My husband and I have been married for 14 years. We don’t have children, we were both focused on our careers and for me I always had PCOS and it was difficult for me to conceive so after a while we just gave up. We both have a lot of love for each other and instead of children we have 3 beautiful dogs together.

About two years ago we experimented with being an open relationship. It was a big change, and it really changed the dynamic of our relationship, like I felt things got a lot more competitive if that makes sense. We have gone into like phases where we date someone else its intense for a while it cools off. I don’t think my husband has found any partners he has been really passionate about the same way I have. He has complained that women lose interest in him when he tells people he has a wife. And that women that are attractive want him to be a sugar daddy.

Recently neither of us have dated anyone else we have both been happy with each other, but about a month ago my husband got invited on a trip to Columbia with his business partner. I wanted to go as well but his business partner is single and he said that it would be weird if I went.

He went, and I think he had an amazing time. Like he won’t give me details but he said people were so warm and kind and that it was incredible. He didn’t give me details but he told me he was able to date beautiful women, and that he would get checked out constantly. He starts going off about how the women there are so much more family oriented and then I asked him if he wants to start a family with a woman from there. He says no, thats not what he meant, but just that it was different in a better way.

I told him I was happy for him, but athat I am his primary partner and I feel uncomfortable. He now tells me if I want to stay his primary partner that I need to move there with him. Then he starts telling me we will be set financially and that he only needs to work 1 more year and he is elligible for his pension and that he doesn’t need much money to live like a king. I am like what? You want to move there? And he is like yup, and I brought up what about our friends and family.

He is like its okay he will come back for months at a time but he wants to move. He said that this can be the next chapter of his life. I am like okay but I don’t want to go. And he is like okay, well he will come back and visit me time to time. I asked him if he fell in love with some girl down there. And he is like no, he just is tired of being average in America and wants to be the big man.

I talked to my friends about this, and they are thinking that because he is a tall White guy that can speak Spanish that he must have been able to get tons of girls. I don’t know what to do here? Is this a temporary phase for him? Like I am getting scared when I was talking to him about this, he was saying like oh I am gonna do this, I don’t care if you come along. Like I am wondering if our marriage is dead already. When I ask him if he loves me, he says he does but then all I see him doing now is practicing duolingo. And I got messaged too by a work friend of his wife that if everything okay and why my husband is planning on leaving. Like Is this a midlife crisis? Like I do not want to leave America but I feel like my husband is set on this. Even small like things like we will eat an apple and he will tell me apples in America suck that the ones in Columbia are much jucier.

**tl;dr- husband and I have an open marriage, he went to Columbia with one his of business partners and I think he now wants to live there permanently.**

45 comments

  1. It sounds like he has rose coloured glasses on. Is he relatively new to traveling outside the US?

  2. I feel like the first mistake in all of this was starting an open marriage to begin with. Sit down and have a conversation with him to see if he’s willing to compromise, but I would start getting your ducks in a work in case divorce actually becomes a conversation topic.

  3. Divorce before he leaves because it will be nothing but trouble when he fails at everything in another country and he wants to come home. It’s not fair for you to uproot your life to go with him and be miserable when you can stay in the states and figure things out with your friends and family. I wish you the best of luck. 💜

  4. Sounds like your marriage is over. He does not care if you come or not. He is indifferent. And if you go you will be room mates or fwb at the most

  5. I’m sure the women there excite him as they do believe he will take care of them if they snag him. I don’t see the big deal in him wanting to move though. Many people are leaving the US. Especially around retirement age. It sounds like it’d make him happy. You two will have to figure out what this means for your marriage sooner than later.

  6. It’s definitely open now, unfortunately open really doesn’t have any boundaries so I guess you wish him luck!!!

  7. I mean…I (44F) have lived all over the US and abroad due to my job or my partner’s job. I’m not averse to living in another country.

    But to just make a decision unilaterally and “inform” your partner that you’re moving to another continent with or without them is a pretty disrespectful thing to do, not to mention a big 🚩 that there’s a lot more going on than “just” a move.

    If you want to save this marriage then I’d book time with a sex positive couples counselor.

    It’s one thing to have an open relationship. This is…a whole other thing.

