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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Damned (& poor) if he does, just damned to a sexless marriage if he doesn't.
With little children involved, I hate these questions.
LW, I agree with Dan.
i do hope she can see that to keep you inhouse as a co parent, will be a whole lot less work for her.
So she has a choice; deal with the emotional work of letting you go sexually or doing the two houses, shared parenting way.
I'll rephrase; So many irresponsible, bad fathers and husbands out there, etc.
How the hell do you figure SHE gets alimony???
How about he gets custody of the kids and SHE pays alimony/child-support???
http://www.divorcesource.com/ds/washingt…
Either way, damn this guy is in a pickle.
It wouldn't surprise me if their son was her and ?'s son. I can't imagine it would be great for the kids to be in a house with the high potential of becoming hostile and loveless. Disgust is not exactly something you come back from. Dude needs to DTMFA and hope he doesn't spend the next 17 years or so poor from alimony and child support.
Also, *reins
Assuming it's all true, skip over the open marriage stage and move directly to divorce.
"Dan, I'm getting older. Sex with my husband (we married young) was acceptable, but after having kids and talking to other women, I realized, there had to be more out there than letting my husband clumsily attempt to make love to me..."
Instead, tell her you forgive her, forego sex with her, and immediately start talking to a divorce attorney about what you can do in the next couple of years to cleanly extract yourself from this situation. This may entail getting fired from your job and living on unemployment for a while. If you can convince a doctor that her infidelity has left you too traumatized and depressed to work, you might even qualify for disability, which would put a quick end to any of her financial claims on you.
The LW says they are friends, that they co parent well together; yes, the financial arrangement needs to be made equitable. Lose his job, seems an unnecessarily stupid suggestion. They have children to rear.
Alimony most certainly does exist.
NoSpin @4: Good point. Perhaps Dan figured that she gave up her career and will continue to not work, or struggle to get back into work, while he continues to work long hours. Or it was a thoughtless, everyday-sexist comment.
Sarah @24: He also mentions "the mother of our two kids."
It sounds to me like CLAP's wife was never attracted to him; perhaps she just used him as a sperm donor. Can't disagree with anyone's advice here, and SeanDR will be pleased to see a letter where the answer was that SHE was being an asshole. Either co-parent and have your own sex lives while living together, or co-parent and have your own sex lives while living apart.
If it's just "no woman would do such a thing," you get the sexist award for the day.
This situation sounds like another example of where we see the extreme of good ideas gone too far. No fault divorce was a great idea because it kept 2 people who had grown apart from wasting money and emotional energy accusing each other of terrible crimes when they ought to be able to walk away. We can wish that Mrs. CLAP had filed for divorce instead of going to Craig's List in the first place, but she didn't, presumably because she felt secure that the divorce, when it came, would be no worse later than it would have been sooner.
As others have noted, laws can vary a huge amount from state to state, so pat suggestions of ‘just do this’ aren’t much help.
The one thing I think we can all agree on is that the wife has forfeited all claims for consideration here. Doesn’t mean you need to put bleach in her shampoo bottle, does mean you don’t need to take ‘but how with this make her feel?’ into your various considerations.
‘We’re still great friends.” No, no you’re not, although the fact that she can still make you think so is some creepy Gone Girl shit.
Talk to a lawyer who’ll be brutally straight with you. Get your options figured. Your priorities now are, in order
Your kids
Your own financial and mental well-being
Her. If you care to, at all.
If you assume that they got married for the right reasons, of course it'd look like there's subtext missing. I'm sure there's stuff that could've been figured out better well before these terrible problems occurred, but does it matter? They both need out of the relationship.
On the day to day, this is not a good idea. As far as she's the one raising the kids at home, he should still take her feelings into account. Just not towards the marriage.
This is clearly a case where everyone would probably be best served by hitting the reset button.
Following up on my comment @29, perhaps it's wrong of me, but I harbor some desire to see Mrs. CLAP punished by the courts. I've tried this with different configurations of cheater-man or lesbian relationship, and I keep coming up with some wish that the person who has cheated at that level could be found to be an unfit parent.
