I've read this board on and off over a few years time but I've never posted. I'm now here b/c I don't know what to do and, other than my H, I don't talk to anyone about this.

We've been married for 7 years, together for 11. We have two boys, 2 and 4. Before we got married, I had concerns over our relationship b/c romance and emotional love seemed to be dwindling and almost didn't get married but then things seemed to get alittle better so we went through with it. After a short period of time, those same issues seemed to creep back up. I would mention it and things would get better for a short time and then dwindle again. This has happened numerous times over the years.

About 4-5 years ago, I developed a very close friendship with another guy. Thats all it was initially and I felt as close to him as some of my best girlfriends. Well, as time went on, it seemed to develop more and I started feeling emotionally connected to this person. I know that he cares for me deeply b/c he's gone as far as to tell me that, if things were different, he'd want to marry me. Anyway, I know that this happening makes me a bad person and I feel awful for it. I truly didn't intend for feeling to develop but I think that he filled that void of emotion that I hadn't been getting at home. I want anyone reading this to know that, with this other guy, things are emotional and not physical. In fact, I almost never even see him but I used to talk to him frequently on the phone. My H knows about the emotional connection that I feel that I have with him and asked me to stop talking to him. I have done that, except for the few times when I've ran into him. Throughout these 4-5 years, I have stopped talking to him numerous times (mostly by my own choice) for up to nearly 11 months at one time and none of the emotional feelings went away. I wanted them to so I could work on things with H and thats why I'd choose to stop being around him but they never changed.

My thoughts on H and I seperating is not "for" the other guy. In fact, I don't even have any intention of dating him. Being around him and seeing others though has shown me what I would want for a relationship and how much I need to be loved emotionally. I feel like my H and I live as roommates and have felt like this for nearly 6 years. I love him as a person (like you would a family member) but not as a husband. He says that he loves me but I just don't see or feel it. Hugs feel empty. We rarely even touch. We haven't had sex in many, many months. He is a good father and good provider. I really don't want to hurt him anymore but I honestly don't know if its possible to get the love back now. I just don't know if I'm capable of it and I keep thinking about why I'm putting off the inevitable.

I know that many of you are automatically going to think, even despite what I've said, that all this is "because of" this other guy but I can tell you that I had these concerns and had talked to my H about these concerns even before I'd met him.

I'm just wondering where to go from here.

Thank you for reading and now posting, Unsure.

I'm going to respond from last to first in your post.

Where do you go from here? Where you choose to go.

It's not about the other guy...the other guy you've put into your marriage...it's about you.

Where your thoughts dwell, there is your treasure. Which is why EAs are betrayals to marriages...instead of you choosing to dwell in your thoughts on your actions, your choices, your partnering...you've focused on your resulting feelings to direct your choices.

You've literally invested emotionally, physically and mentally into someone outside your union. Which breaks the union and gives you conflicting and unsure feelings.

You're not unsure. You know what you choose to do. You know you were harming your BH each time you re-contacted OM...and you know you were harming your marriage...cutting out the constant opportunity to fall head over heels in love with your BH.

He's real. OM isn't. OM doesn't see all of you...every moment, in weakness and confidence, and mostly in between...he doesn't see your incredible acts of love or punishment...doesn't hear your criticisms which rob your own love bank...he only heard about. And he wasn't the man who vowed to you, has been with you, knowing you compare and find him less than another man.

OUCH. And your OM doesn't respect you or your marriage at all...for each time you took back up with contact, he answered. He's all about false intimacy, not the real kind...and he doesn't care enough about you to move away, change his number, or hang up.

That's reality.

Where you invest yourself, so you create your treasure. It's how arranged marriages, mail-order brides...many ways marriages which you'd think wouldn't possibly last do...when you go all in, you're accepting your vows as true and what you really want...and you are acting intimately, even if you fear it greatly.

If you've been reading the infidelity section over the years, you'll see many sentences you wrote found in many posts by people in affairs. Not about OM, not what you think, you're seeing this wrong...I had concerns...I never felt romantic or emotional attachment...even at the birth of my first child, when I saw my BH hold our creation in his arms...chose him as the father of my children...have lived beside this man, who comes home, is faithful to me, devastated and devote to me...

