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I don't see how you came to this conclusion. Please elaborate, if you don't mind. What is the purpose of marriage?
Call me shallow, but I think marriage should involve love/sex/attraction. If you marry just for fear of loneliness and to have someone greet you at home, you may as well keep living with your parents and never get married; or rent and get a roommate. There are so many people out there who insist that you must fight to save a marriage, even when all it includes is being comfortable roommates with someone you get along with. Yes, that is a nice/comfortable arrangement. Yes, some people don't even have that and I am grateful because I have it. But it feels no different than living with my parents or my sister. Why should we strive so hard to save a comfortable roommate situation?
Not trying to be devil's advocate here, but it would be great to hear different perspectives on why people stay married and what is it that they try to achieve through marriage? Please be honest. No judgement.
Has this been the situation for a while? It's not uncommon to go through periods where you're out of sync and just co-existing in the same space, but you both need to put the effort into reconnecting. Setting your sights on another man is only going to get in the way of that.
i appreciate your feedback, and in fact I DO want to find out what other people's reasons for staying married are, to see if my thinking is just somehow defective from normal people. Naive I probably am, I'll admit that. I am also confused, and disappointed in marriage altogether.
For me free will is a very high value; I think people should do whatever they want, and the only restrictions should be law and respect for any living thing. I would HATE to be with a person who is physically with me, but mentally thinking about someone else. For me it's either you are 100% in or you are not. And if God forbid I fell ill, I would be the one running away from the husband; I cannot be so selfish and expect that someone will sacrifice their life and freedom to be stuck with me, when i can't offer them anything.
It would be great to hear what other people think. What's worse? to be left by a spouse who tells you honestly that they are not there emotionally, or to be with someone who pretends?
i appreciate your feedback, and in fact I DO want to find out what other people's reasons for staying married are, to see if my thinking is just somehow defective from normal people. Naive I probably am, I'll admit that. I am also confused, and disappointed in marriage altogether.
For me free will is a very high value; I think people should do whatever they want, and the only restrictions should be law and respect for any living thing. I would HATE to be with a person who is physically with me, but mentally thinking about someone else. For me it's either you are 100% in or you are not. And if God forbid I fell ill, I would be the one running away from the husband; I cannot be so selfish and expect that someone will sacrifice their life and freedom to be stuck with me, when i can't offer them anything.
It would be great to hear what other people think. What's worse? to be left by a spouse who tells you honestly that they are not there emotionally, or to be with someone who pretends?
I'm telling you ... the "what's worse" choices really serve no purpose here other than distraction from the REAL ISSUE.
I mean, do you want to have a happy marriage, or do you really just want to discuss the various philosophies of marriage???
You are approaching that fabled 7-year itch phase. There's a REASON cliches become cliches.
The novelty of being married has worn off, and now what??? Well, it's EASY to be committed to a relationship when things are going well.
But when you are in the state of mind you are in, where the grass REALLY looks greener on the other side, then being committed becomes a challenge. And some people just don't like challenges.
Free will? That's all commitment is!!! It's NOT MAGIC. Every day you get up and CHOOSE to stay with this man, to love him for all his imperfections, and to let him love you. And you decide FREELY to do the things that it takes to make that happen. You can call it settling, if you want to be pessimistic. Or you can call it devotion and dedication.
Or we can just talk about why "people" stay married.
i appreciate your feedback, and in fact I DO want to find out what other people's reasons for staying married are, to see if my thinking is just somehow defective from normal people. Naive I probably am, I'll admit that. I am also confused, and disappointed in marriage altogether.
For me free will is a very high value; I think people should do whatever they want, and the only restrictions should be law and respect for any living thing. I would HATE to be with a person who is physically with me, but mentally thinking about someone else. For me it's either you are 100% in or you are not. And if God forbid I fell ill, I would be the one running away from the husband; I cannot be so selfish and expect that someone will sacrifice their life and freedom to be stuck with me, when i can't offer them anything.
It would be great to hear what other people think. What's worse? to be left by a spouse who tells you honestly that they are not there emotionally, or to be with someone who pretends?
I agree with what you said, I feel the same way. I have been married to my husband for 30 years now. That is a long time. We love each other, but some things have changed, I won't go into here. For myself, I always told him if he didn't want to be with me or didn't love me, to be honest and GO, I would NOT want dishonesty and pretending. And that is how I have always been in previous relationships and in my first marriage.
People get married for many different reasons. And they STAY married for just as many different reasons. Some people realize after many years that they should never have gotten married at all, they prefer their independence, or feel they married the wrong person. You have not been married all that long. If it is lacking the way it is NOW, it probably will not get better over time. He may not be in love with you anymore, or maybe he has someone else? Or physcial problems, emotional problems, we don't know. But ask yourself "are you better off WITH him or WITHOUT him? And make your decision. The worst thing you can do is take no action. Believe me, I speak from experience.
It sounds to me like you are upset because he is in a low point in his relationship with you, where he has not been meeting your physical and emotional needs. You are doing subtle things to try and work at it (dressing sexy, etc), but it is not really working.
As a result, your eyes are wandering and your questioning your marriage.
Communication is key, and the communication needs to be honest and constructive between the two of you. There could be tons of outside factors as to why he has been neglecting your romantic needs lately, and they are not automatically because his eyes are wandering. A host of emotional or physical influences could be at play here.
Before letting your eyes wander to some new guy who gives you a little attention, and before pondering too long about the merits and appropriateness of divorce, you may want to encourage him to speak with you, or go to a counselor and see if you can work through these issues first.
Although there really is nothing wrong with pondering the merits of a no fault divorce either if you think the love is gone, wouldn't you rather put in a lot more due diligence and effort to try and continue your marriage, which you have invested so much in so far?
