Dear Sadiya:

You are welcome.

“I just don’t seem to know how to pick the right men”- I hear/ read women say this sentence a lot, problem with this sentence is: there aren’t a whole lot of right (honest, trustworthy, empathetic, kind) men at any one time, so statistically it is more likely that a women ends up with the wrong man.

What I understand from the information you provided is the following:

1. You and your husband cannot afford separate residences.

2. Both your children are young adults, your youngest will be starting her first year in college this month, a four year program which you and your husband are financing.

3. You and your husband do not have any savings.

4. Your husband does not have a stable income. When he works, he makes good money, but his work is never steady. “we have always had to save for those slow periods, and there is no guarantee the slow periods will end”. Several years ago, he was unemployed for about a year and a half, your savings were drained at the time and you incurred debt.

5. Your husband “isn’t a bad man” and “On a daily basis, we’re fine”, but he is often impatient, insensitive, selfish and rude, and the communication as well as emotional and physical intimacy is severely lacking.

For his 60 birthday you arranged a dinner at a very nice restaurant for him, with your kids, and you bought him a 60″ TV. For your recent 50 birthday he… did nothing at all to celebrate it.

The above example is “typical of our relationship”, you wrote.

My thoughts this morning: regarding the man you refer to as R- doesn’t read to me that the initial R stands for Right, as in the Right Man, not at all. When you met him you were like a woman living in a desert (your relationship with your husband is that desert). You were very thirsty for intellectual stimulation and for feeling like an attractive, desired woman. You experienced those two things with R.

Back to my comment that a woman is statistically unlikely to find the right man at any one time- it is even more statistically unlikely for a man in his 40s (married or not) to meet a married woman at work, a woman close to 50, knowing she is married, and to think something like: I want a lifetime relationship with this woman. He is more likely to think something like: this is fun! What an exciting distraction from the boredom of work!

I understand that you didn’t behave perfectly with him, having made self deprecating comments to him- but the affair with him didn’t last not because you made self deprecating comments- it was very unlikely to last. In 100 affairs between two people, one or two of them married, how many of those affairs last and become lifetime, the two making a life together?

Maybe one, or two. The chances are very small.

Question now: is it time for you to give up on love and resign to the desert kind of relationship you have with this man, your husband or is it time to look for the love you longed for, for so long?

There are places in the world, big cities, let’s say, that a single woman in her 50s can find love, enroll in a respectable dating site with thousands of men, many fitting the age requirement, and after several months of a thoughtful and strategic online activity, setting a date to get to know a candidate better in a coffee shop, let’s say, then setting a second and third date.. finally making it work. The chances are lesser if online dating is not available or the pool of men in geographical proximity is very limited.

There are married women (who have physical intimacy with their husbands) who settle into a lifestyle of having affairs, chasing that good feeling, holding on to it as long as possible, doing so for years. Some of these women will tell you that they feel guilty but they are invested in this lifestyle, basically supplementing their lacking marriages with affair-excitement.

Reads to me that you are a good woman, concerned for your children, especially your younger daughter who is currently experiencing some emotional/ social trouble. You are even concerned for your selfish husband. And reads to me that you are not  okay with the affair-excitement lifestyle- you are simply not that kind of selfish, self centered, dishonest woman, are you?

You believe that your husband will not agree that the two of you stay in separate bedrooms, officially roommates, so to make it possible for you to date a man openly (a man who will be okay with dating a married woman who shares a residence with her roommate-husband).

In summary: if you are or would be able to financially support your own residence, however humble, (and if you live in a place where online dating is promising), then it would  be a good idea to legally separate from your husband as soon as possible.

It has to be very frustrating to live with a selfish man who did not do a thing to celebrate his wife 50 birthday- I can hardly digest this sad fact!) and I wish you didn’t live with him, even if you didn’t meet the right man). To live with a selfish man because one cannot afford living separately is … an undesirable situation.

I don’t know where to go from here. I would like to read more of your thoughts…?

anita