It depends. Do you actually have a question? Or were you just looking for rubber stamp approval of your intentions?
It depends. Do you actually have a question? Or were you just looking for rubber stamp approval of your intentions?
Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.
And..
"I felt the first time round that she was The One, and I feel that now as well .......... She wants to get back together, and so do I."
Who are you trying to convince you wouldn't be leaving your wife for this woman?
I'm gonna be totally honest and say that this whole post is making me feel somewhat self-righteous, because it's just SO wrong. But that's so easy to do. Maybe just as easy as the way you've been going along with things your whole life. Or maybe just as easy as walking out on your whole mess here and leaving your family behind devastated. You say your wife wants to seek counseling and that's the rightest thing I've heard so far. Yet your response to that is already on the side of failure. You DID get married and you DID have kids and you DO have a responsibility to actually put work into improving this situation for you and your family whether you ever really wanted one or not. Work with what you have, YOUR family, and make it the best. ALL relationships take work. That's just how successful relationships do work. It will not be easy for you either way, but really, why not try to do the RIGHT thing first. You need to "make it your aim" so to speak. I'd love for you to be able to do that and somewhere along the way realize the worth of what a beautiful thing it is to have what you have. I'd bet your kids would love it too. I wish you and your family the best.
Oh, and you totally missed Indi's point about your 'poor wife'. Read Indi's first response to your post again. And again.
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” ~ Dr. Seuss
Indi, what's funny is that I couldn't leave well enough alone and I typed my last response before I was able to read your last response. I hope he gets it because if anyone has to explain to him the 'poor wife' thing, I'd almost think his wife would be better off without him. I'm thinking positive though.
I'm tryin...
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” ~ Dr. Seuss
The way I see it,
you don't want to see a Counselor because they'll know what you're up to,
you'd devastate your wife, and you don't want your reputation tarnished.
She'd also probably get a good sum of money from you in court, and since there is evidence now on the internet saying you "may not have wanted them" (lawyers misconstrue everything), you'll totally get out of having to be in their lives! They'll grow up thinking you're a scumbag and won't want anything to do with you.
So, of course counseling isn't a good idea. For you.
At first I was reading this thinking "Aww,the poor door mat..." now I'm thinking "What a bloated, self-centred pig".
I bet you married her because she was pregnant because you badgered her into sex without a condom, too.
Flaming aside-
You need to see a therapist at least for yourself. Get that EGO in CHECK, and realise what you are doing effects MORE than just you.
Edit for conversational piece; Did you ever stop to consider you have more to do with the crummy marriage than you think? Perhaps your wife is arguing with you because she's missing some vital component of communication, and arguing at it's very lowest is better than nothing.
Satisfying sex isn't everything and you've never alluded to times of enjoyment outside of that.
Last edited by lilly1185; 27-08-10 at 02:42 PM.
Give me something I can take,
Can take to make the memories fade.
Poison kiss, remember this,
I never was meant for this day.
Second thoughts can generally be amended with judicious action; injudicious actions can seldom be recovered with second thoughts.
--Cyteen by C.J.Cherryh
I agree that you should stop trying to justify leaving your wife and start working toward how to fix your marriage FIRST. You say you've gone around and come back to this issue several times. Well, now it's probably time to involve a 3rd party who can help sift out the BS and start getting you two on track. A therapist will help you learn how to communicate with one another. Communication seems to be one of the main reasons one or both parties in a marriage shut down. After the communication goes, the rest of the arrangement goes to shit.
I think you have partly stopped communicating because you want this marriage to end, but you're too afraid to do it yourself. You want her to end it because then you can at least look/feel like somewhat of a victim. This is what a lot of young people do when they have no idea how to communicate their feelings. They simply shut down and hope that their partner will do the dirty work for them because they don't want to stay in a sucky relationship, but they also don't want to be alone. They don't know which end is worse, so they drag their feet until someone finally calls them out.
Seems like you're content to drag your feet until the bitter, resentful end. I think you need to be more honest with yourself and take a look at what behavior of yours as helped lead to the potential demise of this marriage.
I'm not looking for aproval from total strangers.
