Husband's "greatest dream in life" is relationships with other women

[ansur]

My husband of 7 years has just told me he has fallen in lust/love with our friend K. He says he wants to stay married etc., and has decided that we must terminate all contact with her in order to keep his sanity.

 

Then he went on to describe how the "only thing he's ever wanted" is to have relationships with other women. Not just sex, but full up relationships. He describes it as an all-consuming desire that makes him miserable because he knows he can never fulfill it without doing irreparable harm to our marriage.

 

He apparently devotes much of his time at work to building and maintaining elaborate adulterous fantasies. This is why we can no longer see K -- because his fantasies have gotten so all-consuming and fever-pitched it is simple torture to try not to act on them. Thing is, there was NOTHING about their relationship that fed into this. She is not a very close friend, and they have had zero flirting or any interaction of this nature. They have no emotional connection. It is a completely internal and one-sided mania that my husband developed all on his own. He talked about how he was deliberately feeding and building these fantasies up, over the course of years.

 

But he doesn't think that this kind of behavior is a problem. He doesn't want to try to redirect his sexual drive towards healthier outlets, like his wife, porn, or at least unattainable women. He feels these fantasies are his "hopes and dreams" and that he would be "letting himself down" if he tried to stop having them. That it would be crushing his hopes and dreams.

 

I think this is a problem. I think if you are feeding fantasy to the point that you have to destroy a relationship with one of your only friends (from something that is COMPLETELY in your head alone), that you are engaging in destructive behavior. He fully intends to deliberately cultivate his adulterous desires, even though he has no intention of acting on them, for the rest of his life. Even though he says that it makes him miserable "most of the time." But he still doesn't think it is a problem to be living this way.

I don't like the idea of being with someone who is so miserable about being trapped in a monogamous relationship. It is hurtful to hear, but I would be OK with living with him and working on improving our relationship if he had the slightest desire to change his habits as well.

As it is, he vehemently wants to change nothing. What is to stop him from repeating this in the future with another friend? I don't want to have to keep cutting my own close friends out of our life because my husband is incapable of controlling his thoughts about someone who is OFF LIMITS.

 

I am working to improve our relationship in other ways -- reconnect sexually, etc., but would just like to hear if people think I am reacting too emotionally to this, or if it seems like something that is going to be an on-going problem if my husband refuses to at least acknowledge that it is a problem.

[Philosoraptor]

Sounds like you are willing to be quite patient and open, which is very commendable. I'd suggest counseling as this "all consuming desire" is not in any way healthy. You shouldn't have to alter your life because he has an imagination he refuses to control. What's next? Moving out of the desert out of fear of a tidal wave?

[oldshirt]

This does sound very troubling and unhealthy. Having feelings and desires that pop into your head are normal. Being all consumed by them and resigning yourself to a life or torment and despair over them is not. Losing frienships and straining your maritial relationship is dysfunctional and unhealthy.

 

I will pose an honest question to you. On a scale of 0-10, with 0 being not at all and 10 being you would absolutely love it and believe you should pursue it, how open and agreeable would YOU be in having some kind of plural arraingement with another woman?

 

On that same 0-10 scale, How open and agreeable would you be to some kind kind of open marriage/swinging type arraingement where it may not be a full fledged plural relationship but more of a recreational sexual arraingements where some limited romantic/sexual contact was aloowed with other people under certain parameters?

 

The reason I ask is there ARE people that do have successful polyamorous and successful open marriages etc.

 

While I am concerned that the depth of his interest in this very concerning and the fact he is unilaterally terminating relationships in the absence of any inappropriate behaviors shows a level of dysfunction and harm - he has in fact also demonstrated that he is respectful of people's boundariesand has shown a great deal of self control.

 

My primary advice is to seek professional counseling (joint MC for both of you and also individual coulseling for him) to help explore this obcession for him and to find away for you guys to live with this in a healthy an productive manner.

 

And if there is a part of you that is OK with a certain level of nonmonogamy that may be an option worth exploring within the counseling.

[stillafool]

Ansur, the question is what are you going to do about his decision to have these fantasies for the rest of his life? He has already told you what he is going to do now what are you going to do about it?

[oldshirt]

I do need to share a little bit of my history so you understand where I am coming from and you understand my perspective a little more.

 

A few things you have said about your husband struck a cord with me but a few other things I believe believe are disturbing.

 

I too had always had "hopes and dreams" and I too would have felt I would have let myself down and would have felt dissapointed with life had I not pursued them. My ' hopes and dreams' were not full blown relationships with other women nor any kind of plural marriage or anything like that, but rather my dreams were to be in a healthy, happy, mutually supportive marriage but have recreational sex with other women as part of FMF 3-somes, couple-couple swapping and group sex scenarios.

 

All men (and probably the vast majority of women) have those kinds of thoughts,feelings and fantasies that pop up every now and then but what separated me from the pack was I ACTUALLY WANTED TO DO IT IN THE REAL WORLD. I didnt want to just fantasize and dream about it any more. I wanted to do it and I didnt want to go to my grave without experiencing it.

 

I kept my dreams on the ba k burner and lived a traditional life and had a good traditional, monogamous marriage for ten years before I felt secure enough to approach my wife about it.

 

It turns out she had fantasies and some kinky desires of her own and so we talked about it and discussed boudaries and rules etc etc for over a year before we tried anything.

 

It was about another year after that that we had actual full swap intercourse with another couple.

 

All in all we were very active swingers for around a half a dozen years and had many 3somes, group sex and lots and lots of couple-couple 4somes.

 

That kind of lifestyle is not for most but it worked for us and we did not have any problems or nightmare scenarios with it.

