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My wife wants an open marriage and I dont

38K views 90 replies 50 participants last post by  goingsolo12 
#1 ·
First time posting on this site.

I have been married for 17 years and the last few years have been challenging. We really grew apart. In November my wife told me that she was leaving me. I begged her to stay and she did. Since then she confessed that she developed feelings for another man and was interested in us opening our marriage so that she can have some type of relationship with him. She claims that she loves me and wants to stay married to me but that she no longer feels any romantic feelings towards me. She wants the freedom to explore romantic emotions with this man and others.

The funny thing is that since confessing this to me, our relationship has grown closer than it ever has, more intimate and we have been having more passionate sex than we have had in many, many years. She claims that she feels closer to me because I am giving her freedom from what she felt was a constricting relationship. This confuses me.

I love my wife and I also still some type of romantic feelings for her. I want to stay in our marriage (we have three kids 14, 10, 8) but I would prefer monogamy. She told me that the only way she can stay married to me is to open things up a bit. I agreed to gift her 4x year overseas trip with freedom to do what she wants with this particular man and anyone else. As long as it is far away from me, from our home, I feel a bit safer about it.

Truth be told, I am uncomfortable about this and I wonder how this will impact our relationship moving forward. I feel pressured into this but at the same time, I dont want to end our marriage over this issue that may be temporary (wishful thinking?). But I am starting to resent her a bit and I am thinking about this all the time. Sex to me is more than a physical act and the idea that she will be experiencing emotional and physical intimacy with others is troubling to me.

If anyone has any experience with this or has anything constructive to say, I would appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks!
 
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#39 ·
First time posting on this site.

I have been married for 17 years and the last few years have been challenging. We really grew apart. In November my wife told me that she was leaving me. I begged her to stay and she did. Since then she confessed that she developed feelings for another man and was interested in us opening our marriage so that she can have some type of relationship with him. She claims that she loves me and wants to stay married to me but that she no longer feels any romantic feelings towards me. She wants the freedom to explore romantic emotions with this man and others.

The funny thing is that since confessing this to me, our relationship has grown closer than it ever has, more intimate and we have been having more passionate sex than we have had in many, many years. She claims that she feels closer to me because I am giving her freedom from what she felt was a constricting relationship. This confuses me.

I love my wife and I also still some type of romantic feelings for her. I want to stay in our marriage (we have three kids 14, 10, 8) but I would prefer monogamy. She told me that the only way she can stay married to me is to open things up a bit. I agreed to gift her 4x year overseas trip with freedom to do what she wants with this particular man and anyone else. As long as it is far away from me, from our home, I feel a bit safer about it.

Truth be told, I am uncomfortable about this and I wonder how this will impact our relationship moving forward. I feel pressured into this but at the same time, I dont want to end our marriage over this issue that may be temporary (wishful thinking?). But I am starting to resent her a bit and I am thinking about this all the time. Sex to me is more than a physical act and the idea that she will be experiencing emotional and physical intimacy with others is troubling to me.

If anyone has any experience with this or has anything constructive to say, I would appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks!
Not something I could ever do or be comfortable with, it would appear she is not prepared to leave the stability you offer or look like a bad person for splitting up the marriage for an AP but she is going to get all the benefits of both worlds.

The mental torture of actually knowing your wife is being ****ed by another man will destroy any self confidence you have left, please do not accept it unless you are totally comfortable with it and the relationship goes both ways as in you also have other woman you have sex with regularly which is clearly not the case here due to the highlighted statements above.

Are you a needy/anxious or controlling person who smothers her and relies on her for everything(you need to be honest with yourself and really think) if so that could be why she could be feeling constricted? Either way I would be very cautious about doing anything but file for Divorce and trying to move on before you lose any more self respect or worth.
 
#40 ·
F....I have been married for 17 years and the last few years have been challenging. We really grew apart. In November my wife told me that she was leaving me. I begged her to stay and she did. Since then she confessed that she developed feelings for another man and was interested in us opening our marriage so that she can have some type of relationship with him. She claims that she loves me and wants to stay married to me but that she no longer feels any romantic feelings towards me. She wants the freedom to explore romantic emotions with this man and others.

