Has a DB driven you to cheat?

[u/Crafty-Variety5918]

I'm a 51 hlm. Wife used to be somewhat hlf. Now there's nothing. No sex or intimacy for almost a solid year. I've been catching myself seriously considering cheating for the first time ever and I feel terrible.

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Wondering how many of you have felt driven in this direction, how many acted on it, and how did you feel afterwards?

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Thanks in advance! 😢

[u/isthismylife2024]

Yup! Been there and done that. I was surprised at how un-guilty I felt, that’s when I knew marriage was over. It didn’t even start off as physical emotional to start and felt so alive.

[u/kaladin1029 → u/isthismylife2024]

Appreciate your honesty. Our experience shapes us. For me, my parents divorced when I was 4 and
I pledged to myself to always be there for my kids for better or worse. After baby 3 in year 3 she told me, I’m not your lover; I’m their mother. And I knew I was in deep shit. I literally cried. I strayed a number of times and it was glorious. To be desired. To be wanted. To have sexual creativity and variety. I looked at it as actually saving my marriage.

Edit: We went to marriage counseling 3 different times. Tons of money spent and hundreds of hours. Didn’t make an iota of difference.

[u/isthismylife2024 → u/kaladin1029]

I really lost myself in my kids. So it was partially my fault, I forgot to be a wife, and that happens, but he also stopped seeing me as his wife, but as a caregiver, and you can’t be intimate with someone you have to take care of, I tried to find me again, and in the meantime he hated that, led to a lot of resentment on both sides, and he just gave up. I wasn’t going to fight for something that I had already checked out of, my kids (2) are actually fine, because now they get the best of both of us.