Here's a good recent article on oral sex, STD, and the need for protection:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/health…
Ms Fan - My guess as to Ms Sophie's comment was more that "no man would ever..." take your pick of the ways the letter suggests or states he's shown fortitude in the face of adversity, or perhaps it's a doubt of his really feeling sexually assaulted - meaning probably the same thing as yours.
We have three references - "my two kids", "our first son" and "our young daughter". Assuming she's not pregnant again, what seems closest to making sense is that he's taking responsibility for her child from a prior relationship but is accurate about having only two biological children himself.
The specificity of the number nine feels significant, but there are too many ways how.
But i don't think having a companionate marriage forever to someone who makes your skin crawl is really a better option than divorcing. It's lonelier than being single, in a way, and only delays the kids getting used to a different arrangement and delays or reduces the possibility of each person finding a new partner and/or happiness & fulfillment.
That said ... LW doesn't need the wife's permission at this point to fuck other people. Legally though, probably best that they just get a damn divorce. From a parenting perspective, if he feels so disgusted sexually by his wife, their relationship is going to serve as a terrible model for their children. Spare them that and go find someone to love properly so they can see what that looks like.
Yeah they're definitely NOT great friends. I can just imagine the sort of back-handed, sniping comments they make to each other.
"me taking the reigns, her taking the reigns, me as a sub, her as a sub, porn, erotica, etc, etc" are his ideas of making their sex life better. What I don't see in that list is his learning to be a great pussy licker. I think she was never getting off and got really pissed about that. No, that in no way excuses fucking and sucking rando guys in cars, probably unprotected as one of you suggested. But I agree that the sex with this guy was never good.
And yeah saying "taking the reigns" not one but TWICE made my hair stand on end. Just yesterday my T shirt arrived in the mail which reads "Grammar Police. To Serve and Correct."
You're just casting about for reasons to blame him for her awful behavior. The problem with their sex life is clearly stated in the letter:
"Finding out that what did it for her was "literally anyone but me" hurt a lot.
She just isn't attracted to him. Not uncommon. From what I've seen, it's the number one reason middle-aged mothers cheat on their husbands.
Venn @36: I read "our first son" as "our first child, who is a boy." As there are no other references to prior marriages, kids that aren't his, etc, this is the closest interpretation that makes sense to me.
As far as whether a letter is fake, my questions are: Is this situation plausible? and Would anyone have a motive to make something like this up? CLAP's answers are Definitely, and I can't see one. Therefore I presume the letter is genuine.
As for "taking the reigns," it seems like an easy usage faux pas to miss as you're banging out a SL letter (spell-check won't catch it, and might even substitute for you). And, since most Americans are only semi-literate anyway I'm inclined to give LW a pass on this one. As George W. Bush once said, "...You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."
"Reading is the basics for all learning."
"Rarely is the questioned asked: ...is our children learning?"
"If you believe every child can learn, therefore we ought to know whether that's the case."
"Of all states that understands local control of schools, Iowa is such a state."
We have -- or possibly had -- a board regular who frequently claimed women cheating or committing lesser infractions was the same thing as rape, and called anyone who disagreed with him a "rape apologist" among other choice epithets. Therefore, I took CLAP at his word that he "felt sexually assaulted." Melodramatic, yes, but anyone in this situation gets a bit of leeway. Hopefully once the raw pain has passed he'll see that there's actually no comparison. As Smajor notes @38.
This lady says no cunnilingus = DTMFA. Sorry. (But no cunnilingus is justification for DTMFA rather than marry the MF, not cheat on him after you've bred.)
Fuck. That. She's already forced you into the same insecurity she's afraid of. She's continuing to betray you by expecting you to live your life without sexual pleasure. And I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that she will cheat on you again. You haven't been sexually assaulted, but you have been emotionally abused by this garbage can of a human being who chose to use sex as her means of abusing you.