    And yeah, I’m sure he found plenty of women who assume he’s a rich American and were happy to sleep with him. But I’d be willing to bet they didn’t know he’s married and wouldn’t think twice about him if they knew he want rich either.

  8. He got a taste of the good life, women actually wanting him, and probably very attractive. He didn’t have to or want to compete with you, most men in an open relationship, get 1/100 of what women can get. You either opened Pandora’s box, or allowed him to open it, because one of you brought it up first. Your marriage was essentially doomed when you did that, and now, you are going to have to compete with very beautiful women who live in Colombia. So your marriage in my opinion is over, unless you want to move down there with him, and watch him enjoy himself. Not that you can’t either.

  9. Honestly it sounds like he is his own primary partner, not you. He is only thinking about his wants and doesn’t care about yours. This has nothing to do with open vs closed relationships. It’s the grass is greener on the other side, only looking to satisfy his wants & fantasies. Personally I think him going through with the move means your relationship is over.

    Don’t chase after him, moving to Columbia is hyped up so high that it’s all going to come crashing down around him once he moves. If you’re there or after still married to him back in the states, you will get blamed when the move doesn’t meet his expectations.

  10. Even in an open marriage you don’t do anything without taking your spouse into consideration and talking about it. The problem here is he doesn’t care what you want he cares about what he wants.

    I think he’s not seeing the full picture. He may have been able to get the attention of lots of women because he’s a foreigner. However if he moves there he will be less of a foreigner. He will be living there.

    What if you do move there and he finds a relationship possibly having a child either by accident or on purpose. How would you feel?

    Honestly this happens a lot with people who travel. 4 years ago I took a trip to Costa Rica for almost a month. I fell in love with the place. I looked at property to buy, was going to spend part of the year there ect. But the more I thought about things it’s an amazing place to visit but I don’t want to live there and people I talked to there said it’s super common. So I know it happens.

    If he’s determined to do this I would honestly call the relationship done. It’s highly likely that things might not work out the way he thinks and you should be financially separated from the possibility of this failure. It would be a financial burden to you and your future.

    But like I said before the biggest issue is he doesn’t care about how you are feeling about it.

  12. Where you messed up is when he told you he wasn’t enjoying the open relationship you didn’t say on the spot it’s closed. I think the number one sign he is done with y’all’s marriage is the total indifference. Anger hate and sadness are temporary emotions when somebody just doesn’t care anymore it’s usually a sign he made peace with his choice.

  13. Your marriage was already dead before you opened it. He’s ready to go live his life the way he wants to and he doesn’t care what you do. It’s time for you to start making plans for your own life without him.

  14. Which one of you wanted an open relationship? If my wife asked me for one, there would never be any going back.

  19. >About two years ago we experimented with being an open relationship. It was a big change, and it really changed the dynamic of our relationship, like **I felt things got a lot more competitive if that makes sense. We have gone into like phases where we date someone else its intense for a while it cools off. I don’t think my husband has found any partners he has been really passionate about the same way I have. He has complained that women lose interest in him when he tells people he has a wife. And that women that are attractive want him to be a sugar daddy.**

    To me this sounds like the two of you mismanaged the new relationship energy phases of your outside relationships and that you were moving at a different pace than he was. The marriage should have been closed somewhere around this point in time so you could regroup, or at the very least adjustments to your own schedule made to balance things out. Your husband’s experience is not unique and it often spells trouble.

    You might want to xpost this to subs like r/nonmonogamy to get more experienced viewpoints.

  22. Has he really thought that one through? Moving to another country is a big deal! Sure, it’s all exciting right now now but Colombia is not exactly a walk in the park. I don’t understand how he can make that decision after just one visit. And he definitely can’t make that decision without you!

    Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore Colombia, I’ve been there many times (business trips) and dated women there, as a white guy the attention from women can be quite overwhelming. However, I never thought about moving there, just not sure that I could deal with Colombia on a daily basis, it’s so vastly different from what I know.

  23. What is wrong with Columbia? Beautiful scenery, delicious food, and you really would be able to live like a king on a lot lower budget. Some places don’t have as good infrastructure as the rest of the country, but a lot of places have amazing infrastructure and an amazing house there is cheaper than a house in any big city in the US.

