Grew up TBM in Utah and when I got into High School dated just one person the entire time. Of course when I turned 19 I left on my mission. While I was gone my girlfriend dated and made out with a lot of people. Anyway, the minute I returned from my mission she was ready to get married. I was so horny from not being with anyone for two years that I quickly forgave her and got married around three months later. Afterall, we are counseled to find are future wife quickly right. Well, I don't think this was the best advice and I should have dated others(I guess this is the churches stance as well). I now feel really resentful and jealous that I was not able to have the same experience my wife had during college. I seriously had little fun from the time I hit 18 years old. All work and college and having children finding my career. Fastforward another 16 years. I am 34 and I feel like I am having a midlife crisis. Severely depressed and starting feel old and boring. No friends or hobbies. It has always been about my wife and kids. Go to work come home go to work and come home. The same cycle over and over. I have been working out and getting in shape. Which makes me feel a lot better. Anyway, I my wife who is TBM is actully a really great person, and she respects my disbelief in the church. She still wants me to be fully active however. Anyway, I have this desire to be with or experience a relationship with other women. I feel horrible that I lost my youth and married so young, and did not party more when I was younger. I was thinking that maybe I would try and have an affair and get it out of my system. Find someone who wanted to have a little fun on the side for a few months. Am I crazy to even consider this? It might be hard to accomplish this living in Utah County. I was going to try out something like Ashley Madison. I really don't want a divorice at this time. Just the experience of something else Just wanted some advice before I dive into this. I think it might help me break up my depression.

Wow - i'm no marriage counsellor but it doesn't sound right to me.
You say 'I really don't want a divorce at this time'. Could it be you think the right time is once your wife finds out.
I'm not sure I really understand your feelings for your wife. If you love her, you wouldn't be thinking like this. What about your children? What will they think of you (now or later) when they find out.
I feel there is more to lose than gain.
Sorry, but Joseph Smith jumps to mind!!!
This is just my opinion. Sorry if I've offended you.

Don't go riding on a new filly,,if you got a filly in the corral. You made choices and so did she. What if she got a boyfriend?

Thanks for your comments. Just wanted some other viewpoing advice. Does everyone think this way. I guess my logic is way screwed up

I understand where you're coming from, but it does seem like a bad idea. I've read countless stories of people whose spouse's belief causes a lot of friction and heartache and yours is cool with your unbelief. You're pretty lucky. Also, she probably doesn't think about all those people she made out with very much. I made out with a bunch of people when I was younger but didn't have sex with them and sometimes wish I had, but not enough to want to cheat on my wife. She probably values the security of your relationship more than some lame flings she had in college.

I think in the long run you're better off to be grateful for what you have and focus on that.

My 2 cents

I fully appreciate what you're feeling: losing out on truly liberating experiences you could have had as a younger man, instead of wasting the best years of your life serving what you now realize is nothing but a damnable cult.

Sadly, those years/opportunities are gone, for good. You can never really go back to anything in life. Trying to relive your youth cannot be done. That's a stage of life that is gone, you had what you had, you now have the present and that's where you must live.

Levinson's book "Seasons of a Man's Life"
(http://www.amazon.com/Seasons-Mans-Life-Daniel-Levinson/dp/0345339010/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1287320214&sr=8-2)
was extremely helpful in helping me realize my life's focus must ever be in the here and now.

Your 'mid-life crisis' (or 'seven year itch') is pretty common, but I urge you not to give into it. It carries the seeds of great heartache and destruction into a circle of loved ones who certainly do not deserve it. Your wife, even though TBM, deserves your honesty, commitment and integrity. To be happy your life must follow those principles.

If you are now a non-believer, but are still attending church under false pretenses, then that's an area of dishonesty on your part. Dishonesty breeds more dishonesty. Please consider stopping all dishonesty here and now - starting with your participation in TSCC.

Once that is under your belt then address what will be a changed marrage relationship. Hopefully your marriage will not only survive, but you may even be so fortunate as to bring all your family out.

Having a loving family united in common beliefs and goals is a precious thing. I urge you to make that your goal, and not try to relive a youth that cannot be revisited.
Good luck to you.

Here are a couple of thoughts:

1. She respects your disbelief but wants you to be fully active. So, she expects you to lie about who you really are? That's kind of soul crushing right there. How about a compromise - church every other weekend? Dad weekends could focus on other activites that YOU feel are important to the family.

