Ten years into our marriage, and it feels like we’re living on borrowed time. On the outside, everything looks fine—everything looks normal, like the life we had dreamed of all those years ago. But beneath the surface, our marriage feels fragile, like a delicate truce holding us together, each of us silently hoping that the other won’t break the peace. I had forgiven him for the mistakes he made in the early years, the betrayals that shook me to my core. I convinced myself that love could heal everything, that time would wash away the pain. For a while, it worked. We moved forward, had children, built a life. But the wounds never fully healed, and the memory of those betrayals kept replaying in my mind, as vivid as the day they happened.
Around the six-year mark, something inside me shifted. I thought I had rebuilt the trust we had lost, but I came to realize that the trust I had worked so hard to restore was only an illusion. It wasn’t real—not in the way I had hoped it would be. The lingering hurt and doubt never went away. It had woven itself into the fabric of our relationship, coloring everything I did and said. I no longer looked at him the same way; the man I had once fallen in love with felt distant, and the sense of safety I had taken for granted was gone.
As time passed, I found myself craving something I hadn’t even known I needed—validation. The kind of attention and excitement that I once thought only my husband could provide. I wanted to feel desirable again, wanted someone to look at me with the kind of admiration and respect that had faded from our marriage. I longed for the thrill of connection, of being seen not just as a wife and mother, but as a woman with her own desires and needs. I never acted on these thoughts, never even came close to crossing the line, but they became a constant presence in my mind. The thought of what it might feel like to be with someone who could make me feel special, who might appreciate me in a way that my husband no longer did, haunted me.
I didn’t want to leave my husband. I didn’t want to betray the family we had created. But the more I suppressed these feelings, the stronger they became. I found myself daydreaming about what it would be like to connect with someone else, someone who might treat me with the care and attention I felt I deserved. There were moments when I would look at my husband and wonder if he had ever truly understood the depth of my pain, the quiet resentment that had built up over the years. I wanted to tell him how I felt, but the words always seemed stuck in my throat, caught between my fear of hurting him and my fear of losing myself.
The urge to connect with someone else wasn’t about escaping my marriage; it was about rediscovering the parts of me that had been lost in the process of being a wife and mother. I missed the feeling of being desired, of being seen for who I truly was, not just for what I did for others. Even in our most intimate moments, I felt like I was going through the motions. The passion had dwindled, replaced by routine and obligation. I longed for more, but I didn’t know how to ask for it without risking everything I had worked so hard to build.
The more I thought about these desires, the more the divide between us seemed impossible to bridge. He remained unaware, or at least indifferent, to the emotional distance I was experiencing. The cracks in our relationship seemed so much wider than they had been in the past. I would try to reconnect, try to bring back the spark, but each attempt felt empty. The weight of the past—the betrayals, the misunderstandings, the unspoken resentments—was too heavy for us to carry forward. And as much as I tried to ignore it, the longing for something more—something different—continued to grow.
Now, a decade into this marriage, I feel lost between two worlds. The family we’ve built, the life we’ve created, holds me in place, yet I wonder if it’s enough anymore. Can love alone hold us together when trust is fractured, when the very foundation we built on has cracks too deep to fill? I don’t know if I’ll ever find the answers, but I can’t help but wonder if the longing for connection, the desire to feel truly seen and cherished, will always linger in the background, casting shadows over everything else.
