got together young, breaking up after 8 yrs.

[dzynr]

I have been lurking around this site for months and finally got the nerve to write something. I am impressed that everyone gives such honest and supportive advice.

 

I guess I just want to ask for advice for my situation. I have known my husband since high school, and we were good freinds then. He got married and divorced right after graduation (2 kids), rebounded, and then we got together and have been together for 8 years, married for 3. Our relationship has been great, besides the normal youthful problems of being poor and having to struggle a bit. Unfortunately, we didn't realize what a bad idea getting together so young was. I have developed into a super ambitious person, who likes to go-go-go, and he has turned into a mellow person that is content with things the way that they are. Initially, we modeled our relationship into a stable "family" environment (although we don't have any kids, or see his other kids due to his wife keeping them away) but over time, I realized that I wanted to be young and fun. We would always joke that we behaved like an "old married couple". The thing i, I honestly loved our relationship that way. We would cook together and have all of our freinds over, and there was just an overabundance of love. Really, we just had the perfect relationship.

 

Basically, he is just not a party guy, and so we developed seperate lives, him doing the mellow thing, me doing the aggressive thing. I have a very involved career that I put a lot of time into, not simply partying, and he just coasted along. This was okay for awhile, because I do go through periods of being a homebody as well. Over time, he felt neglected because I was involved in so much, and I became less attracted to him because it seemed that all he did was sit around and smoke and play on the computer. Our sex life became extremely infrequent (an average of once a month) and was usually a "lets get it over with" event. He is really casual about how his career develops, and often speaks about being a stay at home dad (which is fine by me, because I could never be a stay at home mom) Really, neither of us did anything "wrong", as I can honestly say that we both put every ounce of ourselves into making the relationship work.

 

The end began when we moved to a larger city for my career. I got established pretty quickly, but he had problems finding a job and meeting new people. Basically, I was doing my thing, and he was depressed that it was so hard for him. I tried to help, but it was hard on his pride to take help from me (i'm sure you men can relate to needing to do things on your own) Eventually, I found myself attracted to other people, and I told him that, and we identified a lot of issues and began to work on them, but that was just another blow to his pride, and I think it was too little, too late. The attration to other men was really hard for me to come to terms with, as I had never even given other men a second thought for most of our relationship, even after we stopped having sex frequently. I was really ashamed at those feelings at first, but now I realize that I am missing that experience from getting together so young. (I was a good girl in high school, and he might as well have been my first) I tried to get over those feelings by telling myself that I have a good man, and not to throw away what I have, but I don't want to lie to myself or him, and end up cheating. I actually had some incidents where I flirted EXCESSIVELY before I realized I was not going to "get over" not having sown my wild oats. Of course, he was wild in high school, so he is over that period in his life. We have decided to seperate when our lease is up, and just last night we decided to break up.

 

We both love each other very much, and don't really want to break up, but we would rather remain good freinds than have some huge awful breakup, and hate each other. We have always talked about things really well, but towards the end, we began bickering a lot. I have seen a lot of posts where women don't want sex from their man anymore. Has anyone ever recalimed that feeling after loosing it? We have tried potions, lotions doctors, porno, lingerie ect... The situation is made worse by the fact that he is overweight, and there are a lot of extremely in shape men in my city. I never cared about it before, but now I find the extra weight extremely unattractive.

 

I should say, that I have always been an independent person, and never thought that I should get married (before I got married), that I had never wanted kids, but would want to have kids with him. Do you think it is a good idea to get back together after seperating for a while (and hopefully growing up more). We consider ourselves mature people and love each other very much. please offer any insight you can.

dzynr

[quankanne]

have you guys thought about marriage counseling? It sounds like you've identified several problem areas in your relationship, but don't have the proper tools to work with, and counseling will give you that.

