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 Loving two men in two different
ways - alone
I have written a few things on this forum hoping for
answers but not being completely honest. It wasn't until
after reading most of the letters, I decided to be
completely honest with myself and others on this forum to
get the most honest replys that I can. I'm 32 years old.
I got married at 19 to a man I met at 15. He was 25 when
we got married. My mother raised 6 kids on her own. My
mother drank alot when I was 10years old till about 15. I
moved out when I became serious with my now almost
ex-husband (WELL WERE ONLY SEPERATED, BUT FOR 3 YRS ON
AND OFF). After we got married he became a different
person. I use to love to cook for him, make his lunches,
just try to make him happy. He would come home and just
lie on the couch and it always seemed like he had
something on his mind or that he was mad at me. I used to
ask him what was wrong, he would say nothing.
After six months, I started thinking "this is not
what I want" so I moved out to live with my sister.
I dated but I missed my husband. So we got back together
and moved out of his parents house. At 21 I had my
daughter, we were seperated when I found out I was
pregnant, so we got back together. Things were good for a
while, I worked, he worked, but we just couldn't get
along. I developed a gambling problem because of
depression. I would play cards all night with 6 other
women and get up and go to work, take my daughter to
daycare, and couldn't wait for the next card game.
Meanwhile my husband still came home from work, lied down
on the couch, get up to eat and then go to the gym. 5
days a week. I stopped gambling but started going out
dancing and drinking. I met a man and started sleeping
with him frequently. Everytime I went out I couldn't wait
to be with him that night. I would leave sometime in the
morning 2 or 3am and go home. (my husband was always very
reserved about sex, and as I got older I knew I was more
into sex then he was and was more open, but not with
him). My relationship with the other man was never really
sexually, even though we slept together, I never had an
orgasm, I just wanted to feel close to someone. I wanted
to feel loved.
I continued to see him whenever we would run into each
other whether it be every six months or every year. In
1990 I had my son. I again would stay home hoping things
would change between my husband and I but they wouldn't.
Finially after 11 years of marriage I left for good. In
June of 1995. This other man found a place for me to live
with my children. A friend of his had a basement
apartment in his house so I took it. My husband is only 5
minutes away from his kids and things are going good but
I wonder if I never tried hard enough. My husband was
verbally abusive, but was he justified because of my late
nights and always wondering if I was sleeping with
someone else. Or when he found out about my gambling and
had to pay off the credit cards. I'm still seeing this
other man but he just now seems like he might want to get
married. We havn't talked about it by our selves but
other people say it in a conversation. A year ago he
would of said I'm not ready. Now he seems to be happy
when someone mentions it. I don't bring it up because I
think my daughter who is 11 years old still thinks me and
her daddy will get back some day. Both my kids get along
with my boyfriend, but we do not live together. I've
never had to fake an orgasm with my boyfriend, he's very
unselfish. He always makes sure he pleases me and vise
versa. My husband always expected me to please him, but I
never got anything in return. My boyfriend and I do more
things with my children then my husband and me ever did.
"HERE COMES THE BUT" I always wonder if my
husband was a different person, would I have had an
affair, would I still be with him. Should I have told him
how I felt sexually. I always told him everything else.
But could never tell him about the sex. He used to stay
completely away from me when I was pregnant because it
turned him off and he said that some things he felt dirty
about. What is dirty about 2 people who are suppose to
love each other. My feelings now are when my boyfriend
and I are fighting I really hurt, and I'm always the one
to go to him so we don't go for too long without
fighting. (something my husband and I did often, for
weeks at a time.) Did I make the right choice, does it
sound like my boyfriend really loves me. Should I have
worked harder in my marriage. I feel like my relationship
is coming to a different phase now and I'm scared. He's
talking about buying a house together, but I'm not sure
if I'm ready. Mostly because if I do I know its over with
my husband and I even though so much time has passed. I
really need some advice.
 From: Bernd
First things first. You said “My husband was
verbally abusive, but was he justified ..?” No; you
may have played a part on the anger dance you both
carried, but abuse is a choice - and you have no control
over his choices. Abuse was an option he chose, out of a
range of options; he had healthier ones to pick from too.
My guess is that the only way your husband could have
been a different person is if YOU had been a different
person, because I believe that we usually pick partners
who provide the best mirrors for us - and those partners
usually have faults and struggles which are mirror images
of our own. Sometimes those mirrors are “Crazy
House” kind of mirrors, but mirrors all the same.
And as much as you might wish YOU could have been
different, “what is” is “what is”,
And the same for “what was”. All the wishing in
the world doesn’t change a thing. We are what we
are, for whatever reason - even if we don’t
understand why. Enough of the philosophy.:) I get carried
away sometimes.
Your struggle right now makes a lot of sense to me.
