Sorry for the long post but I want to give some background. My husband and I have been together 12 years, married 6. Up until 4 months ago it was honestly the best relationship I could have hoped for. We never fight. We never yell. The only real disagreements are about money. We are in an open gay relationship where him or I can have causal sex with other but we must tell each other when/where/who. We are open because his sex drive is much higher than mine is. We stated dating when he was 19 and I was 25. I had experienced the single life and lived alone where he was still in college. I’ve done a good bit of letting him explore what he likes to do so that I don’t feel guilty he never got his 20’s.

I’m December, he got a therapist and they started evaluating our relationship. He didn’t tell me anything. A month later he dropped a bomb that he had doubts about us, etc etc. I got a therapist too. And in each of our cases, it was revealed we both suffered from complex trauma from our childhoods. As we’ve worked through that, we started working on each other and it has been fantastic. Fast forward to a few days ago where I found out he’s been secretly seeing a guy for two weeks (someone he’s seen a lot before in the causal sex arena). So much so that he tells him “I love you” each night. I got really pissed and said I was done. After working hard on us for the last 4 months to only find this, it was the last straw. I left for work and of course was a mess.

As I talked to a good friend about it, he said. “You made a commitment and some marriages are not made to last forever but have you done everything you could before you call it quits? I said no. We hadn’t done couples therapy. We hadn’t explored openly and honestly our feelings and fears. So I went back and said “I’m not sure where this will go, but I don’t want to just leave and say I didn’t try everything before we ended it”. He was completely mute. I thought he would have been so thankful for my offer to try to work it out versus just leaving. He then said he needed a day to reflect. He wanted to figure out why he felt the way he did and what he wants.

So yesterday he spent all day out hiking, while I cried miserably on the couch. When he came home he said he wanted to talk. He wrote me a letter. The letter basically said that what he is struggling with is he feels like he’s never been able to grow into his own person. That he uses me a crutch. I do things for us and he does thing for us but he’s never really known what it’s like to be alone. He says I cheated because I feel like marriage just doesn’t fit me. I have this incredible urge to be single and be out on my own. And then the second half of the letter was, but I think what the next 15 years will be like and I know I’ll be a great confident individual who is strong and knows exactly who he is. But when I think of the next 50 years, I think about what it would be like to have someone ti love me unconditionally. He went onto to say I think that person is you and I want to try to invest in us more than I want to invest in myself but I have strong doubts here. He doesn’t thing marriage fits him but knows that in 30 years this could be the best thing ever. So we agreed to go to couples therapy and explore this. After our long talk we had sex, something that was previously rare. There was passion is our eyes. The sex itself was just fine! I mean I spent the day not eating or sleeping so I was a mess but there was passion.

I feel like if I do down this road of couples therapy I’m just prolonging the inevitable. Divorcing him will be such an incredible sorrow to me. I’m scared working on us the next 3 months will only add to the sorrow but at the same time I don’t just want to give up until I know we tried everything.

What do I do?