[idave]

OK, I could use some advice.

I've been married for over 25 years, and have been with my wife for almost 30 years. I have to say we were never passionately in love with each other. I really hadn't gotten over an old relationship, brief though it was, and my wife was afraid that I'd leave her for someone else. And carried that with her for the past 30 years.

Over time, the love we did have for each other sort of dissolved. Frankly, I was sort of dead weight - not fully engaging in helping run the house/family. Apparently like a lot of husbands.

As the years went by, sex was infrequent and my wife obviously didn't enjoy it much. She thought for the past five years I wanted to leave the marriage, I thought the past two (when the kids left home) that she might want to leave me.

Unfortunately, we didn't know how to communicate our feelings to each other, and a sort of low-grade anger simmered in of us.

Last October, the young woman I'd loved so long ago, and frankly still loved (I've had dreams about her over the years, thought about her over the years, but never would have contacted her), contacted me with an email (a textless, messageless email that she swears she sent accidentally or unconsciously). Confused, I sent an email back, saying I had a wonderful wife and two great kids, and I also said a lot - I said a lot about how much I'd loved my old flame long ago. I just didn't say "I still love you."

The other person wrote back - not realizing she'd emailed me first - and said she'd loved me long ago - that she had a great kid and had been married for 25 years.

We kept up the emails and we both began to admit that we weren't happy in our marriages. And we began to realize how much we loved each other. My old flame had dreamed about me, thought about me over the years, as I had about her. We saw each other a few times - 30 years after last seeing each other - and it was wonderful, beyond my expectations. And hers.

A couple of months ago, my wife found an email from my old flame. It completely changed her. She is - now - the kind of spouse I think most people want to have - someone very loving, no longer angry with me.

And I had lost all my anger for my wife, too, well before she found that email.

If I were my wife, I'd have kicked me out. But my wife says she loves me, that we have this long relationship and that she doesn't want to be alone.

The truth, though, is I never loved my wife with the passion I think she deseved to have (whether or not she could return it). I think the loss of intimacy we felt for each other happened because I couldn't fully commit to my wife.

And the truth is that in between the time my old flame contacted me and the time my wife discovered that email which changed her, I realized how deeply I still love my old flame, and that's what has changed me.

I want to be with my old flame. But once I told my old flame my wife had changed, once my old flame realized I am in conflict, she decided it was time to stop communicating with me - at least as long as I'm with my wife.

So it seems to be coming down to a sort of choice.

Do I want to be with the woman I've always wanted to be with, the one I truly love? The woman - literally - of my dreams? It's all a ridiculous fantasy, anyway. I know it but I can't help my feelings. I can't imagine it's really going to work for us. And if it doesn't, I've going to be in a world of hurt. Fantasy or not, I can never be with the one I truly love if I don't believe it, and act to achieve being with her.

I might always regret, though, leaving my wife and so radically changing the comfortable world I'm in, the comfortable world I've let my wife create for me.

So I also have the feeling that since I have a great marriage, since my wife is now the person I think she wants to be and that I wanted her to be, that I should stay with my wife, who is such a good person. The reason I should stay with her, though, is not because I love her deeply (I do love her), but because I don't want to hurt her so deeply.

To stay with her, I'm going to have to push the regret way I'll always feel because I didn't try to be with the person I really love.

I've felt nauseous for the past couple of months. I want the courage to tell my wife I need to try to finish unfinished business with my old flame, that I need to leave home for at least a little while, that I might not come back.

Why can't I do that?