Elsie, hope your are making progress on your own journey. One of the things I have realized is that I cannot control my wife and to truly love someone is to accept who they are and love them by embracing their try soul. But first, you have to recognize and embrace your now true soul. Your husband may be asleep, and the only way to get through to him will be to be brutally honest with him. However, not in a judgmental, or blaming type of way. You can share your feelings without having to be negative. Sharing and being honest is a positive thing! If he still does not respond, then you can either choose to accept that and stop worrying about it, change yourself or remove yourself from the situation.

A little update on my progress…so my wife and I spent two weeks apart and used that time to focus on ourselves. We were planning to go 3 weeks before seeing each other again, but she called me on Thursday and asked if she could come home for the weekend to see me and our son. I agreed and we spent a lot of time talking and being honest with each other. She is clearly taking this seriously and working to understand why she did what she did. It was incredible to have open and honest conversations with each other. There are so many things that we both want and we never even talked about it before. For example we are both very physically attracted to each other, but for some reason the sex got routine. However, we had never really opened up about what we want. Well we really opened up and talked about it and it was awesome. Turns out we want the same things! Well, we can certainly work on that! Look, I know there is a lot more work to be done and I have a lot of pain that I need to be able to let go of before I can fully forgive her for her affair. But it helps to focus on our relationship and understand how she got to the place she was at this year.

She told me that she loves me very much and wants to work on our marriage. While that felt great to hear, I realized that it will take a lot of work and both sides will have to be 100% committed for it to work. The good news is that I want that too. So we are going to keep working on it one day at a time. However, the fact that I realized that I need to be true to my self is the only way that we got to this point. I am truly coming from a position of Love and not “romantic” love but the Love that is perfectly placed inside of us from God. That Love will never disappoint us, because we can never lose it. That is the type of Love that relationships need to flourish in the long term, but you have to make it a daily practice. Both parties have to be “all-in” for this to occur. So I encourage you to open up to your husband and be honest with him. If he loves you he will start to come around. But you will not know unless you give him that chance to hear you and then give him the opportunity to open up. He will not want to at first because it will make him vulnerable. I get it…that was me too! But if you can share in a way that makes him understand that it is okay to be vulnerable and do it little by little, without getting defensive or blaming, it just might help! Good Luck.

Hi guys, I just found this site and feel the need to chime in. I am that husband that you are discussing and my wife is a lot like you. However, unfortunately my wife ended up having an affair over the past year in order to fill her emotional void. I have always been a great guy…a hard worker, make good money and think of myself has attractive, fun and loving. All of my friends can not believe this happened. However, I have realized that I have been going through the motions by putting on the suit everyday and being the “provider” but I was not truly happy with my life and that caused me to be distant. I was feeling under-appreciated and felt like I was not being made a priority. After having the atomic bomb dropped on me two weeks ago when I found out about the affair I was devastated. I have loved my wife with all of my heart for our entire relationship. But I will admit I was not the best at showing affection. Our sex life had gotten routine, despite attempts to spice it up and we clearly fell into that rut you described. While I understand that it is not my fault that she had an affair, I am beginning to understand that there is a lot of cleaning up that needs to be done on my side of the street. I was definitely co-dependent on her. We are now separated and I am realizing how much I was depending on her to do things for me and make me happy. We have a 2 year old son and I have been taking care of him full time while we are separated. In the short time that we have been apart, it has been extremely eye-opening, and if there is any type of a silver lining from the horrible pain I have felt, it is that I now have an opportunity to think deeply about the man I want to be going forward. I have always suppressed my emotions and held a tough exterior because I thought that was the manly thing to do. I allowed myself to get distant from my wife because I was secretly unhappy with other factors in the relationship. Specifically, her not prioritizing me over her mother and sister. But I was not being honest with myself or with her, so I just got distant. I thought I was doing the right thing by just riding it out. I realize now that it is my responsibility to make myself happy, just like it is her responsibility to make herself happy. We can only be good for each other if we love our individual selves first. My point in sharing all of this is not to say go out and have an affair, but maybe think about spending time apart to see how you both can grow independently. That time apart may provide some clarity for you and for him.

I know that for me, this has been an extremely eye opening experience and whether or not we stay together, I will end up being a better man as a result. There is always hope and time away will make it clear if you should be together or not.