The funny thing is that since confessing this to me, our relationship has grown closer than it ever has, more intimate and we have been having more passionate sex than we have had in many, many years. She claims that she feels closer to me because I am giving her freedom from what she felt was a constricting relationship. This confuses me.

I love my wife and I also still some type of romantic feelings for her. I want to stay in our marriage (we have three kids 14, 10, 8) but I would prefer monogamy. She told me that the only way she can stay married to me is to open things up a bit. I agreed to gift her 4x year overseas trip with freedom to do what she wants with this particular man and anyone else. As long as it is far away from me, from our home, I feel a bit safer about it.

Truth be told, I am uncomfortable about this and I wonder how this will impact our relationship moving forward.

My heart goes out to you. I think I understand the slippery slope you are one. Your marriage is in crisis. Insist on you and your wife going to a marriage counselor. Your first priority should be your love for and protecting your children. Your wife in not thinking clearly.

You sound like you are sexually codependent on your wife for your emotional happiness. That isn't good and you really need to practice safe sex with her, she isn't protecting you, herself and her family's future.

Good luck.
 
#41 ·
You can easily google up plenty of anecdotal stories about how well such arrangements have worked for individual couples, but when you find any solid research that looks at the overall picture rather than statistically insignificant anecdotal examples, it becomes clear that it is a disaster for most, and not at all some magic path to how we're "hardwired" to be.

Divorce rate for traditional marriages has run fairly close to 50% for quite some time now. Since open marriages are a small minority, and not openly talked about, there's not as much reliable data. But what surveys have been run show open marriage failure rate to be as high as 92%. What's more, people who respond to questions about whether or not opening the marriage made it stronger, also reply in the negative at a 90%+ rate.

Bottom line: I would never use the failure rate of traditional marriage as a justification for trying an open marriage. It may work for some, but that is a very tiny percentage of the total and the chances of you being part of that total are very slim. And that failure rate/negative response rate includes all the people who went in fully committed to the open marriage and fully believing it would work. If it overwhelmingly doesn't work for them, why would anybody who is opposed or even conflicted about it have any reason to believe it would work for them?
 
#45 · (Edited)
I have yet to see an open marriage that works unless both are committed to the lifestyle and are willing to ignore the obvious pitfalls. That being said, I believe that your wife really just wants an affair, and if that is her requirement to stay in the marriage on a go forward basis, you should offer her a divorce.

As a adjunct to all of this, she says that she wants some sort of relationship with another man, ask her, how she will feel if you are physical with another woman. Ask her how she will feel if you decide that you want an exclusive relationship with another woman?

Sir, you need to get tough on her over this. Let her know that this could potentially destroy your family, and you would be determined to grant her a divorce under fairly punitive terms, ie: loss of custody of minors, financial penalties, such as child support, etc etc etc. See a lawyer and have some papers drawn up. It could shock her out of this bizarre mindset.
 
#46 ·
Xerxes,

You asked if anyone has experience with anything like this, I do indirectly with my mother in law who lived with us.

In spite of her being of advanced age she never got over my FIL living with another woman in another country. She felt incredibly lonely and isolated and would break down emotionally every so often. Can you really imagine yourself sitting at home with your kids while your W is living with someone else.

If your W insists on this course of action you must insist on telling your children every detail of her arraignment, also everyone else should be informed as well, your W does not get to keep her reputation, because she does not deserve it.

Your W may also end up a virtual slave of this Mr Wonderful who has a good chance of being emotionally and physically abusive once he has your W under his control. What kind of man would separate a mother from her children for 4 years?

Tamat
 
#47 ·
@xerxes1974 read what I say below very carefully as I am a very experienced swinger that has been involved in a nonmonogamous marriage for over a decade.

What your wife (or rather STBX wife?) is doing is NOT an open marriage and it is not an alternative lifestyle or any kind of new-age lifestyle. ..... she is simply chumping you. You are being played for a fool and chump her.

She is keeping you around to mow the lawn, unclog the toilet, kill spiders and babysit the kids while she has wild monkey sex with other men.

She knows that you are so desperate to keep the family together and so dependent on her for female companionship and attention that she knows she can feed you a $h!t sandwich and you will eat it and accept her terms because of your desperation and weakness.

