Childfree Abby - What are you bringing to the table?11 July 2006Message ID: 12b7eqqfldk0h1f@news.supernews.com
DEAR ELLIE: I've been committed to my job, and haven't been close to my wife of 10 years. Early on, I discovered she'd lied to me. We separated and nearly divorced four years ago. We both started seeing other people, but agreed to try again for the sake of our son, age 6. Then I started post-graduate studies, with no social life for two years. I've learned that my wife has had an online relationship for emotional support for four years and recently had an intimate visit with him. She still wishes to be his friend. I can't bear the thought of her keeping in touch with this guy. I want to separate but fear it'll mean I won't see my son daily. Should I stay and tolerate her relationship for my child's sake? -- TORN DEAR TORN: Your son is already affected, both by your greater commitment to work as well as emotional distance from you. He must not be designated the glue to keep you and your wife together. It's too much pressure on a child. In such cases, children often become insecure and manipulative, as they keep testing the situation. But that doesn't mean you must separate. Rather, for everyone's sake, you and your wife need counseling. You both need to learn why she found it necessary to lie to you, and why you have always been more attached to work than to your marriage. Counseling may or may not keep you together, but it can help you understand what went wrong, and make negotiations over access to your child and support issues easier, if you go that route.
Dear Torn, If I hear you correctly, you have been more committed to your job and career than to your wife and your marriage. Now, your wife has found emotional comfort elsewhere and you see yourself automatically the injured party. No, I am not excusing her actions because meeting someone on the sly was wrong. However, it does bring to mind something I read years ago, and I have found it to be true more times than not: People have affairs because of some perceived lack in their relationship. When women have an affair, while sex does play a role, it is not the main reason. They do it because the other man involved will actually talk to her. Communication and closeness - the two very things lacking in your marriage. Your wife wants to remain in touch with this other man, likely for the emotional support that you admit that you do not supply - and as far as I can see, have no intention of ever supplying. So, I am going to ask you: what, exactly, are you bringing to the table here? A loveless marriage and more emotional starvation? What are you offering your wife so that she won't have to seek emotional support outside this marriage? To be brutally honest, I think that the two of you should have ended this marriage four years ago. Then she could have gone onto a relationship that would have been more satisfying to her, and you could have gone back to focusing on your career, since that is where you obvioussly want to be. From reading your letter, I don't think you want this marriage anyway. The main reason that you want to stay in it is not because you love and cherish your wife. Rather your main reason for this relationship is that it would be inconvenient for you not to be able to see your son on a daily basis. Quelle horreur! You would actually have to put some effort into maintaining a relationship with your son. There is nothing left in this marriage - your wife is emotionally if not physically involved elsewhere, you have no inclination of actually putting any effort into actually "saving" it. It is time both of you displayed some honesty: this relationship is in a persistent vegetative state. It is time to pull the plug on this Terri Schiavo of a marriage and bury the corpse.
Childfree Abby
|