Sad day, fm, but just trust that after the initial low point you will come out happier in the end. It sounds like he is already emotionally disconnected. My brother was very generous and gracious during his divorce - here’s to hoping your husband is man enough to do the same.
I watched something like this happen to my in-laws, before they were my in-laws, and before I really ever had much of a chance to know them as a couple. My future wife was the youngest of four children (all daughters, which may have been relevant). The day she graduated from college, her mother left for a trip to China – then still very rare – with a professional group, and her father (55 at the time, married 32 years) took her out to dinner and said he was leaving her mother. The marriage had not been working for a long time, and they had agreed to stay together only until she had left the nest and now it was time to move on. He said there wasn’t another woman involved, although he hoped someday he might marry again.
Of course – I’m not sure why I say “of course,” but of course – he was basically lying on several points. There was another woman, 15 years younger. It took almost a year for her to surface publicly, and it was a few more years before they got careless enough to reminisce about things they had done together long before he left his wife, but she was there. Her children leaving home had as much to do with the timing as anything, although her marriage had ended years before. My father-in-law had forgotten to tell his wife that the marriage wasn’t working and they were only staying together until their last child graduated from college. She was bewildered and terribly hurt, devastated really.
As I said, I never knew them as a functional couple. I only ever met them once before they split, for a few hours when I was the new boyfriend, and it was way too early for me to pay a lot of attention to them or they to me. As I got to know them better, it was hard to understand how they had ever been together. My father-in-law was charming, sophisticated, a high-level manager at a multi-national corporation deep in the military-industrial complex. He traveled the world selling equipment to generals and defense ministers (many of whom grew up to be prime ministers) on several continents. Gathering intelligence for the CIA on the side was among his duties. My mother-in-law liked sight-seeing well enough, but fundamentally she was a homebody, a wonderful person, but a little dogmatic and a lot stubborn, someone who knew lots about trees but rarely thought much about forests. He was a physicist-engineer who designed and built things and held patents; she was a gifted gardener.
She was a doctrinaire Old Left Democrat, Bernie Sanders represents her views almost perfectly. He belonged to that space that used to exist where the parties overlapped, Scoop Jackson and Mitt Romney (before the latter swerved right to attempt the Presidency), pragmatic technocrat reformers. (He was a rebelling red-diaper baby; she, too, was rebelling against a family of xenophobic Orthodox Jewish shopkeepers. Dissatisfaction with their parents was what they most had in common. That and loving classical music.)
She was absolutely devoted to her daughters and her grandchildren when they started coming. He was pleasant on occasional visits, but it was clear he had never had a deep emotional engagement with any of his daughters but the oldest, most brilliant one (who never came close to forgiving him for the split). Lots of his work was classified, and his being a merchant of death during the Vietnam Era and thereafter didn’t make it easy for his daughters to be proud of him. So he had kept his work life separate from his home, and his work was really where he lived. My mother-in-law, although she worked regularly as a social worker for nearly 20 years before the split, was completely home-centered.
Anyway, as often happens, the split was great for him. His second wife was European, much more elegant, snobby even, much more compatible with the life he wanted to live. She was a fairly high-level HR manager in the same company as he, so their joint income was quite high until they both retired. By the time he died, they had been married for almost as long as he was married to my mother-in-law. As time went on, he faced a cascading series of medical challenges. He lost a leg to a rare form of cancer that by any probabilistic judgment should have killed him. It didn’t, but it made life difficult and limited his ability to travel, and other elements of his system deteriorated slowly and painfully.
My mother-in-law quit working in a fit of pique (or maybe on bad advice from her lawyer) when the split occurred, and lived off alimony, social security, and a small IRA the rest of her life. She lived very modestly in order to keep a vacation home where all of her children and grandchildren could visit, and took a lot of joy from that. She never got over the anger and sense of injustice she felt at being left, and although she had suitors from time to time never came close to forming a significant romantic relationship. The last 8-9 years of her life were taken over by Alzheimer’s. To a large extent, it was a blessing that they weren’t together during their 80s – their simultaneous but very different disabilities would have completely overwhelmed them, and would have overwhelmed any child trying to care for both of them.
Having written all this, it’s not easy to derive much that’s useful to fauxmaven. The idea of giving it a year probably means there really is no one else; if there were, he would have left. (My observed experience is men don’t leave unless/until there’s someone else.) But people sometimes do develop in inconsistent ways, and stop meeting each other’s needs, even if that isn’t perfectly symmetrical between them. And I deeply wish my mother-in-law had been able to let go of her anger, hurt, jealousy, and sense of injustice. Her feelings were completely legitimate; her husband treated her terribly. But looking backward and feeling aggrieved did nothing to enrich her life, and there was plenty of life that could have been enriched.
