How can I break out of my dull, passionless marriage?
And not by eastern windows only/When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright. SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT AVAILETH ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH (ENGLISH POET, 1819 - 61)
DEAR Bel,
I FEEL as if my life is coming apart, but I don’t quite know why. I’m 39 and have been happily married for 12 years. My husband, 41, is a kind, good, funny man.
We have a son and a daughter, age eight and six, and our life is usually harmonious, apart from when the kids are playing up.
I think we were quite content until the beginning of this year, when something seemed to shift in my brain.
My husband works quite hard in a job he likes, and I have started to train as a psychotherapist, one day a week.
We love cooking, but he doesn’t help much around the house or garden. We have good friends and are close to both families, so no problems there.
The trouble is — we’re really good friends, but just not in love with each other any more.
For the past few months I’ve been feeling it’s not enough. It’s like I want to burst out of my skin and become somebody else — somebody free.
Our life seems in a rut and I think I’m too young to be buried in domesticity and routine — taking the kids to school, shopping for food, putting the clothes in to wash, folding them up, cooking, shouting at the kids for getting out of bed, etc.
There’s no sex in our marriage any more. We just don’t fancy each other and my husband says he’s not worried.
He’s one of those men who like an easy life. But I’m bothered. I fantasise about wonderful sex but not with him.
Would I have an affair? I think so — because to feel excitement again would be fantastic.
But I can’t stand the idea of lying and sneaking and so would it be more honest to split and start again?
We’ve talked, which proves how we get on. I know you’ll suggest we go for counselling, because agony aunts always say that, but what’s the point, if all the passion has gone? How can you get it back, after all this time? It would just be talking round in circles, and wouldn’t change the way I feel.
Which is that I want more out of life and feel depressed at the thought of just jogging along as we are. What do you think?
JADE
WHEN I was exactly your age I felt just the same. I’d already been married for 18 years and hated the idea of facing 40 (so middleaged, it seemed) and felt so restless and tired of being that ‘Mrs’ with all those responsibilities.
I promise you, in all these years of writing an advice column, I’ve had so many letters from both men and woman expressing almost identical frustrations that it almost seems like a rite of passage endured by more people than one might think — often causing pain and sometimes disaster.
Yes, each problem is unique to the one suffering; on the other hand, there is nothing new under the sun.
Do you think the pressures of home-schooling during the pandemic made your life seem more claustrophobic?
Do you and your husband manage to carve out enough time together to (say) go out without the children, share non-domestic interests, and so on? Since you like each other so much, you should build on that.
Of course, the rogue elephant in the room is called Sex, and it trumpets loudly in this and many other marriages. Surely you must know as well as I that after 12 years and more most marriages settle into comfortable companionship: loving instead of ‘being in love’. That’s healthy and normal — and please don’t be taken in by the obsessive propaganda of this sex-obsessed, porn-ridden culture.
It is my firm belief that when surveys are done on the amount of time a couple makes love in a week/month, people actually fib. For some people sexual desire remains important, for others it doesn’t. The problem comes if there’s an imbalance.
The only advice I can give is carefully weigh the consequences. And then weigh them some more. Splitting up is hellish, hurts children and is not to be undertaken on a fantasy of freedom — as I discovered.
The grass on the other side of the fence can turn out to contain hidden cow-pats (see today’s second letter) and plenty of people regret their destructive dream of impossible ‘freedom’.
Loneliness can beckon. So yes, I do think it useful to talk these issues through with a counsellor; the action of arranging that indicates a wish to take marriage seriously and not act on what might be temporary discontentment. And please don’t be so naïve as to believe that ‘passion’ necessarily means getting ‘more’ out of life.
The other day I read a moving magazine article which interviewed brave young women in Ukraine who had signed up for territorial duty. One said, ‘I want a normal life, with children, a house, a family.’ Another, who married her boyfriend at the start of the terrible conflict, said, ‘I want to go on my honeymoon, which would be just going back to our flat and leading a normal life. No rockets.’
Those young women are dreaming of just what you have. Doesn’t this sum up the human condition?