Married for 4.5 years, regret every minute. Met someone else. Now what?

[Pursuinghappiness]

Well Dubby....good luck.

Personally, I think no one changes in a weekend and I would have left for a while to give both of you enough time alone to really consider your options and make real progress on changes. Compatibility isn't just a wish in marriage, its the difference between success and failure in my opinion. But that's just me. I do give you kudos for setting success criteria and making an effort to try.

If you were you, however, I'd triple bag my junk and dispose of the condoms by "gasoline and match" because if you get her pregnant, you're sunk. I wouldn't rely on her method of birth control under any circumstances until you get this worked out for sure.

I recommend a book Amazon.com: Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship (9780452275355): Mira Kirshenbaum: Books . It will give you some key questions to ask yourself going forward.

Good luck and best wishes!

[Rioe]

Two things then:

Counselling. Professional help can make a world of difference. You two don't need to muddle through this on your own.

Contraception. As mentioned, a baby now would be the worst thing that could happen to a couple struggling to stay together. And she may use it as a weapon to guilt you into staying, so don't leave the responsibility up to her.

Good luck!

[DubbyD]

Originally Posted by Pursuinghappiness

Well Dubby....good luck.

Personally, I think no one changes in a weekend and I would have left for a while to give both of you enough time alone to really consider your options and make real progress on changes. Compatibility isn't just a wish in marriage, its the difference between success and failure in my opinion. But that's just me. I do give you kudos for setting success criteria and making an effort to try.

If you were you, however, I'd triple bag my junk and dispose of the condoms by "gasoline and match" because if you get her pregnant, you're sunk. I wouldn't rely on her method of birth control under any circumstances until you get this worked out for sure.

I recommend a book Amazon.com: Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship (9780452275355): Mira Kirshenbaum: Books . It will give you some key questions to ask yourself going forward.

Good luck and best wishes!

Originally Posted by Rioe

Two things then:

Counselling. Professional help can make a world of difference. You two don't need to muddle through this on your own.

Contraception. As mentioned, a baby now would be the worst thing that could happen to a couple struggling to stay together. And she may use it as a weapon to guilt you into staying, so don't leave the responsibility up to her.

Good luck!

Thanks to you both. I'm certainly going to go pick up that book. Probably within the hour.

So for as pregnancy: I was clear when I agreed to give this another chance, sex at all is off of the table until I see change continued for a few weeks. I don't want a weekend or week of progress - I want it stuck to before that happens. She wasn't happy, but understood and is willing to wait.

I agree that change doesn't happen in a weekend - but maybe the first steps do - and actually did - this time. We'll see what the next few weeks bring.

I will, of course, be back to update.

[DubbyD]

So... It's been two weeks now since "the Monday" that I came home to some (minimal) change and things are... different. We've had a couple of fights, but nothing as large or as vicious as they were previously. So far as my big three go:

A committment to herself: She has been doing more pleasure reading, made close to 50 Christmas ornaments, has joined a swim group and is starting a yoga class in another week. Her committing to changes for herself was a request of mine in part because I wanted her to re-find the woman I (re-)met and fell in love with [instead of the cranky, depressed, bitter woman i'm currently married to] so that we could have a chance to fix things, and also so that if things don't get repaired, she can rely on this newly-re-found self to get her through. She's started (and quit) a new diet twice in the past two week, but the rest seems to (slowly) be there.

A committment to me: After the phone calls, there was a lot of in-fighting between our families and us - and our families and each-other. That's started to settle down. Some relatives (On each side) seem sympathetic to me, and others to her. I appreciate that much of what's been going on is more open now, though the actual ultimatums, for the most part, weren't shared - just that they existed. There's a lot of debate, now, over Christmas scheduling.

A committment to us: The bookmarks haven't moved. The workbook hasn't had anything added. A therapist has not been called. When I suggest talking about the state of our relationship, the subject is changed. That said, she has been making improvements on other things that I have been calling her on: She no longer spends dinner on the BlackBerry. She has started asking for my opinion on movies or restaurants. She didn't question me for 5 minutes when I added cookies while grocery shopping. Requests for favours and errands are now "Would you mind..." and "Do you have the time..." instead of "I need you to..." or "You should...". So a bit of a give and a take, here, really.

All in all - progress, in baby steps. But progress is progress, and I've expressed that it's moving more slowly than I'd like - and she has said she'll try to work on that. Part of me still wishes I had the courage to just end things that Saturday morning. Part of me is glad I didn't. If things get fixed, and we can both be happy, then perhaps this will all be worth it. It is strange, though, bing in a relationship where half (her) "desperately" wants everything to work, and the other have is neutral at best. I want us both to be happy - I'm just less stubborn in my thinking that we need to be together to reach that happiness.

I have been doing a lot of reading, a lot of thinking and a lot of talking. Have more ducks (paperwork, money and so on) in a row now - just in case. I keep asking if there's anything she's concerned with that she'd like me to do to fix things - and she says no. So the reading for my own growth, continues.

I'll update again soon.

[pippidee]

You know where this is going to go? You are going to slip, she will get pregnant and then she will know she's got you forever and all of these changes will slip away and she will become even more of a b*tch than ever before. Take this from a woman who is divorce amicably from start to finish but is currently watching this process happen to a male friend of mine.