A
male
age
41-50,
*ave5878
writes:I am concerned that since we got married that things have changed. Things aren’t the same as they were before. I don’t feel like a wife, I don’t feel special, I feel like a roommate. I can’t really pinpoint any specific thing that may have changed, it’s just the way I’m feeling about our relationship. I don’t feel like I’m important, and I know I haven’t always treated my husband with the utmost importance either, but it almost seems that since we’ve been married that our connection with each other has drastically dropped. It’s like we have totally drifted apart. It’s almost like we’re not really a couple any more, we’re not a team. We almost do more things apart from each other than we do with each other. We spend a lot of time together sure but it’s usually on the couch watching movies or tv. We do a few activities together, like this summer we did go rafting a couple times, and gopher hunting a few times and camping once or twice. But we did a lot of things without each other too. Like I went hiking with my family the Sunday before Canada Day, which we had planned for months and I came down to my family’s house by myself. There was also the airshow , which we knew about for 3 weeks and I came down for that by myself too. I know we had 2 weddings this summer and my husband came to both but the one we had to take a week off and travel 15 hours to get there but I knew my husband would enjoy it because it was in the Mountains and he grew up in the mountains, not those ones but anyways, I knew my husband could keep busy there which I know he likes because he gets bored really easily just sitting around in places he’s not really comfortable with so with all the activity of the wedding and the gorgeous surroundings I knew my husband would like going there. With the other wedding it was purely just to hang out with the family because we aren’t really that close to the bride or groom, so that was just going to have a good time with the family pretty much.I just didn’t think being married was going to be like this. I knew there was going to be tough times, there is in any kind of relationship but I thought I would be happier. I know I used to be happy with my husband, I know it’s possible, because it’s happened. I wish we could get back to that. I’m not sure what exactly has happened, I just know the way I’m feeling. And I know I’m not perfect, I’m far from it, but I know this is not how I want our relationship, marriage, to be. I’m not happy and I doubt my husband is truly happy, because we both knew something is wrong, I just couldn’t face it that I wasn’t feeling the same way about my husband as he was about me. I thought maybe it was just a phase and that it would go away, but it hasn’t and now I’ve made a huge mistake by making out with another man. I know this is a HUGE mistake and I should’ve brought the way I was feeling up before I went and did something stupid. I know there is no excuse for it but I was upset and then I got drunk which is the dumbest thing to do when you’re upset and sad and I made a huge mistake. I know that and I know I’ve really hurt our relationship by doing that. I can’t erase what I’ve done and I apologize more deeply than I can even express for the amount of hurt I’ve put on my husband because I did that, and I know that’s why my husband is having such a hard time seeing some of the things I’m trying to talk to him about because he’s totally pissed at me for cheating on him. I love my husband and I want this to work if it can. I want us to work hard and work together on making our relationship work, if its salvageable, maybe its not. Maybe I wrecked it by making a mistake, maybe I waited too long to bring up the fact that I don’t feel the same way any more. Maybe if I admitted sooner that we weren’t working we could’ve fixed it, or broken up without making a huge mess of it like this. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m really sorry for husband and for waiting as long as I did to tell him how I was feeling and for making such a stupid mistake. I love my husband and if we’re meant to be together I know we can get through this eventually and we’ll be stronger because of it, eventually I guess. I know it’s going to be a long time before my husband ever trusts me again, but if we’re together that’s just something I’m going to have to live with because of my mistake. I don’t know how to fix this, I don’t know how to make my husband feel better. I don’t know how to make myself feel better. I’m at a loss as to what to do from this point, it’s very hard and I know it’s gonna be that way for a while.
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, Tisha-1  +, writes (8 September 2008):
 Hi, you've learned the hard way that getting married doesn't automatically mean that you'll live happily ever after. Marriage is hard work, really and truly work, but I think it's possible for it to be joyful and fun work.
Moving in together takes some of the romance and giddiness out of the relationship, doesn't it, because you have bills to pay, and mundane and boring household chores and errands to run, dry cleaning to pick up and drop off, and meals to prepare, all the little tedious minutiae of life to plod through. It is very easy to let it turn into a roommate situation, especially if one partner suddenly lets go of his end of the bargain by not working on keeping the 'spark' alive.
I detect an underlying resentment in your post, that you don't feel important because he's not making you feel special. Yes, you were the one who made the mistake of making out with another man. Did you sleep with the other man, or was it just a drunken make-out session? I think there's actually room for forgiveness in either scenario, but it is up to the wounded party to make the effort to allow himself to be 'healed' so to speak. So I think you subconsciously put yourself in a position to kiss this other man as a way of expressing this hidden anger, to hurt your husband and hit him where it counts. It's obviously backfired on you, as you must have known it would, but I think you were trying to shake him out of his complacency in the relationship. Sometimes we cut off our nose to spite our face, don't we? And whatever reaction you were hoping for from your husband didn't really happen, did it?
At least now you can start working on the relationship again, instead of letting it slide along and growing further apart. The thing is that he has to be willing and committed to making it work too.
So that's what you need to establish, to find out from him, is he willing to put in the effort to make it work? And to put in the effort that he's going to need to find a way to forgive you? Because if he's not committed to this process, there's no way you can do this by yourself. So if I were you, I'd start from this point, and try to find this out from him. If he's not ready to make it work, then give it up as a lost cause.
But if he is, if you two can remember why you got married in the first place, then you need to haul out every single tool in the marriage-repair shed and put them to use.
Marriage counseling, individual counseling, self-discovery, self-sacrifice, patience, giving and forgiving.
It's going to be work, and it may be painful at times, as you find out things about each other and yourselves that you might have preferred to keep under wraps or just ignore forever. But that time has passed and you don't have the luxury of pretending everything is okay as it was, because it clearly was not.
The thing that's going to be difficult to grasp is that he has to work just as hard as you at fixing this. Even though you were the one who cheated, he doesn't get the easy ride on this. So he has to understand this and accept it in order for you two to get on with fixing what's gone wrong.
There's nothing stopping you from making an appointment with a marriage counselor, and I suggest you go ahead and do that. Even if you can't work things out with your husband, at least you'll be aware of the pitfalls for your next relationship and identify some of the patterns of behavior on your part that led to the problems within the marriage.
Again, my guess is that you were secretly angry with him for how things were going in the marriage and acted out in a very inappropriate way rather than tackle it head on. Now you realize that you should have tried to talk with him about it, you've lost his trust in you and it's going to be that much harder to set things to rights.
But I think this is doable. I think you can take what happened and work on what caused it and make your marriage work. You'll need to learn communication skills and develop patience and understanding and learn to spot trouble before it becomes a major issue.
So, get that appointment with a marriage counselor. Talk with your husband about your commitment to making things work, and see if he's on board with this or not. Those are really your only options if you want this to succeed. You can't plod along with things the way they are now, things will just be more toxic and poisonous and you will wind up a year from now no better off than you are right now.
Time to pull out all the stops!
Good luck.
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