How do you know when it's over?

[venusenvy23]

OK, kind of long story here. This story started almost nine years ago. I met my husband when I was 18. He was 40. We dated for a year, had a wonderful sex life and truly enjoyed spending time together. We moved in together, became engaged. He accepted a new job 300 miles away from where we lived. I planned on following him up there, a few months after he got settled. We were married on Sept. 8 of 2000 and on Sept. 11 he moved to the new location. 3 months prior to this, his father died of cancer. He had a hard time dealing with his father's death and sporadic impotence ensued. In Dec. of 2000, I joined him here and he was completely impotent. For two years, he refused to seek help for the impotency and in that time found out he was diabetic. When he finally did seek help, none of the usual drugs (cialis, viagra, etc.) worked. Our intimacy drastically suffered, and for a long time we felt more like room mates. We entered couples counseling and discovered we both bring our own problems to the relationship. We discontinued therapy and found a medicine that actually works. I don't know the name, but it is in shot form, through a company called Boston Medical Group. I thought things were getting better, but three weeks ago discovered he had been talking to months, to a friend of mine, and running errands for her. He swears there was nothing physically or emotionally intimate between the two of them, he just "felt good" helping someone out. Immediately after finding out he had been lying to me, I contacted our previous therapist.

[Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D.]

I am glad you are talking to your therapist because you need to find out what is going on. He may just be friendly to this woman or he may have a relationship that violates your marriage. Both your firend and your  husband have hidden the fact that he is helping her from you-- this doesn't look good and I doubt this is just a platonic relationship.

   Sometimes impotence plays havoc with a relationship. It ishard on men's psyches and unless they are very mature and make love with their mouths and fingers and not worry about an erection, it will affect their self esteem. It may be that he started to see this other woman to shore up his self esteem. If she wasinterested in him it would have gone a long way to shoring up a pretty shakey ego.

  You need to know where his feelings are . Does he still love you?  Do you still love him?  Has the increased intimacy in the bedroom translated to more intimacy in general in the relationship?  Are you on the same page about how you are feeling and what you want?

   Men can change emotionally when they become impotent-- and again, when medicine has solve the problem for them. He may still be reacting to the bad years and perhaps the long time of being "roommates" has made it hard to relate to you the way he
used to or would like to again.

  I think you need to spend time together. Take Romantic Weekends ( you can find some ideas in a book of mine The Great Sex Weekend) or you can rent some sexy videos or the Anne Hooper books that have some great photography and sexy ideas tastefully, but erotically displayed. Create momets for love making, conversation, being alone together. See if you can bring some of the romance back.

    But all of this has to follow finding out what is going on with this other woman, if anything, and conversations between the two of you about reestablishing trust and intimacy.  Don't give up on him right now-- this does sound like something that might be able to be fixed.

[venusenvy23]

Sorry I said this was a long post. I have decided to forgive him. I don't know how to go about doing this. I will not talk to the "friend" again. Due to our own difficulty having sex, I do not believe he was physically intimate with this woman. What I can't get past, the errands he said he was running for her, were things I would have done myself. I wouldn't have cared if they had talked on the phone, but I never knew one single time that they talked. If there was nothing going on, why the lies on both of their parts? Dr. Phil (I know, Sorry) says you know it's over when you can walk away and have no feelings whatsoever. Well, aside from the anger, shock, and feelings of betrayal, I still have feelings for him and love him with everything I have. After all these years and struggles, infidelity is the last thing I thought we would be facing. 5 years of impotence on his part, and I never once cheated. But back to my basic question. How do you know when it's over?

[oceans3]

i sooooo HATE to say this and i always am an optimist/positive/give the benefit of the doubt...however, what stood out the most for me was his "impotence."
*sometimes* that is an excuse when a guy/woman is with someone else. like... a lack of interest in sex because they are getting it else where. yuck.

you know its over when someone says its over. either verbally or emotionally. if you have to question it, chances are it is over. i know it hurts, but you will find someone better suited for YOU. he is a stepping stone for your next relationship. learn from it.

