Partner obsessed with BTS

LegacyUser

Hi folks,

Brief back story - married 15+ years with two kids. Dead bedroom (zero sex) the last 2 years. Mostly dead bedroom for another 2 years before that.

Anyway - I'm really reluctant to call it a day... I don't want to divorce my wife because I love her and I really don't want to put the kids through it.

She seems, basically, to be going through her teenage years again... or maybe for the first time who knows. I was her first boyfriend (at the age of 23). She doesn't work, and that was our decision when the kids were smaller since she didn't have a big career - but now they are bigger.

So maybe a year ago she started becoming interested in BTS - through my daughter who became interested in them first. But she has become more and more obsessive about them. I was looking at her twitter posts and they were crazy (all public). And then she stopped posting and I suspected she changed to another account which I found very easily. So I started looking at her public tweets... my god. She's obviously getting off on them big time... like a teenager. She is clear fantasizing about them. Imagines what it would like to be with them etc. etc. and it seems to be escalating. She is clearly emotionally involved here big time.

Maybe for her she thinks it's a way of having some sort of sex life without techncally cheating, who knows.

But what do I do. I really don't know how to approach this. She isn't interested in trying to repair our marriage. The best she has offered in the many discussions we've had is that maybe we'll become closer again if we have our space, but she's not going to do anything deliberate to make that happen.

I'm afraid if I confront her with this it will embarrass her so much that it will cause lasting damage to our relationship. But maybe that's already done.

Or maybe it's something she has to go through and she'll be different coming out the other end?

Maybe I'm completely deluded and I should have left for my sanity a long time ago.

It all seems so pathetic when I write it out like this.

Does anyone have any perspective on this or experience of this kind of issue. Any angles I'm not seeing? I know she is completely checkout out but I don't want to end things before I've given it every chance.

Thanks in advance all.

wiggle16

What is BTS?

Xterminator

Hi

You have my sympathies. Its a hard situation, and you sound like a decent person trying to do their best. but as the problem is not onesided, neither can the solution be.

But you seem to consider fantasizing about a pop band cheating. If that's the case then half the country are unfaithful. Im not dismissing it but i dont think her fancying a pop start or two is cheating emotionally, unlike say having a boyfriend that she sexts regularly and shares intimate snaps etc.

To put it in perspective it appears to be her outlet because she has needs and wants, as do you, b& they are not getting looked after. and that's the root problem.

I don't see how calling her out would help the situation. I do think seeing a couples therapist might help, but only if you are both willing to go and be honest.

so try that angle - we need professional help. See if she will engage. If not, then you are left with a choice of accepting and making the best of it, or leaving the relationship temporarily or permanently.

Salary Negotiator

wiggle16 wrote: »

What is BTS?

Think One Direction only Korean.

My boss’s daughter is obsessed with them but she’s about 15.

ILoveYourVibes

Your wife posts a lot on social media about a band?


I think you have an issue.

I don't think it would embarrass her if you confronted her. Why would it?

Lots of middle aged women have crushes on bieber. In fact MOSTLY middle aged women!

PARlance

Have you done anything to improve your sex life, OP?
It can take a little bit of effort at times if it hits a lull but it probably won't just kickstart out of the blue.

Seems to be a couple of issues within your post. The sex life and her new "hobby/interest" which seems to fill the void of your own relationship. Not sure if both are related but professional help may be the answer.

Dial Hard

You're focussing on entirely the wrong thing here, imo. Four years of no sex (more or less) is the glaring issue in your marriage, not your wife getting infatuated with a Korean pop group.

LegacyUser

Dial Hard wrote: »

You're focussing on entirely the wrong thing here, imo. Four years of no sex (more or less) is the glaring issue in your marriage, not your wife getting infatuated with a Korean pop group.

The no sex thing has been there for a while and I've been able to delude myself about the reasons for that... the KPOP is the new dimension and making it glaringly obvious what's going on I suppose...

ILoveYourVibes

IsThisTheEnd wrote: »

The no sex thing has been there for a while and I've been able to delude myself about the reasons for that... the KPOP is the new dimension and making it glaringly obvious what's going on I suppose...

The kpop thing is just normal level crazy. The no sex thing is a serious dysfunction in your relationship.

Calypso Realm

wiggle16 wrote: »

What is BTS?

Exactly. I thought it was some new sexual fetish or something!

I suspect she's doing this because it fills a void in her life to make up for what's lacking in your marriage. It offers some excitement etc that she obviously craves.