Not true.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I am fully aware of that. I'm in a mess. I don't know what to think or feel, whether to trust myself, what parts of myself to trust. I have an appointment to see a professional.
I don't wish to blame my wife for the arguments, and I don't believe I have. We're from different cultures, which is sometimes a problem, but it takes two to tango. When we're getting on well, it's great. Things are hardly ever black and white, which is what makes this kind of decision so difficult. You keep trying, hoping for something better, and sometimes you get to a point where you're tired of that and you just want to give up. I'm trying to sort out where I am and why.
As for the link to suicide methods, is that meant to be a joke? I was so low the other day that for I while I thought that was the only way out.
Thanks for all the replies. Some of you have helped a little, some of you have misiterpreted me and made the wrong assumptions about my motives. I no longer have the energy to explain myself further.
Goodbye.
I guess some people are frustrated because you didn't do anything to work on your marriage, and now you're just going to bail on it for the ex. In my own experience, getting back with an ex was always a waste of time, because we always ended up breaking up again for the same reasons we broke up the first time. Marriage suggests a greater degree of commitment, but from the sounds of it, you weren't too interested in being married in the first place. Maybe the right answer is that you go ahead and get a divorce, but then stay single for awhile so you can figure out if there is any point for you to be in any kind of committed relationship at all. It's sad that your parents got divorced when you were young, but you can still take responsibility for your own relationships.
Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.
Someone wise once told me from his own experience (he went through a divorce as well) that in hindsight he thought it was generally better to trade UP (i.e. work with what you have and make it better), than to trade OUT (try again with someone new and repeat those mistakes). Especially when young kids are involved, the cost is just too high to walk away from a fundamentally functional marriage.
So far, he's been exactly right.
If you are still reading, OP think very hard about this. You have no real deal-breakers in your marriage and you are considering leaving at least partly b/c of an ex whose morals are suspect. Despite you defending her, decent people do not move in on a married person esp with young children. Whether they 'feel bad' about it or not is irrelevant. The fact you are even allowing her to sway you at all should tell you, at least objectively, that your own judgement is suspect. One of the more interesting experiences of marriage is that you are given the opportunity to see some rather difficult things about yourself, reflected through your partner's behaviour towards you. Some can't bear to see it so they ignore it. Some blame their partner. Some run to someone new who has yet to see this side of them. But a brave few face this truth about themselves and decide to grow from it. Good luck, I truly mean it.
RIP Hayward.
Second thoughts can generally be amended with judicious action; injudicious actions can seldom be recovered with second thoughts.
--Cyteen by C.J.Cherryh
Oh god, here we go. Yet another....
"Me and the wifey don't get on, drone, drone, drone, blah, blah.....
BUT my ex gf contacted me.
Truth be known you had NO problems till the ex showed up...
All this shit about your wife is you merely justifying the reasons for carrying on with this ex from the past.
Heard it all before love....all you cheating pigs use same lines, same excuses and to carry on your secret rendezvous....YAWWN ZZzzz
Start thinking with your brain rather than your dick!!
To address part 1; Damn. We almost got rid of another cheater.
To address the "I no longer have the energy..." part, this roughly translates to "I didn't get the answers I wanted here, so I am going to continue spamming other advice sites until I feel justified, or just decide I'm right and everyone else is wrong since they don't get the 'full scope' of what's going on."
Seriously.
Give me something I can take,
Can take to make the memories fade.
Poison kiss, remember this,
I never was meant for this day.
Yes we did. Read my posts.
Do you think it's funny to joke about something like this to someone who is fragile enough to have actually considered it in the last few days?
Again, you're wrong. I didn't come here to justify myself. I don't care whether a bunch of total strangers approve or not. I came to see if I could get any help sorting my head out, but I'm going to need a professional for that. I'm tired of having to refute incorrect assumptions.
And I have been listening. I've read your links, Indy, thank you. I have said to my wife "We have a problem" hundreds of times over the years, but sometimes she doesn't appear to listen, and there are some things we just can't agree on. Maybe I've gone about it the wrong way. I'll look over them again.