Dear Roe,
I have been with my partner for more than 10 years and we have two young children. We never married and it was only every spoken about as a possibility in very practical and unromantic terms. This never bothered me until now. During the summer I met someone else and fell deeply in love. This person feels the same way but lives abroad and we’ve only met a handful of times. I told my partner about the affair within weeks of it starting, with the intention of leaving the relationship. However, his reaction shocked me. He was so hurt and upset. I backtracked and decided we should go to therapy together and work on our relationship. We’ve done couples therapy which was useful and addressed some of our past issues, but I can’t stop thinking about the man I had the affair with. My relationship with my partner is better now but I’ve lost sexual interest and I constantly fantasise about the other person and have even started thinking about the practicalities of being with this other person too. I feel like I’m living a double life. Should I end my current relationship or give it time to work?
I can’t tell you whether or not to leave your relationship, but I can offer you some things to think about and seek clarity on that could help you approach your decision.
It’s interesting that your letter offers no details about your partner or this new person in terms of their personality, how they make you feel, or what issues you and your partner experienced in the past. I’m wondering how much clarity you have yourself about the differences between the dynamic you have with your partner, and the dynamic you have with this new person. Is the difference one of personality and compatibility – or is it simply the difference between a new, chemistry-filled, honeymoon period connection, and the lived-in, possibly slightly stale or neglected routine of a long-term relationship?
Comparing the routine and demands and obligations of a long-term relationship with children with the responsibility-free whirlwind of a new, exciting intimacy is not a like-for-like comparison
Feeling a lack of passion or romance in a decade-long relationship, particularly while raising two young children, isn’t rare. I’m not saying it’s something you should settle for if it makes you feel deeply unhappy or unfulfilled, but it isn’t rare. Comparing the routine and demands and obligations of a long-term relationship with children with the responsibility-free whirlwind of a new, exciting intimacy is not a like-for-like comparison. One is reality, and one is a fantasy. Having only met this other person a few times while committed to someone else, you really have no idea what a committed relationship with them would be like, let alone know whether 10 years down the line, they would make you happier than your current partner does now. I don’t doubt that you share a connection with this new person, but a new connection with someone you’ve only me a handful of times and who lives in another country is fuelled by a lot of fantasy – the fantasy of what a committed relationship with them would be, the fantasy of living somewhere else and the exotic romance of that, and the fantasy that the passion and excitement that you feel with them would last forever, never becoming mundane or routine. That’s why you shouldn’t base any decision around this person. Either you want to stay in your current relationship or you want to leave it, but you simply don’t know enough about this new person for them to be the deciding factor.
It is yourself that you need to consider. Any fantasy about another person is the fantasy of the self – imagining how you would be different if you were with them, which parts of you would be invigorated or ignited, and which parts of you would instantly shed or fall away? To understand both your draw to this other person and your current relationship, you need to start asking yourself very honestly about the fantasies this person inspired in you about love, your life, and your self. What did they make you long for? What did they make you realise that you miss or want, and what did they make you re-evaluate?
It’s interesting that not being married never bothered you until now, after meeting someone who made passionate declarations of love and offered the fairy-tale possibility of running away together. It’s also interesting that you did not expect your partner to react so strongly to the idea of losing you, and that his reaction prompted to you to say with him and try work it out. Both of these could indicate that you weren’t feeling as loved, wanted or valued in your relationship as you want to be, and that only when you saw your partner willing to fight for you did you glimpse the relationship you want with him – one where he expresses his love, passion and need for you explicitly and clearly. I wonder if your relationship has been lacking this type of explicit affection, love and appreciation, and having another man express his passion for you and desire to build a life with you has made you realise that you want that kind of love – the kind of love that expresses its intentions, and commits to you, publicly and wholeheartedly. This could be why not being married suddenly feels more charged than it did before, as it represents the romance that you have realised is important to you.
The important choice isn’t whether to move forward with your partner or this new person, it’s about whether to learn from this experience to move forward as the most authentic version of yourself, or to keep outsourcing the solution to your discontent to other people
It will be transformative for you to consider all the things that the fantasies you are having about this other person have made you realise about yourself and what you want. Too often, as people get older and give so much of themselves to parenting and long-term relationships, they (and often their partners) forget to account for the ways they have changed and evolved over time, and take stock of where they are now and what they want. Long-term partners can assume they know everything about the other person and not remain curious about each other, meaning that new and evolving aspects of your self can go unacknowledged and unexpressed. This can make one or both partners feel limited by each other’s perception, and feeling limited by and too enmeshed with a partner in this way can prohibit desire. What parts of you did this new person let you express that have gone stifled?
Think about these questions yourself, and then discuss them with your partner. It could be that your partner has his own experience of these issues, or that he is more than willing to find ways that you can express yourself and have your needs met. It’s possible that he’s willing to work on romance, appreciation, on carving out time for both of you to explore new interests or simply invest in yourselves as individuals, not simply parents or partners, and these shifts could reignite both your sense of self, and passion for him.
You write that you feel like you are living a double life, and that your choice is to stay in your current relationship or end it. But the important choice isn’t whether to move forward with your partner or this new person, it’s about whether to learn from this experience to move forward as the most authentic version of yourself, or to keep outsourcing the solution to your discontent to other people. What you need to figure out is how to reconcile all the best parts of this “double life”, so that you feel like the most fully rounded version of yourself. When you do that, any decision you make about your romantic partners will be based in reality, not fantasy. Good luck.