Reply to Wife is interested in opening up our marriage.

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Wife is interested in opening up our marriage."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]I don’t know. I feel just as bad for her as for the guys in sexless marriages. If you have a kink, playing around the edges probably isn’t enough to scratch that itch. Just like the guys who want 4x a week aren’t going to be satisfied when the wife compromises and puts out once a week. It sucks because one person basically holds all the cards and can dole out whatever they want and the other person has to take it and smile. If they try to discuss solutions, they’re treated like they acted on their worse impulses, when their only crime was honesty. [/quote]

I agree with this. This is a fundamental sexual incompatibility. What OP sees as compromise that his wife should be happy with is, for her, probably the bare minimum she needs to not feel sexually dead. That doesn't mean that OP has to go along with it if it's really not his thing, but there's also probably nothing he can do to help his wife to be fully content in their marriage either because it's not about him--it's about who she is as a sexual being. You can't really turn off being a kinky/sexually adventurous person. As someone in this very same situation--kinky person who married young before I realized what I was and that it was going to be a fundamental incompatibility, I can tell you it sucks. I've not cheated, but it is absolutely a pretty corrosive thing in our marriage.[/quote]

FFS.  Of course you can't "turn off" being a sexually adventurous person, but you can certainly control those impulses, just as you do any number of other impulses detrimental to a relationship.

I'd love to eat donuts and smoke cigarettes every night, but I don't.  I'd love to quit my job and travel the world again, but I don't.

Why?  Because I made promises to someone that I love and we have shared goals and dreams.

Those dreams require sacrifices to achieve.

OP's wife is acting like a 2 YO, thinking that she can have her cake and eat it too.  Not the way the real world works.  [/quote]

She's not acting like a 2 year old. She asked if he would consider it. She came to her husband with an avenue with which she wants to explore her sexuality to see if she could get his buy-in. That's pretty damn mature. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it not so. Not everyone considers monogamy a prerequisite for marriage, and a lot of us consider an ideal marriage to be one in which both parties have the freedom to flourish as individuals too. For a lot of us, the ability to be fully realized in our sexuality is part of that. If you don't understand that, that's fine, but, if that's who you are, you can't just sweep it under the rug either.

To me, OP is the one acting like a 2-year old; I understand it, but it is still immature--if you know she's kinky, it shouldn't be a gigantic shock that she might be interested in swinging or some other type of ethical non-monogamy. But, given the shaming language he uses about her kinkiness, I would wager a bet that swinging is not so much her thing as she just wants the opportunity to be with someone who fully embraces her sexuality. There's nothing about an open marriage inherently harmful to their shared life together, if they are both on board. Now, since OP is not, his wife has some decisions to make. But, she's not wrong for asking. [/quote]

I agree that there's nothing wrong with 2 consenting adults agreeing to an open marriage.

[b]However, obviously, OP and his spouse agreed that monogamy was a prerequisite to their marriage.  Now she's apparently trying to go back on the lifelong commitment that she made in order to pursue her selfish impulses.  That's immature and unfair at best, absurdly childish at worst.[/b]

I also challenge your assumption that the desire to be "fully realized in our sexuality" by having an open marriage is (a) somehow different from any other impulse, and (b) an innate feature beyond anyone's control.

On (a), it's no different than the urge to eat too many donuts, smoke cigarettes, or ride a motorcycle extremely fast.  It's a primal urge from the lizard brain.

On (b), are you really such a slave to your desires?  If so, I feel sorry for you.[/quote]

Except, monogamy is the default position in our society and many people, especially young people, don't know that it can be negotiable.  OP's wife may not have realized that she had a choice about being monogamous in a long term relationship.

And women's sexuality changes with time, for a whole lot of women.  Tons of women live happily as straight women or lesbian women when they are younger and as they move into middle age find out that they suddenly have an interest in women or men that wasn't there before.  Women fundamentally can't guarantee to be one sexual orientation their whole life because their sexuality may change with time. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics