the aftermath

So I came out to my wife this summer. It was the single scariest thing I've ever done and the moment was surreal. She was great--not surprisingly, she wasn't shocked. The difficulty is that she has continued to insist that "I need to figure out what I want," meaning that I need to decide whether I want to stay married or not. For a while it was very intense with lots of talking that seemed to go nowhere. We got so far as to plan out options post-separation with respect to our young daughter.

We sort of got tired of rehashing, I guess, and we've sunken back into the status quo. To us that's lots of positive interaction around our daughter with both of us too busy with her and our work to really sort things out. What's become clear, oddly enough, is that I think she's less happy than I am with the status quo.

I'm beginning to think that what keeps us together is a combination of: (1) fear of being alone; (2) concern about the impact on our daughter; and (3) the challenge of rebuilding separate lives.

I vacillate from feeling boxed in to wanting to just roll back the clock and take it all back. But then I remember why I came out to her in the first place. I was concerned because she was taking my disinterest in intimacy to some failing of hers. I thought letting her know would be something of a relief, which it might of been initially, but now we seem to be in limbo.

The next step will be hard. And given how long it took me to come to grips with things, I feel like maybe I should give her some time to fully accept it and get to a place of wanting change. Or does this just promote denial? The fact that I've never been a big "talker" doesn't help--I'm now realizing that part of that was probably a defense mechanism to keep people from finding out too much.

This is exhausting.

 

Thanks for the encouragement! I have been struggling for a while and I think you're right that on some level I wanted a reason or opportunity to come out. Initially, it felt like such a weight had been lifted--similar to when I finally looked into the mirror, said the words and had chills run up my spine.

I guess I sort of figured that once my wife knew, we would quickly move toward resolution. I hadn't counted on all these other emotions playing into it, and I honestly didn't expect that my wife would have any interest in staying together with no promise of greater sexual intimacy.

Most recently, I think we're both realizing that we're each going to want more out of a relationship. There's a tremendous sadness at the thought of ending a 10-year marriage, especially when we do love each other and want to share the experiences with our daughter. We now both have to get to a place where we can look beyond what is and toward what can be.