[dzynr]

My insurance does not cover marriage counseling, but it does cover individual counseling. I have agreed to go (and had planned on it regardless of our relationship, due to my own depression issues) but he refuses to go, because he does not feel that he could talk to a therapist openly enough to do him any good. He is aware that he has mental health issues that need to be dealt with, but looks at them differently than I do. I personally think that everyone has some mental health issue that they may need help with at some time or another in their life, and that it is fairly normal. He looks at it as having a stigma attatched. His answer is that "we are smart people, we should be able to figure it out with time and patience." I don't always belive that we can see our own problems clearly enough. Sometimes it is nice to have someone with a birds eye view show you what you have missed. Also, I asked my doctor, and she said that marriage counseling has a high failure rate, due to the fact that people end up bickering, rather than solving. She reccommended individual counseing as being best.

[quankanne]

doctors are good, but they don't know everything! And whether or not you will benefit from marriage counseling is something that you two alone will have to try first, then decide if it does YOU any good -- the doctor isn't involved in the relationship!

 

the mental health thing is a tuffy -- people don't want others to know that they've got "those" kinds of problems, but because of advances in science, a lot of things can be explained more clearly now, and they aren't really as much a stigma as before. But if he's feeling insecure or bad about those problems, he's not going to want to address them ...

 

if counseling is not an option through your insurance, check to see if your local churches offer it. You might not even need to be a member of said parish to get the help you need, just be willing to work with that clergy member to help yourself. Or you might try looking through the Yellow Pages of your phone directory, even a google search of counselors in your area. Sometimes you can find therapists who work with clients on a sliding scale basis. Help is out there, just keep looking until you find what you need, and good luck with getting the help you want/need.

[dzynr]

We are not religious people in the traditional sense, so a pastor wouldn't do us much good. We do have freinds who's opinions that we respect that we can talk to about our relationship. The funny thing is that our relationship was so great, others often came to us for advice! In reality, it is not a communication problem, as we do understand that we need to seperate, and have been through the why's of it all. His unwillingness to go to a counselor is just another symptom of his lack of motivation and laid back attitude. I want to know if it is a good idea to try again after breaking up, or should you just let it be? Also have any women had luck getting the sex vibe back after it has gone? That would help his ego a lot, and maybe I wouldn't be thinking of other people.

[boyohboy]

I can relate to what you are going through Dz. My own situation is similar, however I am on the other side of it. My wife & I are headed the same way and maybe for some of the same reasons. I know a couple of things from my situation; you cant work it out if both people aren't equally commited to fixing the problems. 2. You can't work it out if you are not completely honest about the problems you are having. I don't know that this will help you much but i hope it does. If there is any one thing that I would make clear to you if I could, it is that you can't make things better if you both don't know what the problems are. Make sure that he knows the score. If he's not getting the TLC because he needs to shed some pounds, let him know. If you're not attracted to him because he can't get off his heine (sp?) and make something of his life, tell him that. If it's the truth, then it will help him even if it hurts. And lastly if there's no chance of it working out...leave, because he may not.

[dzynr]

I feel like I have lost my faith that any amount of trying is going to make things better, because we have tried for so long with no success. I have told him about the weight and motivation issues, but he wants me to say that when those things are fixed, that everything will be ok, and I don't know that it will.

 

Now that he sees that I am serious about leaving, he does things like comment on how baggy his pants are now that he has been working out, and progress that he is making with his carreer, and then he looks at me with this pleading expressison, as if to say "see, I am trying, don't leave!" and I can't tell you how much that breaks my heart. I encourage his progress, but I don't want to say that I will stay, because I know he will backslide when the danger is over. It's frustrating to be with someone who is only reactive and not proactive. I am sick of waiting for things to be at critical condition before he gets around to them!!! (sorry just letting off a little steam)

 

We talked again last night, and he told me that he still wants to make it work and that marriage is forever, at least that is what he signed up for. I felt soooo guilty, that I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die, but I stuck to my guns and said that I still think that seperating is the best for now. I read somewhere that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and that is what I think I would be doing if I dont go through with this. It is so hard not to fall back into the familiar rythym of things.