Re: Burning Down the Other Side of the Hill poppy: i'm probably going to get in big trouble for this, but here goes...
my husband and i separated almost a year ago. i thought i was going to DIE. i wanted to die. my life was OVER, and i was only 29. at the time i was not happy, i had not been happy for nearly all of our marriage, but it did not change the way i felt. i loved him. but there was no connection. there never really was the deep best friend soul mate connection. he didn't even get my sense of humor. that doesn't change the fact that i loved him. or that i worried for his safety. our marriage was like a business deal. he needed a houskeeper and i needed someone to do my taxes. we enjoyed each other's company, but we probably didn't rock each other's worlds. we were young and inexperienced when we met and young when we married.
at the time of our separation i didn't want to accept what i knew. i could have a perfectly comfortable, low conflict marriage to a man who cut the grass regularly and paid the bills on time. it would also be lonely. and emotionally unsatisfying. he could have stayed married to me, each of us in drowning in emotional unfulfillment while i kept his laundry clean and the house tidy. we were only married for four and a half years and i felt like an old woman.
my perspective has changed quite a bit in the last year. last year i felt that he HAD to stay married to me because he married me. that's it. it didn't matter that in a marriage of no infidelity or abuse, we would never find comfort with each other. now i am glad that he has set me free.
for me, i need emotional fulfillment. i had every material thing i could ever desire and i was miserable. i had not a care in the world and the freedom to do as i pleased, but i was miserable. i was miserable because i did not and could not connect with my husband. my husband's mind was elsewhere, he was not concerned with my emotional well being. he felt that since i was fed, sheltered and clothed, i should want no more.
you have an unenviable choice to make. i don't think anyone should live in an emotional void.
Re: Burning Down the Other Side of the Hill confused101: I choose to live in an emotional cardboard box. It has a nice view though.
Re: Burning Down the Other Side of the Hill sf7: Wow poppy. Wow. See, there it is, the anthesis advice that always comes up. If I were advising this issue I'd always say "you have a freakin' responsibility to your wife and kids dude...now go to work". But here's the devil in the detail now, isn't it? The one perspective that balances everyone else's: "leave for the connection". How do you reconcile these conflicting points? This is just confirming the two devils whispering on each shoulder, every dang day.
Re: Burning Down the Other Side of the Hill CDNgurl: well... what about your children? Would you choose this woman over your God given responsibility as a father? .... and believe me when I say you would not have the same sort of connection to your children if you would make such a choice...
my 2 cents.
Re: Burning Down the Other Side of the Hill poppy: i am certainly not whispering that you SHOULD leave.
it should be a decision about your wife or not your wife. not between your wife and straight into the arms of another woman.
full disclosure- i am the product of divorced parents. before they divorced, i have not one single memory of them in the same room together. ever. i was raised as my stepfather's own child and felt so much love between him and my mother.
i don't have kids, so maybe i should recuse myself. i would never have wanted my mother to live in her empty first marriage for what she thought was my best interest. my best interests were served by having parents who loved each other.
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