I’ll keep it short. I let my husband sleep with other women because of a fantasy and now I’m tore up inside from letting him and I am too afraid to ask him to stop because he has already started. Keep reading if you have time on your hands.
So, my husband and I have been together for 3 years, married for 2 years. I will save the sappy, romantic feelings I have for my husband for a later point because once I start, I won’t stop and I just wanna get to the story. Warning: I will describe him!
To describe our union, it is very intimate, loving, thoughtful and filled with passion and hope- but my latest “great” decision to allow my husband to sleep with other women is redefining our union for myself and I feel as though I just opened Pandora’s box of bull crap that will complicate everything and that it will cost everything we have invested in each other so far, and it’s all my fault.
Having met and married my husband is one of the most blissful, yet peaceful things I have experienced in my life so far, so I was deeply honored when he asked me to marry him (I cried as if someone shot my puppy in front of me). He calls me every chance he gets, holds me close all the time, he includes me in everything he does, loses sleep just to hear my stupid thoughts at 3 AM, and just is always straight and honest with me with his thought processes and feelings. I never asked him to treat me so special and so well, I never could grasp why, but I felt like a new person. He is more than my husband and my lover, he was my best friend…
And then I got super depressed over a life event that triggered a whole onslaught of “trauma” that even preceded THIS trauma. Let’s just call it “career sabotage” especially because I had identified with this “career”. I was crushed and I became bitter. I was paralyzed with fear because now I have no sense of direction in life, and my plans for a secure, and prosperous future with my husband have gone out the window. I have gone through life struggles before, but not like this. Someone else is involved in this struggle.
Before meeting my husband, I had worked on myself for two years on my emotional state because I am an angry person that doesn’t process my emotions when upsetting things happen to me, I repress and move forward because life still moves forward, despite my feelings toward anything. And this is the attitude I’ve applied to this horrendous idea I’ve conjured up in an attempt to please my husband and make sure he feels satisfied because I am dealing with deep feelings of dissatisfaction and he bears the brunt of it and I can’t regulate my negative emotions when I experience them at all. Those feelings transpired into this fantasy that was honestly great in theory and we had great sex with it but now it’s a mirror of what’s really happening.
My husband makes me happy, and I just simply want him to be happy. I began to fantasize my husband being with other women, and in this fantasy I would be present, NOT participating in the act with him (I get grossed out with the idea of others touching me, only my husband can touch me), but just witnessing him experiencing pleasure, was exhilarating for me. I’ve told my husband this in great detail.
The first time I brought it up was during sex, and he stopped in the middle of it and gave me this look as if he was heart broken, I guess giving me pity or disgust, I actually couldn’t tell and asked “why would you take that from me? Why would you ever let me? That would break your heart.” And I reassured him it wouldn’t. I said that I understood that he loves me, as long as he can separate his emotions from his sexual encounters, protect our relationship from us separating over a woman, and if he can handle that, then I would allow it for him.
BOY I WAS WRONG! I had gotten a job full time and we spent less time with each other, but remember at this point I’m still angry and a jerk. He finally acted on it a few months later when I brought it up again because the fantasy intensified and I urged him to go because I thought I could handle it as my stress grew and my temper worsened and we laid down ground rules before he had done it. The main one being I don’t wanna know too much detail (yes I know, very contradicting, but shit got real!) I reconciled between fantasy and reality with him just being able to have sex with other women. The fantasy would require that I be present but in reality if he were to call a girl pretty, I’d be crushed. So that was my solution to me experiencing inner turmoil and wanting to salvage our connection, but in retrospect I am sabotaging it.
The first time he did it, I came clean and said I didn’t like it and that it would be best I just don’t know at all. Well, he did it a second time and he didn’t tell me like I asked, but I found out right away and still hate it.
But he came home a little different this time and this is what is scaring me and making me regret it amongst all the dumb reasons I explained that are totally not worth it.
I feel like I just single handily shot down my marriage. I haven’t talked to him about it yet because I don’t know if that will make him leave me. I feel like I just ruined my marriage that was purely intentioned and I opened a door I don’t know if I can close or if he would agree to close it.
I’ve scheduled therapy for myself to get my shit straight so I stop stressing my husband with my own problems that really have nothing to do with him. This fantasy is not a solution and I don’t know how to navigate this and I DO NOT want to tell a therapist this.
Is there any coming back from this? I fucking regret this so bad