Journal

When?

So the question is why now? What has prompted all of this? I guess the simple trigger is that I'm in love with another woman. That's over simplifying matters and love may be completely the wrong word.

I guess I should point out that I'm not having an affair and don't believe I would. Nothing has happened between me and the woman and I doubt it would. We work together and hopefully she has no idea about how I feel. She's too young for me, or more specifically I'm too old for her, with her being a decade younger than me.

Instead of referring to her as the other woman I'll give her the name Izzy just so I have something to refer to her by.

Apart from a few work outings, we haven't spent any time together out of work. It's probably easier to fall in love with someone you don't know very well, if you know little about someone but like everything you know then you just assume everything you don't know you will also like.

She's pretty, intelligent, funny, kind and really happy and positive. Work can be really stressful at times and at the end of a hectic week she will still be smiling. Regardless of what we are talking, about it can be work or quantum mechanics, I always feel uplifted. It's impossible to be miserable when talking to her no matter how crap I feel before we start talking.

The thing is my description of Izzy is pretty much the same as I would have described my wife when we got together. So what has changed? As I explained before having a child was stressful, years of my wife being anxious and depressed about that fact that we weren't pregnant. During the pregnancy I was terrified but she was generally happier than she had been for ages, she didn't suffer from morning sickness at all and even managed to cope with being diagnosed with gestational diabetes despite a complete fear of needles.

The birth was relatively easy and short, due to high blood pressure she was induced. The first day at hospital was just sitting around waiting and eventually being told that the labour ward was full so nothing was going to happen, so from waters being broken on the second day to the birth was about 9 hours.

The first weeks were hard but I had 3 weeks off work to help out and like I said previously she actually was pretty good at sleeping.

So one thing I haven't talked about is that I have IBS and due to that can't drive and don't really cope being in a car very well at all. So I'm pretty much dependant on my wife driving me to work, that wasn't too much of an issue as we work together but with my wife on maternity leave it started to cause arguments.

The arguments pretty much revolved around my wife being upset that I wasn't grateful enough for the lifts and me being upset that she didn't seem grateful for the fact that I was willing to work full time when all I wanted was to be at home with my daughter.

After a year and a bit my wife went back to work 3 days a week and that's when I dropped down to 4. So we have 2 days where we are both at work then she looks after our daughter 2 days and I get her on the other.

Since returning to work my wife is not happy. She doesn't want to be at work and only working 3 days a week isn't productive.

I think it's the stress of working plus the fact our daughter is teething and so our sleep is completely iratic plus a few tummy bugs and bad colds that has resulted in her being very irritable. As a result I'm getting shouted at a lot and that's hard to cope with.

I'm very introverted, hate social activities, and really need to spend time by myself to destress. My wife on the other hand is very sociable, which causes more conflict as she wants me to be sociable as well.

I feel like I'm doing a good job as a father, but it's not easy and it doesn't really leave me much energy to be a good husband, all I want to do when my daughter is in bed is relax on the sofa watching TV and playing on my laptop.

So I mentioned that I don't believe I would have an affair with Izzy, I probably should expand on that. I love my wife and that's part of it, but possibly more than that, is that I don't think I could put Izzy through it. Affairs are pretty seedy at the best of the times and they never remain secret for all that long. But if you assume it does stay secret then there would be a lot of sneaking around and lying and that's not great for anyone. Even if I didn't have an affair and instead split up with my wife then started dating Izzy there would still be rumours that she was the reason for the breakup. So as I said I don't think anything could ever happen between me and Izzy.

So in summary, I'm in love with a woman I can't be with who reminds me of my wife when we first met. I love my wife but am finding it harder and harder to live with her. And all of that just feels like it's slowly crushing me.