i got married to my current husband almost 2 years ago and i have given up so much for him. he is my second husband. i moved from the u.s. to europe with him shortly after our marriage but we are planning on moving back to the united states, however to a state neither of us has lived in, this october if things go as planned.
living so far from my country has been hard, however i agreed to move with him because i was, and still am, in love with him. before i married him i knew that his job sometimes required moving around, so i was willing to make this sacrifice. i dont regret it because i've learned and experienced a lot of new things here.
all of this is besides the point, however. as you can see by the title, he has currently proposed a very strange idea. i don't remember when he first brought it up, but it was at least 3 weeks ago.
he told me that he had something to discuss with me and that he had been thinking about this for a while. he said that he believes the key to maintaining a marriage is sexual satisfaction. he told me that our sex life was very good, however all good things get stale. he says it's not stale right now, but that one day we will both get tired of each other.
so he says that we should give each other permission to sleep with other people every once in a while. i was completely shocked and i thought he was joking but then he started setting up a bunch of rules.
he said that first of all, when we were considering having sex with someone else, we should tell each other about it BEFORE we do it. that way neither of us is left in the dark. second of all, having a continuous sexual relationship with one particular person is not allowed. he says that although he is proposing that we open up our sexual lives to other people, we should keep our romantic affections for only each other. he believes that having a continuos sexual relationship with one other person would lead either me or him to develop feelings for that person, which he thinks is bad. thirdly, neither of us can have sex with close friends of ours. fourthly, he can't have sex with women i don't like, and i can't have sex with men he doesn't like.
basically he doesn't think it's natural for people to stay attracted to one person for their entire lives without having to tell themselves that they are or going to counseling. he says that we're all animals and that humans are not naturally monogamous and that it's only natural for people to want to sleep with others at some point. he also doesn't think that sex is always romantic or reserved for love. that sometimes it's simply to feed an appetite. he says as long as we only think of it as the other person pursing natural urges instead of as betrayal, that it won't hurt either of us.
he says that if we did this, it would not be cheating because cheating is only cheating if the other person doesn't know about the relationship and is against it. he says if we give each other permission then we are changing our game rules, so we wouldn't be cheating at the game.
well, i am not happy about this at all.
in fact i don't even know what to say as it has come completely out of the blue. he talked to me for a very long time, trying to make me understand his point of view, but i don't think i can handle something like that. i am very territorial when it comes to my men. i do NOT like to share.
i can't help but feel that he is just asking me for permission to have as many affairs as he wants. if i agreed he would never have to worry about hiding his tracks, in fact he would say it to my face.
i am feeling very very paranoid about all this. my first marriage ended after i discovered my husband had been having a long affair behind my back, so this is opening up a lot of wounds and insecurities for me. it bothers me that he would even bring this up because he knows very well about my past. this is making me feel all those old things like that i'm not desirable enough to keep a man for myself.
and after moving and making so many sacrifices to make this work, i don't know how to feel.
honestly even though i'm not old, i'm not so so young anymore that i can go out and find myself another man to have a long relationship with and to marry. people also suspect people like me who have been divorced not just once but multiple times. the thought of being alone terrifies me and i don't want to give up so easily. my husband is very good to me and he's very intelligent too. some of the things he says concerning this makes sense to me but the idea is too radical for my what i was brought up to believe, which is that you don't sleep around after you're married. i'm just very confused. i don't know if i should accept what he's saying.
