Well just to follow up at this point, I explained in truth last night to him that my thoughts have gone so far as to consider us retaining a respectful friendship and me ‘letting him go’ as my significant other because it’s not fair to him that I can’t give him the intimacy he desires, nor is it fair to the kids, etc.

His initial response was at first to suggest that’s even more reason for us to get married because divorce is more difficult, so I would be forced to try harder and he would have piece of mind I can’t just ‘leave’, which I of course pointed out being a horrible reason to get married…. He also said he is frustrated by how I just do everything I want to do usually without consulting him much in it (such as joining new activities, getting a gym membership, going to University part-time, etc.), and said he’s already ‘been there done it all including education’ so he doesn’t need to keep learning and doing new things in his life because he knows what he wants now. And lastly he says if we split up he loses ‘Everything’. I tried to explain the worst case scenario being him not losing everything as he still has his children and we still spend time together with them and maintain a friendship similar to what we have…and really that’s not as bad as us hating and disrespecting each other! I know that truthfully he’s scared of his family thinking he’s a ‘failure’ as he constantly shoulders a burden that his family ‘looks down upon him’ and thinks he’s not capable of much and this would just compliment those thoughts…..but I guess that’s truly not my responsibility to deal with those feelings of failure and loss he’s worried of?

So, that being said. I said I want to maintain our working relationship for a bit (and for me a bit is maybe a max of 1 month) ‘as is’ to see if I have any chance for a change of heart, which he wants me to try for as well…so I will wait things out a bit after explaining my real intentions to see if that remains as my real intention still? Hah.