Does happiness last in a marriage? What now?

Hello! My husband and I have been married for 8 years. We have two amazing children, ages 6 and 4. I stay at home with my children and homeschool them. I love being a mom and I adore my kids. My husband and I are on the same page parenting-wise and we are in sync with each other when it comes to life style decisions that really matter (health, nutrition, our home, our security, raising a family, etc.). What puzzles me is how lonely and sad I feel every day. I cook, clean, do laundry, raise kids, educate them... I love filling these roles. With this said I can't remember what it feels like to be a woman, a wanted, tenderly loved woman. My husband is a wonderful person. He is smart, handsome, talented. He loves people and strangers warms up to his charming, sunny disposition within minutes. He has no problems making friends and keeping them. All of my days are spent at home, taking care of all my responsibilities. My husband supports our family financially and helps around the house whenever he feels inspired too. There is also a dark, self-destructing side to my husband. He can nap for hours and hours on end sometimes, no matter what is happening under his nose. He can go for days looking at his phone and his computer without noticing me. When he goes out to work, he seems happy. Whenever he is home with us on weekends or in the evenings we all seem to bore him and he looks for opportunities to escape us. When he does help out around the house it usually comes with a trade later (I do for you, now you do for me) or it feels like he really doesn't want to be there and he is doing me a big favor. Over the years I have felt insignificant in light of his work relationships, friends and hobbies. It feels like he got comfortable in our life together. I am taking care of things at home and he makes it possible for me by going out and doing his work outside of our home. In the meantime our bed is cold, our relationship is cold and time and time again I am given clues that my feelings don't matter. For example, my husband likes to play basketball. If a game is on, it doesn't matter what is going on at home, he will drop everything to go run around the gym court with his basketball buddies. If ask him to stay and spend time with me, he treats it like a really unreasonable request. One of his most recent games fell on our anniversary and after he hurried through dinner that I made, he rushed out to play basketball regardless of my reminding him that it is our anniversary. I felt so small. I wish I could say that our life was different before kids, but it wasn't really. We have always had communication problems and there are some very hurtful things that my husband has done in the past, which he admitted to me and showed remorse. Deep down I am still hurt by these memories. I think it is because I am constantly reminded that I am not all that special. We never make love. Even before kids it wasn't all that frequent. I am no expert in sex, but we had none on our honeymoon... and it seems strange. I remember feeling so confused on our honeymoon, but we didn't even talk about it. We talk about it now, wondering what we are doing. My husband says that he feels attracted to me. However, he keeps growing his facial hair out, knowing that it repels me. I have never been the girl to adore facial hair... just like some people won't date guys overweight, smokers, etc. When I tell him that I really like his clean saved look, he says he likes facial hair and wants to give it a try. He knows that I cannot stand beards and prickly hair on my face, but it doesn't seem to matter to him. Last time we had sex ( I can't call it making love anymore) he didn't seem to notice that besides the obvious sex organs I have other body parts that may appreciate tenderness. It was just one of those get in and get out deals! I felt like a piece of meat. Prior to that we didn't have sex for three and a half years. I don't know what I am doing in this marriage. I also don't know what I would do out of it. I am not in the mood for a dating pool again, for starting over again... What is the point? Just to end up in this place again only a lot older? I also don't wish to hurt my children. I know that divorces are painful for everyone and that they scar children. Neither one of us believes in divorce. It doesn't solve anything. Neither one of us wants to hurt our kids either. We went to a marriage counselor and nothing changed. We read books about relationships and we were not able to change anything. I feel so stuck and so confused. I don't know what to do, what I can do. I am 36 and I have so much life left in me. I am healthy, pretty and in shape. I speak two languages fluently, have two college degrees which I obtained with highest honors, I am a trained professional, a pretty smart person in general. I love being a mom and raising two amazing human beings. I have been crying almost every day, by myself at night because of how lonely I feel. Is there anything more to my life or is this it? Is this normal? I don't know what to do. Any experts out there or people who have have experienced similar challenges and were able to find happiness? Thank you.

