So, to get the obvious question out of the way: my wife is poly, and I am poly-curious, and the cheating occurred with her boyfriend. Before providing advice, please take a minute to understand the background of our situation.
We have been married for almost 9 years, and my wife has known she is Poly for roughly 6 months. We have a close friend whom she had fallen for, and I helped her to realize that she had feelings for him, as I have known she was Poly for the last few years. Long story short, turns out he has feelings also, and we agree to start advancing towards a throuple, with my wife as a hinge; her being in a relationship with him, while maintaining our relationship as primary, and her boyfriend and I just being friends without sexual connection.
We had set some ground rules, as this wasn’t something we were experienced with, and boyfriend was involved and agreed; the last thing any of us wanted was to end the marriage with my wife, so we wanted to take things slow, and with some strong boundaries while we got used to the idea.
Repeatedly, my wife “forgot” the boundaries, and we needed to retouch on them, only for them to be thrown out the window. We would then create more strict boundaries as a group, only for my wife to once again disregard them. We started seeing a marriage counselor (my wife and I) to try and find a better way to communicate, and navigate through this new territory.
As I mentioned before, her new boyfriend was a friend of ours, and we actually would travel a few hours once a month to visit him, or vice versa with him visiting us. Well, just over a week ago, we had another visit – and due to the amount of times boundaries had been broken that she and I had set together (yes, she was 100% involved and it was a discussion, not a “this is how it needs to be”), we limited this visit to purely cuddling and handholding – I needed to rewarm back up to the idea of them before, as while I knew she hadn’t cheated on me, the repeated offenses had hurt me.
Needless to say, she and her boyfriend were kissing in the kitchen.
So, now, in our relationship, we have always considering cheating to be more about dishonestly, and breaking boundaries that we had set, and less about the “sexual” side, so long as we were both aware and in agreement. This brings me back to my title – I finally broke down and I feel like I have been cheated on. I feel like my wife has stronger feelings for her boyfriend than she does for me, even though she swears that isn’t the case. Our marriage counselor agrees, and is walking us through restarting our relationship, and my wife has stopped seeing her boyfriend to work on our relationship.
I do not plan on leaving my wife, and as far as I know, she does not plan on leaving me. We want to work through this, but I am having such a hard time trusting her, and I am constantly in emotional pain. She tells me I just need to forget that it happened and move forward, but it was literally just over a week ago; the wound is still fresh.
Any advice on how I can heal would be appreciated, and I would prefer to stay away from “she cheated just leave her”, as that is not my goal. Thank you reddit <3
24 comments
I’m a little confused. Can you specify what boundaries she broke and when?
> I do not plan on leaving my wife, and as far as I know, she does not plan on leaving me.
Well yeah, why would she? You’re a doormat and a sure thing in terms of commitment and finances. She can break the rules and you’ll keep sticking around.
If you’re not going to leave and she’s not going to play by the rules set out by both of you, you can’t be helped.
*You have a job. You outlined in the contract that you would like to be paid for that job for a specific amount of hours per week. But your boss keeps underpaying you and or making you work more. You keep having meetings about it and he agrees to pay you and you only work set hours. But he keeps breaking his promise.*
*But you don’t want to leave because you, for whatever reason, enjoy working there.*
You should quit.
My wife has known she is poly for 6 months.
Let me correct you, she got bored and wants something you’re not giving her.
You’ll get better advice in r/polyamory and by specifically stating what the boundaries and agreements you and your wife made that were broken.
That said, you and your wife jumped into a polyam relationship without any preparation and, unsurprisingly, it blew up in your faces, with you seeming to bear the brunt of damage. Marriage counseling is a great start, but you both need to sit down and go through resources *together* for a good six months to a year before you even consider opening back up.
For the record, this –
>we agree to start advancing towards a throuple, with my wife as a hinge
isn’t a throuple unless you’re also involved with the boyfriend and this –
>my wife has stopped seeing her boyfriend to work on our relationship.
closing down a relationship anytime you and your wife experience a difficulty in your relationship is a dick move that only tells your partners that they are disposable and second-class.
OK so no “cheating” happened but the breaking of trust and boundaries is frequently happening. This boils down to her simply not having respect for you. Her being all “forget about it and move on” is the disrespectful cherry on top of the disrespectful cake, that is NOT her call to make, at all. The only way poly works is through trust and respect, and she’s broken both multiple times and her solution is for you to “just get over it”. Honestly, I’m livid for you, how dare she think she can REPEATEDLY break trust/boundaries and is just telling you to get over it and forget it, that’s literally not how this works. If this is her attitude, you’re in for a rough relationship of continuous heartbreak.
She cheated. Just leave her.
Honestly, this doesn’t sound like a poly relationship, it sounds like condoned cheating. It’s why your wife and your “friend” could never stick to the boundaries that were set, it’s also why you feel so bad about it, your wife seems to have gotten caught up in the fog of it and your continued acceptance of these boundary breaks and “restructuring” just emboldened them to keep pushing it until something snapped.
I know that’s not what your after but that’s what comes across from your post.
Edit: I put friend in quotation marks because he continued to encourage these boundary breaks knowing they would hurt you and your marriage, those are the actions of an affair partner, not a friend whose considerate of both your marriage and your friendship
First of all, your wife gets no more boyfriends. Second, uh, well…. Idk honestly. She’s faced no consequences for her actions, and you don’t seem keen on changing things in your relationship to make sure she doesn’t do this again. You don’t want to leave either so, I don’t really know what else you *can* do.
Also, ofc she wants you to forget it. If you forget about it you’ll be happy as roses, until she starts doing it again…
ETA: Oh, this might be a terrible idea, but you might want to consider getting a gf? If your wife is cool with it, since you were never *actually* in the “poly” part of a poly relationship, only your wife was/is.
I feel that most often when people go from exclusive to open or poly or other stuff it doesn’t go well.
So is the relationship at least temporarily closed?
Frankly she seems to have a lack of remorse. You both had set agreed upon boundaries that she cross with no regard for your feelings. She only agreed to stop once you literally had a breakdown.
And what does it mean that she “stopped seeing him”. Are you both NC with him? Or is she just now “friends” with the dude who wants to get in her pants now?
Marriage is an equal partnership and if she doesn’t see you as an equal and respect you maybe there shouldn’t be a marriage.
Play stupid games…..
What were the consequences of violating boundaries you both discussed ? Did you establish that ?
Since he lives a few hours away, my first thought would be for you to close things down for a few months (?) and just focus on re-establishing your relationship together. If she cannot respect boundaries, you may need to rethink the viability of your polyamorous relationship. You cannot “make” her want to respect boundaries. It has to come from her. Discussing some consequences of boundary breaking (if you haven’t done so already) might be something to consider.
Are you clear on whether your wife is initiating the boundary breaking behavior or the guy? It may be worth having the boundary discussion with the fellow also.
Tell her that she does NOT get to tell you to forget about it and move on. That’s dismissive and honestly means that she’s just waiting for this to be done so she can get back to seeing her boyfriend. You can’t heal if she’s being dismissive like that.
Get out of here with that rhetoric. Polyamory is not a sexual orientation. There’s no such thing as “poly-curious.”
The worst kind of poly person is someone who makes up rules as they go along, and breaks them. That’s your wife. Your marriage won’t survive.
Yeah this isn’t poly. This is her cheating on you openly.
Close the marriage back up and don’t actually open it unless you want to this time.
You have a marriage counselor who is trained to deal with these things. Listen to them and don’t ask Reddit strangers who just say to break up. Your counselor will get to the bottom of why your wife won’t stick to the rules you both agree to and why you keep letting her get away with it. Therapy will uncover whether she wants to save the marriage or be single. Reddit readers have no idea.
setting limits must have certain sanctions
“If you cheat, I will forgive you after a few days.”
there is no sanction
she lives her relationship and for a few days you punish yourself
“He thinks he’s in control. I do what I want, he pouts a little, then he comes back” into her teasing story.
Best advice I can give is don’t assume you have a choice in staying married or not. From your own post is seems like she has already replaced you and just doesn’t want to admit it.
I myself was in a relationship like this. And in the exact same scenario as yourself. I totally understand where you’re coming from with the “it’s not cheating but it’s cheating to me” I was in an open relationship with my fiancé and we were both able to sleep around/whatever but we had rules/boundaries. The interesting thing when you drop sleeping with others as a mortal sin then the lines get kinda fuzzy. “She only broke a few rules, it’s not like it’s always not okay, it just wasn’t okay then but she still did it” you guys set up the relationship with specific rules and boundaries. It was only agreed upon because of said rules and boundaries. The second a partner goes out and blasts through those rules it becomes a huge disrespectful act to you. You gave her full quarter to do what she wanted so long as she followed the rules but she completely disregarded your feelings and the agreement you two made as primary partners. The power balance is slipping in her favor and to your detriment. Now she has no consequences for breaking rules and you have this huge cloud over you for being upset. Of course she’s trying to rug sweep you, she “only kissed him” which has been totally fine before, and she’s slept with him so what’s the big deal with a little kiss? /s. The big deal is that the kiss wasn’t just a kiss. It was a major disrespect to you and your relationship because she agreed specifically to not do that. You are not hurt because she kissed him, you are hurt because she totally disregarded your feelings and ignored your entire discussion, only for a kiss too. In retrospect when I dealt with this I wish I had stood up for myself more and left during the first few instances but I stayed around until she essentially left me for another partner. One of my biggest regrets was not being the one to end it because I should have. For you, you’re going to need to decide what you’ll do if she disregards the boundaries again, but the biggest thing is following through on that. She’s already done it once, she’ll probably do it again, hopefully not, but you need to be ready to follow through. I would recommend either cut off the polyamory completely if she does it again and go back to monogomy, that way it would be total cheating if anything happens. Or you need to tell her you’ll leave if she does it again. Best of luck my man. Feel free to PM me if you want more advice, I didn’t have anyone I could talk to because of how special the situation was too.
> I would prefer to stay away from “she cheated just leave her”, as that is not my goal.
OP, that’s no one’s goal. But you’ve just told us above that she has REPEATEDLY overstepped boundaries. And “overstepping boundaries” literally means “cheated on you,” by your own definition, and by the definitions all of you have set in your relationship. She has repeatedly cheated on you and you’ve put up with it, over and over.
And now that you’ve finally had enough and put your foot down, she’s AGAIN trying to slime out of it by telling you to just get over it.
There’s nothing YOU can do, bc you’ve done everything else, EXCEPT LEAVE. There’s literally no other way to make it clear to her that you’re serious, because you’ve already talked yourself blue in the face, made her put her other relationship on hold, and taken her to couples counseling. And she’s. still. doing. it.
It’s not going to stop. So your choices are: accept that she’s going to stomp your boundaries and cheat, or leave. Pick one.
You are entitled to your boundaries, but are you sure that
-no petting
-no oral sex
are enforcable boundaries in a poly relationship? Because from outside it looks a lot like “ok have sex, but do not enjoy it, do not touch each other, do not kiss each other, you know what? Don’t have sex”.
Are you sure you are comfortable with a poly relationship? It really doesn’t seem so.
Whelp, this is some sad shit.
Polyamory has become such a great way for people to browbeat their partner into letting them cheat.
Sounds like another open marriage success story!! Ha ha ha
I’m a Forgive Once guy, but with Wife’s attitude, even I would take a different route, called Restorative Justice. Accountability for the repeatedly broken agreements. For an agreed time period, the offender foregoes one or more specific privileges and performs act(s) of penance.
In your case, I wouldn’t make the terms all that severe, but still requiring effort. I’d suggest a time period of six months, which is roughly equal to the duration of her promise-breaking. It’s a test to see if she’ll live faithfully by the terms without showing resentment. Considering how easily she “forgot” her promises, this will be no small test.
Just between you and me: you will have to keep an optimistic face, and to put on a good show of gladness when promises are kept. She will lose resolve quickly if you’re stern, demanding, or even indifferent – a parole officer instead of a husband.
I don’t consider RJ and DIY project. Simply coming to terms can be rough. Let your MFT guide you. Good luck