I’m sure it was easier for the children to be 21-29 when their parents split, instead of younger. But it wasn’t easy. It affected all of them a little, some a lot, and it distorted their relationships with one another for years. I don’t know that there was any way around that.
Given what you said in #130, @fauxmaven, I’ll first of all second @austinmshauri’s advice in #134, and add that if that’s actually what your husband said, I wonder if he’ll ever feel “the chemistry” if he’s that selfish of a person. But who knows?
You mentioned your family-in-law, and the joy you’ve had with them. Is there any chance you could retain that? I have a SIL whose husband left her very messily several years back, and her ex-family-in-law was actually very supportive of her through it. (Her ex-MIL even took it on herself to play matchmaker, to “find [her] a better husband”! Not how my SIL found her current husband, but still.) That’s a rarity, of course, but even if simply maintaining some of the friendships you’ve built there over the past ~30 years comes out of this, that’d be a victory, I think.
So sorry you are going through this FM. I have no advice, but my heart goes out to you.
@JHS I feel like your post is the basis for a good novel.
I’m going to have a momentary rant and say I find some talk about “chemistry” to be hooey. A 60-something guy thinks he’s going out there to find the blush of romance, feel like he’s 20 again? I’m sorry, but I think the word is “relationship,” and all that that means. And it’s also what’s really behind good coupling when people are younger, too. Ie, how you get through the days, weeks, and months, how you make each other feel as individuals and as the other half, which is awareness and willingness to work at it. “Chemistry” makes it sound like it’s beyond your control.
^ I agree. Marriage and life is not a Nicholas Spark’s novel.
I don’t know how to say this nicely but if he has never felt the Chemistry with you by now I don’t see how he is going to find it with you in the next year. It sounds like he is going to go looking for it somewhere else and hopes he finds it in the next year. I am so sorry you are going through this.
Also how does emotional needs equal chemistry? To me those are 2 separate things.Chemistry to me equals sex…
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he reminded me that he never should have married me because he never felt " the chemistry". We were so busy raising the kids that he didn’t really think about till EMPTY NEST. Before he dies, he would like to experience the CHEMISTRY! After my first marriage, which was physically abusive, I wanted a kind and gentle man. I did not care so much for the CHEMISTRY. So its really not about sex at this point( which we are not having) but the lack of attraction on his part.
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how obnoxious to say that to you.
Sadly…it is about the sex. He wants the chemistry…which goes with sex. Believe me, he’s not interested in finding someone with chemistry and live like a monk.
The whole above is ANOTHER reason to see an atty to protect your finanacial interests. A long-married, middle-aged, suddenly-single man who’s in the hunt for Chemistry, will want to present himself as financially stable… He won’t want to be financially wiped out or diminished.
As someone said or hinted earlier, there’s no saying what a 60+ guy can really manage physically. There was an assumption earlier that he might be going for younger, but we don’t know if he’s the sort a younger woman would be interested in.
He can call it chemistry all he wants (for lack of a better word or thinking it has some blunt impact.) But unless he says, I want more sex, or, I want someone I am physically more attracted to, we can’t assume that’s what this is about. Otoh, OP said he told her he feels lonely and his emotional needs aren’t being met. That’s “relationship.”
It is hard not to feel used (as a good mom, but no “chemistry”) when the OPs spouse says something like that. And it sounds like it could be very painful to lose your connection to his family. I don’t know what to say about that – I still maintain a close connection with my BIL and his family from my marriage, and to a lesser extent with my in-laws. We don’t spend holidays together, but we are still in each other’s lives the rest of the year. I hope you can maintain that.
So sorry for the hurtful things your husband said in counseling. Now is the time to protect yourself financially and emotionally. Get support wherever you can to prepare yourself for whatever changes may be coming.
Chemistry is just another word for flirting and demonstrated sexual desire. Both are habits of happy couples. The good news is men are super-easy to fool if the desire is an act and not genuine, or else a certain profession would cease to exist.
Yes to all of what m2ck said.
fauxmaven, I am so sorry about this! It must have hurt so much to hear your husband say that. No one can predict whether or not your marriage will survive, but I think we have to accept that there is a significant chance that you are headed for divorce. Advice from someone in the middle of the process: put your emotional wounds on the back burner and focus on protecting yourself financially. Copy all financial records. Get recommendations for a good attorney and consult him/her. Get advice on what to do to protect yourself. Please do this right away. I know that what you are going through is devastating, but you must protect your future.
