Need advice: Is it time for a divorce, or do I ride this out?

When we met in college, he asked me out twice and I put him off before I seriously considered dating him. [. . .] Over the next five years, he dumped me three times, but I always hung on to the idea that we'd end up together and he always came back [. . .] I've always had some doubts in my mind...a little voice in my head the day we got engaged and later when we got married...that make me think maybe I settled. [. . .] The main disconnect for us is emotional. [. . .] there's never been a deep romantic connection between us [. . .] I also find he lacks empathy in general for emotional people/situations, which has always made me reluctant to share my emotions or even play sentimental songs in the car because he'll start making fun of it. [. . .]Also, his lack of decisiveness and initiative in general--whether it's handling an unexpected chore or doing/saying something nice out of the blue--make our daily relationship feel more like a mother/son or best friends as roommates type of thing[ . . .] We are also rather mismatched sexually.[ . . .]I feel quite unappreciated. [. . .] I'm not even sure I love my husband anymore[ . . .] (It could be argued that I already made the decision to get a divorce by doing what I did.) This is not the story of a happy marriage that is going through a rough patch. From what you've written here, you want to divorce him. If what you need is permission from the Internet, I hereby grant it to you.

I was you at 30 minus the affair. I divorced and happily remarried. Second time I chose a better match for me. FWIW. I like that someone up top says your husband is not involved enough with your sex life to be told about the affair, I agree. I also know from experience that the compatible but intimacy-less relationship you describe is not sustainable. Lastly, unlike other commenters... I don't think you sound unkind towards your husband. You sound honest, and it sounds like a tough relationship to be in.

There is nothing objectively wrong with your marriage - it would work just fine for some people, you just may not be one of them. But I will tell you this: my young niece recently asked me "How do you know when it's time to give up on a relationship?" and my answer, after some consideration, was "When you've clearly asked for what you need and you still can't get it." I don't think you've http://ask.metafilter.com/126034/Do-I-really-have-to-say-goodbye-to-all-that-so-soon#1800416 - not in a bald, high-risk way - and I think it's lame that you're considering bailing without giving your marriage your best shot. You understand how you and your needs have changed, but your behaviour and your way of relating to your spouse probably isn't any different than it was a couple of years ago. People evolve and perhaps the same is true for your husband. Separate if you need to, but I think you owe your marriage and your spouse a solid, good-faith run at relationship therapy.

Hi there, I'm you. Meet my husband, your husband. You are where I was five or six years ago, except we have two kids--which changes things considerably. It's possible to change this situation but in my experience it's incredibly hard and will require being willing to end the relationship entirely. There are a lot of posts in my history that pertain to the struggles in my marriage, if you care to look, or you can MeMail me directly. I think it's worth getting into the struggle because it really is a two-person dance. There are a lot of things up with your husband, but you play your role in this dynamic as well. Odds are very good that by getting into counseling together and fighting the good fight, you will get a lot of insight about how you came to get into this situation. Note I'm not blaming the victim here--I think your husband likely has a huge blind spot about emotional skills and has a lot of growing up to do--but learning about why and how you tolerated this in the early stages of your life can help you as you move forward, with him or without him. Good reading material to start: Patti Henry's the Emotionally Unavailable Man; Terry Real's How Can I Get Through To You; Terry Real's New Rules of Marriage. Good luck. This is really hard.

Your entire love story from college till today is purely irrelevant, and a distraction (to you). What is immediately material is, you cheated on your husband. The affair (whether you like it or not) moves all your private grievances into a secondary folder, temporarily. Right now you need to inform your husband of the affair and the potential impact on his health and life. In other words, he needs to have a say in next steps.

[This is a response from an anonymous commenter.]Look, I've been in your shoes. I was in a more-or-less comfortable marriage with somebody who shared my interests, but we were not igniting each other's fires. Our sex life was gone, I had lost respect for him, and we were on diverging paths. We both knew this, and had discussed it, but neither of us really wanted to fix the marriage. During this time, I had a drawn-out affair with someone with whom I had been involved previously. While I knew that this person and I would likely never end up together permanently (which was the case), I realized that I could not stay with my husband, that he and I were not happy. You are not obligated to reveal this affair to him. I never told my husband about it, and I stand by that decision. Others may not agree with you, but it's your life, and you have to decide if he really needs that information.