[venusenvy23]

I understand. I read a lot of these forums and see you always  give good advice. The impotence is strictly a physical factor. That's why the drugs like Viagra never worked. They weren't helping the root of the problem. I can't remember the exact way the doctor described it, but basically the veins(it's not veins, I can't remember the technical term)in his penis are too constricted to recieve blood flow. This is directly related to his diabetes. And sometimes... the shots don't even work. The liquid fills up the veins(?)and enables him to have an erection. I know that the impotence wasn't due to him being fulfilled, so to speak, by another woman. In almost six years, you would think at least once, he could have an erection on his own with me, if that was the case. We are seeing the therapist regularly now. We have appts. where we both attend and he goes on his own. The therapist, who knows us fairly well, as we had seen her for a year, doesn't think there was anything intimate between the two of them either. I know just because the therapist says something, doesn't make it true. She likened this whole situation to my marijuana addiction. I am not naive enough to think that love will fix everything. I just don't know what to do this at this junction.

[borninquisitive]

>How do you know when it's over?<

For me, I knew it was over when I woke one morning and upon putting my feet on the ground...discovered that I just didn't love my husband. I felt entirely "indiffernt" towards him.
Not that I hated him, I just didn't love him anymore.
For good reasons.

Having said this, prior to this, he had already taken a "chunk" out of my heart earlier. That morning (said above) was the final "farewell." I left him 3 months later, for good and have been happy since.

[venusenvy23]

Thank you for your response. I know that my original question was silly. No one can tell another person when the relationship is over. Even though we are seeing the therapist, I suppose I just needed to talk to someone. I have no one else, besides the the therapist, to talk to about this. I feel as if I can't talk to my family because they will be judgmental and jump to the same conclusions I would if a friend were to tell me the exact same story. I agree that I cannot move forward until I find out exactly what transpired between the two of them. But, as you can probably tell, my husband is very good at avoiding. He tends to keep everything inside and ignore it, while I am ready to confront things right now (which is not always good. I float between confusion and extreme anger). I thought things were better as we were becoming more and more sexually reaquainted, but now I feel as if it meant nothing, since he was lying and hiding things from me. I am trying not to dwell on the past. It can't be undone. On the same token, I cannot concentrate on the future either. Our six-year wedding anniversary is coming up this weekend. I cannot be excited about it. All I keep thinking is.... Would he still have been talking to her if I hadn't caught them? Would he have called her the day of? And it makes it even harder that I want to forgive him, but don't know exactly what I would be forgiving him for. He is sticking by his story that he was only talking to/ and running errands for her because it made him feel good. Our conversations run in circles. I feel I may never get to the bottom of what really happened.

[burris]

It sounds as if you have to make another critical decision besides is it over.

Do you believe what he is telling you is ture, ie that nothing emotional or physical is going on?

Do you believe your friend?

It sounds like you don't want to or can't accept what you are being told for some reason.  I am not saying it is valid or invalid, but if you don't really trust his answer and are going around in circles it is either because he is hiding something or you won't accept truth.  You must decide which and follow from there.

[Taurus12]

I too wonder when over is really over.  My husband and I dated for 7 months, got married and 8 months into the marriage he moved out into his own place. Reason for leaving doesn't really like all the responsibility that comes with marriage, especially now since I'm not working due to a medical condition.
Initially I was devasted and though I still care for him, I don't believe I love him enough to make the marriage work. The verbal abuse tore me down which is what I think makes me "not" want to work things out. My biggest concern is rather I am making the right decision to move forward with the divorce, now that he wants to work things out from afar (he doesn't want to move back in just date.)

[Allie cat]

I was in love with my husband. We got married quickly and became pregnant quickly. I feel we got married because I was pregnant. I was dating this one guy, he was my first love. We got engaged but  we left each other because he had problems with going in and out of jail and using drugs. I dated some guys after my first love and then I met my husnband and I used to be able to see myself with him forever until maybe the past couple of months. We have been arguiing so much, we have a 16 month old together and he is the love om lo=ife but I don't feel that I am in love with my husband anymore. I have been constently been thinking and dreaming about my first love and I think I wast to be back with. I just started recently talking to his mother. And I feel I either need closure with my first love or something. HELP!!!!!

[holiday368]

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[holiday368]

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