My ex-husband and I fell out of love long before our marriage ended. We hung onto the bits that we could — we were great friends, we loved our children so much, and we rarely fought.
Our sex life dwindled sometime around year seven of our marriage and I would lie awake at night wishing I’d feel sexually attracted to him again. It was this huge wedge that finally broke us. He was so busy with his business, I took on all the household duties and took care of our three children. We were literally living separate lives and at the end of the day, I had nothing left for him and he knew it. There was zero connection between us and we began to resent and blame each other for our misery.
After he confessed to having a month-long affair with a co-worker, something he was distraught about, his willingness to want to work it out kept me from leaving.
I was at my gynecologist a few weeks after he told me and I lost it on the table. The paper covering collected my tears and she said: “I can’t tell you how many women come in here and tell me they no longer feel attracted to their husband’s and their sex life is nonexistent. Many of them have affairs, and many of them are cheated on. It’s so common and it can tear you apart, or you might look back to this moment in 20 years and see it was just a bump in the road.”
I wanted it, all of it, to be just that — a bump in the road.
I knew I wasn’t in love with my husband, I knew I didn’t want to have sex with him any longer, and we worked on changing that for six years with no luck.
The reason I stuck it out for so long was my children. I know now that kids need happy parents, and that matters more than having parents who are together. There was a big part of me who knew it then and yet, I hung on for them.
I didn’t want their lives to be messed up,
I didn’t want to go days, or holidays, without seeing them. The thought of their father moving on and meeting someone else didn’t bother me, but not sleeping together under the same roof every night? That broke me. It still does over four years later.
My children have a great relationship with their father. We are great co-parents. They have adjusted as well as kids can adjust to a huge life change. I am thankful for all of it.
Yet I still have days almost five years later when I wish we’d tried harder and hung on. I never thought my life would be like this — sharing custody of my children — they are teenagers and it still feels unnatural to me to drop them off with their dad half the time.
I tense up when my daughter tells me she just wants to stay at home because going back and forth is hard for her.
I hate when they get confused about where they are going and who they are going to be with when our schedules change. I blame myself so much for falling out of love with their dad because if I hadn’t done that, all would be fine and we would be staying under the same roof every night and my kids wouldn’t have to ask me where they are going to spend Thanksgiving this year.
I never meant to hurt them, but we had to divorce because we were hurting them by staying married.
I never meant to hurt them, but I knew they were starting to see the signs.
I never meant to hurt them, but I knew by staying married we would have ended up hurting them more.
I never meant to hurt them, but we had to go our separate ways in order to give them the best life we knew how.