The marriage is over. Don't stay together for the kids. They deserve to grow up seeing what an *actual* happy, healthy relationship looks like, and you can give them that (while she probably ends up repeatedly cheating on the next dude unfortunate enough to end up with her). Start talking to a divorce lawyer. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. This woman is a vile, manipulative piece of shit, and you would do well to cut her out of your life.
Go get some grief counseling to deal with your feelings of betrayal and rejection. Then quit one of your jobs and spend more time taking care of your children. Sell your home/cars and move into an apartment near your job/kids' schools/buses. Cut out anything you don't need, cable, internet etc. You can take your kids to the libraries to do homework, and the parks for fun and entertainment, and your wife can't troll for sex dates from home, which will make you feel less assaulted. DON'T SLEEP WITH HER, your kids won't have anyone to take care of them if you catch a serious disease.
To clarify a few things, Dan changed the genders on the kids in what I am assuming is an attempt to mask some details in case she read the letter (we have two sons).
As to why we are still together, because I am not an angel either. I have latent feelings of guilt about stuff that I did in the marriage. About 5 years ago I went and saw a domme for a few (non-sexual, fully clothed) beatings, and I have had a more than a few chat sessions online with strangers over the years when I was feeling lonely and disconnected. I never exposed her to an STI and I never so much as saw another person naked (other than in porn) during the marriage.
We are both pieces of work who have been bad for each other but I can honestly say until the last week or two we were friends. We hang out and live our lives much as they were before all this came out. We take care of our kids, eat, watch our television shows, go to movies, sleep, etc. This string of one-night stands though is next-level bonkers. The fact that she let us have another kid (one child was born before the infidelity and one child was born after) without raising this as a serious "we need to stop making new people until we get our shit sorted out" is a huge problem. So many huge problems.
Anyway, if you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer what I can.
That does explain the onesidedness of it all, but not why you're still trying when you seem to loathe her as everything but a caretaker of your kids.
She didn't steal your penis to do so, nor was this forced. You agreed to make a life in this dysfunctional marriage, so blaming her is doing you zero good.
Is it fair to either of you to attempt to continue having some sort of romantic connection? It sounds like your respect for each other (at least on a deep, romantic level) died many years ago, and now by forcing it you are just being cruel to one another.
But of course all I have to go on are a few paragraphs you've written.
All acedemic now whether she should have told you before your second boy was conceived, he's here now and you two are connected in one way or another for years to come.
If you two are talking with a therapist still, that is good. Yes she behaved badly and yes to a lesser extent you behaved badly. Forgive each other and focus on how best to look after your children.
Yes, it's hella fucking shady. Obviously. Don't waste your time seeking validation from @undead, she wouldn't give it to you in a million years.
Stop talking to therapists (and internet commenters) and start talking to a divorce lawyer. Immediately! A lawyer would have advised you not to move out of the house. Go find one, today, before you make any other self-defeating decisions that will cost you dearly.
But it's just a guess. I could be wrong.
Clap' s wife has no doubt owned up to being a piece of work, hopefully clap has owned up to his deceit. They have been together for over 15 yrs, he says they have a friendship, what they do have is two small children to look after.
Yes he should keep an eye on the legal needs of the situation, get his rights in the situation sorted. He also needs to keep talking with his wife with a therapist to try and work out how they are going to look after the children's needs.
Lava is wise. Heed her words at @63. People here have some good advice, but they don't know you and they (we) are of necessity projecting our own personal experiences and those of people close to us onto your situation. I agree that her knowing the marriage was so bad she was seeking sex elsewhere, but still expanding your family, was seriously not on. And "violated" sounds like an accurate word. She violated your marriage vows, if she didn't technically violate you. She betrayed you; you feel abused. And you were.
Clap, you sound like a reasonable, fair person. I think there's a good chance your wife and you can be friends and co-parents once you dissolve this marriage in hopefully an amicable way. Good luck to you. I hope your next partner is a monogamous, dominant woman who likes other people's kids. Hugs.
Going to the Domme was intentionally non-sexual but let me feel connected to another person if only in a very inauthentic way to me. I ended that relationship with the Domme for a lot of reasons, and the fact that I wasn't into it was one of them.
