Extremely unhappy young married woman

LegacyUser

Sorry about the long post but i really need advice. I am in my mid twenties and have been married for 3 years. I am with my husband since i was 14. (First and only lover)We got engaged because it was either that or break up. I got caught up in the wedding planning and building our home. About two weeks before the wedding i had serious doubts but put it down to wedding nerves. I knew i loved my husband but i wasn't in love with him. (i decided that all relationships are exciting at the beginning and that one would have to work at the relationship to get the spark back) I knew he was a good man who loved me dearly, my family loved him, we wouldn't have any great financial worries as we are both highly paid professionals. I married him and now i am in a terrible mess. Since getting married things have become worse, we don't make love (It has been a year, things were never good sexually between us), we argue more than ever, my usband spends a great deal of time working away from home. As part of my work i signed up to work on a new project. I met a man whilst working on this project. He is married three years also. (His wife shows no interest in him, they argue a lot and have discussed divorce and he is very good looking as a lot of my single colleagues are always ranting on about him.)We became friendly and i really enjoyed his company. We sealed a deal we were working on and our team had a party and this man told me how he felt about me. The truth is i knew i felt the same way about him. We started texting every day and we meet to work on the project fortnightly. We both know that nothing can happen between us but the chemistry between us is unbelievable. I think about him constantly and he told me that it is the same for him. Yesterday we were working together and he touched my hand, it sent shivers down my spine. We spoke about how we wished we had met before we got married and that it would be selfish and wrong to act upon our feelings as we both made solemn promises to other people. To make matters worse, i know i love him (crazy i know). I want to be with him but i know i can't. We both have signed contracts that are next to impossible to get out of so quitting the project is not an option. i don't know what to do, i love him so much and i know he feels the same about me because he told me. If we feel like this so early on in our marriages what hope does the future have for us. Any advice much appreciated. (For the record i have tried so hard to put the spark into my marriage, holidays, romantic trips, showing affection and complimenting, surprises, the list is endless and my husband has never shown appreciation or reciprocated the above. We have spoken about our problems and he said that he's happy with the situation and under no circumstances will he come with me to speak to a councillor. My husbands friends often make comments to my husband about fancying me and my husband doesn't flicker an eyelid.) Help!

greenteaicedtea

well I might be off track here but I have 2 married friends who express boredom at being with the same person on the couch watching TV. What if you keep trying to work on your relationship with your husband, but get out and meet some new female friends your age, or learn something new by taking a class? I wonder if you're bored, somewhere in this. Due to my friends pairing off or moving out, I've been bored myself, and have had to make new friends lately, and it's a lot of fun spending time with brand new people.

I would say try to keep clear of the fellow at work... you've both agreed that you don't want to hurt your spouses. Also, if you were to leave your husband and be together with this new person, who's to say the same thing wouldn't happen again once the initial spark wears off?

I feel some chemistry with people I can't have, and I just try to block it out... I think it's just a part of life.

Villain

You see thats the problem with this society, people feel under pressure to marry the first person they have a long serious relationship with and when it goes wrong they just accept it as part of life, sorry but thats bull imo. I went out with a girl for 4 years and it came down to either engagement or end it and we ended it because I knew that what has happened the op would happen us.

The way I see it is you will meet one person (maybe more) at some stage in your life who will truely madly love and want to spend time with till the day you die, now its just a matter of whether you are ready to wait for that to happen and stay single or whether you give up and marry someone you like.

My advice would be get out of the marriage before its too late and kids are involved, then try a relationship with this man and see how it goes, otherwise you will live an unhappy life and end up bringing kids into an unhappy home.

InFront

The thing that reappears constantly throughout your post is physical attraction.
Your marriage has little or no sexual aspect, your work colleague is physically attractive, people always talk about him, he touched your hand. You only really discuss this new colleague in physical terms, and give no other reason to suggest why it is love apart from your physical attraction to one another. You don't really mention his character at all, and surely that is the most important aspect of falling in love?

Just going by your post, it seems like a very specific kind of problem. Your husband doesn't seem rude or cruel or emotionally inadequate, there is no financial stress. Much of it seems physical.
I'm not married personally, but a young couple not having sexual relations for over a year doesn't sound like a normal situation.

So I think you need to understand why the sexual problem has arisen. It is a very important aspect to creating a family and/ or sustaining a marriage, and it sounds like it's the root of your problem with this work colleague.

So perhaps you should explain in a very serious tone to your husband how bad things have become for you, and explain how necessary counselling really is.