Your job is 24/7. His is workadays hours. When he helps you do your two/three/four jobs and communicates that it's later tit for present tat, what he's saying is, This is woman's work ergo I'm doing you a giant favour by helping. When he finds excuses to slope off during what is family time, what he's saying is, This doesn't involve me. When he naps for hours, what he's saying is, I want to avoid having to participate. When he basically (rhymes with tanks) into you, he's saying, Hopefully this will shut you up. Overall, he's saying, 'I want to get all the perks of being a married family man but I don't want to do the associative WORK'. By work, I mean Duty. [hoity sniff] No work? NO PERKS! His uggering off on your anniversary - eating and leaving - is massive as well as wholly indicative of his entire, underlying attitude towards your relationship or marriage generally. And yet I note you big him up to compensate. It's called, making excuses. And I think the reason why you do this is because of the fact his work ethic allows you to lead the largest chunk of your day-to-day life exactly as you'd want to, which aspects you DON'T want to lose. Who told you you couldn't be married to an excellent provider who simultaneously ENJOYED (verb) the actual marital and paternal relationships? Of course you're still hurt by the past transgressions. Because they weren't one-off anomalies. They've simply continued under a change of clothing. (Think about it.) Soulmates make love as often as practicable. Soulmates make love to each other's MINDS (aka hearts), merely VIA the body. They prefer NOT to simply ank into each other, given the choice. Soulmates don't do a THING to jeopardise their partner's degree of attraction; they try to HEIGHTEN it. (PS: Facial hair repulses me, too, and we're not the only ones.) Soulmates want to please their partner, not deliberately defy them. Soulmates share their lives and interests and workloads (so that no-one is getting contextually to work only part-time whilst the other flogs their guts out). Soulmates WANT to celebrate the memory of the day they found one another. Soulmates can't do enough for each other. And soulmates naturally extend that loving and caring attitude to the extension of their relationship on-legs, namely, the kidlets. Sometimes soulmates act like unkind and self-centred prats. But this compared to the rest of the time is *fleeting*. You don't know what you're doing in this marriage? Madam, if marriage is taken to mean what it's supposed to mean - a legal formalisation of an information and emotional ying and yang enmeshing - then... I don't know WHAT you'd call this but you certainly couldn't call it 'a marriage'! From his point of view, it's just base camp. He gets to be single AND by all appearances married. And that's because he has a 24/7 nanny, school, cook, cleaner, housekeeper, bottle-washer. How ironic that the very lifestyle you so love is the very lifestyle of yours that enables him to behave like a UNT! It SHOULDN'T be something that enables him to behave like one. But it is. Because he is. Berbom. "Just to end up in this place again only a lot older? " Why? Were you planning on dating ANOTHER unt and AGAIN applying superglue prematurely? You may have food poisoning but that doesn't mean every single other restaurant in the world practises bad hygiene. Just this one restaurant. But I wouldn't expect you to be thinking positively about eating in another restaurant. One, you're not at that point yet, not remotely, and, two, you're still busy throwing up! I don't know ANYONE who fancies a three course meal whilst they've still got their head down the toilet, do you? Either your so-called husband is a walking bucket of resentment (whether that's down to your relationship or whatever preceded it) - and buckets can be emptied - or he's a walking bucket of Salmonella - which, emptied or not, still leaves bacteria enough to re-multiply. Since you say the marriage was NEVER very good, it's time for you to wake up and smell the coffee... Bad marriages (and even love-less despite zero bickering equals bad) is worse for children than anything because this is their primary example WHICH they daily sponge up and use as their own template come the time. So what you've TAUGHT your 6 year old whose blueprint is now already formed, is that this is how the man treats the woman and the woman treats the man, and what you're TEACHING your 2 year old is the same. That template is going to have to be overlayed. And how better to do that than free yourself in order to be available once you bump paths with your automatic