i have never posted anything before and i don't know who to turn to anymore. firstly i will be married 20 years in a few weeks and i am forty years old. my husband is forty one and we have three teenage children 19,17,14. i have found myself alone most of my marriage as my husband worked shift work, went out with his friends alot and slept in most weekends. he never paid much in the way of attention to me ever. communication has for me always been a big issue and i feel that my husband has not met my needs in this area. i have stated that repeatedly over the years. he said if we had more sex we would have better communication and i said if we had better communication we would have more sex. it's a no win situation for either of us. to sum the long and short of it - we have gone through severe in-law trouble (i was not welcomed by his family), huge financial loss from a risk my husband took which will now put us a lifetime behind and a relationship that never really seemed to take off the ground except for our wonderful children. we both are committed parents and i think we would both like to see our family stay together and flourish. we have put everything in our life to raising our children and didn't spend any time on our marriage.
last year something occured in my life that set us on a road of misery. i began chatting on the internet and met a man their who i felt really was interested in me and what i said and felt. of course there is sexual content involved and i actually at one point thought that there could be a future with this person. my husband tracked my emails and recorded my conversations with this person and eventually he could not deal with this and kicked me out of the house. i wanted very much to come back to my family and during this time i recollected a past experience in which i was sexually assualted by a male friend of my husbands. this issue in my mind has not been resolved. i went to counselling for this but my husband has now forbid me to return to counselling. i have put this other man behind me and realized the reason i cared for him so much was because of how he made me feel inside. special and important. i was already on my own realizing that i could not have a future with this other man and he would not be someone that i would want to spend my life with anyway. i felt like my whole life was an open book. everything that i had said in passing and in confidence was recorded by my husband when he hacked into my email and chats. when my husband found out about this relationship i turned to another person i chatted with on the net and it became a hot and heavy friendship. the long and short of it is that i have given these people up. i want to be honest with my husband and have tried but i am too frightened to speak with him openly because he one day he is ok and the next day he walks around mad at me but doesn't say anything until he explodes. he is tracking my work email now i am sure or was and is very insecure. i don't trust him because he does this to me and he doesn't trust me contacting these other men. it's become a game of control to me. i don't want him controlling me and so i see if i can beat him at his own game. it sounds sick but i need to know if he is doing this to me because he never once discussed that part of the problem with me. it's something i needed to move on but he is not willing to discuss.
i love him. i want to spend my life with him but it appears that is will all have to be on his terms. he tells me that men and woman cannot be friends as any man who is a friend to me will eventually want to sleep with me. i don't agree with this. he also tells me that i can trust him to tell him anything. i would like to be open about why i think i have reached out to these people but i don't think we could have an adult discussion because when ever we talk about it he just blames me for everything. i don't think there is room for a third person in a happy marriage and i didn't reach this point alone. he says that he has done everything in his power to fix the relationship but still i keep turning to other men. i have gone for counselling but he came to one session and didn't like the counsellor saying lets stop blaming and find out why this was happening. he walked out and threatened that night to leave because i was arranging to meet a guy for coffee and he found that out through email again. i want to tell him that i have friends and some that i am very close too BUT he is the "most important person in my life". i agree with him in that i should not chat with other men like i did but i don't think it's right for him to say that i can't have male friends. if we could get past the awkward silences in our conversations, start having fun together and bridge the differences that have occured i think we could have a powerful marriage. he is a good man, a kind man, a wonderful father and i love him but i feel there is the communication i need between us missing because we both don't know where to get started. i wish that i could tell him what i got from talking to these other people. a feeling of being important, interesting and sharing in conversation. i have felt suicidal many times lately, and realize that i am depressed. i want to move forward in my life and be happy. i want that to be with him but i can't seem to break down the barriers and find what is was that brought us together in the first place. i'm even frightened posting this incase he can read my thoughts here. i don't expect that his views would match mine but i wish there was some way for him to let me be and get to know me as a person, a friend, and not someone he's known for 20 years and thinks that i am still that girl from way back then. how can you love someone so much yet feel that so much has occured that you don't know where or how to get it back?

<small>[ January 27, 2005, 12:48 PM: Message edited by: hanora ]</small>

There are a couple of issues here&#8230;the first I have to agree with your h. It is not appropriate for you to have friends with someone of the opposite sex on a one-to-one basis. Same sex friends and married couples are okay but the other really does lead to problems many times, especially if one of you is unhappy in your marriage.<p>The second thing I have a problem with is him forbidding you to go to counseling. I think he fears that through counseling you will find self-esteem and strength to either force him to make changes or to end the marriage. He sounds very controlling and that is something that is not going to change. He has no desire to know you as a friend, etc---he&#8217;s had it his own convenient way now for too long. He has a wife, a family and a home and he doesn&#8217;t have to put any emotional effort into it.<p>You have to decide what you need. You are not going to change him. If he changes, it will be because he wants to and from what I see here, it doesn&#8217;t sound very promising at this point. You say you love him but you were ready to jump ship with someone you met over the internet. Are you sure you love him or are you just used to him and afraid of what might or might not be out &#8216;there&#8217;? As I said, you can&#8217;t change him so you have to decide what you can and can&#8217;t live without and what changes you might have to make to achieve that life.