2. Instead of going behind her back, how about planning an "affair" with her? Plan a secret get-away to strengthen your relationship. Enlist the help of family or friends to watch the kids and whisk her away for a few days to just focus on you. Go to Victoria's Secret, but some sexy undies, get some help packing her stuff, and just go have a "fling" with the woman you know, love, and trust. You might be amazed at the impact something like that has on your love life.

You say you don't want your marriage to end, and you love your wife, and she's a great person.

But then,

You want to step out on her because you didn't get to date other people as a teenager/young adult?

You are trying to figure out whether it's okay to be a cheater if there's some unfulfilled aspect of your young adult life?

We all missed out on "living life" to some degree in consequence of being raised in and obedient to the church. That's no excuse for childishly fucking up our lives and the lives of our partners now. Past wrongs against us by a culture, an organization, our families, or others, in no way excuse or legitimize dishonesty or cheating by us right now. The fact that your wife dated others while you were on your mission in no way legitimizes or excuses cheating right now on your part.

Considering that you seem to really be concerned with this enough to bring it to a forum for feedback, I'm guessing that you need some help working through these issues (we all do at times). You might find a good non-LDS counselor to help you focus more on living a fulfilling life now, instead of trying to live a different life that has been irretrievably lost in time.

By having an affair you would be teaching your sons that this is how they should treat the women in their lives. By having an affair you would be teaching your daughters that this is how they should expect to be treated by men. Is this what you want to do? Is this the message you want to send to your kids?

If you really want to screw around then have the decency to get divorced first. And enjoy doing that while you're forking out alimony, child support for multiple kids, the mortgage on the house, rent on your new place, etc.

My advice? Talk to your wife. Tell her that you feel like you're in a rut and would like to develop some new interests *with her*. If she's not up for that then say that you need to go ahead and do this without her, but that you'd prefer to do it with her. And when you do develop your interests *tell her about them*: "Say, honey, you'll never guess what I learned today about X." By keeping her updated about what you're doing you'll be involving her indirectly and she'll see your new interests/activities as less of a threat. And you never know, she may be feeling deprived, too. But you won't know until you talk to her.

If you cheat on her now, she will never respect you again. The bond will be broken. If you just "want to have sex to have sex" with someone else, then divorce her and move on...But the grass in never as green as you think it is..Once you lose her trust, you lose it from your kids/family/members/ associates. No one will ever look at you the same way again...

I had similar feelings, but I was a little older. I was so angry that I "jumped" into things because of the church. There were so many things that I could have, and maybe should have done before settling down on the mormon track.

Luckily I had a few days of quiet time to really reflect on who I was and what I wanted. It is so easy to make a knee-jerk reaction to things when we find that we have suddenly gone through the transformation of no longer being a believer. The pain and unsettling feeling of having our world view pulled away from us, and the sudden reaction by our inner being too protect and preserve ourselves can cause us to make hasty and unwise decisions.

For me I was able to remember the feelings and thoughts I had when I married. She was a good woman then, a good friend, had fun together, and we were interested in being a good team from the start. So I weighed the evidence. Was it a good choice that I made at the time, or wasn't it? What things matter and what things don't (for me)? Did the choice I made then really have anything to do with what experiences I didn't have? Were the experience I had as a consequence of earlier choices and from that point forward of any value? Are the feelings to run away from what I had always considered good, as response to the fraud, what I really wanted? Or were they a fulfillment of my psyche trying to balance consistant in my former world view (mormonism says that if you fall away, that is exactly what you will do)? Was I still believing in the fraud deep inside and forcing the end game accordingly?

For me I decided to completely reject the fraudulent and imaginary worldview of mormonism. I then decided to honor, in good faith, the decisions I had made. I decided that those were really my choices, that I made with the information I had at the time, and were made in good faith, and were not choices made by mormonism. I then decided to see what I could forge to make those decisions better as I move into the future. I took ownership and rejected the teachings of a false master.

So good luck to you. You might decide differently, but I hope you choose to make of your world what is best for you now and into the future and find the peace of heart that you are seeking.

If you want to screw around you should be free to screw around first.

If you love your wife and kids you know that they don't deserve to be screwed like that.

Please don't screw up your life.

