I’m so fucking fucked. I really hope you can help me. I just don’t know what to do.
I’m in a fifteen-year relationship with my (now) wife. We met when I was very young and unsure of myself. Despite a large age difference (I’m younger), I convinced her to take a chance on me, and together we have built a life, a successful company, and she has stood by my side and supported my own career, which is now flourishing. I have also blossomed personally, only in recent yeas. I’m nearing 40 now, and I find it hard to even believe I’m the same girl my wife met so many years ago—though she herself is pretty much the same, solid and unwavering.
Our sex life has always been terrible. It’s inconsistent and unfulfilling and there’s not really any attraction…but she doesn’t really have attraction for anyone, and this has always been an issue for her. I, however, am very attracted to attraction. For the sake of making a long story short, I had a pretty significant (though short) affair a couple years ago with someone who pursued me and then promptly fell in love with me. It was exhilarating, and I loved her too, but I hated myself throughout the process. I hated that I had become a cheater, but I didn’t know how to end it, and I don’t think I wanted to. My marriage nearly ended, but I pleaded and begged for a second chance, unable to live with the pain I had caused my wife. I temporarily entered therapy, and we also were in couple’s therapy. I thought we had become stronger, that I had become more self-reliant, and that our fundamental needs were being addressed. I love my wife so much. I love the life we have.
And now, here I am again. I met a woman at a conference, and we hit it off. But there was an intensity there, and that intensity has taken over our “friendship.” I live on one coast and she’s on the other—and she’s also in an unfulfilling relationship. We have plans to see each other again. For the first time in my life, it all feels so RIGHT with this person. We communicate constantly, and have had every kind of sex that we can have from afar. We have told each other we love each other, and we do. Despite how this sounds, it doesn’t feel obsessive. It feels real and sweet. And scary.
I don’t want to betray my marriage, nor do I want to lose it. In addition to a lot of logistic circumstances that I won’t get into here (though there are no kids involved, thankfully), I am financially tied to my wife, and would be broke, and lose my business, without her. All things considered, that is minor though, and that is not my driving force. The thing is, I really, really love my wife. I love our sweetness and our shared hobbies and our connection. I’m just not in love with her, there is no vavavoom, and she’s not in love with me… or at least, not in the way I need.
The “other person” is applying no pressure. She knows that we have to each be in our respective marriages and situations for the time being for a variety of reasons, and so we have adopted a sort of “see you down the road” attitude, though we hope for moments of lovemaking and connection along the way. My wife is older. Can I just let time play out or am I being a horrible partner and betraying the person who believed in me when no one else did? Do I need to end all contact with this new person who fills me up in ways I didn’t know were possible? I just don’t think I can do that. I feel like this is all unmanageable. Many people who contact you with similar stories are in unhappy marriages. Mine is not unhappy. I honestly don’t see a way forward.
Help?
Lost On A Coast
Ugh.
I swore off answering questions like yours in this week’s column, LOAC, and then I made the mistake of reading your letter. Just when I thought I was out… your tale of woe pulls me back in.
It’s too bad your wife won’t allow you to have a girlfriend on the side—I’m assuming the subject of getting your sexual needs met elsewhere was raised during those post-affair couple’s counseling sessions—because this particular girlfriend sounds ideal. She’s on the other side of the country and married herself, so she wouldn’t be eating up all of your time and emotional energy, even as she ate up all of your sexual energy. And your wife isn’t particularly interested in eating up your sexual energy—or anything else of yours—so why not outsource that?
I’m fucking mystified by people who aren’t interested in having sex with their partners but who are nevertheless adamant that their partners not have sex with anyone else. Your wife would probably say the thought of you fucking another woman makes her miserable—miserable and insecure—but what about your misery? (And how would it make your wife feel to know that sexual deprivation has you looking forward to her death? Assuming that’s what you meant by, “Can I just let time play out?”) Our culture’s simplistic, knee-jerk bias against “cheating” means the world will see you a horrible person who betrayed the woman you professed to love—and you’ll see yourself that way—but the world is blind to your partner’s betrayal of you. And it is a betrayal. If you make a monogamous commitment to someone, if you demand a monogamous commitment from someone, you are obligated to meet that person’s reasonable sexual needs. If you can’t meet those needs—if you’re not a sexual person—then demanding monogamy (demanding celibacy) is a form of emotional abuse.
I probably shouldn’t have picked your question for the SLLOTD, LOAC, and not just because I’m tired of telling people in loving-but-sexless marriages to do what they need to do stay married and stay sane. I shouldn’t have run your letter because I can’t help you. There are no good options here. You either betray your wife and feel like a piece of shit and spend half of every day worrying about getting caught or you betray yourself and feel like a piece of shit and spend half of every day looking forward to your widowhood or you leave your wife and lose your business and go broke. (Did you sign some sort of onerous prenup?) I honestly don’t know which lousy option you should pick. But if I were you, LOAC, I would rather be poor and free and than married and miserable.
There’s also the option, of course, of starring in the lesbian reboot of Same Time Next Year.
Good luck.
