42 M here, a several months back my wife told me she wanted to open up our relationship and see other people. Kind of blindsided by the whole proposition but was like cool, let’s give it a go.
During the first month, the disparity between our two situations was pretty noticeable. She had dates every other night, got dolled up and came home late. First week she had dates on consecutive nights (Friday and Saturday). I would have dates maybe once or twice a week and roughly half of those would either flake or I would get stood up. It’s a pretty humbling introduction to middle age for those married men in their 40’s wondering if the grass is greener…
Never made an issue out of it, just took the opportunity to explore the nightlife of my city or camp out at a late night coffee shop and catch up on some reading. Some nights I would just come home early and catch up on work.
After a bit of trial and error, I’m currently juggling 2-3 FWBs, and going out on the occasional first dates. Some days I’m having sex with multiple FWBs on the same day.
I’m a well educated affluent male but I’m also married, in my 40’s, under six feet tall and have a dad bod for sure. Let’s just say it took me a while to cultivate my current roster of FWBs and feel like I’m just getting warmed up.
**Current wrinkle in the status quo** is that my wife just recently broke things off with her side piece, I’ve never inquired about him and wouldn’t be able to recognize him if we crossed paths. She’s in an emotional free-fall right now and is really leaning on her close friends to grieve the end of the fling. She spent most of last night crying to her BFF on the phone, not realizing till later that they were in the middle of a storm surge from Hurricane Ian (Naples, FL) and didn’t really have the bandwidth or battery life to deal with her issue.
Additionally we have a lot of mutual friends so there’s some issues of overlapping loyalties and weirdness there, I’ve received several unprompted check-ins to see how things are going on my end. There might be an overall lack of sympathy from her friends who are not in an ENM situation since they probably view this as strictly an extracurricular activity versus a “real stakes” relationship.
I’m making myself as emotionally available as I can right now but I suspect she’s having a hard time seeing me as a confidant in that facet of her life. We’ve both enjoyed the unrestricted DADT privacy of our side adventures but am suspecting she’s ready to get off the rollercoaster of emotions. I’m pretty familiar with the dynamics of NRE (New Relationship Energy) so kind of anticipated to perks and pitfalls of it from the get-go.
**Any advice here?** I don’t mind hitting pause on my current situations but at the same time they’re all very low key FWB situations that’s mostly a variation of “Lets fuck and hang…”. Would like to keep that going if its a reasonable expectation to advocate for.
32 comments
If the situation is dadt then why would her breaking off her side thing affect you in any way?
The idea of this lifestyle is that it wouldn’t. If she can’t handle the boundaries and stresses of continuous break ups this may not be the right choice for her.
Sounds like you should just let her handle her issues. It’s part of the lifestyle she chose.
What did she think would happen?
This arrangement isn’t designed to make you both closer. She’s slowly going to find herself more isolated over time.
So she fell in love with this guy, got you to agree to let her sleep with him, and it didn’t work out for her. She is grieving the loss of a romantic relationship that is not between her and her husband. I would take this time to regroup and think of how to proceed.
She asked to open the marriage because she was either already cheating with this guy or was going to, this was not a fwb to her but an actual relationship, and she’s grieving the loss of someone she was picturing a future with. Don’t be surprised if she wants to close the marriage sooner rather than later.
Do not pause it, she didn’t do it when you were alone at the start so there is no reason to do it now.
This was her idea, so it is up to her to come out of this, you can support her but do not pause what you have becasue she didn’t and would probably never do it for you.
You might ask this question again at /r/nonmonogamy, where you’re likely to get better answers. You should also spell out what sort of discussions you and your wife had going into this. Do you feel like she overstepped some boundaries? From your post I don’t get the sense that you do, but I could be wrong.
I’ve had to help a partner grieving over a secondary relationship. In my case I had the opposite problem you’re having — I was the only person she would trust. That said good things about the relationship, but was also exhausting and felt like something I hadn’t signed up for.
You don’t say how long you’ve been married and the state of the marriage before this, but it’s possible that your wife hadn’t experienced anything like these strong emotions in quite a long time and was unprepared for how overwhelming they can be. I mean something beyond pure NRE and its loss. When you’re young and dating around you can get a little inured to heartbreak, but when it hits you after being absent for 15 years it can pack quite a wallop. Your wife will probably need to get off the roller coaster for a while. Even if she won’t talk to you about the relationship loss (and she really should), you should at least get her to tell you if that means you need to pause or drop your FWB arrangements as well.
Good luck.
Ok, no one is actually listening to you here. They are all assuming you’re here about cheating. This sub is not equipped to advise you on ENM.
Go ask this question in r/ENM or r/nonmonogamy.
Tell her to keep her chin up she’ll find another fuk buddy soon.
It sounds like there is a real problem with the communication in this marriage. Was polyamory part of this or do you feel she crossed a line if this is her reaction to a break up with someone that should have just been a sexual partner?
Just ignoring her unless she asks for help would be the obvious answer.
Its not really your problem.
Here is what I am seeing. You, in the spirit of the open marriage, are having purely sexual adventures with other people. She had a steady relationship where she transferred her primary romantic feelings and affection. If one of your FWB’s got a boyfriend, and asked to cut things off you would probably be a little disappointed, or you might just be happy for them. She was so emotionally devastated by the break up that she is crying to every person you know, and it’s so clear to them that this person was her partner, and you’re just being kept for convenience, that they’re trying to open dialogue so that they can help you make that realization yourself and do better for yourself. You should not let her come back and treat you like her partner so she can cry on your shoulder about the person she was emotionally cheating on you with. Let her go, and go have your adventures without having to support the lifestyle of someone who truly does not consider you their primary partner anymore.