If you think you are depressed now you will be more depressed if you do this. Don't know the age of your kids but if any are near teen yrs. and they find out, you will not have the same kind of love from them. Don't do it. If you are out of love with your spouse, leave her first...even a separation... with the understanding you will not be sitting at home or be a couch potato. You plan to experience life in ways you didn't from- 19-34. Let your wife decide if this is acceptable to her.

Seriously, you could bring home diseases to her and from the sound of it you do not wish her harm. It is a bad idea... but staying in this marriage may also be a bad idea. The ball is in your court. Search your soul as to what you need... more love from your wife or affairs. If you really want affairs then do it away from your marriage bed. Leave and you will know soon enough if you have made a big mistake or perhaps it will allow you to face the fact you don't want to be married.

This is a terrible idea. You will seriously hurt her and permanently damage your relationship. She may never trust you again, and with good cause.

If you want out of your marriage, fine. If you are unsure of your marriage, get counseling. If you are sexually dissatisfied, talk to your wife about making things more interesting.

If you are just an idiot, well then Heaven help you, because this in an idiotic plan.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2010 10:54AM by axeldc.

If I understand you correctly, you feel resentful that your wife was able to play the field and have a good time while you were slogging along on a mission. Then she got the fairy tale Mormon wedding when you got home, so she got the best of both worlds. Was she committed to you while you were on the mission? You mentioned that you forgave her, so I'm assuming she was. You paid the price, while she did not and got everything she wanted while you didn't.

Well, I think this is more about resentment than about sex, though sex is definitely part of it, but that need is amplified by the resentment. I think you should figure out how you're going to deal with the resentment first. Ignore all the people trying to put you on a guilt trip for doing the right thing and regretting it, because that will only make it worse. I think you're still trying to do the right thing, or else you would have cheated already, and this thing has grown until it's unmanageable.

I suggest you get some kind of counselling. Talk to someone who will allow you to express the injustice you feel and help you come to an honorable solution. This feeling isn't going to go away, and it's going to consume you until you try to work through it.

Best wishes to you.

Your feelings are very legitimate, however I think you're somewhat blaming your wife for things that are not her fault. You resent her for having experiences you didn't get a chance to have due to your own choices. You see the church as having taken away all those potential experiences and right now are only focused on the sexual repression you've gone through. There are many areas of life you didn't get to experience besides multiple sex partners; those experiences are still things you can seek for without hurting the people around you.

Go redefine yourself, get a divorce if that's what it takes, but if you cheat on your wife you will find yourself paying for that mistake for the rest of your life.

That is the only place you will find peace is in the NOW.
You can't redo the past.

I have a suggestion: make a list of everything you are grateful for, then ..... be grateful! :-)

Not having FUN? Then have more FUN with with those kids and your wife. That is the greatest fulfillment and FUN there is. You do that.

There are no fantasy pasts, fantasy parents, wives, children, siblings, etc.

What you are thinking of doing is the best way to destroy everything you have. I don't think you want to do that.

Time to stop feeling sorry for yourself, the pity party is over. You are not a teenager anymore.

Tell your wife and kids how much you love them, and be appreciative of what joy and FUN they bring to your life.
You'll be so busy enjoying them, you won't have time to think about an imaginary teenage life. You'll be filled with everything they give back. There will be no emptiness.

Live as if today was the last day of your life with full appreciation and love for everything you have.
Life is very, very short.
I'm grateful everyday I wake up that I have one more day to enjoy with love and laughter.

Now, go Do It! :-)

If you get it taken care of, you will be far less likely to use such bad judgment.

Living a lie by going to church is probably part of it, but there may be many other reasons. Ex mormons aren't the only ones who get depressed.

Get a checkup, find a counselor, try anti depressants. All those will help you deal with yourself better than cheating, and they won't give you STDs.

And if you think a counselor is too expensive, compare it to the cost of divorce, especially the cost to your kids.

I agree with a lot of what has already been said. I've been the victim of a cheating partner. I don't know why so many people can casually cheat and find all kinds of ways to rationalize it, as if it's no big deal, because it's very far from a trivial matter. In my case, it's been one of the most traumatic things I've ever been through. I've been through a lot of things in my life, things that you would expect to be a lot more damaging than infidelity, but I think about that betrayal more than I think about being held at gunpoint during a robbery, more than I think about being sexually assaulted, more than *almost* anything else that has ever happened to me.

