Let your wife go find her ex if she wants a relationship because it's not fair to keep making her settle. Let it go man.
What she said is inexcusable and theres no way to explain her way out of it. aka her lazy life style. There is more there and I think OP is just using it as a way out. Get a lawyer. "he doesn't excite me the way that my ex does". Don't be so proud my friend. Looking at the way the OP is responding to posts in this thread IMO confirms this several times over. EVERY responder. This sounds like old people shit they tell themselves to soothe themselves. Just putting this out there, there's a chance that both your wife and yourself could both be having midlife crises. Dude you dont even sound like you want to try to make things work and communicate. It was a stupid thing for her to say, and really the only lie is the one she is telling herself, but if you feel like you need to divorce talk to a lawyer and get started, but my take is she just misses the excitement being young and in love and expressed it in a very stupid way. With righteous indignation, you can end things now without feeling any sort of guilt. 20 years is a long time to throw something away over a statement. People have said shitty things to other people in confidence. Sorry but, someone saying they settled for their partner and it's over for me, what the fuck is the point then, mediocrity? Impulsiveness? I mean I feel like there are steps you could take before divorcing her but go off I guess. Theyre there for support. Far to often we excuse a person because they said something & it got overheard or it was said in anger. Im guessing the threat of losing a 20 year relationship will probably help her remember the good there too. You've got one fucking life, so do they.
I wish I'd had the wisdom and awareness this man does to just move on. She lied because she loved you. If you know it's over then it's over. On the other hand, its always much easier for the audience to opine. Like this isn't just some heated words said during an argument. Tom represents that and she vents to her friend. Try therapy and if you still don't want to stay in the marriage then leave. " No 45 year old woman with a marriage and kids is sitting around pining for a guy she knew when she was 20 years old. For real. Exactly, especially since he went from thinking they had a happy marriage to knowing right then and there he wanted a divorce. I can't even imagine being in a relationship with someone who is thinking about someone else everyday let alone married to them. To me, thats REAL love. Im just glad my IRL friend group/family/boyfriend have compassion and dont talk this way to people. It's 20 years OP is never gonna get back. Make the conversation personal. If you never "settled", if you didn't stop chasing after dreams, you would have missed the opportunity make those dreams a reality.
There is more to the story here and OP isnt disclosing it. That I could forgive. If it was the other way around people would b like omg leave his ass ASAP, Finally someone who speaks my language. I tried therapy for myself and for us as a couple. Nothing you have/had is wasted just because it ends. Because it's either that the wife has been putting on an academy award winning performance for decades or it's that she really was happy and was just bitching to a friend because people do that. This is a case of him overhearing something and jumping on it because he wanted out of the relationship anywayhe's hoping that he will look like less of a douche if he blames it on her. I hope things turn out for the best, whatever that may be. I find it hard to believe you would be considering divorce if this was a fairy tale marriage and she was the perfect wife up to this point. its obviously because of the initial post. Is this like a midlife crisis situation where people think all crazy things about missed moments whilst completing ignoring the fact that they made decisions that they wanted to at the time because they wanted to? She is thinking she wasted her youth. I was slightly younger than you when I divorced and it was the best decision I ever made. Like others have said, there are just somethings that cant be unheard. It sucks but some things you just cant take back. Then she shouldnt be afraid to talk to her husband of 20 years about her needs. If she's thinking about this now and saying it within your earshot there's obviously a problem here you're not mentionning. (I know these are broad generalizations and they dont apply to everyone, but we have tropes for a reason). OP probably figure there was an underlying reason for the rejection. In short, the OPs feelings are valid, but his actions are pretty immature. Being on and off with someone has a lot of heat even though it is unhealthy. Nope. Happens all the time. Its no wonder she talks to her girl friends instead of OP about it because he flies off the handle and divorces her at the sound of overhearing one sentence he didnt like to hear. So let me talk about how thats how a felt a long time ago, how it isnt the way I feel now, how it was all quite reasonable now that I know my words cut you so deeply you are leaving me. But please feel free to try. It's your life, and although you can't pick the cards you are dealt, it's up to you to play them the best you can. Yeah, that type of conversation would hurt to hear, but to refuse to listen to what she has to say about the conversation is a cop out. You can end your