It's hard to understand whether physical problems are causing emotional problems or vice versa. It sounds like the most immediate problem is physical, but there must be emotional reasons for the physical problem to arise to begin with.
There are so many possibilities for these emotional problems, and emotion is so particular, that I think you're the only person who can really be aware of where the root of the problem lies:)
Good luck with everything

Black Swan

You, as a couple, need marriage counselling. As for the other married man at work, that will more than likely be a lose-lose situation for the both of you in the long run. Oh, it may appear thrilling now, but cheating or a double divorce can be tragic for four people (or more if children are involved, not to mention other family members). Not only that, no matter what he promises you, should you get divorced for him, he may not follow through and get divorced for you, leaving you as the stranded "other" woman. Happens all the time. So push for marriage counselling.

eviecarwash

For what it's worth I think you're too young to be in an unhappy marriage with no sex life. You should still be crazy about each other.. Leaving this new guy aside, I'd get out of this lifeless marriage if I were you. Life's too short, and God you're only in your twenties.. Leave this other guy out of the picture though, he might have a happier marriage than you think underneath it all. If your husband is honest I bet he'd say he wasn't happy either - I mean a year and no sex? Come on!

The Sweeper

This is a miserable situation for you.

As others have said, forget the other guy in work. Whatever about the electricity between you, it is entirely possible you have forged such a strong attraction simply because he's there and isn't your husband.

As for your marriage?

I'm married. I've been with my husband five years, and had two long term relationships (one three years, one four years) before him. In both of my long-term relationships, no matter how good or bad they were at any stage, I always knew they weren't going to last. Even when there was no reason to stop them at the time, on a particular day, at a particular moment, I still knew inside that I wasn't with the person I was going to spend my life with.

People who've been together a long time but aren't married sometimes ask me what difference a marriage makes. Simply put, it changes your perspective of your relationship. When you fight, you think "when this fight is over, I'm going to..." not "when this relationship is over, I'm going to..." For us, our marriage works to lessen the impact of the little niggling things. Stuff that may be mutually annoying when in a relationship becomes less important because it's like "well we're married and I wouldn't have married you if I was planning to leave you, so..."

It also makes it very, very difficult to ever imagine being on your own again while your partner is still alive - even if your marriage is in a bad way. There are lots of things to consider - the emotional and financial cost of a divorce, the opinions of other people... God do I really want to be an X-aged divorcee... Plus in Ireland there's the whole separation requirement...

I'll put it to you this way.

Can you ever, ever see yourself happy with your husband? Is it a case of "If he could just do a little more X and a little less Y" and that allows you to envisage yourselves hand in hand on a beach somewhere with a clatter of kids building sandcastles in the distance?

Do you even like your husband any more?

A marriage is salvageable if you still love your partner, or like them, or can see yourself in the future being happy with them if something were to change. A marriage is even salvageable sometimes if you hate your partner or they hurt you badly, because that depth of feeling shows you do care about them.

In my opinion, if you look at your husband and feel nothing, no like, no particular dislike, no hatred, no love, nothing but resignation and a sense of "Dear God, why am I with you?", then it's not salvageable.

But as Blue Lagoon said, it's important to get marriage counselling for the closure it will give you. If you can tell yourself "I tried everything, I really did", it will help you move on with your own life and justify leaving your husband (if that's what happens) to yourself and to anyone who asks. If it doesn't work it may also help you separate more amicably, because it will have brought you both to the slow realisation of why you're not going to work together.

Having a highly-charged emotional affair with a work mate - which is what you're doing - will get you nowhere. Not just because the reality is that the work-mate, however perfect he seems, is just as human as anyone else and probably leaves his jocks on the bathroom floor and picks his toenails and sulks or whatever - and while you're having a distant emotional fling with this man, it's not fair to your husband.

It's not fair to him because there is no way he can possibly compete with someone you adore specifically because you barely know them and haven't had a chance to let them irritate you yet. Every time you build this work mate into perfection in your head you have the reality of your poorly performing husband in front of you and you are become less and less enamoured of the man you married, because you're comparing him to your fantasy.

1) Get marriage counselling.
2) When that dead horse is thoroughly flogged, get out of your marraige if that's the right thing to do.
3) Get on with your life.

Villain

Why is everyone telling her to forget the guy in work?? If she does she could be missing out on a chance to be really happy. I'm not saying it will work out, it could end up being nothing but I don't go with all this crap about counselling, from the ops story I don't think counselling, sometimes you just have to accept a mistake has been made and learn from it not live in it.

is_that_so

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

This is a miserable situation for you.