It's not a trivial matter. It's one of the most abusive things you can do to someone. I'm assuming you're just unaware of how badly it can wound the other person . . . I'm not calling you an abuser NOW. But if you do this thing, you might as well be a wife-beater. It's really that serious. Just don't do it. Don't even think about it anymore.

I just read all of the responses and as far as I can tell, no one thought it was a good idea. In fact, WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING!!! Wah, wah, wah. Do you want some cheese with that wHine?

As I read this, I am finding that I am getting a little angry. Can you tell? If you want to go screw someone else, get a divorce. If you have your dream affair that you are so fantasizing about, you not only betray your wife AND your children, but most of all yourself. IT IS NEVER OKAY TO BE UNFAITHFUL!! NEVER!! I don't care if you're married to the Wicked Witch of the West. I don't care if you never, ever, have sex.

The problem is, you. You are bored, because you are boring. My ex told my daughter when she was having some problems in her marriage. "The grass isn't always greener. I was just bored and mostly with myself. It was the biggest mistake of my life. Go home to your husband."

Take your wife somewhere today. Go on a hike, walk or a drive. Treat her like your girlfriend. You will reap what you sow.

End of rant.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2010 11:37AM by janeaubrey7.

Given your feelings for her, the affair won't be as good as your wife. The person you may have an affair with will be bitchier, and will likely be demanding, controlling, emasculating. Also, keep in mind that there's lots of guys waiting for someone like your current wife. Want to experience 'different' partners? Role-play...

I guess I'll give you my 2 cents. All points above are valid and correct -- another reason to remain faithful: Don't give the Church ammunition to use you as a poster child for "apostate behavior".

I'm impressed reading up on Pat Tillman. Imagine that ... an atheist who was faithful to his wife! The key with him I think was a sense of virtue (which I think was a greco-roman warrior virtue; he was a tough, righteous ATHEIST). This was his moral code. Now that you lost the LDS moral code, you must develop one or you will screw up your life.

Good luck friend.

Your feelings are understandable.
At age 34, you may well be looking at another 66 years of breathing, you are much too young to feel buried alive.

What you are saying is that you wish you had had more sexual expweriences before settling down but you really do not want to get divorced.

An affair is not the answer, since it would have involve too much emtional investment and could result in never-ending problems.

The solution is fairly simply - drive down to Nevada where prostitution is legal, have safe sex with as many professionals as you want, and get it out of your system.

Using paid services of is not necessarily "bad" in your situation. Just be discreet about it.

>No friends or hobbies

Then maybe it is time to get a hobby or two? Friends can be found through hobbies.

It sounds like you need to spice up the sex life with the wife. Will she go to an adult store with you? Some TBM's will. Or at least Spencers? Take your sex life with her to a new level of kinky.

Either get a divorce or live the life you created. It was, after all, *your* choice to get married.

Or, get online and compete with all the other millions of whiny bitches who don't want to take responsibility for their choices, thinking maybe there's some hot supermodel out there waiting to make all their dreams come true. There are plenty of women so desperate for a man that they'll take whatever they can get.

I can't even tell you how sleazy that is.

Everyone has things that they would change if they had it to do over again. If I were somehow magically transported back to be my eighteen-year-old self, I would go to the same college, but choose a different major. I would join a sorority. I would study abroad. I would put more into my studies and party less. I would not date some guys that I dated and I would date others that I turned down.

I would choose differently now because I would be choosing with the benefit of experience. I didn't have that back then. I did the best I could under the circumstances. And so did you.

Quit beating yourself up over it. I can tell you that dating does get old after a while. You tell your story over and over again to complete strangers. Does that sound like fun? You could search for many years and not find anyone as compatible with you as your wife is right now.

The stage you are in right now is not at all unusual. If you can find a way to work through it, as others have, I think you will find the long-term rewards to be very worthwhile.

You *will* need a way to inject some interest into your life. Plan activities with your family, such as hiking. Take the occasional weekend away with your wife. I also think it is a good thing to go off on your own on occasion, and ditto for your wife. Everyone needs change and variety, as well as something to look forward to.

Your wife may feel as stuck in a rut as you are. Working, raising kids, and keeping up with church activities is very, very draining. She may be hoping she gets to escape it someday.