    You guys should talk and at least hear him out on what his plans are. Maybe it would be an amazing move for you guys. Why do you automatically say you would never go there when you havent even tried it?

  24. Sorry but … he’s done. Which is good for you because he sounds like a self-centered asshole quite frankly. I’m guessing the open marriage was his idea.

    Just listen to him. He wants to leave you and move to another country, all so he can feel like ‘the big man on campus’. It would be laughable if it weren’t so damn cringey.

    I’m sorry. I’m sure this has to hurt a ton, the way he is just throwing you and the marriage away without a second thought. But that just tells you where his mentality is and, ultimately, how little you actually mean to him vs. how important stroking his ego is to him. End it now before it gets any more painful than it already is.

  26. Can confirm as a single 34M, tall white guy with money, Columbia is an incredible place. The women are beautiful and love American tourists. Granted, there are a lot of prostitutes, but also just other young single women who are drop dead gorgeous. If he was just with prostitutes, he will be in for a ride awakening if he moves there.

    It seems to me like he found a place where he can thrive in an open marriage and is willing to do anything to keep it going. I would think (though not sure, never been in an open marriage….or any kind of marriage), he was incredibly jealous of your success with other men and resentful that other women only wanted his money. I bet when he was saying he doesn’t like the open marriage but you were cool with it, it broke his loyalty to you. Now his loyalty seems to have disappeared all together. I think it’s safe for you to assume the marriage is over.

  27. Seems like the marriage died when you opened it—if it wasn’t dead before. Competing with your partner over your other sexual relationships is bizarre and unhealthy at best.

    I’m wondering why you all didn’t close it the moment he told you he wasn’t having fun. Is an open marriage something you pushed for? Sounds he’s been having a shit time of it for the last two years and has finally found something he can also be passionate about.

  28. That’s what ya get for doing an open marriage.

    Hope you learned your lesson OP.

    Our actions have consequences

  29. > they are thinking that because he is a tall White guy that can speak Spanish that he must have been able to get tons of girls.

    WTF?

    white skin doesn’t make non whites drop their panties

    delusional much

  30. Did the offer to open the marriage come from you?

    That day your marriage ended.

    The number of partners and age flexibility of women in open relationships are greater.

    Although the spouses behave in harmony, over time they begin to move away from their marriage and their women who sleep with many men.

  31. What I’m getting out of all of this is that he’s literally putting his desire to move to Colombia, which revolves solely around his desire to be surrounded by women he feels he has a chance with, over your entire marriage.

    …Do you honestly think there’s any chance of saving this.

    …And, more importantly, why would you even want to try to save this?

  33. The moment he also felt good in an open relationship, you said that you feel uncomfortable? Don’t you think that’s selfish?

    As for him moving there, that’s a different scenario, he now knows the feeling of being wanted and ofc he’ll chase that, nothing wrong in that. It’s for you to decide whether you want to be a part of that or not.

    For the marriage part, it was dead the moment it was opened.

  34. You would be crazy to go with him. Hurry and file for divorce because once he leaves the country you may have trouble getting your share of the assets. Sorry but you will find someone else.

  36. they see him as a money bag that’s it … 🙄 how naive is he ..

    i’d say your marriage is over … this whole open marriage thing never ends well

  39. File for divorce before he moves – get the finances divided. He is going to blow through everything on the women he is trying to impress and end up broke.

  44. Well, you were enjoying the “competitive” aspects of the open marriage so long as you were winning, right?

    Feels like you should give it just as long with the shoe on the other foot, to see just how much fun your husband was having.

  45. It sounds like you were upset he actually got to successfully advantage of the open relationship and you immediately got uncomfortable. You say **we** got into phases where it was intense, but also that he hasn’t had any partners he felt passionate about. You were in a very unbalanced open relationship, and now I guess you’re not his priority after two years of a lopsided unhappy dynamic. Instead of just complaining he should’ve more directly communicated about his displeasure, but I find it hard to believe you didn’t realize he was unhappy unless you were that caught up in dating.

    Realistically he was already checked out, a good time in Columbia made him realize there was a way out.

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