However. As wonderful as the holiday was, it was a holiday as friends. We decided on Wednesday 27th September, less than three weeks before we were due to go away, that we would split up. We hadn't had sex for over two weeks and when he suggested it that evening in the same manner as if he was asking me what we were going to have for dinner, something inside me finally realised - I'm tired. He's not going to change. I cannot change him. I cannot keep going round in these circles. I told him I was having doubts. He told me that we'd promised ourselves we wouldn't do this again. It was sad, but we'd tried and it hadn't worked. We were done.
I was tired of trying to change him when he simply can't, for whatever reason, be changed. He will never meet my needs sexually. I knew that then. At that moment. The realisation just hit me. When he suggested we have sex that Wednesday evening, so matter-of-factly, as if it was something to tick off a list, I just couldn't go through with it. Despite the fact he knew how much it meant to me, how upset it made me and how much I desperately want us to have a good sex life (which might even lead to children) - he just couldn't do anything about it. He'd had days off work in the week, when I wasn't around, and he spent them watching old films, sleeping and playing games on his phone. He didn't spend them reading the counsellor recommended book, or any other book on the subject, or doing any research about his lack of libido and lack of experience. He'd never even tried to put into practice anything in the book. And I was tired of talking about it. Tired of trying to make him see my point of view. Tired of trying to make him change.
The rose tinted glasses from summer had definitely come off and we were suddenly brought screechingly back to where we were. Where we were a year ago. A year. He was still only a third of the way through said recommended book that had arrived in the first week of August (i.e. six weeks previously). He hadn't seen the counsellor again since the one and only appointment in July. And I was tired. I absolutely could not do it anymore. And I know I've said that before but something definitively shifted. The penny finally dropped that he was not going to change no matter what I did or said. And I couldn't spend the rest of my life wondering 'what if'.
He's found somewhere else to live and is moving out this Saturday (4th Nov), still local which should be lovely. We will remain friends, I know we will. To be honest that is all we've been for a while now. The Wednesday night was horrible. After the discussion we spent the evening in different rooms. We looked at cancelling the holiday but it was too late, I looked at someone else to go with but there was no one that could. The next day he said that he'd changed his mind and actually he'd like to come. When I asked why he said it was because it was unlikely he'd be able to go away anywhere again in the near future. Which is true, and it's true for me too. We honeymooned in Mexico, it somehow seemed fitting that that was also the location of the holiday which was to be the end of our married life together.
We're absolutely not talking about divorce, there's no reason to go down that road really, it's just a different chapter. Once the initial hurt had passed there was no further atmosphere at home, it was lovely. It really was. As if we could stop trying to force the relationship to be something it wasn't, stop trying to force-fit something that just wouldn't go and that pressure just lifted. We were like two mates. Really good mates. We'd laugh and joke, we divided up the furniture and talked about me helping him financially with the new place. It was all incredibly amicable. Like a weight had been lifted and neither of us had to force things or desperately try and fix something that I think, deep down, we both knew couldn't be fixed.
He said he'd thought it was inevitable. That actually, even though my flat was on the market and we'd looked at houses, that he couldn't see us living in one. For whatever reason. That it was just never going to work. And the fact we have both accepted that now and can relax (if that's the right word?!) has been brilliant. We've been out for dinner since we decided to split, we still talk frequently during the working day, we've discussed going on holiday again in the future together and going out for dinner at least once a month to catch up - we still get on so well. On holiday we were perfectly happy being naked around each other, coating each other in cocoa butter at the end of every day (and yet still nothing........) and we still hug and kiss on the lips, hold hands and snuggle on the sofa watching TV. So we're probably in some limbo that's unique to us. More than friends but not quite boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife. I don't expect people to understand that, that's fine, my family are struggling to understand. But we know, we get it and are sure of exactly where we stand with each other and that's all that matters.
It's just sad. So unbelievably, gut wrenchingly, painfully, excruciatingly sad. And it fucking hurts. Like. HELL. I'm mourning the end of my marriage, mourning the future I thought we had that is now no longer there. I am not mourning him tho, I know I will not lose him. It will be strange not seeing him every day, that will take a lot of getting used to, but he will still be in my life. I am sure of that. Our relationship is just a different one now. One of friendship. Good friendship, amazingly spectacularly close friendship - but no more than that.
Family have been told. Friends are in the process of being told as and when it's appropriate. So there you go. The end of an era. I'm single again at 38. Onwards.