I've got a friend who does this on a somewhat lesser level. On admission, she develops little crushes on various individuals (in the public eye as well as others) as coping mechanism because she has no SO in her life, something she misses a lot. It's a 'safe' way of liking someone because it doesn't involve a 'real' relationship and the added risk of getting hurt all over again. She split up from her partner a year or two ago when he found someone else. She was heartbroken at the time. At least that's her explanation.

What does you wife mean by you becoming closer again if you have your own space?

leggo

Weird as it is, I actually know someone who went through something similar. His social media became a shrine to Lady Gaga when she was popular, then he started travelling around America following her to gigs and properly obsessing. I'm not messing. And this lad had kids with his wife too, it was all very weird especially watching from afar and seeing that he physically couldn't have been with his family or having a normal life.

He ended up breaking up with his wife. I wouldn't know him well enough to be able to pry that much during brief conversations, but I know he ended up moving to a completely different part of the country and re-marrying. He doesn't post about Gaga anymore. Who knows what happens but, even just seeing it play out, it always struck me as escapism from a problem he didn't want to deal with and what ended up happening his marriage kind of solidified that.

That's not to say this is going to happen you OP. But connecting this and your marital issues isn't as crazy as some may think, I've literally seen it before and it checked out. If you feel they're connected somehow, they probably are.

ILoveYourVibes

leggo wrote: »

Weird as it is, I actually know someone who went through something similar. His social media became a shrine to Lady Gaga when she was popular, then he started travelling around America following her to gigs and properly obsessing. I'm not messing. And this lad had kids with his wife too, it was all very weird especially watching from afar and seeing that he physically couldn't have been with his family or having a normal life.

He ended up breaking up with his wife. I wouldn't know him well enough to be able to pry that much during brief conversations, but I know he ended up moving to a completely different part of the country and re-marrying. He doesn't post about Gaga anymore. Who knows what happens but, even just seeing it play out, it always struck me as escapism from a problem he didn't want to deal with and what ended up happening his marriage kind of solidified that.

That's not to say this is going to happen you OP. But connecting this and your marital issues isn't as crazy as some may think, I've literally seen it before and it checked out. If you feel they're connected somehow, they probably are.

maybe he was just delusional

Maybe that was why he couldn't be in a marriage. He was too ..whats a way to describe it??

Well you have to live in reality and in the same world as your partner if you want to be married to them right?

If you are both in different levels of sanity or different realities...its not possible to be intimate.

PARlance

wiggle16 wrote: »

What is BTS?

I misread the T for a J on first glance...

ILoveYourVibes

PARlance wrote: »

I misread the T for a J on first glance...

i thought it was bdsm

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Have there been any other big changes in her behaviour or has she had any obsessive infatuations like this previously? Is there any history of mental illness in her family?

I'm not being funny but a cousin of mine started getting obsessed with Taylor Swift to the point her husband became concerned and as it turned out, she had bipolar disorder and was in a manic episode. In retrospect she'd been symptomatic before that but was a high functioning person in general and it was missed, she was diagnosed in her late 30s.

I agree that there are bigger issues in your marriage here, but this seems to be particularly alarming you, just raising it as a possibility.

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Maxwell Putrid Yardage wrote: »

Have there been any other big changes in her behaviour or has she had any obsessive infatuations like this previously? Is there any history of mental illness in her family?

I'm not being funny but a cousin of mine started getting obsessed with Taylor Swift to the point her husband became concerned and as it turned out, she had bipolar disorder and was in a manic episode. In retrospect she'd been symptomatic before that but was a high functioning person in general and it was missed, she was diagnosed in her late 30s.

I agree that there are bigger issues in your marriage here, but this seems to be particularly alarming you, just raising it as a possibility.

I agree that such an unusual obsession as an adult does sound a bit like a mental illness.
I don’t think sex is the problem in your marriage, the no sex is as a result of something else.
Could you start by going on a lunch date or walk together and just see if you can enjoy each other’s company - not address the problems yet, but just chat to each other and be nice?

4 years is a long time for you both to be living unhappily. You really need to go to couples counseling.life is too short to be unhappy for that long and your children will notice even when you think they don’t . They deserve happy parents who are good role models of a healthy relationship whether it is together as their parents, separately or with another partner.
Best of luck.

Sleepy

4 years without a healthy sex life?

Your marriage is already over OP. Get your affairs in order and go talk to a solicitor that specialises in family law.

I agree with others, the obsession isn't your main problem, it's the seeming lack of intimacy in your relationship. You need to think about what you will do if she will re-engage in the relationship, and who you will do if she won't. This is your one life, if you thought the next forty years would be like the last four, would you change it?

It's hard to know how to read the BTS thing. I know plenty of grown men who are obsessed with a football team, and who can talk for hours (and hours) about them and their rivals etc. Is it healthy or are they avoiding real life, hard to know.