marriage for any reason or no reason at all*, but no one should expect the other person to have zero feelings regardless of who said what. Regardless of how she meant it, what she said was really hurtful. Based on their ages, is it possible they married relatively young and then stayed together for their kids and now that the kids are adults they realize theres no love and affection in their relationship anymore? She lied because she loved you. It doesn't make sense. Ive been with my partner for over 15 years now and if I caught wind of the idea that they were pining over someone else, Id be outta here. Reactivity? So, okay. What caused that powder keg? Best of luck OP! So, it is no surprise that OP probably has also wanted a leave his wife subconsciously and is finding a reason for it. The whole marriage was built on falsities. I've been married for 16 years and my husband is MY PERSON, my best friend, the dude that I look forward to sharing every damn day and can't wait to see or talk to him to tell him how my day was or listen to his. Yeah other than eavesdropping on half of a private conversation she was having? that doesnt sound very isolated. They dont have to spend the rest of their life with her. Maybe you both will be better off apart, the grass is always greener on the other side and I think that applies to both people here. She pines for younger days without kids where theres a new relationship spark. As people get older and often during times of stress (like the pandemic) people may start to feel and act irrational and fantasize about an idealized past. Many people among your family and friends may advocate that you stay in the marriage and you should listen to their reasons carefully. If you know, you know but give yourself a chance at the easy way out, sometimes it's the best way too. The real bitch is that this could very much be a grass is greener problem. You aren't leaving her because of this one comment you overheard. You've mentioned multiple times being free and wanting to do things you were kept from doing while in the marriage. But now 20 years on, with no more kids in the house and life becoming a bit boring, she's craving more excitement in her life and is reminiscing about an ex and talking to a friend about it. I found out that my wife is telling her friends about our private life, including details of our sex life, and even our infrequent arguments. What does a woman have to do to her husband in this sub for people to not make stupid af comments like this defending it? Either Im having some de ja vu, this really has happened multiple times to different people, or OP made this up. get your ducks in a row OP, and she is probably only romanticising her past with him, she's looking at it with rose tinted glasses, because that thing her and tom had didnt sound good, he sounded like a fuckboy. If you want a divorce, more power to you. Was the message just verbatim "I feel like i settled for him i love him but he doesn't excite me the way Tom did.
You would probably break down, I know I would. Before you go through with it, talk to her, and get some counseling together. Just man up and admit this is what you really want. This is along the lines of what I tend to think. You can walk away just as easily six months from now as you could two weeks from now. Maybe a light and a tunnel you never wanted. I dont blame you for being hurt down to the core. Honesty is key.
We all have intruding thoughts and sometimes the best way to deal with those is by talking them out with someone you trust. So it makes me wonder if a lot of miscommunication has to do with the fact that the signal-to-noise ratio for the sexes is different and how likely it is that any one statement will lead to some action beyond venting. The fact she is bringing up 20+ year old ex's in conversations is very worrying. I've never made a choice in my freaking life I didn't doubt at some point! I know it sounds crazy, but in that moment I knew it was over. "It's not what it looks like." All of it. I think the vast majority of people have said something to a friend that they didn't really mean. It might have been a comment. I see some absolute total dickfaces while poking around the internet, but I never thought about that being their real face. That's how I took it exactly. This was just what he needed to get away for good so any reasonable answer wont sound good to him now. Then, he shows up one day as a 40 something year old to get a hair cut, and she doesn't even recognize him.. she just stares at her picture of him from their teens as he arrives, she cuts his hair, and he leaves. I was with my boyfriend for 2 years until he started saying the same shit, I was just blind to his bs & left him even though everyone told me not to. If youve been unaware for 20 years, there seems to be a gap in communications. Fuck her. It doesn't take someone who has live many years to see the wife's bs in this story. Dead bedroom and she wouldn't talk about it. Ive gotten backlash on this sub twice now that resulted in me being personally insulted and DMd terrible things. I feel like there has to be more to this than her comments. Hey Im curious - how have you extrapolated that all he cares about is feeling like hes above her? Exactly, people invest more and more (emotionally, socially, financial, etc) into a relationship and ending it can become more daunting the longer youre in it.
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