I didn’t want to write this. I know I’ve left you all hanging for weeks for which I apologize. But writing this makes it more real and I didn’t want to do that.
She said she doesn’t believe that non-monogamy can be ethical. It’s a contradiction. Therefore, it would be a sham marriage and she wouldn’t be happy to tell or talk about it with anyone, regardless that she never actually would but that it’s not something she wants to do because she couldn’t talk about it.
We had good sex that night. But the next day I still felt terrible. In 2023, when we had good sex (3 times), I felt great for days afterwards. I didn’t this time. I don’t know what that means.
So we agreed to couples therapy two weeks later. We went (a week ago) and it felt like we just rehashed all the same arguments. For the first session, maybe it’s just a set up and we can’t expect progress. The therapist did give us homework to do:
- What attracts me to her?
- What do I need from her?
- What do I need from her in order to get to a more “natural” emotional state?
- What needs need to be met?
- What would a date night look like?
And my spouse would answer the same things of me.
And some issues kept happening since therapy and I got tired of trying so I stopped. I do the basics to be a good roommate, but I feel like all the effort we’ve made is sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Old issues resurface and occur again which undoes progress.
I’m on-call this week for work. On Wednesday-Thursday night I woke up after 1.5 hours from going to sleep and was up for 2 hours. I finally felt ready to go back to sleep and then I got a page for work. It was a real problem this time so I was up for 2 more hours. In total, I got 4.5 hours of sleep that night. In the morning I was tired and groggy.
When I make coffee, I like half and half and sugar. In making coffee Thursday morning, I get the sugar out of the pantry, make coffee, and return it. She has asked me to close the pantry door when done using it, so I do. But sometimes she’s doing something in the kitchen and she’ll close the pantry door. I think it’s rude to close it when I have something out. This time I was going to put the sugar away and she was already at the pantry and closed it with me behind her. I sighed and started putting it away and she said “Sorry, it’s just habit.” I feel that’s not an apology. When I was closing the door the sugar fell and made a loud noise (but didn’t spill) and I looked back and was too tired to care. I’ll get it later. She went and got it and put it away. Today she said she felt like I gave her a look “You put it away bitch.” I feel like we assume a terrible thing about each other when there is often a much more benign solution.
It sounds silly to write out this incident now.
But I feel like she doesn’t care about me. She says she does, but then does things like this that show she doesn’t. She didn’t ask how I was feeling. I’ve asked her recently how she was feeling and she didn’t ask me back.
I approached her today to talk and started off “Are you ready to talk about divorce?” and she said “Yes.” So we spent an hour discussing our joint ownership of things and child custody arrangements. It was pretty civil. In the divorce paperwork there’s a statement we agree to that “the marriage is irrevocably broken and cannot be repaired.” I asked her if she felt that way and she said she’s not sure; I feel the same.
So we’re not going to do anything just yet. We’ll think about it. We’ll attend our scheduled therapy session in a week. We’ll check back in 2 weeks. We’re going to give each other some space, which is difficult to do living together with kids and needing to coordinate, but we’ll do what we can.
It’s scary. I don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re still going to be a part of each other’s lives for a decade because of kids, but it’ll be less.
Maybe we can try a trial separation?