[relationshipa1]

Hello – I am 34 years old and married with 2 kids. My husband is 35 and we have been together since we were 17 yrs old, so about 17 years. We were high school sweethearts. I can’t complain, he is a great man. He has a good job, is a wonderful husband and father. What could be so bad right?? I love him but I am not in love with him, I know it is the old cliche right? I do not have anyone else or anything, I just feel like I need to get out on my own and be my own person. We got together when we were so young and I know it was a mistake now in hindsight. He is still very in love with me, he talks about how he can’t see himself with anyone else and I am his only love. There have been times in our relationship where the talk of splitting up has been a hot topic, and he has made it clear that is would break his heart. How do I tell a man that I have been with for so long that I want to be on my own?? I feel so guilty about this and I know this will deeply hurt him and I don’t want to break his heart. I do not have the nerve to tell him this because he has done nothing wrong. Have any advice for me? Thanks

[April Masini]

If your children are minors, I would encourage you to honor your marriage vows until the kids are on their own, specifically because it sounds like your husband is a good man, who hasn’t done anything wrong.

If, after the children leave home and are on their own and “of age”, then, the only person you would be betraying by leaving is your husband, but not your children.

That said, be careful what you wish for. If what you are truly missing is a sense of yourself and your independence, I would encourage you to try and find that within your marriage, because you say that your husband is a good man and a good husband. Maybe what will really make you feel better is a job, or a new job, or a career shift. Maybe going back to school to get a degree, or an advanced degree, will open up new worlds for you, without your needing to leave the marriage. Sometimes traveling can make you feel renewed, whether it’s with your husband, with a girlfriend or relative, or with a career or academic group. Maybe what you need to do is spice up the sex life you already have with your husband, and feel a sense of sexual renewal and fulfillment that you haven’t had up until now.

The reason I suggest all of the above, is that you may throw away a good man, only to find him heartbroken, at first, but scooped up by another woman who realizes his value. You may not find fulfillment outside of your marriage, and you will have left yourself worse off than where you were before. While the grass is apt to look greener when it’s on someone else’s lawn, divorce has many downsides. If your husband re-marries, and your kids come home (from college, or their own marriages) to have Thanksgiving with him, and you’re on your own, how will you feel? Are you willing to have a stepmother sharing the wedding aisle walk for your kids, and being the grandmother to your kids’ children? Really think this through before you act.

My advice to you is to consider my suggestions above, about changing your own life, but staying in the marriage, because whether or not you married young or old, you did marry, and the man you married is good. And that’s not just lucky, but good choosing on your part, and something that shouldn’t be easily tossed out, but instead, should be nurtured when times are slow, uninspiring, or even down in the dumps.

I hope that helps! 🙂

[Anonymous]

I have been with my boyfriend for a little over 6 months now, and I’m incredibly in love with him. He’s a good man, works very hard, takes amazing care of me & my two children (who are from my previous marriage), he’s loving, kind, affectionate and communicative, but my trust in him has been shaken. Every day I hear him tell me how much he loves me, how in love with me he is, how he’s never met any1 like me who fits him so perfectly and how blessed & lucky he feels to have me, yet I found text messages between him & another woman that were very sexual in nature. They had never met, but were well on their way to doing it, and she even knew that he had a girlfriend. I went into nuerotic mode and looked at his emails too, and found that he had answered a few ads in the personals section of craigslist. One was for a woman looking for a sugar daddy, another was for a NSA discreet relationship, and the other was for getting together for “fun times”. After I discovered the text messages, we got even closer. It felt like we worked through everything, but I haven’t felt comfortable trusting him again. Its eating at me, and I find myself checking his emails every day, assuming the worst about every action, wondering what he’s doing when he’s on the computer, or whether he’s really at work or not. My boyfriend is very attractive, and has a very open kind personality, so there’s lots of women that are attracted to him. He’s friends with every ex girlfriend he’s ever had, and they all want to marry him still. He wants to marry me & asked me if we can start looking at rings together. He also really wants more children. He would be the perfect man if it wasn’t for all these women that like him, that are apart of his life still, and the ones he maybe has yet to meet. I’m not sure what to do. I can’t imagine finding anyone as wonderful as he is to me, aside from this other stuff. Is this a sign that things will only get worse and end in ruin or is this an acclimation period and worth having tolerance & patience over?

[April Masini]

“I can’t imagine finding anyone as wonderful as he is to me, aside from this other stuff.”

😯

The other stuff is his [i]cheating on you.[/i] 😕 Are you kidding? Is this guy just part time wonderful, and part time, cad? You need some smelling salts to knock you out of your stupor. You have children and that means you have to be really careful about who you bring into their lives. They don’t have choices, and you do, and the last thing you should want to do is to bring someone into their lives who is going to hurt them (by hurting you) in any way — even if it means he’s going to eventually leave you (and them). You also need to find a man who is a good role model for your children because if you marry him, he’s going to be their stepfather. So this isn’t just about you. It’s about them. Why on earth would you settle for someone who lies and cheats as their stepdad? 🙁

So, sorry, but I think that after 6 months, and his professing his love for you, finding secret, sexy text messages to other women, and his answers to Craigslist ads for relationships with other women, this guy is one big con artist. 😮

Wake up and smell the coffee. A good man doesn’t treat you this way. You need to let him go because he’s never going to be completely faithful to you. If in the first 6 months of a relationship he’s doing this, imagine his behavior after 6 years together when things get boring sometimes, at best, and difficult, as they often do, at worst.

You need Mr. Right. Not Mr. Sexy Text.

[Author]

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