For the Men- staying vs leaving

Baza
held a view as a young bloke that I would "never cheat or divorce" (this being from the position of not even being married at the time !!)

I had the same belief as a younger person and to some extent still do. Couple that to a sense of my internal responsibility towards others  and most people can see my stumbling block to moving on.  Maybe I am just a "guilt king."

I also thought if I had a major medical issue I would want to not be tied in a baron marriage. Well I have the medical issues but now feel like I need to keep calm to save myself.

For a while I was looking for a different place to live but the costs of the real-estate seemed high.

A long time ago I read that many or some men don't leave a marriage until they figure out the path to a new potential lover. That new person seems to show up several times in this thread.

tyler74, it’s an axiom in business that you can’t expect to get a better position until you’ve trained a replacement. It sounds like the concept applies here too.

Perhaps, knowing your desire / intent, you should be focusing on how you can become replaceable - whether that means training your wife, or documenting your processes so cleanly that someone experienced can easily help her pick up the pieces. Whether you leave by choice or get hit by a bus, it’s something she will need.

This hits a hot button because I am quite literally playing that role for someone this month - he depended on his longtime girlfriend to handle all the details of his business and finances; one day, he came home and she had left without notice (and for good reason). It went very badly for him because she didn’t make the transition easy. (No theft, just a lot of “How the hell does this work, what needs to be paid and when, and where does the money come from?”)

If you know the "why," you can endure many a "what." I had hope things would get better. It was a false hope.

So, these are the factors that got me to leave.
1) The realization that she was never going to want me sexually.
2) The realization that she had no concerns about my feelings, desires, or discomfort.
3) The realization that I was attractive to other women. I just wasn't attractive to my wife.

With this, my hope for the marriage died. I was never loved back by her, and never would be. Once the false hope was gone, I could have hope elsewhere.

should somebody arrive that I could love as much as my wife, yet show me some appreciation (sexually) for all that I do (I do a lot), then I will be off.

Well, there's the trick, isn't it?

Unpacking the statement, it shows several thoughts that are common to people stuck in the gutter.

1. "should somebody arrive that I could love as much as my wife" for example.

What's framed is your love for your wife, but not mutual love, or at least the same kind of love. It's perfectly normal to have unrequited love, and this would be a poor prescription for a marriage. Most celibate marriages have arrived at a point where either they never achieved liftoff, or somewhere years back, one of them decidedly fell out of love, but was held in place by the other elements of marriage.

Framing it this way, as many do, people go on to replicate the same mistakes in subsequent relationships. A successful marriage generally involves two people loving each other in a similar way, and the likelihood of reciprocation has no sense of cosmic justice, based on how hard you work or what you deserve, based on what you'll endure to prove your love. No amount of appreciation will happen when your partner DOES NOT see you as a sexual partner. No amount of sex with someone you don't want, is too little.

2. The second common mistake I see is the "switching from one horse to another while riding" trope.  The way we are with one partner might be quite different from the way we are with another. Meet an adventurous person, for example, and suddenly you are out skydiving or scuba diving, or on the way to Peru. Meet a family-oriented person if you came from a dysfunctional family, and suddenly you are eagerly looking forward to hordes of people and how you will bake the yams for Thanksgiving dinner, when before you dreaded it.  

But there's also - who are you as a person - irrespective of a partner. We all have a duty to ourselves to be interesting people and to see who we are at a baseline, when not adapting to another person's agenda. It's important to set that baseline before cannonballing into a new relationship so that you know who you are and what your limits are - when to pull the plug.

For example, when I was dating quite a few women, getting my bearings, I often secretly weighed my time out with company against the same time and money spent with my children, or alone, playing videogames, or pursuing  a solo interest. If I found that my time with a date came up consistently short, I would cut bait, rather than continuing on with the assumption that I was "applying for a relationship" with them. I surprised several women who had assumed my affection and felt they were holding all the cards. This was important personal growth, because the old married me would have continued supplicating and compromising until I had nothing I wanted and no personal credibility left. I learned intrinsic, principled limits, standards and boundaries that were not solely set by "what the market would bear".

3. The idea that you would shift only when someone you love more comes along. This "Darwin's Law" idea is based on the faulty premise that you need someone, however unsuitable, beside you. The presence of another candidate has nothing much really to do with the unsuitability and misery of your present partner. Even if you were to have an affair while in your present engagement - the way people show up when conducting an affair is different from how they present when fully available and single. And, in an affair situation, your suitability to the affair partner might be contingent upon your unavailability. Why? Because there are fewer misconceptions then about  the upper limits of the relationship. Sometimes people don't want the whole thing. Sometimes people want a relationship that is limited to a narrow range of exploration. A married person can be attractive to someone who doesn't want to feel badly about not wanting to spend a lot of time or personal investment to get the romantic and sexual excitement or intimacy they want. If you were to become single again and available all the time, suddenly your value drops, in that circumstance. At least, it's like starting again in a different context.

To say nothing of the unsuitability of you as a partner - when you have all that baggage - to an otherwise viable prospective partner. It's a jungle out there. Why wouldn't they just choose someone else who is single or not mired in the middle of a new separation?

Now I have left, and looking back with fresh eyes, and fresh mind, having used every excuse (reason) in the book - I finally loved myself enough to leave.

This is true! I remember quoting numerous times when I found myself thinking/saying about my now ex" thank you for CONFIRMING my choice to leave. I made the right choice"

I now, marvel at the attitude,actions,and choices that my new partner makes, that would have been unheard of by my ex! And I, the fool and duped co dependent, giver that I was, allowed it to continue for far too long.