You are being exploited and manipulated.

Yes, I understand things have perked up in the bedroom. But that is a momentary boost in hormones because she knows she can now have wild monkey sex with other men and it has given her a temporary boost in hormones.

The thought of her being with other men has also given you a temporary bit of an evolutionary boost in hormones as well.

This will all be short-lived. Once you agree to let her screw around, she will lose respect and admiration for you because she will see you as weak, dumb and manipulatable. Women cannot desire men they do not respect or see as weak so she will soon lose that temporary horniness with you and she will soon stop responding sexually to you all together. your marriage will soon become completely sexless or she will give you duty sex once a month and let you have sex with her limp body while she watches HGTV on the tv in the bedroom.

While this is happening with you, she will be having hot, wild, passionate, porn sex with the other men.

She will invariably start seeing them as strong, virile "Real Men" while she will see you as the babysitter and house boy that washes her laundry after she comes home with the other's men's semen in her underwear.

You will be the beta boy that takes care of things at home while she gets down with the real men.

At that point it will simply be a matter of time before one of those men makes her an offer to leave the house boy and take up with him full time.

You can't win this one and it will never play out to your benefit. This is a loser's and fool's game. You are being played for a chump and a fool here.

Grow some giblets and squash this silly idea or pack your bags and make a good life of your own now.
 
#49 ·
So, OP, what do you get out of the deal? I haven't heard you say what your plans are for yourself since this is an "open marriage." (It's not by true definition.) What are the terms of the open marriage for you? Was that discussed? Or was it alllll about her?

Also, Are You The Breadwinner of the family?

Look, I have no issues with open marriages, swingers, any sort of alternative lifestyle. If it is between two consenting adults or 3, or 10 consenting adults, that is not my business and it is not my place to judge. However, both parties have to be in agreement and both parties should get something out of the deal. Sounds like this is a totally lopsided situation.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
 
#50 ·
She's a bully.
She has bullied you into this with emotional blackmail, knowing you don't want it and you're afraid she'll leave if you don't allow her to have her frolics with other men.

An 'open marriage' is when both partners are fine with it. If you continue, it's not an 'open marriage'.
It's a marriage where the husband is allowing his wife to have affairs - though he doesn't want her to - because he's afraid she will leave. Hardly a 'marriage'.

The hard truth is that no-one would do this to someone they love and respect. Would you?

Quit being glad your relationship has 'improved'. She's only rewarding you with crumbs because you've agreed.

See it for what it is. Get your self-respect back NOW. You deserve better.
 
#52 ·
I am so sorry this is happening to you and your family. You might be in danger of making decisions too quickly. It's so tempting to come up with plans that you think you can deal with but really your being too optimistic about how much garbage you are willing to tolerate. Don't make any commitments to her right now. Wait a few weeks. Tell her you need to think about it for a while first.

After learning your W has another guy it's normally to emotionally be all over the place. Desperate, angry, and my personal favorite suspicious. I am/was so suspicious. Suspicious that she is telling you the whole truth. Suspicious she isn't going to limit the affair to 4 times a year. Suspicious she is emotionally attached to this other guy all the time and not 4 times a year. Does she text him, call him, meet up with him? How do you know? She has poor judgement since she got herself in this position. You can't trust her. It's no way to live.

My H had an EA and I scared away the OW away but 5 years later I wish I had just let her have him and because I could have healed. Now the wound keeps reopening. Resentment builds. Then my H got caught rekindling his friendship with OW. It never stops. Might as well stop it now. She is not in a place to R.
 
#54 ·
Xerxes,

Ok buddy, I'm going to jump in here not as someone who agreed to a proposition like this, but someone who shut it down. Without getting into my long story my WW got herself convinced polyamory would be a great thing, and went about trying out sex with other men to see if she could handle it before I got any say. Now, unlike you I never said yes to anything, but I did do some investigating and reading, including going with her on polyamory websites. So heres my take because you have no clue what you are getting yourself in for out of desperation on your part to stay married at all costs.

If you think you are uncomfortable now, when apparently this OM she has found is overseas wherever that is, wait until she starts to "explore" her more local male population, and if you think this little agreement you have is going to hold when you have capitulated so easily, you are sadly mistake.

