AnotherConfused
New member
Hello. It has been a while since I posted. Life has drifted along fairly uneventfully lately for my mono husband and my boyfriend of two years, C. More or less ok, although my marriage has dulled. We are working on that.
Lately I've been struggling with how to be content with the "secondary" type of relationship I have with C. There is, on the one hand, a limit imposed by my husband's discomfort with the entire situation. We get at most a weekend a month together, although from mid April until the beginning of August we are having to be content with occasional brief daytime visits. (C lives several hours away so this is when he happens to pass through town on travels.) C doesn't come to my house. Our sexual intimacy has restrictions.
But aside from that, the relationship between us is severely limited by distance, and by C's propensity to travel (something I love about him). There are periods of days to a couple of weeks when he is home, and we text throughout the day, sharing thoughts on everything from breakfast recipes to the larger events of each other's lives. I feel very close to him. Sometimes I feel off center, because this goes on in the background of my life here as wife, mother, employer. And I want to see him, be with him, and I can't. And then he'll go off on a trip and will either have no cell phone coverage (difficult but manageable for me) or he'll simply be too busy for much communication. It's hard to adjust to the ups and downs of our frequency in contact, especially when I'm having a week with more I want to talk about. (This past week there were several significant things that happened, good and bad, that I couldn't tell him about.)
But most unbearable is when we try to make do with these sporadic talk-later-I'm-busy texts, and then something comes up where feelings get hurt or misunderstandings occur, and we can't talk. He'll be off at some social event all evening and too tired for a phone call before bed, and I'm left feeling bewildered and unsettled. We nearly broke up over this in February, but he kind of woke up to the realization that relationships do come with a certain amount of commitment, and vowed never to leave me hanging if something between us is hurting me. Except last night, when I was full of confusion over a recent exchange, and he said, "Good night, have a good sleep, and enjoy a beautiful Sunday."
I don't know where to go with this. I've never had a "secondary" (hate that term) relationship before. I feel like if I put my whole heart into loving him, I get hurt when he is too busy for me, or pulls away from me. It's like this relationship has no room to grow, but my feelings for him get deeper over time, and I don't know what to do with that. I try not to have expectations or demands, but I end up feeling like a plaything, like he can just get me out when he wants to. He tells me everything, except when he doesn't talk to me at all. We are close, except when he has no time for me.
He's shopping for a house in my city, and in fact zeroed in on a favorite neighborhood 1/2 mile from me. His plan is to use it part time, and rent it out as a vacation rental. This will either make things better or worse. More moments of closeness, followed by disconcerting drops to zero communication in between.
How do people handle the off-again-on-again nature of a relationship that is never destined to follow the traditional path towards partnership (like living together, having real sex, and vowing commitment)? The heartache of this inconsistency isn't feeling worth it right now. I want him to mean less to me, since he can't be more for me.
Lately I've been struggling with how to be content with the "secondary" type of relationship I have with C. There is, on the one hand, a limit imposed by my husband's discomfort with the entire situation. We get at most a weekend a month together, although from mid April until the beginning of August we are having to be content with occasional brief daytime visits. (C lives several hours away so this is when he happens to pass through town on travels.) C doesn't come to my house. Our sexual intimacy has restrictions.
But aside from that, the relationship between us is severely limited by distance, and by C's propensity to travel (something I love about him). There are periods of days to a couple of weeks when he is home, and we text throughout the day, sharing thoughts on everything from breakfast recipes to the larger events of each other's lives. I feel very close to him. Sometimes I feel off center, because this goes on in the background of my life here as wife, mother, employer. And I want to see him, be with him, and I can't. And then he'll go off on a trip and will either have no cell phone coverage (difficult but manageable for me) or he'll simply be too busy for much communication. It's hard to adjust to the ups and downs of our frequency in contact, especially when I'm having a week with more I want to talk about. (This past week there were several significant things that happened, good and bad, that I couldn't tell him about.)
But most unbearable is when we try to make do with these sporadic talk-later-I'm-busy texts, and then something comes up where feelings get hurt or misunderstandings occur, and we can't talk. He'll be off at some social event all evening and too tired for a phone call before bed, and I'm left feeling bewildered and unsettled. We nearly broke up over this in February, but he kind of woke up to the realization that relationships do come with a certain amount of commitment, and vowed never to leave me hanging if something between us is hurting me. Except last night, when I was full of confusion over a recent exchange, and he said, "Good night, have a good sleep, and enjoy a beautiful Sunday."
I don't know where to go with this. I've never had a "secondary" (hate that term) relationship before. I feel like if I put my whole heart into loving him, I get hurt when he is too busy for me, or pulls away from me. It's like this relationship has no room to grow, but my feelings for him get deeper over time, and I don't know what to do with that. I try not to have expectations or demands, but I end up feeling like a plaything, like he can just get me out when he wants to. He tells me everything, except when he doesn't talk to me at all. We are close, except when he has no time for me.
He's shopping for a house in my city, and in fact zeroed in on a favorite neighborhood 1/2 mile from me. His plan is to use it part time, and rent it out as a vacation rental. This will either make things better or worse. More moments of closeness, followed by disconcerting drops to zero communication in between.
How do people handle the off-again-on-again nature of a relationship that is never destined to follow the traditional path towards partnership (like living together, having real sex, and vowing commitment)? The heartache of this inconsistency isn't feeling worth it right now. I want him to mean less to me, since he can't be more for me.