I agree with all of the posters who suggest that you try to spice things up with your wife. Tell her you'd like to try something new. Ask her if she has any suggestions. The Great Interweb and the erotica section of any bookstore are full of suggestions of interesting things to do in bed. (First step: Replace the garments with something a lot sexier.)

Go on date nights without the kids (or the church!). Send the kids to Grandma's, or check into a motel somewhere. You need a space to explore adult activities with another adult.

But whatever you do, DO NOT blame her for dating other men while you were on your mission. You weren't even engaged. She was under the same pressure you were to find someone to marry. She may have regrets of her own.

The person who advised you to stop regretting the past and live fully in the present has the right idea. The idea of undoing the past is a fantasy. My daughters are in your age group and they all looking for dependable men who will make good husbands BECAUSE THAT STATE OF LIFE IS OVER FOR THEM. So you will be with young women in their 20's who are exploring. How hot do you think you will be to one of them? Exactly. You don't even speak the same language. You could go younger....or go couger. A couger might think it's fun to play with a naive guy like you, but alas, you are terrible in bed with no imagination (or else you would be more creative with your wife). So that leaves professionals.

When you think about losing "what you have", let me tell you that after you do the above, today will be the good old days that you would give anything to have back. Let me share with you some of the effects this kind of thing has on children: one boy dies at 28 of a drug overdose. Another, a girl, requires thousands and thousands of dollars of treatment because she is heading toward 400 lbs and hates her life. You have already coughed up $30K, which you borrowed, for Fat Camp when she was a teenager, which you are still paying back. Now she wants a stomach bypass. And by the way, you/your extended family/every friend you ever knew blames you.

But the saddest part of all is you blame yourself and now you are a stubbled-cheeked, unemployed has-been who moved back in with your mother and you are begging your children to be part of their lives, or maybe just even let you be their Friend on Facebook.

Hope it was worth it. Detouring from "it's a wonderful life" motif, why don't you get even for the lies and lack of integrity you experienced by being the very opposite, like one poster said. Start telling the truth today and never go back. You're not putting the church first anymore, so why not put the wife first. You once wanted to save your children for an eternal relationship as a family forever? Why not just focus on saving them from what I described above. Why not give them a father they can really be proud of. Show those Mormon bastards what real family devotion looks like.

Go to church with your wife on alternate weeks because you are proud to be by her side. NOT ONE COMMENT ABOUT THE LUNACY YOU HEAR. Join some exmormon groups and talk about it online to get the feelings out.

Have a date every week and take turns planning it (set aside money in the budget for the person whose turn it is). And you be creative...CREATIVE, you hear? She likes flowers? Take her to a flower convention and dinner. You want to spice up your sex life, play "sexy movie of her choice" and watch it in a motel. Find some happy couples to hang out with that are mixed marriages (LDS/other) - find them on the internet. NOthing like watching the real thing in action.

SAVE your family for time. Become a man NOT like Joseph Smith.

and Good luck

Anagrammy

but I understand why it bugs you.
I have an even more irrational jealousy than you.
I was the one who messed around before we got married. That is, I was inactive and had sex with a few partners, then on my last partner fell in love and wanted to give her her long lost wish of a temple wedding. So I went on a mission. So she screwed around while I was gone then dumped me.
After my mission I assumed I'd only be worthy to marry an ex-slut. But wouldn't you know it, a virgin falls for me. I admitted my past and she ran away bawling, then a week later came back saying she'd forgiven me, and we went on to get married. But I never forgave myself. I was horribly depressed and sometimes suicidal for cheating her of the virgin she deserved. It got even worse as I realized it was eternal, and that she'd FOREVER have to endure the thought of my penis in some other vagina.

But then I get pissed in my own way. Long AFTER we're married she finally admits she'd had oral sex with a few boys before she met me. No problem right? Well I'm pissed because I was carrying this huge boulder of guilt about messing up, and she claims she's a "virgin" and so it seems double the weight, while not bothering to mention that she had penises in her mouth and tongues on her boobs and in her crotch. What if I had been a the virgin she cried over losing? Was she planning on telling me? Was she planning on giving me the same chance to cry?

I'm not mad that she had oral sex. I'm mad that she had the gall to watch me grovel for forgiveness and cry in anguish of soul, and have the audacity to say she'd prayed to God and He said to forgive me and marry me anyway, bringing the weight of the universe down on me, while keeping her own little oopsies out of it.