1) Get marriage counselling.
2) When that dead horse is thoroughly flogged, get out of your marriage if that's the right thing to do.
3) Get on with your life.

Very sound advice. There is a personal responsibility that goes with the contract of marriage and you have to make sure that you know if it can work or not. Greener fields can look fantastic when you are unhappy. But all it really does is put off the inevitable soul searching. Get to the root of it all. It is better to be unhappy for a while if you can get clarity in your mind as to how to resolve that unhappiness.

Talliesin

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

We got engaged because it was either that or break up.

Sorry, but how does that work exactly?

I've seen similar things before and it really confuses me.

Surely if it's a matter of "get engaged or break up" then that translates to "get married or break up" which when we consider that marriage doesn't change anything about the underlying issues in a relationships translates to "get married to someone I should break up with or break up".

If your not already answering "stay with this person for ever or not" with a definitive "stay", why even consider marriage? It can be hard enough as it is.

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

I knew he was a good man

That means you will associate with him rather than avoid him. People being good people is just gets them as far as not being people you tell to go away and stop bothering you.
Hell, my ex-wife is a good person. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop proceeding towards divorce.

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

who loved me dearly,

Okay, this is something real.

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

my family loved him,

They weren't marrying him. This is something that merely makes life easier when things are good between a couple. It can make things actually worse when they aren't good though.

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

we wouldn't have any great financial worries as we are both highly paid professionals.

This is a very important point. Life's problems are a hell of a lot easier to deal with when you don't have to worry about making ends meet as well. At the same time, it's not actually a reason for being with someone.

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

As part of my work i signed up to work on a new project. I met a man whilst working on this project. ... this man told me how he felt about me. The truth is i knew i felt the same way about him.

I think you should forget about this guy for the time being.

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

My husbands friends often make comments to my husband about fancying me and my husband doesn't flicker an eyelid.) Help!

Okay, no flicker is bad. If you read my posts in this forum you'll know I have very little time for people who get jealous because other people fancy their partners. That's still better than no reaction. The ideal IMO would be for him to say "yes, she's pretty hot, I'm a lucky man". But indifference is worse than all but the most dangerous levels of jealousy.

I don't think there is any quick fix available here.

I think you're in a bad situation that you should never have gotten anywhere near being in. This doesn't mean it can't be turned around, but its going to take a lot of work from both of you. Couples counselling seems a pretty vital first step, and commitment to it from both of you is an absolute prerequisite to it working (couples counselling that both people aren't committing to is just something that drags out the inevitable).

If it gets to the point where it really is beyond hope, and the same thing happens to your colleague, then maybe try for something with him. In the meantime though it will just add complications.

p~b

First thing you should do is talk to your husband about your situation, he could think everything is great in the relationship so pointing out the bad spots could really make him sit up and change.

Don't give up straight away

kelle

Does your work colleague have children? I assume you don't.
You say you've been with your husband since you were 14. The problem is you've both grown up a lot since then and you both think differently to how you did all those years ago.
It's a sad situation. I'd be wary of your work colleague, though. You might not be the first, or the only one on the scene since he got married and if you leave your husband to be with him he could do the same to you as he's doing to his wife.

Marksie

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

(For the record i have tried so hard to put the spark into my marriage, holidays, romantic trips, showing affection and complimenting, surprises, the list is endless and my husband has never shown appreciation or reciprocated the above. We have spoken about our problems and he said that he's happy with the situation and under no circumstances will he come with me to speak to a councillor. My husbands friends often make comments to my husband about fancying me and my husband doesn't flicker an eyelid.) Help!

To me, if i loved and cared about someone enough to marry them , i would be open enough to work through the inevitable problems.

The fact that he says he is happy with the situation while completely disgregarding the fact that you are not is really not a very good sign.
There is a high degree of emotional immaturity on both sides here, but there does not seem to be any part of him that is willing to explore resolving the situation.
on your part, the affection you are receiving from the work colleague is replacing what you should be receiving from your husband.
The lack of any meaningful intimacy within your marriage is the crux of this. Any good relationship is based on affection, trust and understanding, the willingness to be open and intimate and to explore each other as you change through life.
Getting engaged for the reasons you describe were perhaps the worst of reasons.

To state that one is happy with things as they are is avoiding the inevitable, thaht the nature of things changes.