Maybe somewhere inside are little alarm bells ringing,
and the fear of THIS relationship going down the tubes
once you get married, like the last one? The commitment
at this stage in your life HAS to feel like a big step;
you want stability in your life for once, and in your
kids’ lives. And no matter how good your
relationship with your boyfriend is right now, at least
you know what LIVING with your husband is like. Living
with your boyfriend as a husband is still a very much
“unknown” thing, no matter how much you might
think you can predict it based on your present
relationship with him. I sense a fear that “if I
can’t figure out how to fix my first marriage, or
let it go, how the heck am I gonna cope if a big problem
pops up in the second marriage?”
I’m going to make one statement that I hope will
help put things in a little perspective. You, and I have
absolutely NO final control over whether a marriage works
or not. We are able to control our input into the
relationship, what we give and take, and how we do it. We
could have all the virtues of Mother Theresa, and still
end up divorced - because it’s up to our partner
whether they want to be with us or not, and rational
thinking does NOT have the final say in such decisions,
as many know thru experience.
You made the best choices you could, with what you
knew, and the baggage you carried (not of your own
choosing) from your past. So did he. In my opinion, the
word “marriage” really doesn’t matter on
its own. What is most important to your happiness, and
your kids, is what kind of “relationship” you
have with your ex. It isn’t necessary to live with
him, or be married to him, to have a great relationship.
And you can have a super relationship with him even if
you’re married to someone else. In fact, they
complement each other very well.
What I hear is you have been used to defining your
happiness and self-worth in terms of your main
“relationship”. I suspect you feel inside that
the failure of your first marriage, and the struggles you
had in it, meant that there was something “wrong
with you” - for eg., maybe you “didn’t try
hard enough”, or wasn’t enough of this, or of
that. As long as you define yourself this way, your
marriage -past and present - will be both an Eden and a
prison.
One of the things I discovered about love is that
whatever is truly good for me is also truly good for
Lynda. And vice versa. When I take the time to find out
what my needs are, and take responsibility for them, and
don’t try to “bargain” with them, things
work out better than they ever did. Trying to make a
partner “happy” usually means we focus more on
trying to find out what their needs are, and become out
of touch with our own. It backfires, because no matter
how hard we try to please, somehow we end feeling like we
got the short end of the stick sooner or later. It’s
our own unmet, unacknowledged needs demanding our
attention. When they yell loud enough, the most common
thing to do is try and find the “quick fix” -
an affair, gambling, etc. - which unleashes the trapdoor
we pushed down for so long, and we end up gorging like a
person who hasn’t eaten for what seems like forever.
One of the common things men do is to give up and
withdraw when they feel like a failure. When a woman
tries hard to “please her man”, often the man -
who has been taught all his life NOT to feel too much
emotion - feels overwhelmed, then feels guilty, then
tries to even the scales, and finally gives up because of
feelings of failure. This is not the woman’s fault,
nor the man’s. It’s a dance they’ve both
been taught all too well, and made to believe would bring
them happiness. It’s a lie, something they discover
all to well when that dance and many others they were
taught take them from wedded bliss to divorce.
It took us many leaps of faith to practice taking
responsibility for our OWN feelings first. This includes
being honest with myself about what I want and what I
need, finding ways of taking care of those needs that
don’t obligate or hurt Lynda or anyone else, telling
her what I want and need, and finding other ways of
taking care of my needs when she isn’t ready,
capable or willing. I found a way to get my
“hug” need met when she didn’t want to be
close, by getting them in my support group. I took care
of my sexual needs when she was having her struggles with
magazines, and believe it or not, hugs! (Non-sexual hugs
seem to take care of some really deep inner needs that I
had been using sex to fill before - a nice discovery!) I
took care of my need to have my thoughts and feelings
listened to, and validated, in my support group and with
my therapist - and any friends I could corral to listen!
I found there’s always more than one way to skin a
cat, and often a dozen or more.:) By taking more
responsibility for my needs, what I found is I
wasn’t adding to Lynda’s weight like I used to,
and she became more in touch with HER needs. Guess what?
We discovered that we both pretty well wanted and needed
the same things after all! We just didn’t know
enough about how to listen to our own feelings before, or
how many ways there were to safely take care of those
needs with others, and with each other. Compared to the
struggles we had with our needs before, things are so
much EASIER now. It took leaps of faith, practice, and a
lot of trial and error, but the rewards are permanent.
I’m too old to keep these wheels inside my head
going all day.:)
If you like reading, I’d recommend picking up any
of the books I have listed in my Relationship Resources
page, especially any on Codependency. Growing up in an
alcoholic home has long-lasting effects, that very
commonly show up later in adult relationships. You
learned to dance from someone who danced with a bottle,
and someone who was MARRIED to that person. It’s
time to learn a different dance, one that doesn’t
leave you stepping on each other’s toes all the
time. Be with the one you chose, and let your soul help
guide you in making that choice. But build a great
relationship with both, by starting on building a new
relationship with yourself. There’s no greater gift
you can give your men, your kids, and yourself.
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