upgrade. If you stay single just long enough to skip the Rebound Relationship phase of grieving yet not so long that you get stuck in your single ways, your mind will join all the dots as will leave you knowing exactly what you did wrong, what he did wrong, what couldn't be right for being wrong due to incompatibilities, what you definitely don't want AND do want in a relationship, etc., etc., which will leave your whole vibe screaming, 'PRINCES FOR THIS PRINCESS ONLY, PLEASE/THANK-YOU!', which is what you'll attract. Happiness awaits. Well, that process will commence once you've ceased puking, anyway. Go see a family law solicitor for a friendly chat about what your life will end up like if you divorce. Prepare to be nicely surprised! "It" will have to provide you with spousal and child maintenance - as closely as possible to the life to which you've all this time become accustomed (hurrah!). You don't have a job, not even a part-time one. EXCELLENT - DON'T GET ONE, EITHER! "It" is going to learn a giant life lesson, VIA his wallet first and foremost, called, 'Don't ever pretend you want a relationship if all you want is a full-time mother so that you can behave, bar your career, like a single teenager, just because YOU think marriage is nothing but a practical convenience or Fate will spank you very hard on the behind...and for years'. And if that sounds unfair? Just remember how widespreadly you have always been forcefed the message that men are the bosses. Yeah? Well, the buck, accordingly, stops with THEM. They can't have it both ways, despite too many of them seem to think they can. However, you don't NEED loads of diamond geezers, you just need one. And since most women are saddled with the prats, there are still plenty to go round. When you start 'looking', look for the rejector, not the rejectee. PS: So if he's not getting his needs met by you, who IS he getting them met by, hmm?

Dear Soulmate, thank you for your thoughtful response to me. I certainly appreciated the humor in it too... it made me chuckle, which is a big change for my evening. You bring up some very interesting points and I need to think on them and figure out my way. I very much appreciate your emotional support and the time you took to reply to me. Much gratitude for this, dear friend!

("Yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but"... I ain't finished yet. LOL) Haven't you got lovely manners! How on earth did you end up with an unt with none? Oh, wait... really low and down on your emotional luck at the time when Beta (or should I say, Delta) saw his chance to get an Alpha and swooped, were we? Yep, all too common. You wait and see what "It" eventually ends up with as your so-called replacement. It'll be a female "It" ("Tit"). They'll be so well suited and will live UN-happily (or at the least, annoyingly and insipidly) ever after. You'll wish you could send her a note that reads, 'How are ya liking my old life? Great! ..., doesn't it.' But you won't because you won't want him single and sniffing around you again, aside from having to discuss kid matters. You meanwhile, will sometimes feel like crying, despite concurrently too happy to produce tears, about the fact that you and your genuine soulmate, your You With A Willy, "could" have met YEARS earlier, "...what a waste of precious time!... you could have known me when my bum was still pert / well, you could have known me when my muscles were bigger and I didn't have a bit of a pot belly / damnit / damnit....never mind, we found each other in the end and that's the main thing :-) / :-) / [snog/snog]". A beautiful romantic one-ness comprised of two, is the BEDROCK to a happy life. Even if you happened to have a sh*t job or flakey friends, say - you don't GIVE a damn because you've got the most important, dominant part in place, meaning, you no longer even have the time or heart-space for really close platonic friends, bar other couples in your same happy boat, and you whistle while you work anyway, just because you know you're going home to your most favourite person and bestest friend in the world EVER IMAGINABLE. News for you and the doubting Thomases out there: if you do get with the best out of your soulmate pool, and you will if you allow the 2-5 year grieving process to proceed unimpeded and then go into dating vowing not to settle - that Honeymoon Period you thought lasted only one or two years before "brother-sister" kicked in? IT DOESN'T END. All the normal following phases activate, sure... and you still have the odd, unavoidable barnie, yes, because you're still both only human. But those happen