What if it is a lull and you decide to throw away your investment. ? Next month could start the greatest and most fulfilling chapter of your marriage and you would miss it.
It sounds to me like you are upset because he is in a low point in his relationship with you, where he has not been meeting your physical and emotional needs. You are doing subtle things to try and work at it (dressing sexy, etc), but it is not really working.
As a result, your eyes are wandering and your questioning your marriage.
Communication is key, and the communication needs to be honest and constructive between the two of you. There could be tons of outside factors as to why he has been neglecting your romantic needs lately, and they are not automatically because his eyes are wandering. A host of emotional or physical influences could be at play here.
Before letting your eyes wander to some new guy who gives you a little attention, and before pondering too long about the merits and appropriateness of divorce, you may want to encourage him to speak with you, or go to a counselor and see if you can work through these issues first.
Although there really is nothing wrong with pondering the merits of a no fault divorce either if you think the love is gone, wouldn't you rather put in a lot more due diligence and effort to try and continue your marriage, which you have invested so much in so far?
What if it is a lull and you decide to throw away your investment. ? Next month could start the greatest and most fulfilling chapter of your marriage and you would miss it.
Again, I appreciate all the opinions I am hearing here; it's great to gain more perspective. Those of you who've been in this kind of phase, can you tell us that it passed, and now you are back in love with your spouse and want them and you have no eyes for anyone else? Does that ever happen? I would very much like to hope this is just a phase that will go away. but so far all decisions in life i took based on instinct were right; and somehow my instinct doubts that once this point is reached it will go away; maybe for a little while my husband could try hard and things will be good, but then he'll get bored with the chase and just go back to his own, and I will feel neglected and invisible again. Yes, I am emotional and dramatic. But trying to look at it statistically, as well. For how many of you did these phases pass ?
Again, I appreciate all the opinions I am hearing here; it's great to gain more perspective. Those of you who've been in this kind of phase, can you tell us that it passed, and now you are back in love with your spouse and want them and you have no eyes for anyone else? Does that ever happen?
Having a down period in a marriage, and cultivating desires for someone else are two different things.
Continuing to emotionally entertain the idea of other guys, and by fixating on it, you are driving your own emotional wedge between you and your spouse in your marriage. If you seek to rekindle the passion in your marriage, your first work better be to accept fantasy as fantasy, and refocus on the real relationship you are in.
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I would very much like to hope this is just a phase that will go away. but so far all decisions in life i took based on instinct were right; and somehow my instinct doubts that once this point is reached it will go away; maybe for a little while my husband could try hard and things will be good, but then he'll get bored with the chase and just go back to his own, and I will feel neglected and invisible again. Yes, I am emotional and dramatic. But trying to look at it statistically, as well. For how many of you did these phases pass ?
I would put down the statistics too. A real marriage is not a statistic. There is also, at least IMO, a lot of agenda and bias in the bulk of marriage and divorce statistic reporting. Stats are being generalized, misreported, and sensationalized for goals other than honest and clear reporting of some numbers.
In terms of instincts, I do not think a person is wrong to listen to their instincts, but they also need to do so in perspective and with proper analysis. Your instincts are picking up on the downturn in your romantic relationship. They are then being fueled by your emotions which are encouraging a wandering eye, and being justified by picking up on some "statistics" about divorce and failed marriages elsewhere. Some, all, or none of which may have anything to do with the situation you are in.
Really, as I said above, deep and productive communication is the real key with someone who can facilitate the communication. This is to dig deep down and get to the heart of the wedge currently between the two of you which is causing the lack of romance, and figure out how to rekindle the romance to grow and move forward as a couple.
Again, I appreciate all the opinions I am hearing here; it's great to gain more perspective. Those of you who've been in this kind of phase, can you tell us that it passed, and now you are back in love with your spouse and want them and you have no eyes for anyone else? Does that ever happen? I would very much like to hope this is just a phase that will go away. but so far all decisions in life i took based on instinct were right; and somehow my instinct doubts that once this point is reached it will go away; maybe for a little while my husband could try hard and things will be good, but then he'll get bored with the chase and just go back to his own, and I will feel neglected and invisible again. Yes, I am emotional and dramatic. But trying to look at it statistically, as well. For how many of you did these phases pass ?
Did you ever see the movie, A Beautiful Mind, where Russell Crowe played the mathematician John Nash who has schizophrenia?
The way they portrayed it in the movie is an analogy that can be used here. At first you see two characters who you believe are real people in the movie, the roommate played by Paul Bettany and the little girl who was his niece.
As the movie moves along and the main character John Nash deals with his illness by learning coping skills and taking medication, we still see these characters but find out that they are products of Nash's imagination. The characters begin to take on less of a marquee role in Nash's life. They fade into the background.
Yet they don't go away completely. Nash can see them hovering to the side, farther away than ever before, but he makes an active effort to NOT engage with them because he understands the risk to his health.
This long metaphor is not to compare marriage with schizophrenia. It's to illustrate that no, in my experience this is not a phase that just "goes away." This is something you will always have to deal with. It's called BEING HUMAN.
Like I said earlier, commitment is a choice, a choice to sacrifice those thoughts of other men. "No eyes for anyone else?"LOL Like they say, you're married; you're not dead.
There WILL be times when you feel neglected, and there will be men who will offer you that attention that seems to feel so good.
YOUR JOB as a wife is to understand that you are using that attention and those wandering eyes as a remedy to kill the pain you are feeling about the state that you two have allowed your marriage to fall into. It's not something that you should fool yourself into thinking that it's your instinct telling you to leave. It's just a symptom of a problem that YOU CAN SOLVE if you and your husband both choose to.
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