In Love with a Happily Married Man for Forty long years

What did you want us to say? Oh yeah, what you want to hear. And since that isn't going to happen, you just get all upset and whine that we are being mean.

you can have it........

i just won't eat today......

Chai: I think you're DOOMED to a dry, crusty, breadless life . . . but I can see that you have gained empathy and compassion for others through your breadless suffering . . . your only consolation is that Shewolf is happy with her bread.

as it should be.


suffer on chai!
fight the good fight precious..

Doomed...you really need to stop telling yourself you're in love with this man. There's one question you need to ask yourself in life, and that is this: "Has anything I've done made me happy?" Ask yourself that question regarding the man you love but can never have. If the answer is no, you really are lost, if the answer is yes, well then you may have even bigger problems.

I am SO hungry - that crust of bread had been meant to see me through the end of the week.



but....as long as you enjoyed it, that's all that matters.......





whoooooooo.....I'm feeling a little dizzy.............must.........sit..........down.........on floor..........


<lying down so some blood get to my head>

you know........(wheeze)........I think Doomed is actually.........(cough)...........gus.........

It may surprise you, but I took your points, I even agree. It is the sarcastic and mean-spirited tone of the answers I find unbelieveable and, frankly, unacceptable for public discourse. And I replied with sarcasm and I feel ashamed I did.

Just food for thought: There is a recent post about a man in a very similar situation who is not in love with his wife and never was (20 year marriage). He got nothing but sympathy. That's fine by me, but, it just makes me wonder ...

wonder what?

diffrent people, diffrent situations, diffrent answers.

Different people, pretty similar situation, different answers. Why?

Everybody feels bad for my husband and I get this. I was sure I was falling in love when we got married, but the spark just blew out.

But, nobody felt sorry for this guys' wife and he says he never loved her and then he went ahead and had a second child with her.

So you're telling me you're jealous of him because he got the sympathy on this forum. Doesn't that prove that you did want sympathy, you did expect sympathy, and that you may have even posted on here for sympathy?

Doomed...I hope you've divorced him by now. I know that if my wife used me as an object to get attention and sympathy, that I would be pretty hurt. Poor guy...

The situations are NOT similar.

The poster you are talking about acknowledged that he loved his wife--he just didn't feel romantic passion for her. Unlike you, he was not in love with someone other than his spouse. He was looking for advice on how to ignite passion in his marriage.

The poster you're talking about received three responses.

The first response suggested that he try to spark some romance in the marriage--but if it's not possible--perhaps he should think about separating so that he and his wife can "both find someone to be crazy happy with."

The second response: "You just need a shiny new red car. vrooom vrooom."

So . . . where's the OUTPOURING of SYMPATHY that you claim this man received? And, contrary to your view that no one expressed concern for this man's wife--the first responder definitely believed she was entitled to happiness too.

OH . . . I see the OUTPOURING of SYMPATHY . . . The third response was YOURS. I'm sure the poster appreciated your outpouring of sympathy, but your situation and his situation aren't the same.

You weren't seeking advice on how to ignite passion in YOUR marriage. If that was your concern, then you already know how to put some spark back in your marriage based on your advice in the other thread. On the contrary, you're telling us that you're DOOMED because you've been in love with a man--not your husband--for forty LONG years.

Entirely different situations.

Doomed
I was going to ask you for the link to that thread because I found it very hard to believe that people here would have responded differently to someone else with the same situation, but Debra kindly explained what was happening in that other thread and she's right in saying that your situations are completely different.
Maybe you were looking for folks to justify your love for another man other than your husband, but we can't do that knowing that he is the one who suffers the most in all this.
If the spark is gone in your marriage, then I suggest you do the most humane thing by setting him free. Give him the ability to go out and find someone who is in love with him and only him.

You're obviously not thinking about his feelings at all here and I think it's about time you did.

The only reason I posted was I wondered if there were other people in my situation.

I have tried and am trying all the suggestions (and more) I wrote to the guy trying to fall in love with his wife. In my efforts to save my marriage I have done a lot of writing and research about the nature of love to try to find help. My husband supports me all the way. I mean, he loves me. He wants us to try everything we can. If I leave now he's saying I wouldn't have tried. And - I don't know it's NOT going to work.