You need to read two books. "More Than Two", and one called "Opening Up" These books will not sugar coat this and will give you the pros and cons of an open marraige. To give you the factys in short version
(1) women have ALL the power in open relationships. They can walk into a bar with five wedding rings on and 95% or more of the men will be falling all over themselves to get with them for some no strings sex. You on the other hand will get totally rejected by the same percentage of women who know you are married.
(2) open marriages collapse for the same reasons monogamous ones do. Broken boundaries. You have just Ok'd your wife having sex with another man who is not local, but in her mind you are now in an open marriage, and she is free to explore relationships with other men also. once she starts having sex with other men, you are going to find yourself baby sitting while she primps and goes out to get laid and be sitting there when she conmes home. You will be watching TV while she sexts and texts her boyfriends. You are going to eventually be asked to meet them and maybe even to let her bring them in public where you live. If you do not believe any of that you will if you read the books.
(3) you are not now in any form of legitimate open marriage. You have been browbeat in to accepting whatever she wants to do because you are too paralyzed mentally right now to cope with it

The simple fact is if you go to a polyamory convention or gathering you will be told up front that this NEVER works when one partner is coerced into it like you have been. And if you read a polyamory forum you will see how many of these relationships are a mess. You need to see an IC for youtr apparent co dependence that allows you to so easily be pushed into accepting this.

You are in for a world of hurt that in the long run will probably wind up a disaster anyway because if she screws enough other men she will become emotionally involved ( most women do) with one local to you and leave you anyway. I know you are under this illusion that you have limited the potential damage to four times a year. keep posting here. We will see how long that holds up.

my suggestion to you is to see an attorney and call her bluff. if she is willing to divorce you to go bang some guy overseas, you are toast in this relationship;
 
#55 ·
my suggestion to you is to see an attorney and call her bluff. if she is willing to divorce you to go bang some guy overseas, you are toast in this relationship;
Straightshooter's suggestion "to see an attorney and call her bluff. if she is willing to divorce you to go bang some guy overseas, you are toast in this relationship" in a nutshell says it all.
 
#58 ·
You have children with this woman, so look at it this way. If it was your son who was in this position and he told you that his wife demanded that she be able to sleep with other men while he stays at home and watches the kids what would you tell him?

Would you advise him to just roll over like a dog for her in order to keep the marriage at any cost or would you attempt to talk some sense into him and get him to see how this arrangement will leave him feeling completely worthless and emasculated? Would you warn him of the possibility that his wife could bring home any number of sexually transmitted diseases or tell him how dangerous it is for a woman to meet up with strange men for random hookups? Would you tell him that as a husband and a father it was his primary responsibility to protect his wife and children even if that means telling them "NO" sometimes?

Unfortunately you've allowed this to go so far that now a simple "NO" will no longer suffice if you wish to salvage your marriage. You'll have to drag your wife kicking and screaming(metaphorically speaking) out of this "lifestyle" which she will no doubt resent you for taking away from her for the foreseeable future.

Worst case scenario(other than her getting infected/impregnated/or killed by an OM obviously) is she finds somebody, maybe her current OM maybe a different one and decides he's a better catch, she divorces you and you become a weekend dad. Best case scenario is that some years down the road she regrets ever getting involved with this garbage and she looks back and wishes you had put your foot down the moment those words ever left her mouth, cause in the back of her mind she is always gonna blame you at least a little bit for not "mate guarding" her.

There are only two types of men who would allow their wife to be degraded like this. Those who are living in fear of being abandoned cause they think they're not good enough for her or those who simply don't value their wife all that much and see nothing wrong with pimping the mother of their children out to random degenerates. Either way it's a dangerous and nasty underworld filled with broken people that you and your wife are about to embark on.
 
#59 ·
On a somewhat humorous note, my former business partner (former, because his WW's moods basically destroyed our business) was confronted with this scenario. He asked me what I would say to her? Me being somewhat of a prick when it came to that woman, gave him his line. He said to her; "Should we open the marriage before or after I have both of your legs broken?"