ALONGSIDE this 'weirdly' un-ending Honeymoon part. SOULMATES (it does what it says on the tin). That little known reality (the one the commitmentphobes, not least those who become so-called dating gurus, secretly find too intimidating to admit exists or try to label 'unhealthy' (what b*llock!)) is an eye-opener to happy-headf*** proportions, I tell ya! You trust each other and get each other so damn well that there is nothing ever to fear at their hands, meaning the only remaining mutual fears you occasionally allow in are whether one of you will get some horrid terminal illness or get run over by a big fat truck. You know they would *never* cheat, *never* deliberately hurt, scare or invalidate you, *never* abandon you in any hour of need...because you are their worthwhile meaning to life, no bull. Do not fear the future, is what I'm saying, because it's an exercise in ridiculousness and futility. Those who end up worse or no better off after divorce, the poor kids alongside them, are those that fear relationship success and daren't release their grip on their old sh*t lives, be that purely mentally or via choosing to replicate it. The only thing worth fearing is what you're in NOW and could ("oh, ye gods!") remain in for the rest of your naturals. Kidlets need to see mum, not content, not just happy TODAY, but genuinely, underneath anything else, click-your-heels-together HAPPY as a *life state*...because then kidlets will sponge up and exhibit then make self-manifest to suit (monkey see, monkey do), meaning that is the kind of marriage they'll hold out for and work towards, too...because they'll know first-hand it really, truly, actually, strike me down with a bolt of lightning if I lie, EXISTS. The punishing degree course you've been living, the one you're coming to the end of, including the final exam (divorce process) is worth the graduation prize five times over, in other words. So all of this has certainly NOT been a waste! After all, you can't recognise and enter heaven if you've never been to hell, can you. So - waste, my arse! If you want to know anything else - e.g. about how to come out of the divorce process laughing and how to get your kids through this quickest with the minimum of upset and fuss, etc., you know where I am. :-)

He is gay and has a lover.

(LOL, yoooou little b*gger! I was trying to leave it at smattered hints so that she could let it dawn on her in her own sweet time...and then in walks you, whipping back the curtain and revealing 'the wiz' in all his puny g[l]ory. Tsk...Cuh...But I'll forgive you *and* High Five you, "!!!", because that's an impressive, almost genius, level of insight you've got there, and we need more advisers like that around this here ranch. :-)) Yeah, sorry, JW, but, what with the eating and leaving, treating you as base camp, and the strange lack of sexual appetite, "quick in-and-out-ing", nose constantly in his cell and computer, HAPPIER when going off to work, *and* the beard despite you hate it and are supposedly his sole route to sexual gratification, and all that imperative (cough!) basketball, etc., etc., it does seem he has a 'mistress' - from work - and likely not of the female variety. But that's GOOD news because...well... Family Law court judges they MAY be but they're still human, *and* humans who so incredibly detest avoidable unfairness, including serious duping, that they [wait for it] slog their guts out obsessively to attain a position that lets them be the one to PUNISH all the buggers of this world, ta-daaaa! And they do. They may have jurisprudent guidelines but you'd be surprised how many little loopholes and side alleys there are when it comes to spousal settlement/maintenance amounts AND DURATIONS. I and "!!!" saw it, so you can bet your arse an highly experienced vocational seer will! You did too little wrong. All *you* did (for whatever reasons you must address now) was try to hide from the 'threat' of ever having to 'riskily' become embroiled in a full-blown, scary, 'everything to lose' soulmate-soulmate relationship by opting for a watered-down version, and this, you couldn't possibly have self-registered at the time because it's not the sort of thing that occurs to one on its own; it takes going through the oppositional motions. He, on the other hand, KNEW he was just looking for a cover story, and didn't pre-tell you in order to let you make up your own mind. So he denied you your position of responsibility. Not your responsibility? Not your crime. Not your punishment (aside from THIS BIT - the disruption). It's all good. Just doesn't feel like it the precise time. :-)