You ask to ask yourself the follwoing questions:

1) Do you want to continue in this situation?
2) Do you want to spend your life with your husband?
3) Why do you seek affection from other men?
4) Do you want to resolve this with your husband?
5) Are you and your husband going to be open enough and mature enough to accept change, to pursue any avenues to expand intimacy and increase affection?
6) If you stay in the situation.. are you likely to have a series of affairs to replace the emotional aspect missing from your own marriage, is thaht fair on your husband, on you and one all those involved?

When your husband said he was happy..did you leave it at that?
You may have to grasp the unpalatable and try to shock him out of his indifference. You may have to mention divorce.

Having good jobs anmd material things is one thing, but which is better... to be emotionaly complete and fulfilled and have enough money to get by, or to have that extra hoiliday and the new LCD screen TV.

Kell

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

We have spoken about our problems and he said that he's happy with the situation and under no circumstances will he come with me to speak to a councillor.

My older brother is in the same situation with his wife.

It seems to me that you have tried your best thus far i.e. going away, romantic gestures etc, and have also suggested counselling. He dismissed the counselling, so do as Mark Suttonie says and broach divorce. Seems like you have been flogging a dead horse for quite some time and its got you nowhere, so rather than seeing divorce as a knee jerk, see it as the next logical step.

Mrs Unhappy wrote:

things were never good sexually between us

Sorry to state the obvious, but why did you get married to someone who left you unfulfilled in that rather large department? You have to accept full responsibility for the situation you find yourself in as it was you who walked in with at least 12/13 years experience of not being a gazillion percent happy with your relationship. So, not entirely happy, you committed to the biggest decision of your life. Apologies again for my bluntness, but this isnt the dark ages and you dont have the marry someone for stability and an income. What were you thinking? Why did you think it would change??

Hope things work out for you whatever way the dice roll.

K-

Marksie

I would juts like to add as well as i missed it from my previous post.

In all likelyhood if it continues this way, you are going to pass through the phase of caring/loving, to indifference, to dislike, to contempt and eventual bitterness and hatred.

You are both young and should be exploring this together.

Bog Man

Just leave aside the guy you work with for a moment.
You are a young woman in a dysfunctional marriage. By the sound of it, you don't love your husband. So firstly (1)Decide if you love this man you married, if you think you do even just a little, then talk to the guy and see what you can salvage. (2)If you do not love your husband then get out now while you can and while you are still young enough to start over. (3)Do not make any decisions based on the man you met at work- you can think about him later after you have decided on the best course of action for YOU.
BElieve me,this comes from personal experience.

LegacyUser

'" ... it would be selfish and wrong to act upon our feelings as we both made solemn promises to other people. "

Is this katlic church guilt trip stuff ???
I have to advise you that this particular cult is now finished
and cannot be taken seriously anymore ( and in fact should
never have been taken seriously ).

I sounds to me like U are really going to have to get out of
that marriage. It's not working, you and your husband met
too young ( 14 for jayzus sake !!! ), are still too young and
it will never work.'

BaZmO*

irish1 wrote:

You see thats the problem with this society, people feel under pressure to marry the first person they have a long serious relationship with and when it goes wrong they just accept it as part of life

Really? Where? 1978? I think you will find that Irish society as a whole has moved on.

irish1 wrote:

Why is everyone telling her to forget the guy in work?? If she does she could be missing out on a chance to be really happy. I'm not saying it will work out, it could end up being nothing but I don't go with all this crap about counselling, from the ops story I don't think counselling, sometimes you just have to accept a mistake has been made and learn from it not live in it.

Because, by having an affair she risks being labelled as the one that wasn't bothered with salvaging the relationship which by the looks of her husbands unwillingness to go to counselling is not the case. Also, by having an affair the potential to hurt more people is magnified hugely and she could also bring untold hassle to her workplace.

Talliesin wrote:

Hell, my ex-wife is a good person.

You're a bloke?? :eek: I always thought you were a laydeee.

free2fly

I see two problems here. The first being a lack of intimacy in your marriage. The second being that you are physically attracted to the guy at work because of the lack of intimacy in your marriage. He makes you feel good about yourself. It is a boost to your ego because you know that he wants you. Be very careful there OP.

You need to talk to your husband about the way you are feeling. And Mark Sutton is correct. You should mention that you're thinking about divorce. It may shake him out of his indifference.

Stay away from the guy at work for now. Try to find out what, if anything, can be done about your marriage first. Sort out your own head and take it from there.

Villain

BaZmO* wrote:

Really? Where? 1978? I think you will find that Irish society as a whole has moved on.

I thought so too, but friends and family just keeping proving me wrong, I know more married people unhappy in relationships than I do happy and worst part is some of them have kids. Its like going in and buying a ferrari and then realising a few months later that while the initial buzz was good its just borring now and want to change it, only thing is the Ferrari has an engine not a heart or kids!

