Anyone figured out a way to be happy in a loveless marriage or is it always utterly miserable?
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Anonymous
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Spouse and I are obviously no longer in love. We've been through some really tough trials in recent years that I don't want to detail here to remain anonymous, and our kids are young so I know that's always a tough phase. But this has been going on for years and isn't improving. We've have had a lot of counseling, at my initiative, to try make things better. It's obvious spouse does not love me any more and doesn't have any interest in putting in the work to make things better, as the counselors have suggested. I'm also fed up and don't feel any passion any more. We have sex once or twice a month, but it's forced and unsatisfying. We don't have deep conversations or hardly any time one-on-one, which I tried for a long time to initiate but without any effort in return. Most of our interactions leave me annoyed and frustrated at the way spouse handles things. But I don't see divorce as the answer, since I'd still be dealing with an ex over the kids all the time and probably even more frustrated.
We have very different outlooks on life, and I constantly beat myself up for this marriage choice. It was a bad one. I've spent the last few years considering whether to divorce or not and we have discussed it many times. Constantly thinking about it is exhausting and instead I would like to put that behind us and just commit. We are both very hands-on parents and very bonded to the kids. We don't want to split custody and make them live between two homes. I can't bear the thought of less time with our kids, and frankly also can't bear the thought of making my kids spend time away from my spouse because they are so adoring of us both. I also think financially divorce will be so hard on all of us, and the kids would have to give up things like music lessons and camps and college funds. I'd like to do everything I can to keep us together and try to be happy as co-parents. My spouse works and travels a lot in a new job taken on in the past year, so we don't see each other much any more and that's actually made things a little better. I'm trying to do everything I can to make myself happy and the best I can be -- eating right, exercising, getting good rest, enjoying good books, being productive at work, seeing friends and just being a kind and thoughtful person. I'm also trying to focus on the good things in our life -- my spouse is kind to me even if not adoring, we are all healthy, we have a good joint income that affords some luxuries. We love each other's families and all the in-laws are close. Our kids are very well-adjusted, well-mannered, bright and happy. But there's this underlying sadness to my life because I am married to someone who doesn't love me and I don't really love, either. Anyone made a happy life from a situation like this? I've even considered whether we should explore an open marriage to see other people, but the idea grosses me out and I have no interest. Counseling, vacations, date nights have all been tried and haven't worked, and my spouse isn't into doing any of it any more. TIA |
Anonymous
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What does your husband want to do? It doesn't sound like it could work to me unless you're both on board with the same idea.
Otherwise I'd say fake it and hopefully you can learn to love again. |
Anonymous
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Well if both of you are on the same page that you want to divorce, but don't want to split custody and can't afford it, I don't see why you're so opposed to having a discreet open marriage? If that's the kind of companionship you're looking for.
Otherwise, just establish that you're living as co-parenting roommates and try to focus on being friends. When you go out, make it about having fun and blowing off steam from work/kids. Not filled with romantic pressure and impending sex. |
Anonymous
| Do you think your husband is having an affair? |
Anonymous
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My father did this. He left my mom the second I went to college and I struggled to reconcile things until I realized that my mother was bonkers and I was lucky that he stuck around to mitigate her crazy. I say this as someone who didn't really understand the sacrifice until I had my own kids.
He's happy now. They divorced at 51 and he has a partner, a lovely woman, who is just fantastic. My mother spun into a deep depression, claimed to have been blindsided and basically had a breakdown. I even took a semester off to care for her. I realize now, as an adult, how nuts that was. I would never do that to my children but my mother took being a victim as her lot in life. I actually cut myself off from her (my brother did as well). It took nearly losing her adult children for her to finally grow up and deal with her own issues. She did finally and is in a good place. She moved to New Mexico and is basically your crunchy grandma. So, it works out. But you have to decide what's it worth and what you want after, I guess. |
Anonymous
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This is the OP - It would be nearly impossible for my spouse to be having an affair. We work at the same place and know where each other is at every minute of the day and what the other is doing because of the nature of our jobs. My spouse could be having a random hook-up here and there on work travel, but not a sustained affair without my knowing about it. I don't have any suspicion that's happened. Spouse is a pretty traditional person, so I'm not sure even would be interested in open marriage and I'm certainly not.
When I have asked spouse what we should do, spouse seems to be on the same page as me -- knows our relationship is not great, but not so horrible that we should break up our family. I've been doing the fake it until hopefully something comes back thing, and plan to keep it up. But if anyone has been here and made it work, I'd love to get advice. |
Anonymous
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Well I don't know what to tell you because I would go with the frienshhip marriage arrangement and open to other relationships to get that fulfillment else where. Your options are as such:
-divorce and blow up your children's world and security -live in misery -be honest and stay together and get a boyfriend/girlfriend to.round out the inbalance. |
Anonymous
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OP I don't know what you want to hear. You need to make an arrangement with, at a minimum, yourself about what you can handle. I'm the PP with the father who split when I went to college and I think the big thing is to be an adult and make a choice and not be a victim. You decide what life you want to live. And accept the consequences of that choice - trade offs and all -- with your eyes open.
If you want to stay married, then just do that. But don't bother looking outside for guidance on this. You need to make your own peace, OP. |
Anonymous
Why aren't you interested in an open marriage? If you're "utterly miserable" in your current one and there's no hope of making the marriage better for yourself, then open marriage is the answer. |
Anonymous
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Here's an idea: move into a different bedroom, start looking at your spouse as more of a roommate and less of a spouse, and see what happens. Take off your wedding ring. Go out with friends. Does the idea of dating scare the hell out of you or does it make you a little hopeful at the possibility of finding a better marriage someday?
I don't really know what else to tell you, though. You are either going to stay married or you'll get divorced. There really isn't middle ground. you can divorce now or divorce later. I think it would confuse kids and maybe set a bad example to have parents who were clearly just going through the motions as a couple. And you two seem pretty amicable, which is kind of the best place to be in if you split. |
SenecaSky
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I also have an open marriage, and we're loving it, but before we opened, we discovered each others love language. Mine is Words of Affirmation and his is Touch. We weren't feeling loved by each other because I didn't know sex is an important way he feels loved and he didn't know that I wasn't just nagging when I told him I'd like him to ask me about my day when he comes home. Once we started exploring this, things improved dramatically. The book is called The Five Love Languages.
Open marriage doesn't have to be gross. There are many ways of connecting and finding love than having other sexual relationships. You could check into polyamory - but it sounds like he may not go for the idea. I personally like the idea of treating each other as though you're roommates and see how that goes. Down the road maybe you both will be more open to opening up? Otherwise, you're staying together for a noble cause, but ending up in misery with each other. If you believe you have one life here on earth, then think seriously about how you want to spend it. |
Anonymous
| Open marriage open stds |
Anonymous
| Are you actually miserable? Posters keep saying you are but I don't see that in your post. |
Anonymous
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OP- find a good group of girlfriends: spend your free time with them, share your secrets with them.
Buy a good vibrator. Order is online if you don't want go to a store. Buy a detachable shower head. Read good books Drink good wine Love to you. |
Anonymous
| Always.utterly.miserable. |