My heart beats for my husband, that is why I am here attempting to work on my marriage.
If your heart beats for your OM, why not be with him - so your H can find someone whose heart does beat for him.
And we are not "stupid shameful" women, we are women who made poor choices.

My heart beats for my husband ... I thought at one stage that it did for the OM but boy was that fog very thick.

You cannot force your heart to beat for your H. You cannot live life "pretending". It will catch up with you. Is the OM involved with your child's life? Your H is a kind person for treating your child as his own, but if your heart doesn't beat for him, let him go. It's not fair to him and most importantly to yourself. You deserve to be truly happy.

My heart does not beat for my H. We are taking steps to separate ties; however, we will be forever connected due to kids. We have to do the right thing for our children. We cannot pretend to be happy. Plus I want our children to know what true happiness means even if it means leaving their father. But number one priority is making sure our children know that they are loved and we will always be their parents. My heart does "flutter" for the OM, but he's not the right one either. He just helped me open my eyes to see what has been missing in my life. Unfortunately, it's too late for H and me since too many years of disconnection and H's unwillingness to make me his priority so I must move on.

You are not s shameful stupid woman for realizing you are unhappy. Listen to your heart and be brave. You deserve to be truly happy. Stop pretending.

LiveWithIntention, great post!! Good luck, in33. Do you still feel your heart beats for your OM?

JustDrifting & minspa - Thank you. You ALL have that strength within you.... You just got to believe you deserve true happiness. My other option was pretending and feeling dead inside. I was dying a little bit each day...and I literally WANTED to die. That's how bad it got... So really, it isn't just strength... I wanted to stay alive for my kids and friends that mattered to me. I needed to feel alive and REALLY start living. Yes, the "conventional" way of living is playing by the rules and keeping peace.... But when one is so unhappy for so many years and cross paths with someone that helps you realize that one deserves to be happy and "feel", we need to ask ourselves... "Why?"... Why are we doing this?...Why are we having an A? And if our heart doesn't beat for our spouse, then we HAVE to let it go and move on. It's not fair to your spouse, but MORE importantly, to yourself. I'm not saying it's been easy and its going to take hard honest work. We need to be true to ourselves, listen to ourselves, and feel for ourselves before we can be true and feel for another person. Stop Pretending.

I've always considered myself a coward regarding my marriage. 32 yrs later....

Hmmm not sure where anyone thinks i'm financially trapped thats not it. I have always felt complelled to be with my h i guess maybe because he was the only one there for me for so long. And now that we have one kid together I don't want to lose my son, I can't bare to only see him for a few days at a time if that is the case. The OM sees his son every two months as he lives out of state, and our son is only a few months old. But i know eventually he will want custody he just knows that right now our infant needs to be with me. LiveWithin, thank you for your comments because I feel the way you do/did. I feel like I am dying inside sometimes. I keep saying this mantra every couple of minutes to keep sane and not to think of the OM "breath in and out, smile, pretend, and don't think of him". I don't know if I do love the OM I am afraid that if I go to him or to anyone else will what happen to me and my h happen. Will the love just flame out? So I stay because overall my h does make me happy we are a happy family. But at the same time I just feel like we are just good friends and there is not much more.

As far as the OM willing to let my h raise his son, that is my fault not his. I made the choice to stay with my h because I was pregnant and scared and the OM was out of state. Once again that all came down to is all love that I have for anyone just going to die out.

Please don't keep dying. Yes, your child will fill the void. Since your son is young and have many "first" with him, it will help with feeling alive. But trust me when he becomes a teenager and no longer need the hour to hour then day to day attention...and start becoming his own independent person (and that is the goal of every good parent), you will feel the emptiness. You will look at your spouse, the one who your heart does not beat for and will say to yourself, "I do not want to grow old with you... What am I doing here?... There's got to be more to life than this..." Do not wait 15 years like I did. Either seek counseling together to see if you two can make it work honestly now. If you wait too long, it will be too late. Either you stop pretending now or later. It's much easier when you are young. The odds of finding someone that makes your heart "beat" is better. Believe in yourself. You deserve to be truly happy and with a life partner that rocks your world.

I guess it's easier and safer to pretend for some mostly for the sake of kids.. Yes kids dont need to see unhappy parents living together but at least they get to be with both their parents everyday... And we fake and fake really well- so they see really happy mommy and daddy separately. I guess i'm still hanging on to hope. Hope that my husband will open his heart completely , that i wont feel anxious, neglected and down when he comes home and just downright afraid. Perhaps one day he'll accept the meal i've cooked or the tea or breakfasr i've offered to make. One really stubborn, hard-hearted man with a lot of pride:(

LivewithIntention is correct. Children mirror and learn from their parent's relationship. They can perceive if their parents really love each other or if they are together for convenience or worse, because they feel they have to be. And they may very well model this for their future relationships. Life is entirely too short to pretend, isn't it?

And, yes, those years fly by and as soon as you send them off to college, there you will be sitting across the table from someone you don't even know anymore.

I've had this conversation with friends. They talk about priorities and how the kids come first before any man life its some sign of female strength. But I remind them that this marriage they put behind everything, this man who is second (at best) to their children is who they will be spending their old age with.

Those kids will become teens who put their friends first. Those teens will become adults who will put their careers and lives first and one day they will be husband's and wives who will put their family's first.

Who are you with? Oh yea that guy you put second and that marriage you didn't nurture. Find that space to make the marriage a priority now and put each other first now. Learn to enjoy each other while the kids are young.

If you can't find a way now, waiting 10, 15, 20 years isn't going to be easy. Marriage counseling, date nights and finding common interests now will help you decide if the relationship has what it takes to grow old together.

My H and I spent a lot of years putting everything else first. For me it was the kids and for him it was his business. The real marriage didn't begin until both of us put in the hard work.

I could have written most of your post myself. I have a new baby from an A (she was born last month). My H knows and decided he wanted to raise the baby as his own - which I really do appreciate since we have other children, but I didn't ask him to do that. I don't want to be with my H but I feel bad to continue to hurt him by leaving him. When I told him about my A it was to ask for a divorce... and it some how ended up turned around on me and with me back feeling trapped in our M. My heart does beat for my OM but I know we could never be together - but what I really want is just to be out of my M and focus on living my life with my kids. I don't see OM like that anymore, as soon as I found out I was pregnant I told him and he told me to get rid of the baby and so we never talked about anything again - I do see him because he is our friend, which I know is weird but my H is always inviting him over and handing him the baby and its just a weird mess. I just need to get the strength to get out. My H has a hold on me because he always makes me feel so guilty for leaving him, threatening to hurt himself and things like that. Also he was weirdly happy about the baby being born because in the state we live in, if you are married then you have to put your H's name on the birth certificate - so he is always threatening to take all the kids, baby included, if I try to leave him.