[Anonymous]

I am a 23 year old married mother of two children aged 2 and 4. I met my husband when I was 19, still not over my ex, and incredibly naive. We got pregnant one month into dating and found out about it two months into dating. By then my high school sweetheart of 4 years & I had been broken up for just over a year and he had been dating a woman seriously for several months. I was still in lust with my now husband at the time as well and in high school I had gone through an abortion so it all felt very right to keep the baby and make a life with this man I hardly knew. (I have to mention that I of course can never regret my decision as now I have two beautiful boys) Dan (my husband) and I moved in together almost immediately and he asked me to marry him when we were together for only 3 months. I agreed. To make an already long story slightly shorter, now years later I am married to him and rely on him completely for financial support. Together we hardly make enough to get by let alone me trying to support my two kids on my income of only .50 cents above min. wage, although I do have a college degree. My point is I’m not in love with him any more. We never see each other as I work days and he works evenings and I sometimes still think of my ex. For three months he slept on the couch until last week when I told him it wasn’t expectable. We have no interest in each others interests. I am extremely emotional and sentimental but he is the very opposite. I know he loves me deeply and I’m scared to leave him because I don’t want to hurt him or his family who’ve really helped us get to where we are. Im also scared I wont be able to make it on my own but in my heart I know hes not my soul mate. Should I try to stick it out and hope my feelings change or should I get out why I still have my youth?? Im confused and scared about both options. Please help me. I don’t want to make the wrong decision.

[Anonymous]

You’re staying in the relationship out of guilt; you feel you owe him and his family something so you suffer just to make them happy, just so they won’t think anything badly of you. That is not the way to live. You need to live for yourself and no one else, you need to work on making yourself happy and stop trying to please everyone else. Do what’s best for you and your children, yes, but remember, you can’t give to your children your full potential if you’re unhappy and unsatisfied with your life and yourself. You’re far too young to be locked down to someone you aren’t even in love with. You should be learning about yourself & what makes you happy, living that experience and finding out about life and all the joys it comes with it that many youngsters seek after. Young relationships tend to foil because they settled down way too fast without experiencing the opposite sex, having fun and enjoying life, so that comes out during the marriage or when they get older. You are making a huge mistake and you need to fix it. Go live with family or something until you can put that degree to use so you can feed your kids, and get out of that relationship and go find one you deserve to be in. Everyone deserves love and to be happy, so why not you? You owe yourself that much.

Answer: GO!

[April Masini, your AskApril]

You’re overwhelmed and you’ve both gotten a little bit lazy in the relationship, but you have two children and a good man, so my advice is to roll up your sleeves and work on the relationship. EVERY marriage and long term relationship has ups and downs and without tune ups and maintenance, they tank. So don’t give up — but don’t stay in the status quo.

You can start working on your sex life because that helps! Romance, time alone (especially when you have children) and dates (even inexpensive ones) are important to any marriage. Treat your husband like a man that you value instead of someone you’re tired of because you’ve given up. If you’ve let yourself go (easy to do with two little ones), start taking better care of yourself. Make yourself attractive to him and start to flirt with him again.

Love comes and goes, but respect and commitment are what you vowed when you married and your children deserve to see two parents who don’t let themselves walk away from tough problems when the going gets rough. Nobody cheated here; nobody committed violence; there is no addiction — you just need to rev up your relationship (and you will again sometime in the future).

Give it a shot and do the work to make it work. I know you can!

I hope that helps — let me know how it goes, and if you get a chance, check out a book I wrote for putting the X back in your sex life called Romantic Date Ideas [url]https://www.askapril.com/relationship-dating-advice/romantic-date-ideas.html[/url]. It will help you!

Please follow me @AskAprilcom on Twitter and on Facebook at this link: [url][/url].

[Member]

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