My husband admitted that he didn’t expect anyone to want to fuck a 42 year old woman when he asked for open marriage

Initially, I wrote a very long post with our whole backstory but before posting it, I deleted the entire thing. It didn’t really matter how we got here but here we are. He asked for open marriage after 20 years of happy marriage because he wasn’t attracted to me anymore even though he still loved me. Maybe it was midlife crisis? but he was panicking about not have been with another woman his entire life. I left him and asked for divorce. The separation devastated us mentally and financially. My children suffered the most and started hating me for leaving and breaking their happy home. When we got back together, I agreed to open marriage but I didn’t want to know details. Everything was great (according to him anyway). <br><br>Around new years, I met someone and we clicked. It took him 2 months to find out. He was livid. I was sleeping with someone while he remained faithful? How dare I? He wanted to know everything about the guy and how many times I had been unfaithful. I was blindsided by his reaction. I thought we had agreed to open marriage? what was his problem? He finally admitted that he didn’t expect anyone to want a 42 years old married mother of 3. <br><br>That hurt. I asked if he thought I was too old to be dateable? if I was too old to have any worth? He denied it. I told him that he had 2 options. 1. He could ditch the open marriage and never cheat again or 2. He could continue seeing whoever he was seeing and accepts that I was also dating. He could not have both. He could not humiliate me and then refuse to let me date. <br><br>His response “You are not happy that I am seeing someone else. How can you say that you’re ok? And I didn’t know you were this sensitive about your age?” <br><br>I was so taken aback by his response. No, I wasn’t ok but I also didn’t want to divorce him. But clearly, he didn’t see anything wrong with what he did. He didn’t realize how his words were hurting me. I realized that I had to leave him. I couldn’t stay with someone who saw me as too old to be dateable. He made me feel worthless when I gave him everything. <br><br>No, I didn’t leave him and waste the last 20 years of my youth. I stayed with him. I admit that I couldn’t leave him. He was and still is the love of my life. But now, everything is ruined. I hate myself for not standing firm and leaving when I had the chance. I should have left him when I had the chance. I know I will never be able to trust him again. Does he see other women and lie about it? Does he think that I am too old and ugly? <br><br>I know I won’t be able to move past this. Everytime I think about this, I am heartbroken. I just don’t know what to do.