Memories are a tricky thing. Being at the end of the divorce I can tell you I don’t remember being attracted to my H or having chemistry. I KNOW I did because I can recall circumstances. But I don’t remember the feeling. This is where couples therapy is tricky. I never would have revealed that to my H. It’s too hurtful. I don’t believe complete honesty is a good thing all the time. Thinking about you, OP.
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Memories are a tricky thing. Being at the end of the divorce I can tell you I don’t remember being attracted to my H or having chemistry. I KNOW I did because I can recall circumstances. But I don’t remember the feeling. This is where couples therapy is tricky. I never would have revealed that to my H. It’s too hurtful. I don’t believe complete honesty is a good thing all the time.
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This could be true in this case as well.
I am so, so sorry you had to hear that, that has to be extremely painful to hear. I wish I had words to make you not feel the hurt, I will tell you that I put all that on him, it has nothing to do with you. One thing I suspect strongly is he is going to be very disappointed if he thinks he is going to go out there and find ‘chemistry’ that he supposedly missed the first time, someone who could go into a marriage like that, so coldly and practically, isn’t likely to ever feel that spark, someone like that IMO doesn’t have the feeling or soul to find that magic or whatever.
The real question now is for you, hearing that, do you want to go forward trying to save the relationship, or knowing that, do you want to work on, going forward, what you’ll need. I can only speak for myself, but if my spouse told me they only married me for practical reasons, that for example I was a good earner and she knew I would always take care of her and any kids, I probably right then and there would be working with my therapist to find a way to break away and prepare for the future without my spouse, that would gut me. To be honest, looking at what your H said, I don’t know what grounds there are to save the relationship, it sounds like he thinks there is magic out there, and if he does stay, he will likely spend the rest of your time together wondering “what if”. I have to be honest, based on that, I think your husband is a jerk, speaking as someone who has been married a lot of years and had to deal with a lot, I think he is just continuing on with what he did originally, getting what he wanted without thinking of you or anyone else.
I disagree. Chemistry = sex. When I was in college I dated a perfectly nice man off and on for about a year. When we met he had just graduated, was beginning his career, and it was pretty obvious to me that he was looking for a wife so he could settle down and have a family. I liked him; he was smart, funny, kind, attractive, a hard worker, and I think he would have been a great dad – but there was no spark. Zero. If I had continued dating him I have no doubt we could have ended up married, but after thinkng about it I realized I’d sooner live alone than live like that. And he deserved better than someone who was settling.
Two years after we broke up I met my husband and sparks flew immediately. I knew right away that if he turned out to be the kind of man I was looking for, that was going to be it for me. Some people can be friends first and a relationship can develop from there, but for others the spark has to come first. Chemistry is part of what I consider a good relationship, but it’s not the same.
I am 2 years ahead of you. I can tell you that you can be happy again. Time is a great healer. I was very hurt and angry, but more recently I am more at peace. When we first got married, we were very compatible and we met each other’s needs, but as we got older, we changed. I can see why he wanted to move on. More recently I found out he is in a serious relationship. When it didn’t hit me hard, I knew. I think my kids could sense it. They are happier knowing we have moved on. I will always consider him to be family (you don’t always have to like your family), but just not my partner.
I am wishing you all the best, but I have to say you are very patient!! After he said that, I would be like, “Here’s your pillow and tooth brush, see ya.”
+1 to NYMom’s specific advice about assembling copies of all assets, insurance, the balance in any HELOC, etc. and hightailing it to an attorney. A friend’s ex-H drained the HELOC account once he knew he was leaving but before he’d told her. The HELOC was joint because they both were on the title to the house, but the loan withdrawals could be done with only one signature. (Yes, there are HELOCs that work this way. When we got a HELOC account for our house, we wanted dual signatures (since we are both on the title to the property) as a protection. The bank said it had to be set up so only one spouse needed to sign. Our friend wound up having to share that debt in the divorce, even though she had nothing to do with it.
My former SIL is still very much a part of our family. She has been there for my parents, was my bFF in college, and most of us like her better than our brother whose behavior spurred the divorce.
fauxmaven, I am so sorry your H is being hurtful. Know that he’s saying what makes HIM feel better about dumping you. His words are likely not a true reflection of his feelings about your marriage over all these years.