That I still have strong feelings for my old childhood sweetheart has been something that became clearer to me as I got older. This is not something I felt was written in stone when I was thirteen, or 20 or even when I married at 34. I just can't help being amazed by the persistence of it.

My husband does not want a divorce - he's very emphatic about this. I keep no secrets from him and we are trying to work things out. He claims to be 100% happy in our marriage. I really do care about him. If he's happy, then at least one of us is.

Both me and the out-of-love guy face the same problem. Can we ignite the spark in our marriages? He also admitted to being in love before he married so we both know what we are missing.

LOL - If I were simply looking for sympathy, would I be here ??

I'm sorry, Doomed. I'm glad to hear that you've been honest with your husband about this and that's he's so very supporting.

I truly hope you find your way.

Doomed:

You have convinced yourself that "this guy" is your one true love based on the giddy "in love" feelings you felt for him when you were 13 years old. He's NOT your one true love. You never had a relationship with him that matured and ran the normal relationship course. You cling to your memories and those overwhelming feelings of being young and in love. You cling to overwhelming feelings of loss.

You seem to be addicted to the "manic" sensation of overwhelming feelings--the incredible feeling of being in love; the incredible feeling of loss. You've made manic feelings the entire essense of you. When your feelings were brought to normal levels . . . you didn't feel alive. Without your manic emotions to cling to; you didn't feel anything.

Relationships mature. Those manic "in love" (trembling, lustful, heart-jumping) feelings fade over time and are replaced with comfortable, enduring love. Those "I can't wait until he gets home so I can hold him and kiss him" feelings are replaced with those "I can't wait until he gets home so we can go to dinner and stop off at Wal-Mart on the way home because we need garbage bags, light bulbs, and toilet paper."

You thought you were in love with your husband when you married him; but the spark waned. Well . . . that's normal. The romantic spark wanes in every relationship. It's replaced with mature love; enduring love; love that embraces growing old together comfortably. But, you aren't content with mature love. You cling to those old manic feelings you felt when you were thirteen years old and associate with some man that you envision as the "love of your life" whom you LOST.

You're rejecting your real-life husband's mature love because he doesn't invoke those euphoric feelings anymore. You submerge yourself in mournful mania about what could have been but was lost--because you're apparently addicted to those feelings and don't feel complete without them. And, you think that there is high value in suffering because it makes you a far better person than average people who have "happy outcomes." This signals an inflated self-esteem or thoughts of grandiosity through grand suffering. This also signals that you may be suffering from a form of manic depression. Please see a counselor.

thanks debra for putting this in perspective.

to doomed - I imagine you were insulted by things said at first.

what I, (at least) was trying to convey (badly evidently) was what debra stating.

There's a word.....limerance I think, for that first in love, infatuated feeling.

It's like comparing living on a white sugar diet to a balanced one.

Excellent post, Debra!

I'm curious about Debra's qualifications to make mental health assessments.

EhBeth:

Sorry you didn't take the time to read all of Doomed's posts--nor take the time to recognize a lot of the signals she is emanating. I don't need to have a doctorate in psychology to be alerted to the fact that it's NOT HEALTHY for an individual to cling to manic feelings of hopeless (doomed to)unhappiness for FORTY LONG YEARS.

It doesn't take a behavioral scientist to read Doomed's own words to discover that Doomed has gained most of her self-esteem through her suffering. She won't let go of her overwhelming unhappiness because she has convinced herself that retaining it makes her a far better person--it makes her the empathetic, compassionate person that she is proud to be. She doesn't think she would be the person she is today if she hadn't spent the last forty years suffering over that one life-changing event--losing the love of her life when she was only thirteen years old.

When Doomed tried to let go of her manic unhappiness . . . she claimed that she didn't feel anything and that was maddening to her. Normal levels of emotion just don't satisfy Doomed--she enjoys being "DOOMED" way to much to let go of her overwhelming feelings of forlorn love and loss. Look up the symptoms of manic depression. Doomed's need to feel overwhelming emotions appears to have become the total essense of who she is: Doomed. Is that healthy?

Don't you think Doomed would benefit from seeing a counselor?

I won't apologize for suggesting that Doomed see a counselor. Maybe she's finally tired after forty LONG years of being DOOMED and maybe she could use some help to get her manic emotions under control.