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@lovemilk619 I’m serious. You deserve better. Your spouse deserves better. Your future partner deserves better. Start with counseling for YOU. It took me 2.5 years of counseling to decide how and when to leave, and I don’t regret the time I spent working on myself one bit. You’re worth it. You are worth more than a miserable relationship.
Right now you’re focusing on your needs. Unless you can find a married woman in a similar situation, the options are slim for you.
Any relationship requires consideration of the other person’s needs. Looking for a single woman is unfair to the woman, shows no consideration for her needs or wants. ABF ANR requires a shared intimacy; that isn’t possible for you with her. It’s unhealthy and unfair.
As others have stated, you need to choose to be healthy or stay stuck where you are. Don’t ask or expect others, unless they’re in your exact situation, to be interested. You need to do some serious self evaluation of why you cannot divorce. Therapy would be a good place to learn to make healthy choices for yourself and have support doing so.
Wishing you good luck with all of that.
Based on your question and you might want to psychoanalyze yourself first. Stating you’re in a “loveless” marriage and seeking a physical and mental relationship pretty much sums up your issue, you didn’t marry for the emotion of love anyway because you don’t state emotion or love as one of the criteria you are seeking.
ANR means different things to different people. In that relationship, as with any partnership each partner has their individual likes or dislikes. Everyone commenting here has stated theirs and each is unique unto itself. You being also unique, must evaluate your future.
@pawsda23 – These are all really good points! Defining what one considers an “emotional” and “connected” relationship is really important, particularly if the current relationship wasn’t what it was formed under, or those conditions changed, as they often do with a narcissist. They profess undying love at the start and all the hopes and dreams, then immediately change their behavior and support when they feel secure.
It would be a really good idea to figure out what that means for yourself. This is where a therapist can really help!
Life is too short to be miserable and in a toxic situation. After All this crazy world stuff your happiness should be #1
I’m not sure this is the place for this discussion, but you have gotten a lot of good advice in response. I’m not even sure what I want to say. Do you really thing that you can have a truly deep connection with someone when you are having to disconnect with yourself in order to be in your own life? I know that disconnect to some extent. After a while, a person who has buried a part of themselves feels that it is normal…familiar. And you settle for only part of you being present in your own life. I guess you need to decide if you value the buried part more than the status quo. And I think to even find that part, one needs some time alone. Good luck to you. I hope this doesn’t sound judgy. I’m just speaking from my own life experience.
For what it’s worth, I’m definitely aligned to @jules post. I was married for 18 years, in the same relationship for 21. In the final years of marriage I wasn’t happy and worried I’d never experience passion again, I was an ABF guy at this point but didn’t know it. We both took a brave decision to split amicably but I had to break the line and start the dialogue, we did this over a long walk in the country, nobody to overhear us if we might argue and no alcohol involved in a bar. It was heartbreaking and incredibly tough but also liberating and euphoric to seperate. My kids, now young adults are so much happier and both my ex and I brought the kids through the split without much trauma…I think?! 😬
There is life after life, it takes a brave step but starts with honesty and a little tenacity.Good luck.
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