Your wife sounds like an incredibly selfish person. I can’t even wrap my head around keeping someone on the phone with this while they’re in actual crisis. I wouldn’t count on her being loyal to you the same way you’re loyal to her meaning I think she’ll leave you when she does find someone else. My advice for would be to let her go.
ENM and DADT are not compatible. ENM essentially requires radical honesty. That’s where the ethical part of the ENM comes from.
DADT is a policy that will almost always lead to any agreed upon boundaries being violated because there is no enforcement mechanism. In fact, you are putting up an additional wall between you and your main partner since you disallow asking or talking about other partners. This essentially makes the secondary partners emotionally closer and more available than your primary.
It feels like you skimmed the polyamory reading materials and figured you could wing it.
I’m much younger than you friend (28M) but I’m going to share my experience anyway. Do with it what you will, it may even be things you know already but here it goes.
My first long term relationship was from 21-27, she was 2 years younger so 19-25. About 2 or 3ish years into our relationship we decided to open it up. We were committed to each other at the time but we were young and wanted to have some fun. It was actually something I wanted but was too afraid to ask for until she actually suggested it.
The number one thing that I learned during that relationship and especially once we opened it up is that communication is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL. Communication between you and your partner about what your boundaries and expectations of the situation are. What is acceptable and what isn’t. Where exactly to draw the line as far as how much info you want to share with each other about your extra curricular activities. And so many other things besides.
Communication with your FWB is also crucial. It’s important to make sure early that they know your situation and that you’re not fully available. It’s important that they know they’re getting into a casual situation and to not expect anything past that.
If you can’t have that kind of open and honest communication with everyone involved the situation is just not gonna work out and is a recipe for disaster.
My suggestion is to lean into this philosophy and try to open up communication with your wife. Have a conversation with her about how she’s feeling and how you might be able to help. She may want space, she may want comfort, she may want to go out with her girlfriends, get white girl wasted, and vent to them. I don’t know her or how she wants to handle the situation but that is something you guys need to have an open and honest conversation about.
I’ll close with a word of caution. My relationship ended when she decided she would rather be with one of her FWB than me. (Something that I never even considered with any of my secondary partners) It may have been inevitable but it also may have been avoided if me and her had had better communication skills at the time, and honestly even if communication hadn’t of solved the issue at least I wouldn’t have been so blindsided when it happened.
Lmfao this sounds exhausting.
Sounds like wifey got a dose of “careful what you wish for”
Sounds totally stable
That’s what you get when you let your heart win
You are remarkably sanguine about the whole thing. I would think it would be pretty damned hard to watch your wife having a meltdown over having just lost the apparent love of her life. (Sorry to be blunt, but from you descriptions of this whole thing, she’s freaking head over heels for the other guy.). Plus she either isn’t interested in you enough to lean on you through this, or maybe she’s just barely self-aware enough to realize that would be a hell of an unfair ask. She would be basically rubbing your nose in how much more this other guy means to her than you do.
I don’t see a lot of reason for you to put your whole arrangement on hold over this. It’s not like she was at all gentle with you while you were getting your sea legs; it’s not like she’s making a lot of demands on you right now, preferring to work through this with others; and you frankly deserve to feel loved and desired by somebody when her interests so blatantly lie elsewhere.
Maybe subtly make yourself available to her another couple of nights a week to give her the message that you’re there for her. But don’t feel like you have to drop everything and everyone preemptively. Make her do some introspection and come to you prepared to eat some crow if she wants to close it down (for her own benefit, the same reason she opened it up).
I think you need to let her handle her own affairs. Do your own thing. Honestly it’s so weird that you are comforting her because the other man left her and at the same time you have your own side pieces.
This just sounds like a cesspool for resentment and issues.
My 3 cents on this (inflation adjusted 2 cents) is that WHEN her emotions on this settle down a conversation on emotional attachments with other people is in order. She should have broken this off when that started happening.
In the interim a couple people suggested good alternate subs to check on for more specific advice here.
in her mind, you’re pretty low-tier to do anything for her. Just let her handle her own issues and she’ll come to you when she wants to.
it’s not your responsibility cause i feel she’s checked out of the relationship eons ago
Why would you pause your end of things? When she meets someone new to hook up with she won’t want to pause anymore.
You have an agreement, if it comes to deciding to terminate that agreement it should be something you both agree to. You both agreed to an open marriage not “an open marriage but only when we both have other people to fuck”
You and your so called wife have nothing for each other.
I would jyst leave her. If you left, would she act like this? I doubt it. I don’t even think she would even know you had left.
why get married if it’s just gonna be an open relationship…..wtf….
No respect
What a train wreck, do these open relationships ever work?!
Why are y’all even still married? She clearly wanted to see other people without “cheating “ on you. Now you made a mess out of your relationship. This is a HOT mess omg. Having a open relationship is code for being attracted to someone else and wanting to fuck🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
Fucked around and found out. Literally. Why should you stop what you got going on now that she crashed and is burning. Did she stop when she had it good and you didn’t? Yea didn’t think so. She dug the hole. Not let her lay in it.
Sooooo….. when’s the divorce party….
This sounds less like an open marriage and more like you are just roommates now
Open marriages/relationships sound so fucking awful lol