No. No connection.

When you choose from your feelings you live backwards. What are your beliefs? Do you believe because of your BH you won't feel? Wouldn't that make your feelings not your own?

They are.

They are inside you, about you, to you as information (got that part right) about your OWN beliefs, thoughts, where you dwell...

Not the other way around.

You've read here...gotten Harley's books? Understood and choose to believe fully that you can fall in love, romantically, emotionally, in totality with your BH over and over again throughout the rest of your life?

It's a choice. A choice you make every day, about you. Not him.

You can experience a huge chemical charge around this man who is your real partner from changing where your thoughts dwell, your beliefs...and stop living backwards.

I have no doubt your BH feared your infidelity before marriage...having already experienced it...those concerns concerned him...and he chose you, anyway.

You chose to violate the healthy boundary of marriage and work on, develop as you said, a close relationship with a member of the opposite sex whom you CHOSE to allow to meet your ENs and cut off your BH from meeting them. Your choices bring you to today, what you experience.

And at times, you chose differently...didn't change your feelings because you didn't change your thoughts. I have no doubt in my mind that no matter what man you're with in your lifetime, you will NOT have an intimate relationship, unless it's not someone you're married to...someone you who is real to you. By choice, not condition.

When you're focused on finding the "right" partner, then you stop being a good one. You won't enforce and maintain healthy boundaries around yourself...be your focus is on them...not you.

I know. I lived it.

OM might marry and divorce, you, too, like your BH has...then again, why do that when he's had a fantasy relationship with you for years...and not a real one. Reality comes from proximity, the minute-to-minute days of our lives...which is why 95% of affairs break apart...they shatter when the fantasy does.

Which is why second marriages fail at a much higher rate than firsts...and why thirds even higher...and on it goes...because it's about the other person, not you.

Only you are the common denominator. I ache for your future heart when it gets out of the fog and the regret and remorse feel like you're drowning in them.

Especially when you look into your sons' future eyes and say, "You're replaceable. You're plug and play with women. You gotta make your wives feel or else you'll lose them." How corrosive and heartbreaking that is..because that will be what they see...

instead of acts of commitments...honoring the marriage even when you feel like honoring your partner...acting directly from your beliefs knowing that feelings follow actions, so you can experience a fulfilling, loving, thriving marriage.

I'm so sorry you didn't bring your BH here to read and know to fight for his kids, keep his home, and Plan B you so you could maybe save your marriage.

You chose to NOT love your husband as your partner. You used him while you dwelled in your mind, resulting in your feelings, on a man who was not your husband. You acted intimately with him in communication so you felt intimate. You acted with care, consideration, attention, awareness and focus...which means you did not with your BH...can't do both...our minds don't work that way. You had three people in your marriage for the whole time...when cutting out the one who didn't vow, and never having contact with him was the one choice you didn't make. A tragic mistake.

Not too late...even as your BH may be done with you (don't know), you can change...so you don't reinact, don't teach your sons they are replaceable, just like their dad...and that someday, if they don't keep you happy, you'll leave them to...after you all, you left their dad in your own head, for years.

YOu aren't hugging with love and commitment...you are touching with guilt, inattention, harmful expectations and demands...which keep you safe from acting from intimacy with your BH. They are going to feel empty and unreal...you've made your husband this fantasy guy...and negated your real BH. You made him the phantom in his own home...the striver...the forgiver...wisher...and discounted by comparison again and again.

A great man. A great partner...who loves his family--probably breaks his heart to not be there for his sons...because his WW won't stop her long-term affair. For not splitting apart the intact family he's chosen to keep at nearly all costs...his choices matter too...he didn't maintain and enforce healthy boundaries either.

If you want to go from here into a great future, please choose to become radically honest with yourself...what you do...where your thoughts dwell...how you perceive...what you believe...and choose differently.

You choose to not get the love back...by your choice of actions. You choose to not touch, to not connect, to not have SF, to not reach, even when you don't feel like it, as an act of commitment. So you don't feel committed, all-in...keeps you at a safe distance from being really known...and really knowing your BH.