Unfortunately, or fortunately, his WW has no apparent sense of humor, (When you look up "Bimbo" in Webster's, her picture is presented) and took this quite seriously. Basically, within 8 hours, she NC'ed her AP, made appointments for her psychiatrist, and PCP, and begged him forgiveness. They are still limping, as neither of them really understands that she has more psychological problems stemming from being raised by two functional alcoholics, and lacks any semblance of impulse control or boundaries.
 
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#63 ·
I didn't even read your post because your title has all the info anyone should need to reply.

Any spouse who wants an open marriage when their partner doesn't needs to have their ass kicked to the curb. There is NO in between or negotiation or extenuating circumstances involved. If you do not want to share your wife, and your wife won't agree, then your wife gets the hell out. End of story.
 
#67 ·
My guess is she's been doing the OM for weeks before submitting her proposal for an open marriage. Rather than him being plan B I look at it a him being "base camp" where she can return like a hunting party does when going after big horn sheep in NW Montana. ;)
 
#68 ·
I really hope you come back and read the advice given by everyone.

You are not going to be able to handle know she went off to sleep with someone else, she is having great sex with you because you gave her what she wanted.

My question to you is what are you getting out of it?

I think you need to have a sit down with the wife, and explain after doing some thinking you just can't agree to let her do this and continue to be your wife.
 
#71 ·
This is sad. 3 kids stable home life is about to blown apart so this woman can test drive this guy out in the open. Let's be serious here. When a spouse tells you about an open marriage, they have already been getting busy for a while.

Open marriage for the majority of men, is the road to cuckoldville. Even a below average woman can most likely have sex on-demand with men of a higher sex rank than her. They're not going to wine and dine for it but she can have a new partner every night. The great majority of men, would be lucky to score once a month. So what will happen is that your wife will be out several nights a week getting more wanton by the day, while you're home with the kids.

Just file for divorce and work on becoming a better man. You will respect yourself and you will model for your kids what a man should be. Let your wife model the kind of woman they should avoid at all cost. She's puffed up on confidence she gained from the ego boost she's gotten from a new man blowing smoke up her behind.

But remember life is a marathon not a sprint. If you make the right moves, you'll prepare yourself to meet a woman worthy of your love. She's on the glamorized road to divorce, single mom'sville except it rarely turns out like those Lifetime channel made for TV movies.
 
#76 ·
In any real situation like this, the woman is giving the man a opportunity to come to his senses and just exit the marriage with dignity. It's surprising many men cannot. As a metaphor, no man wants wants another man helping himself to the best watermelons in your truck patch. But men who often believe they are lucky to have what little they got, are willing to permit the gatekeeper/wife to allow a certain amount of pilferage by certain men so long as there a little left for them during harvest. Our man Xerxes, appears to be the type that really has few problems with his wife inviting sharecroppers to harvest what he labored 17 years to make. Its on him and I submit ain't a hell of a lot any of us can do. It ain't like he's going to wake up one day and say, "I really don't have to put up with this crap." The road to replacement is appears too long.
 
#77 ·
I haven't read any of the other comments, but as someone who had a sexually non-exclusive (though still very much traditionally 'monogamous' in every other aspect) marriage for a while, my opinion would be that your proposed situation is not going to work. At all. Particularly for you.

I've been around a whole lot of 'open' relationships in my time, and have been very close to the people involved, and my take on what it takes to make things work are these (and even with these, you are still playing an 'extreme sport' and should be fully aware of that):

- the marriage comes first and is as strong as it can possibly be, with two partners that adore and respect each other above all others and who have excellent communication and partnering skills. I have never, ever seen an less-than-great marriage improve through opening it up (except in some extreme cases, like when one partner doesn't really care about/want sex and also doesn't care if their partner seeks sex elsewhere).

- both partners have to want it equally. If one partner wants to dial it back or wants out entirely, the other should follow with little-to-no resistance.

- everything must be done together, and at the same level, unless the less active partner truly doesn't care (see above). Most women, particularly, will have a much easier time finding willing partners than most men will. If she is not cognizant of and responsible around that power imbalance to make sure her partner doesn't feel left out, the marriage may quickly turn sour.

There are lots of other considerations, but those are the big three, IMO. Bottom line - the marriage, and the people in the marriage, always always always comes first. No exceptions.
 
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