BaZmO* wrote:

Because, by having an affair she risks being labelled as the one that wasn't bothered with salvaging the relationship which by the looks of her husbands unwillingness to go to counselling is not the case. Also, by having an affair the potential to hurt more people is magnified hugely and she could also bring untold hassle to her workplace.

I agree it could do very wrong but she won't know unless she gives it a go.

Marksie

irish1 wrote:

I agree it could do very wrong but she won't know unless she gives it a go.

Or it could end up throwing guilt into the package as well. The OP will have to live with the consequences. If she has an affair now it will impact on what she may want to achieve with her husband as it will add another layer onto things.

Better at the moment to ask herself why she has such feelings for a work colleague... my guess is it will be the lack of affection. If the OP can accept this has happened because of the marriage circumstances, she may be able to handle things better.
To have an affair now would not be the best idea. Not while there is such confusion.
Additionally you have to think about possible fallout which will extend beyond the marriage..this is a WORK colleague. It is all to easy to imagine not only stress at home, but equally the same amount at work. Easily one or other or both would end up leaving.

MojoMaker

There is an old saying "...a woman craving intimacy will fancy the ugliest guy..."

The chap in the workplace is merely the classic vehicle for washing away the feelings of loneliness and emptiness, he is not 'the one'. He could never be 'the one' because of the circumstances under which you have met. A great shame it may well be, but get shot of this current situation, serve the most appropriate period of due diligence for you as a single person, and you might be in a position to be able to enter a new relationship in a year or two.

Wish it could be sugarcoated a little better but why kid yourself.

dan_y

Dtmfa

Crea

I think OP needs to look at what will happen long term if she does leave her marriage.
(a) Move out and move in with Work Guy? This is a huge amount of pressure to put on a relationship with someone that you don't really know
(b) Leave and start dating work guy? Where will she live? What will she do if the relationship doesn't work out?

These are the kind of questions that need to be asked. What will happen if she leaves?

I do agree that the relationship can't continue under these circumstances. Obviously counselling is the way to go. This husband should be told how bad the situation is and given the option of counselling. This will truely help the OP decide if the relationship is salvagable. But she really needs to look at the practicalities of leaving. Would she be thinking of leaving if it weren't for work Guy?
It isn't uncommon for married people to be attracted to people other than their spouse especially if your spouse isn't attentive. Having an affair is the cowardly way out. Either have the guts to make a go of the marriage or have the guts to leave and be alone.

LegacyUser

'Ok so your husband is in his mid twenties also in a marriage that has had no sex for over a year....and claims he is happy!!? I'm sorry but that smacks of 2 things.
1= He is gettin it somewhere else or
2= He makes passionate love to PALMela HANDerson on a regular basis

Seriously though i dont think you have a positive future with your husband...so if i were you i would move on but give it some time before you go near anybody else.'

nicolo

If I was you id discuss this with your husband. Because if he freaks and walks then you’ve got your answer and if he accepts that there is a problem then you’ve a foundation to build a new relationship on. We are all human and having feelings for someone else is not a crime. It’s only wrong to act upon such things while still tied to someone.

But in general it sounds to me like you just got trapped by your fear of being alone a fear which has now developed into a fear of being trapped (god where stupid creatures)
I spent the better part of my late teens /early 20s in a relationship and stayed in that relationship because I was afraid of being alone which is one of the worst reasons.
we subsequently broke up and I spent the next few years in and out of relationships and now I’m back in a serious one with a girl who I’m mad about and in truth if I hadn’t of had the experiences I got from being single and having different relationships and learning what does and doesn’t keep a relationship together and learning to be on my own and gaining independence then my current relationship would have gone out the window along time ago.

Also foot note to that when I met my current girlfriend we where in a very similar place to you, we where both in serious relationships and unhappy and when we met we just fell for each other instantly and while there was (and is) an intense physical attraction it wasn’t what made us fall in love. We both ended our relationships and got with each other and have been madly in love ever since, neither of our old partners minded too much, (they did a bit obviously but they both admitted that the relationships where doomed).
My point being that just ‘cos you have feelings for someone it doesn’t mean your only having them because your not happy with your Husband, still if you still have strong feelings for your husband try there first and if its as bad as it seems at least you know you’ve another person who if nothing else will aid the transition to being free and independent so you can find someone who youll be HAPPY to spend the rest ofgyour life with.no one should be in a sexless marriage ever but least of all in your mid 20s..