My Sexless Marriage Turned Into An Open Marriage....i Think...lol.

Hello, everyone. So, I actually joined this site a few years ago when I was deeply depressed and suicidal because my husband refused to touch me. He loved to buy me expensive things but was extremely emotionally and psychologically abusive afterward. Long story short it was painful, confusing, depressing and I thought I was going to kill myself. After exactly 7 years of being a beautiful (much younger - by 20 years than my husband), smart, dedicated, loving wife and mother to our boys I finally simply just snapped out of it and told him that I have had enough of begging for love and sex and I was going to go ahead a take a lover. He said: " I wouldn't blame you." And that is exactly what I did. I was honest about it and simply proceeded to see my lover when my husband went away on his business trips and I told my husband when I had plans with my lover and so forth. After about six months I found out that my husband had in fact been cheating on me for about two years of the marriage. I was enraged to say the least and began divorce proceedings...then after tons of fighting and eventually talking...we called a truce because at that point I no longer had any romantic or sexual feelings for him anyway...so there wasn't much to fight about any longer.....the pain of rejection was gone and i was done venting all my rage. I was getting my love elsewhere at that point anyway. The bottom line is that our boys - whom we've always very carefully sheltered from any of our issues - were and are simply more important and neither of us wants to disrupt their lives. So, we've decided to just live together - he has his room and I have my room. He is home on the weekends and we do normal family things with our boys. During the week I spent time with my lover and it worked quite nicely to be honest...and I caught up on all that sex, and caressing and touching and loving and squeezing I was missing...It was so wonderful to be loved in that intimate way...I swear to you that it woke me up and healed me in so many ways. Denying myself that pleasure had truly shut me off to myself in so many many ways. At this point, I don't know if my husband still sees his girlfriend, I'm sure he does and to be honest I think he is much happier when he is. I think and I'm just sharing out loud here - that I've concluded that one person cannot fulfill all our needs. Now that all the anger has subsided and we don't view one another as sexual partners - we've been able to simply enjoy the richness of our lives and our boys. I was with my lover for a year and a half and it has ended and I'm actually looking for someone new to share my intimacy and love with. My therapist has stated that this situation is in fact more common than we think...people are simply discreet about it. And there you have it...just thought I would share....thank god I snapped out of it and put my foot down otherwise I would still be depressed, suicidal and dying for sex and intimacy...I'm 39 and I spent some of the best years of my life celibate...ughh. Thank god I put an end to the insanity. So far this works for me/us.