Come on, man, you know it's over.
You say you are disgusted with her, then that's it, isn't it? As Rhone @75 has pointed out, it's over if you are feeling that way.
Yes, you have to rage at the betrayal, just don't let it overwhelm you. Don't jeopodize your relationships with your kids and your financial security as you go thru these feelings.
This marriage is over, yes? Then look to How you guys are going to navigate the future.
(Noticing that men and women display, in aggregate, different tendencies is not the same thing as holding to rigid gender norms. Does it make me sexist to notice that far more women consider it cheating when their male partner looks at porn vs. men who view their female partner's porn viewing a problem?)
So, the cheating actually stopped years before you found out about it and before you started trying for the second kid, as far as you know she has been fully monogamous for years now, which makes her desire to not do the open marriage a lot more understandable than the way the letter originally read. I still think you should get a divorce, because you're obviously not compatible, but I don't think you would've gotten the same advice as you did from Dan and others if you'd stated your case more plainly.
It's ok to be incompatible. Nobody has to be the bad guy. Divorce. Focus on being good co-parents and carry on your romantic lives elsewhere.
LW- I’d also recommend incorporating some meetings with the therapy. Maybe you should too, if only to hear others and their experiences, challenges, and even joys.
Screw stigma- no one starts attending 12-step meetings just because they want to, it’s almost always after something bad happens.
I’d recommend different meetings to you and her to ensure privacy, trying different groups and see where you feel most comfortable. It usually takes some time to find the right one.
(1) "She decided at almost the last minute to be a stay-at-home-mom." That's creating a huge disparity in income--more so because you had "almost nothing in savings" and thus had to work "crazy...70 hour weeks." So she gets alimony as a dependant, plus as primary caregiver, she gets custody and therefore child support.
(2) What does it for her is "literally anyone but [you]"--in other words, she sexually can't stand you to the point that she basically had to go hop on some random dicks--but she still wanted you enough to conceive a second child? Why? She wants more kids for more child support?
(3) She gets "extremely insecure and refuses to allow" an honest open marriage, although she admits to hooking up with 9 randos on Craigslist, AND she essentially told you she's sexually repulsed by you? Why the heck would she even care if you want to seek it elsewhere, if she doesn't even want you? Sounds like she's trying to torpedo the marriage by forcing you to be the one to file for divorce--thereby making her the put-upon, wronged single mother who gave up her career for the children and was abandoned by the big, mean, porn-&-domme seeking husband, and thus even more deserving of an alimony check.
Oh, this whole thing stinks. I agree with @56 and @70: it's dangerous to move out! Be careful--very careful.
P.S. @84: Regardless of whether the addiction in question is legit or not, 12 Steps fosters a mentality of identification with one's vice ("I am a ___,") and learned helplessness that has been shown to exacerbate conditions in the long-term and reduce the odds of successful recovery. Sex addiction counseling may be helpful to the wife, but preferably it should be obtained somewhere with a better track record than 12 Steps.
Ah, that changes things, to my mind. Projecting to her point of view: Things weren't good after the first kid. She starts idly browsing Craigslist, as I'm sure many of us have done for a laugh *cough*. No, she shouldn't have taken the step of actually contacting anyone, let alone cheating several times. But let's say that whatever she had to get out of her system, she realised she made a huge mistake and recommitted to fidelity in the marriage, because she realised she really loved you and didn't want to lose you.
If she wanted to stay in the marriage, what was the best way to accomplish that:
A. Confess to behaviours that even Dan deems DTMFA-worthy, or
B. Put everything behind her, take the secret to her grave, and strengthen the bond by having another child?
Okay, the child bit was probably unncessary, but if she knew your thoughts on monogamy and knew that you'd dump her over cheating, what motivation could she possibly have had to confess to something you'd otherwise never find out about?
Not sure on the timeline here -- How long has it been since this cheating spree?
I'm inclined to agree with Sophie @81 (I can be charitable, since I get to be so smug about her "this letter must be fake"). Perhaps your current "I want to open the marriage" means "I want to even the score," and her "No" means "I learned my lesson; that only makes things worse."
