again and got a hostile reaction to it. - a save the marriage Vegas weekend extravaganza - celibacy Here is where I pulled the plug. Within two weeks of that, she proposed Marriage 2.0 - open relationship, open a crack. - her original pitch was that it was open just on her side. I countered that both sides be open. She needed to fully grasp the cost of what she was asking. - this is where we both went through A LOT of difficulty, but where we also restored sexual relations with each other to a large extent - Over the course of 3 years, she repeatedly and constantly went out of our agreed bounds, causing enormous hardship, and I consistently fell to further fallback positions. - eventually she and I were celibate again - we did another save the marriage vacation - this one did not save it. - we tried therapy again, different counselor. This one discounted and disrespected me and the role of sexual intimacy for me as a route to ingratiating herself to my spouse - I ended that, and within a few weeks ended the marriage. |
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Post by seabr33z3 on Apr 25, 2017 12:00:32 GMT -5
If nothing else is to be taken from this it's that you tried( the ultimate understatement). You were left with no other direction other than to walk away.
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Post by lyn on Apr 25, 2017 12:23:10 GMT -5
McRoomMateI hope this works for you and your W. I truly do. This is coming from my optimistic side. As a realist? Please, set an expiration date on your calendar for this foray. If enough changes appear creating a mutually satisfying relationship, then, awesome. But, if by this date on your calendar nothing has changed (or simply not enough) - honor this date and exit for real. You have a lot to offer to someone who will gladly accept everything you are NOW. If in 6 months or so - things are all too familiar, go out and live your life. Just BE you. YOU are enough. Good luck! xx P.s. Read and re-read what Apocrypha is saying.
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Post by wom360 on Apr 25, 2017 13:05:08 GMT -5
McRoomate, this is a hard thread for me to read because I see myself in your resolve, and I know how that ended. There are a few things I noted from the beginning of this thread, the way things get framed - that lead to magical thinking. The words we use matter. They shape our ideas into forms that aren't always effective in the situation. When we say things like " save the marriage", it becomes tempting to view the marriage as a separate thing from the two individuals in it, and their behavior and feelings toward each other. "Saving" it, implies a state of jeopardy, rather than a beginning state of total loss - like a house with a kitchen fire, rather than a house that has been burnt to the foundation. A marriage - at least Western concepts of it - is a sexually intimate union. You, on the other hand, do not have a sexually intimate relationship with that woman. You aim to do the work, to rebuild or restore that sexual union, with the assumption being that the default state is restored and active. It's reasonable to understand why anyone might think that after most of their adult life sharing space with someone, but being separated and dating has a way of jolting one's perspective. The default state between two people is NOT one of intimate sexual union. It's not a simple matter of tightening the loose wire and the whole machine springs to life again. It's more akin to duplicating cold fusion, or the "conditions for life" in a primordial pond and hoping something happens. Doing all the work, if you are lucky, claws you back up to zero. For Mrs Apocrypha and me, that took well over a year of steady counselling, to get to a place of the appearance of relative forgiveness and empathy. It did NOT "restore" sexual intimacy. My odds of eliciting that reaction were about on par with anyone else, or maybe a bit less, rather than a "last man on earth" situation. Understand your limits - or that there can be limits, when embarking on an "at any cost" commitment. There is always either a place to fall back to in a relationship, or a way to reframe it. Each will come with a cost. When I realized "restoring" wasn't going to work, I reframed what I felt our relationship was, and embarked upon my second relationship with my spouse, with different rules and expectations around intimacy. After several years of difficult learning, this failed too - and I realized I'd begun to take pride in the amount of hard work I could put in - in my capacity for pain and humiliation. You can both want to "save the relationship", like it's a separate thing from the two of you - but it really comes down to how each one of you feels about the other, and behaves toward the other. Thank-you Apocrypha Very much appreciate the sharing of your story. With your "Second Relationship" (I liked the way you put that very much - it is something new and different not restoring, the old one is gone, it is the new 2nd version at least), If I may ask did you and Mrs. Apocrypha succeed in intimacy and sex on a regular basis? Call me nuts but I think WE can do this and I have 100% the intention to do it and the will power and the feelings - well, I think the love will grow organically from the neglected roots that God willing will stir again from the almost daily sex and every day intimacy (holding her every night, sleeping naked, holding hands, morning kisses, lots of cuddling, etc.) What you're contemplating here is not true intimacy. You're trying to get sex, which is a byproduct of intimacy (sometimes). It's clear from your posts that you really have no idea what intimacy is. Again, I urge you to confess your affair to your wife. Stop being a coward. Give her the choice to reconcile with her eyes wide open. It's your only chance for true intimacy with your wife. Don't ask me how I know this. Your fellow coward, WOM360 |
