It works for the kids. They want their family intact. They don’t want to have to choose between you two. They don’t want to have to put up with your emotional or sexual entanglements while you’re dating. And frankly, they don’t care if you are blissfully happy or fulfilled, they need to you to be equal to the obligation you incurred when you had them.
I would say the same to a man asking this question.
As the victim of a mother who threw away a “good enough” marriage and put my brother and I through the disruption of our family, taking us two states away from a loving and involved father (who had no power in the courts to stop her), poisoning our minds against our father, being totally unavailable to parent us at the time of our greatest need due to having to work all the time and her own emotional maelstrom, inflicting her terrible choice of boyfriends on us, and then screwing up her life financially so badly that she had to return us to our father, I beg you not to leave your husband. As a daughter who had to listen her young, single, wild father’s escapades with dozens of women (in the bedroom right next to mine), I beg you not to break the marriage and make your kids have to watch either of you date.
Let’s be honest here. Most likely, your marriage is not beyond all hope. Most of them aren’t. If you are tempted to leave because you’re just “not happy,” not only is that selfish and horrible thing to do to your kids, but the research clearly shows you won’t be any happier if you divorce. Divorce is difficult, painful, and rarely solves anything. You will take the same attitudes and problems you have now with you, and they will sabotage any other relationship you have, if you let them. Just like they can only sabotage your marriage, if you let them.
What are the problems that seem unsolvable? Have you really done your best to make your marriage better? Exhausted all resources you can find? What is your husband’s main complaint, and have you honestly addressed it? I’m not saying this is all your fault… nothing in marriage is one-sided. But we women have a lot of power in our relationships. There aren’t too many guys out there who refuse sex… there are reasons the sexual spark in a marriage dies, and most of them are not medical, and are therefore fixable.
In the end though, if your marriage is peaceful but not passionate, if your kids feel secure and loved by both of you even though niether of you feels much loved by the other, then I think you should stick it out for your kids. The research also shows that most people who claim to be unhappily married, even extremely so, but stay married, say as little as five years later that they are glad they stayed and that the marriage got better. Something to think about.
Prayers… and good luck.
and my kids don’t do well with change.
