Hello. It's early days yet. You guys will find your "new normal".
I guess that's a large part of it. I don't want a new normal. I want my wife back.
A few months back our relationship was as good as it's ever been. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have all of the excitement in our relationship we once had. We have a kid that has definately gotten in the way of our relationship and there's no novelty. But I swear, I fall in love with her over again several times throughout my day. I find most women boring and vapid. But my wife excites me and seems to be more attractive to me than the day I first met her.
So a few months ago she asked to sleep with a mutual friend. After a lot of talking about it I told her it was okay. Our relationship was fantastic and I figured this would be something fun she could do. I'm no dummy and I recognize that I'm not all things to all people. I get attracted to other women too. She and I were sleeping together daily, sometimes more often than that. So I figured this to be a friends with benefits thing. I told her I had a couple of concerns:
That she'd end up seeing him as a boyfriend.
That it'd be awkward (he's also my friend).
That it'd cut into how much sex we're having.
That there'd be secret winks and stuff and inside jokes when they're together I'm out of.
That the sex'd be a regular thing instead of an occasional thing.
So she's very attracted to this guy for a lot of reasons, but also that they share a common hobby (this comes up later). It's one I'm incapable of doing. Plus, I'm also okay with her having a life outside of me. I'm not trying to smother her.
So she asks to go on a road trip with a few friends including this guy. (We'll call him Steve). I've not been a possessive man to date and I'm cool with her hanging out with other guys. So all the friends skip out except Steve. So they leave for the weekend. I cannot go because I have to watch our daughter. Over the weekend she ends up going down on him a few times. I responded poorly when she told me after she got back. I felt ditched because I was watching our child and his dog, and she didn't talk to me much over the trip. But I was mostly in the wrong and got over this.
Well, over that month our relationship takes a dive. She proceeds to tell me that she loves me but isn't "in love" with me. I've gotten boring. I'm angry. I'm depressed. I'm not passionate about anything. Mind you, I was in the military (happily) previously and she gave me the ultimatum, "her or the military" I gave up the military and a few other jobs I found interesting for her.
So she's sleeping with this guy (who IS in the military), getting excited about their shared hobby (she sleeps with him EVERY time they do this) and telling me she isn't excited by me. Now, a lot of the problems she outlines I had, I've since gone a long way to correct (and for good reason; she was RIGHT). Now our relationship is MUCH corrected except for the depression I have over her relationship with this guy.
Again, he is a mutual friend and now lives with us. I signed off on this because I thought her excitement would die down having him around all the time. Instead it got worse. They sleep together a few times a week. They generally take advantage of just about any time I'm not around to at least make out together.
Now let me be clear: when things are good in our relationship, this is a huge turn on. I'm not threatened by her wanting to sleep with other people. Hell, I want to sleep with other people. She says that she loves him and he excites her. That's the threat.
I can tell her to stop at any time and she will. But I know she likes it, and it isn't going to change how she feels, so I try to let this go as far as I can without becoming overly miserable. He's effectively her boyfriend at this point. I decided that I think I can handle this. I have a hard time articulating my feelings, but when I could I figured it came down to this:
It's important to me that I'm her best lay.
It's important to me that she loves me MORE.
She's mentioned the V relationship and that's unacceptable to me. A checkmark shape, sure, but not a V. She tells me that her brain doesn't work in a way to rank her love. This is frustrating. I cannot understand this thought process. I can understand loving multiple people. I can understand loving them differently. But I can't understand how you can have multiple people at the top rung of the love ladder. I'll admit I've never REALLY loved anyone other than my wife and child, but I'll be the first to admit (as sick as it may seem to people) that I love my wife more than my child.
As to the sex part, she and Steve have really agressive, acrobatic, wild sex. She and I have sex that's slower, with more grinding. She says that I'm a better lay and the only one that can get her off, but she has never been someone to let me have more wild, acrobatic sex because I'm a little more endowed and it hurts her. She's much more corrective of me during sex than him. So this all together makes it really hard to believe that I'm a better lay.
A large part of this is that I don't feel I get a fair shake. She's into this military guy after getting me to leave the military. This guy has said, were the roles reversed, no way would he let her sleep with someone else. She's even talking about joining his branch of the military (which only makes sense as a big deal to those in my branch). I don't think it's fair because I'm the boring guy because I have a baby with her. We have the mundane crap we have to take care of together. When I'm dealing with our child she is effectively single, if only for a few hours.
I feel cheated. I signed on for a friends with bennies relationship and now have a something that is a threat to my own relationship with my wife. Knowing that she loves him is okay, but knowing that I'm not clearly her #1 hurts me. I mean, I probably am right now, but she's quick to say that she doesn't think this way and readily would want a V. It hurts my feelings toward her. If I'm not clearly her #1, then it makes me feel that maybe our relationship isn't what I always thought it was and what I wanted in a relationship. In short, the fact that the realization 7 years and 1 child later that she doesn't feel about me the way I feel about is emotionally devastating.
I'm not throwing the towel in on my marriage. In part I believe that she loves me more right now, even if she doesn't articulate it. So part of me figures I should ride it out and it'll work out or I'll end in a V, in which I will leave. I still absolutely adore my wife. When I feel like I'm her #1, this is hot. When I don't, it is absolute torture.
Thanks guys for reading this much, it was a novel!
SaS