Reply to Wife is interested in opening up our marriage.

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[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.

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.

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]

Lots of people stumble into monogamy (and marriage for that matter) because it's what's expected or "normal" in society and not because they've taken the time to know themselves well and consider what type of commitment best suits their personality, needs and preferences.  People are immature like that.  Most people, I'd say.  Especially people who marry in their early 20s.  They often don't even know who they are yet.  If they are lucky, they grow together.  If they are not lucky, they grow apart.  OP and his wife have to talk about who they are and how they have grown and changed and see if they still want to be together now, and what that looks like.  OP needs to drop the shaming of his wife for discovering different interests, though he can be clear that it's not where he is or what he wants AT ALL.  Maybe there's something else that can be just as fun and exciting for her that he feels better about.  But they can't know that unless they talk about it, and they can't really talk about it if OP is going to punish her and be angry at her for the fact that they have to talk about it.  Part of being deeply committed to another person is being willing to talk about what they want and what you want and how those things fit together (or don't).  Which is not to say that he has to agree to open the marriage (he doesn't!).   But if he's pissed that he even has to deal with the fact that his wife has desires different from his own, well, that's not great for a marriage.  He can say he's hurt, he can say he's scared, he can say that in fact his deepest desires line up pretty well with the default social structure for sex and marriage and that he's concerned that this is a fundamental problem that they didn't recognize at the start of their marriage.  And see if she says it's fundamental or it's something she just thought would be fun and a fair number of men would be excited about, so she took a shot.  But if he's that opposed to it, then it's not something she needs.[/quote]

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