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Post by Apocrypha on Apr 25, 2017 14:02:07 GMT -5
Thank-you Apocrypha Very much appreciate the sharing of your story. With your "Second Relationship" (I liked the way you put that very much - it is something new and different not restoring, the old one is gone, it is the new 2nd version at least), If I may ask did you and Mrs. Apocrypha succeed in intimacy and sex on a regular basis? Call me nuts but I think WE can do this and I have 100% the intention to do it and the will power and the feelings - well, I think the love will grow organically from the neglected roots that God willing will stir again from the almost daily sex and every day intimacy (holding her every night, sleeping naked, holding hands, morning kisses, lots of cuddling, etc.) What you're contemplating here is not true intimacy. You're trying to get sex, which is a byproduct of intimacy (sometimes). It's clear from your posts that you really have no idea what intimacy is. Again, I urge you to confess your affair to your wife. Stop being a coward. Give her the choice to reconcile with her eyes wide open. It's your only chance for true intimacy with your wife. How do you know what is in another person's heart? You might or might not be correct in the result, but it damned hard to, on the basis of a few sentences on a specific angle of a specific topic, to know what another person thinks or intends. Most people don't even have a grasp on their own motivations, let alone those of others. I do NOT necessarily urge anyone toward confession of an affair that is over, with lessons learned. An affair that's ongoing? In the middle of it? That's useful information, but it is a train wreck if it's not accompanied by a full commitment to ending the affair and relationship. I have a tough time understanding how knowing that kind of information can strengthen a relationship. |
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Post by Apocrypha on Apr 25, 2017 14:22:14 GMT -5
If nothing else is to be taken from this it's that you tried( the ultimate understatement). You were left with no other direction other than to walk away. That's not true though. I could have done more. I could have tried embracing being in what's called a cuckold relationship, in which I eroticize my own denial, and in which she eroticizes my denial and humiliation. I could have tried a "hotwife" or "wittol" scenario, in which I exclusively eroticize the expression of my wife's sexuality (with whomever she wants). I could have embraced celibacy and looked the other way. I could have kept going to the next counselor, in the hope that Mrs Apocrypha would come around and stop using the sessions as an excuse to scream and yell about the indignity of being wanted by her husband, and to confirm her idea that separation is ideal with every conflict explored. I could have agreed to a "trial separation" or a "therapeutic" separation. I could have separated but maintained a semblance of sexual intimacy (which she proposed a number of times, but only on her own terms), while she and I dated others, effectively with each of us being secondary partners to each other. I'm sure a lot of people would have gotten off the bus at her affair - their Majinot Line. I'm sure others might have gotten out when she resumed contact with him, and then when she pined for him for a year, or expressed her fury and resentment at me for ruining what they had, after she had confessed to it. The thing is, once you get there, there's always another corner to turn, and you can keep on going down that rabbit hole. I clung to the idea that "at least I will have tried everything", but I hadn't tried everything. I did go much, much farther than I ever thought possible. But what I saw, over time that every time I came to meet her where she was, or where she said she needed to be, she moved it out farther and found new ways to be out of bounds. I chalked a bit up to "learning curve", but I wasn't making those "mistakes" - only she was - consistently. After a time, I came to realize simple wisdom. If a person's behavior and words seem confusing over time, sometimes the best way to make sense is to look at the result of their actions. Maybe THAT is their true intent. You can always do more to accommodate - but understand that it always comes at a personal cost. I understand @mcroomate and what a powerful thing it is to feel for once that the person you married FINALLY is giving you priority. He had to move out to make the needle move - to make this real. Now, he's getting just a taste of acknowledgment, in which this woman is signalling an intent to engage in a gesture that symbolizes an intent toward intimacy. |
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Post by novembercomingfire on Apr 25, 2017 14:29:04 GMT -5
If nothing else is to be taken from this it's that you tried( the ultimate understatement). You were left with no other direction other than to walk away. That's not true though. I could have done more. I could have tried embracing being in what's called a cuckold relationship, in which I eroticize my own denial, and in which she eroticizes my denial and humiliation. I could have tried a "hotwife" or "wittol" scenario, in which I exclusively eroticize the expression of my wife's sexuality (with whomever she wants). I could have embraced celibacy and looked the other way. I could have kept going to the next counselor, in the hope that Mrs Apocrypha would come around and stop using the sessions as an excuse to scream and yell about the indignity of being wanted by her husband, and to confirm her idea that separation is ideal with every conflict explored. I could have agreed to a "trial separation" or a "therapeutic" separation. I could have separated but maintained a semblance of sexual intimacy (which she proposed a number of times, but only on her own terms), while she and I dated others, effectively with each of us being secondary partners to each other. I'm sure a lot of people would have gotten off the bus at her affair - their Majinot Line. I'm sure others might have gotten out when she resumed contact with him, and then when she pined for him for a year, or expressed her fury and resentment at me for ruining what they had, after she had confessed to it. The thing is, once you get there, there's always another corner to turn, and you can keep on going down that rabbit hole. I clung to the idea that "at least I will have tried everything", but I hadn't tried everything. I did go much, much farther than I ever thought possible. But what I saw, over time that every time I came to meet her where she was, or where she said she needed to be, she moved it out farther and found new ways to be out of bounds. I chalked a bit up to "learning curve", but I wasn't making those "mistakes" - only she was - consistently. After a time, I came to realize simple wisdom. If a person's behavior and words seem confusing over time, sometimes the best way to make sense is to look at the result of their actions. Maybe THAT is their true intent. You can always do more to accommodate - but understand that it always comes at a personal cost. I understand @mcroomate and what a powerful thing it is to feel for once that the person you married FINALLY is giving you priority. He had to move out to make the needle move - to make this real. Now, he's getting just a taste of acknowledgment, in which this woman is signalling an intent to engage in a gesture that symbolizes an intent toward intimacy. So, your wife was unwilling to have sex with you but wanted to have sex with other partners, a unilateral open marriage benefitting only her, etc. How in hell did she justify this, and her right to stay married to you, especially to the therapists that you jointly consulted? |
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Post by seabr33z3 on Apr 25, 2017 15:01:24 GMT -5
If nothing else is to be taken from this it's that you tried( the ultimate understatement). You were left with no other direction other than to walk away. That's not true though. I could have done more. I could have tried embracing being in what's called a cuckold relationship, in which I eroticize my own denial, and in which she eroticizes my denial and humiliation. I could have tried a "hotwife" or "wittol" scenario, in which I exclusively eroticize the expression of my wife's sexuality (with whomever she wants). I could have embraced celibacy and looked the other way. I could have kept going to the next counselor, in the hope that Mrs Apocrypha would come around and stop using the sessions as an excuse to scream and yell about the indignity of being wanted by her husband, and to confirm her idea that separation is ideal with every conflict explored. I could have agreed to a "trial separation" or a "therapeutic" separation. I could have separated but maintained a semblance of sexual intimacy (which she proposed a number of times, but only on her own terms), while she and I dated others, effectively with each of us being secondary partners to each other. I'm sure a lot of people would have gotten off the bus at her affair - their Majinot Line. I'm sure others might have gotten out when she resumed contact with him, and then when she pined for him for a year, or expressed her fury and resentment at me for ruining what they had, after she had confessed to it. The thing is, once you get there, there's always another corner to turn, and you can keep on going down that rabbit hole. I clung to the idea that "at least I will have tried everything", but I hadn't tried everything. I did go much, much farther than I ever thought possible. But what I saw, over time that every time I came to meet her where she was, or where she said she needed to be, she moved it out farther and found new ways to be out of bounds. I chalked a bit up to "learning curve", but I wasn't making those "mistakes" - only she was - consistently. After a time, I came to realize simple wisdom. If a person's behavior and words seem confusing over time, sometimes the best way to make sense is to look at the result of their actions. Maybe THAT is their true intent. You can always do more to accommodate - but understand that it always comes at a personal cost. I understand @mcroomate and what a powerful thing it is to feel for once that the person you married FINALLY is giving you priority. He had to move out to make the needle move - to make this real. Now, he's getting just a taste of acknowledgment, in which this woman is signalling an intent to engage in a gesture that symbolizes an intent toward intimacy. all of the above seems like flogging a dead horse to me and nothing in any of those options would have been beneficial to you. To the contrary, they would have led to your demise in some shape or form. I don't know your full story, but your wife seems like she has some type of personality disorder |
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