Thanks for taking the time to write the reply Stein. You're points are duly noted and appreciate your advice.

In an ideal world I'd split with my wife, but money is tight and it wouldn't be viable to rent a flat and still help pay the mortgage on the family home (I'm the breadwinner and she was made redundant over a year ago and doesn't have access to any other money). In all likelihood they'd be losing both me AND the family home, which would only compound the devastation. I don't have any relatives to live with and then there's our kid who I'd feel awfully guilty and worried about. She's just starting her GCSEs and I just know the upheaval of a split would derail her - she's a high achiever but awfully neurotic and I worry it would seriously f*ck her childhood up. Being a child divorce myself I know how it can be, although in my case it was obvious my parents weren't getting on, which is not so now as wife and I get on OK; we laugh and never argue more than anyone else, and it looks to others that we have a loving family home. The truth is I see her as a close friend now and not someone I am in love with any more. We so very rarely have sex (every couple of months or less) and it varies between perfunctory and dead boring. I know I no longer find her attractive either - so from my perspective the spark has gone - possibly from her's too, but she's not said anything give it away... I just kind of sense it.

You had a good point re trying polyamory, but I know the subject would got down like a pork chop at a bar mitzvah. Although my wife likes to think of herself as an enlightened liberal socialist, the fact is that as far as relationships go she's very conservative. She still doesn't get that Tinder exists and that there's a market for it, as is in that stuck old-fashioned mindset that you'd have to be a real loser to look for anyone, long-term partner or otherwise, online. She so doesn't get the social acceptance and therein lies part of the problem with even the idea of it.

I thought and think PUA'ing could be an answer, but as you say, I don't as yet have time to hone any experience down, not yet unless the situation changes, and it my do in the next 12months or so. Having an affair is another option, but not my preferred one - it's bad enough one too be duplicitous to one woman let alone two but it'd certainly be cheaper than running two households ;-).

I'm going to look at some more PUA videos and methods and see what takes my fancy. As you said, it's the principles that matter, not the routines.

Cheers.