IF you believe that this really was a one-off lapse of judgment and you can trust her not to do it again, I think you can move past it. It would be a gesture of goodwill on her part to give you at least one get-out-of-monogamy-free card, I mean she definitely owes you big time. But it sounds like your sex life is in the toilet anyway, this pooch can't be unscrewed, as Dan puts it. Forgive her, but end the marriage anyway.
CMD @84: Agree, there have to be some lurking demons for Mrs CLAP to have engaged in such risky practices -- not just risking her and her husband's sexual health, but risking the marriage and her relationship with her child. If Mrs CLAP isn't exploring her motivations in counselling, she absolutely should be.
I can smell the stink of setting up half the world away.
" it should be obtained somewhere with a better track record than 12 Steps."
Please elaborate on the "track record" - Any research or just your own assessment?
I'm guessing neither of you have children. Neither of you know the care that is needed in rearing a child. Being a stay at home mother is still being a working woman.
Good points Fan. She had finished her betrayal behaviour, after realizing what she was doing. I wonder how clap found out then? Did she suddenly decide to come clean, and then he's reacted by feeling such repulsion for her? What a sad story.
Maybe you have a point CMD, her impulse may have come from some very dark place. She stopped though, then had their second child. Then wanted to suddenly be honest about it all?
His repulsion is understandable. I don't however see why clap feels she is saying by this behaviour that he is
not good enough. It is saying more about how she felt about herself, while she had sex with these random men.
Since they are anonymous, "success" claims are based entirely on anecdotal evidence, I'm not aware of any research that indicates that they are more successful than facing your addictions without them.
I perfectly know that staing at home doesn't mean having nothing to do. It's not the staying at home by itself, it's all the things combined that reveal someone who is at the very least someone who doesn't care at all about her husband. For example deciding all by herself, having previously said else, to not work anymore in a moment when the family hadn't much money, thus forcing hubby to work like a mule - and consequently not see his children enough - is manipulative in more than one level and it's very different from the ideal situation where a couple decides together whether one of them can stay home with the kids instead of working (and ideally the other one doesn't kill him/herself of overwork and gets to see the kids while they are awake).
Can you see the difference?
He didn't mention in his letter that he too had had a sexual adventure.
"It makes you sexist to assume that any individual can't possibly think or behave in ways not associated with the norms for their gender."
It makes you a bad reader to assume "I have a hard time believing" means "this is something that can't possibly happen." There's weird shit going on in that letter. There's weird shit going on in clap's follow up comments.
Assuming everything LW has written is true, here's the timeline: first son is born, 18 months later wife starts hooking up with men from CL, however long it took her to hook up with 9 different guys (keeping in mind this is a woman with a toddler, so child care needs, and a husband who worked 70 hours a week to support them, so tight budget, her ability to hook up isn't quite as flexible as hubby who hits a glory hole on the way home from work), she ends the affairs 2 years before they start trying to get pregnant with second child, however long it takes for her to get pregnant, 9 months to gestate, second son born and at some point after that (about a year ago) he finds out about affairs. That potentially puts the trip to the domme "about five years ago" in the same window as wife's initiation of affairs. And it definitely puts the trip to the domme post birth of first son. That seems like a relevant detail to have included in the original letter.
And about that domme, while it is certainly possible that he found some nice lady on the internet to serve him a few beatings for free, as a woman who's spent some time in those spaces dealing with curious men, "(non-sexual, fully clothed) beatings" reads as the sort of thing he paid for. And that isn't cheap. It's not really the sort of thing you'd expect a man working 70 hours a week to support his wife and newborn child to be able to afford. I would not be surprised if LW is fudging the timeline to try and disguise his identity* (it seems likely he learned about the infidelity far more recently than a year ago), but the story as told doesn't really cohere.
*Although I'm pretty sure "I visited a domme a few times for non-sexual, fully clothed beatings, but I wasn't really into it" is a much clearer identifying detail than the timeline or the gender of the children.