And you're braver than that...and you won't know until you act from bravery instead of reacting from your fear and then guiding yourself through your resulting feelings...

what do you tell your sons when they hit each other? "Don't act out your anger?" Why are you acting on your feelings? "Don't do what I do" holds no water.

Which is why divorce hurts so much..."Didn't work out" means they are subject to some invisible force, a spin of the wheel, no matter who they choose or who they are...instead of learning to partner and be a great one.

You can choose to stop living as roommates and become fantastic teammates...you are married...you are partners...you just aren't experiencing him like one because of YOUR choices, not his.

Please identify your LBs...really understand how DJs harm you, your children, your marriage, your life...how they are fantasy and full of disrespect...so you don't repeat this...and you will...as long as someone else makes you who you are, this will happen again and again. I don't believe you want this for yourself, to be an adulteress...I believe you want to be a great partner in a thriving marriage, through thick and thin...growing together...loving who you really are and sharing all of yourself with your husband...and being shared with.

LA

Thank you for your response. I had to read it numerous times to make sure that I took in everything that you were saying and understood it. You are certainly right that mostly everything going on relates back to me; however, I think that behaviors my H has exhibited in the past did not help things. When I became close with the other person, it was because I was not having that closeness at home. I had talked to my H numerous times about my concerns but nothing would change. There were times that I would put myself out there but he just wouldn't take the bait. There were no EAs before our marriage, just my concerns that there wasn't enough love between us to sustain us. Anytime I've brought this up over the years, things get better temporarily but it never lasts.

When I talked to him about this for the first time a couple years ago, I had completely stopped talking to the OM. I told my H that I was worried about where our relationship was going and suggested we make some changes but like always, it was short lived changes. It is my fault that I have allowed the OM back into my life but we worked together and completely had the same circle of friends so at times, we couldn't avoid each other. You are right that he doesn't respect my marriage obviously but with that said, he has numerous times offered to completely leave so that I can go on with my life and "fix" things. Thats basically what he has done now (by my request) except for the occasional times we've run into each other (we don't live in a very big place).

Enough about him though because my H and I are the bigger concerns here. I did suggest this site to my H and I think he glanced at it a few times. And I requested that we try counseling but he refused because he doesn't believe in it. When I talked to him about divorce/ seperation, it says that he doesn't really want it because even though he knows that our marriage isn't "what it should be" that he doesn't think its "that bad" and he doesn't believe in divorce.

I have read through this board and all the concepts thoroughly but not any of the books. I think I understand the concepts for the most part and have tried to start putting them into action. I just can't get past this feeling of no connection and lack of romantic/ emotional love. I want that in my marriage and we just do not have it and have not for a long time. We have tried to hug more frequently lately and my H is interested in sex but I'm having a very hard time with the thought of that because I just don't look at him in that sexual way. I feel like you have to be in love to have sex. When he tries things with me, I feel very awkward like its just a friend or co-worker trying to have sex with me. I just don't have that connection to make me want to have sex. And I definitely know that a HUGE need for me is to feel sexual and desired by the person I'm with so I need to figure out how to get past that.

I know that this is all about me and what I choose to do to make things better. I am trying to make those choices and suggestions to help. I want to believe in the concept that I can fall in love all over again but I think thats the one that I'm struggling with the most. Right now, I just don't see any hope for that happening and I know thats what brought me here. Everyday, I see these elderly couples (at work) that have been together for 50 years and still are clearly in love. I look at that and think that I don't even have that now so how will I possibly have that in 50 years. I think about how I don't even want to take care of H now when he gets a cold, let alone the horrible things that my patients are going through and still carrying for each other. I fear that the inevitable is divorce and while its never easy, I think that if it happens sooner, it will be easier for all involved and allow more time for each of us to find someone to make us happy. (We are both young. I'm 29 and he just turned 32. Basically, we've never really dated anyone but each other.)

I don't know how to get past those doubts of not being able to fall in love again and the fear of what I see as the inevitable.

I felt like I should clarify and say that, in the beginning, when we became such close friends that led to the development of the emotional things, we worked together, had the same circle of friends, and saw each other often. Now, I have a new job, we don't generally hang out with those same friends anymore, and I have asked him to stay away.