Thanks in advance for anyone who takes the time to read this and advice they may have. I apologize for being long winded, but it's a complicated situation and I want to be as transparent as possible.

My current wife and I have been married for 14 years and separated on and off for the last 5 years, we have 2 awesome children that somehow haven't been horribly affected by all of this. Since the beginning of our relationship, we've never been horribly passionate about each other. After getting out of a toxic relationship, I think I was attracted to her "safeness" if that makes sense. She's a wonderful woman that I trust implicitly, has a great career and is the epitome of stable. I do love her, but not in love with her. I feel that I should appreciate her qualities more, but even trying to force myself to, I just can't seem to.

She's always seemed emotionless and her expressions are the same whether she's happy or sad and everything in between. This lack of connection has hit me hard (in and out of the bedroom). Our conversations have become mundane and revolve around work and the kids and that's about it. This COVID sheltering has just exacerbated the problem to where we just sit and watch TV together and don't really converse and can't remember the last time she made me laugh. I was trying to work on remodeling parts of the house and can't seem to get her involved in something that she wanted to do. She just doesn't seem to have an opinion on anything and just goes along with whatever I want. It sounds like a dream come true for most guys, but it just has me feeling like I'm doing everything on my own without a partner. I've explained this to my wife in detail, and she'll put effort for a week and then everything goes back to normal and I'm left feeling frustrated. It seems we're more like great friends that occasionally sleep together than a husband and wife.

Of course I'm not blameless in all of this, I screwed up pretty bad. About 5 years ago, I met a woman at work and fell crazy in love with her. She fulfilled everything I had been missing. She is super passionate, we can have fun doing anything, anywhere, she makes me feel loved, confident, and I just have more emotion for this woman than I ever have for anyone else in my life. She makes me want to go the extra mile, be more romantic, do the little things. Even after 5 years, the passion has not faded.

She's not perfect by any means, there is a huge amount of jealousy for my wife, which got to the point where I couldn't spend any time with her and my children together. Together or not, I feel very strongly about the kids being able to spend quality with their mom and dad and that's not something I can budge on. There's also a lack of ambition that I have a hard time dealing with, I'm fairly ambitious and do want a comfortable life. She's 42 with a dead end job and no real plan in life. With her being such a passionate person, the fighting can get pretty bad, however the make up is always equally good. We've made a lot of strides in this department, but still have a long way to go. I inherently feel that divorce is wrong and that the kids needs both their parents around all the time.

We did have week on/week off shared custody for a couple of years and the kids didn't seem effected by it, so some of that may be in my head.

I need to make a decision and stick with it, however my past attempts with both of them have failed for the reasons above. At this point I feel like I have to choose between a life of comfort, stability, no guilt for divorce and a life of instability, passion, and laughter and I just don't know what to do.

Please Help!

If you love your wife, please ask her to come post on this forum and make a thread of her own.

I will, but no promises she will....that's a lot of the issues between me and her.

To summarise: you've been in an affair for 5 years and you're asking us to help you make a choice between your wife or your affair.

Have you read the Welcome Statement, which says "This is a community where people come in search of marriage related support, answers, or encouragement"? In other words, you won't find support for your affair here.

You feel that divorce is wrong. Do you feel that your conduct with this woman over the past 5 years has been right?

You say that you have been separated on and off for the last 5 years. This timeframe coincides with your affair. Since you left your wife before, what made you reunite? And do you really think your children were not affected by that period?

Did they know that the separation was because of your affair? Do they know that you still see this woman? Does your wife know?

Also, you talk about your "current wife". Did you meet her while you were still married to your previous wife?

Sorry to hear about it. Honestly, it is really hard to lose someone I love.