It sounds like the OP has had some pretty harsh experience that has taught her that her husband won't be receptive or sympathetic to her vulnerability and emotions--for instance the situation with her health scares where she felt abandoned and rejected, and his disdain or mockery of emotional stuff like songs on the radio. Not to mention that intimation about explosiveness when he's angry at work, and the fear that he will be abusive if she confesses. Experiences like that can train someone that keeping information away from an unsupportive spouse is preferable than risking opening up, which is likely to be met with rejection or worse and will make a painful situation even worse. The stonewalling and disinterested husband described on http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Advice-for-Victims-and-Abusers probably seems really familiar and the rest of the information about angry and abusive men is worth some serious consideration as well. OP, you mention in passing that your family of origin is troubled (not so great). Chances are good that you learned early how to tend to your own garden emotionally, because those around you wouldn't or couldn't care for you that way. You got accustomed to it and so you didn't notice or mind initially when your husband started doing it too. But now it's gone on too far and too long and you are having to confront that it's really not working for you. (For whatever it's worth, on your husband's side of things, even families-of-origin that are "great" can have some seriously screwy emotional dynamics at work. Sometimes when they seem to conform to our idea of how families "should be"--longtime marriages, material success--it can even be much, much harder to comprehend that things are actually fucked up beneath the surface. Something to consider.) I think an affair like yours can serve as a wake up call. You're like that frog in the pot of water who just came to consciousness that it's heated up to the boiling point. Someone who came along and gave you some things that you've really been missing--attention, emotional connection, passion, pleasure--has made it so you have to acknowledge that yes, you really need those things, and yes, they really matter. They *do* matter, but other things do as well. I believe you that your husband is in many ways a good person and a good friend. I believe that there are other parts of life where you mesh well, and probably always have, and these were the things that you selected for when you chose him as your mate. They matter too and this is why your situation is so hard. It would be much easier if it were cut and dried. Should you tell, or should you not? That's a really tough call. I think you need to level with your husband that there are some parts of your life where things are really in trouble, in serious trouble. Feeling unsupported, unappreciated, undesired, and without a partner pulling equal weight are really, really big problems. Based on your past experience he may well just blow that off--for exactly the same reason he waffles and can't commit about other kinds of big issues. It's easier to just ignore than deal with the anxiety. Dollars to donuts that's exactly the same kind of passive-aggressive dynamic that keeps him from engaging with you emotionally and sexually, even though he must know how much that all means to him. He's mad at you about other stuff, he can't deal with the conflict that will come from addressing it directly, so he takes it out on you by withdrawing. So, what will take him to engage? What is a serious enough indicator that he will realize that you are dead serious that you two need to get to counseling and make some major changes? Well, telling him about the affair will be high-impact. That's one way to get him to realize you've been seriously unhappy. You could try the tack of telling him you need to have a serious conversation, that you've realized how unhappy you are, and that you need for the two of you to get into counseling. If he does rise to the occasion, engage honestly in the process, and is open to making changes just as you are, right?--if he does that just from that conversation alone, then great. If not, well, you can follow up with what you told us. I think that will be awful for everyone involved--but someone in this relationship needs to get honest and own their shit. If you totally level with him, come clean, share your own self-reflection, be willing to do your own work, that will be some powerful positive motion in your marriage, and he may be willing to get on board to do that too. At least if you really own it--yes, you did something really hurtful to your husband, against your own moral code, and you are honest and want to make amends and do better--that gives you back a huge measure of your own integrity. You have to own 100% of the affair, but each of you needs to own 50% of the state of the marriage before that. You may have to be the one to start the process of getting both of you to do just that. Again, hard road ahead, no matter what. Good luck to both of you.

It really sounds like you want a divorce, so you should get one. I wouldn't want to be married to someone who, secretly, was having affairs, reflecting on my lack of satisfaction with the marriage, and thinking concretely about divorce.

I don't know how many close friends you have that are also married and if you ever talk with them about what goes on at home, but I don't think you realize how far apart your marriage is from a good one (or maybe you do and you just want us to validate what you already know). It's not the affair, it's the way you write about him - you say he's a good guy but that's not how you interpret his conduct towards you (ex. not enough care when you were sick). Objectively, there may be more or less wrong with his behavior towards you than you believe, but it's the fact that you don't accept who he is, you want him to be something different, and love is accepting who someone is. My partner does a lot of things "wrong", I'm pretty sure, all the time (and I do too, oh my, likely much worse), and yet if I try to pick something out off the top of my head I can't come up with an example because whatever it is it doesn't matter to the way I love him or the way I know he loves me. Someday I hope you have this same feeling.