 

Where I am going with this is I can somewhat identify with your husband as having that as a "dream." And for me I do look back on it as a dream come true and I am very glad we were able to discuss it and live out my dream in a healthy and mutually satisfying manner.

 

The concern I see with your husband is he is not addressing and dealing with his feelings in a healthy and functional manner an it is causing problems in your marriage and friendships.

 

NOW PLEASE BE CLEAR, I AM NOT SAYING THAT YOU SHOULD INDULGE HIM HIMAND GIVE IN TO HIS WHIMS. I am saying you should become aware of your own desires, your own values, your own boundaries and then discuss them and make them perfectly within the confines of competant, professional maritial therapy......

[oldshirt]

..... so where i am going with all of this is I believe he should seek serious individual therapy so he can address his feelings and learn a more healthy and effective way of dealing with them. And I believe that both of you should also be in some serious maritial therapy so that both of you can better understand and communicate each of your feelings and boundaries.

 

The reason I ask about your feelings on nonmonogamy and boundaries is because no amount of therapy and counseling will "cure" him of wanting to be with other women. This is almost an orientation in and of itself just like heterosexuality and homosexuality etc. It can't be cured or made to go away, only controled and managed so that it is expressed and delt with in a healthy and functional fashion.

 

You are going to have to be self-aware of and willing to enforce your hard boundaries. Your actual hard boundaries may be more liberal and accepting than what you are currently aware of. You may be ok with him having sex with other women if you are able to touch her too. You may be willing to let him have a night out as long as you know nothing about it. You may be willing to let him have a gf as long as she goes shopping and other girlie things with you and is respectfull to you. You may be willing to let him be with another woman as you as you can be withher husband etc etc etc etc etc

 

Those are the things you need to really explore your feelings and boundaries about because in many ways wanting to bewith other people is like water building up behind a dam. If you completely block it thepressure will just keep building up and either something unexpected floods upstream or the dam just breaks in an uncontrooled torrent.

 

Whereas if you can let some of the water out in a controlled fashion it can relieve the pressure so that nothing floods in an unpridictable manner and nothing breaks out of control.

[It-is-what-it-is.]

Ansur

 

My husband of 7 years has just told me he has fallen in lust/love with our friend K.

 

Ok, well it's good he told you, I think...

 

He says he wants to stay married etc., and has decided that we must terminate all contact with her in order to keep his sanity.

 

Okkkaaaaay.....sanity? Okay

 

Then he went on to describe how the "only thing he's ever wanted" is to have relationships with other women. Not just sex, but full up relationships. He describes it as an all-consuming desire that makes him miserable because he knows he can never fulfill it without doing irreparable harm to our marriage.

 

He apparently devotes much of his time at work to building and maintaining elaborate adulterous fantasies.

 

Oh HELL NO...(and btw What kind of job tolerates this?) you have one of two things here, 1. Sex addict, read up on that stuff, some pretty scary stuff. Or 2. He is mentally ill. Ok or 3. He is just saying something so completely nutty because he is actually having an affair and you will grateful that its just a run of the mill affair after this nonsense. I vote for 2. And 1.

 

it is simple torture to try not to act on them. It is a completely internal and one-sided mania that my husband developed all on his own. He talked about how he was deliberately feeding and building these fantasies up, over the course of years.

He feels these fantasies are his "hopes and dreams" and that he would be "letting himself down" if he tried to stop having them. That it would be crushing his hopes and dreams.

 

Oh.hell.no.

 

He fully intends to deliberately cultivate his adulterous desires, even though he has no intention of acting on them, for the rest of his life. Even though he says that it makes him miserable "most of the time." But he still doesn't think it is a problem to be living this way.

 

Oh.hell.no. Just so many issues with this. What does this give you? Why would you ever in a million years think this is ok?

 

 

I don't like the idea of being with someone who is so miserable about being trapped in a monogamous relationship.

 

(Fist bump) you go girl! Exactly, why would you ever accept this. Like he's doing you some big favor sacrificing his greatest hopes and dreams to have relationships with many other women, and poor baby he's stuck with you. Hes an Asswipe

 

As it is, he vehemently wants to change nothing.

 

Dump.him.fast.

 

Do you have children? If not then run. If yes. Run faster.

 

This is never going to be pretty. This is not you. You can't fix this, especially if he won't go to therapy. Sorry, there is zero hope.

 

I don't mean to make light of any of this, but your husband is not right.

[It-is-what-it-is.]

..... so where i am going with all of this is I believe he should seek serious individual therapy so he can address his feelings and learn a more healthy and effective way of dealing with them. And I believe that both of you should also be in some serious maritial therapy so that both of you can better understand and communicate each of your feelings and boundaries.

 

The reason I ask about your feelings on nonmonogamy and boundaries is because no amount of therapy and counseling will "cure" him of wanting to be with other women. This is almost an orientation in and of itself just like heterosexuality and homosexuality etc. It can't be cured or made to go away, only controled and managed so that it is expressed and delt with in a healthy and functional fashion.

 

You are going to have to be self-aware of and willing to enforce your hard boundaries. Your actual hard boundaries may be more liberal and accepting than what you are currently aware of. You may be ok with him having sex with other women if you are able to touch her too. You may be willing to let him have a night out as long as you know nothing about it. You may be willing to let him have a gf as long as she goes shopping and other girlie things with you and is respectfull to you. You may be willing to let him be with another woman as you as you can be withher husband etc etc etc etc etc

 

Those are the things you need to really explore your feelings and boundaries about because in many ways wanting to bewith other people is like water building up behind a dam. If you completely block it thepressure will just keep building up and either something unexpected floods upstream or the dam just breaks in an uncontrooled torrent.

 

Whereas if you can let some of the water out in a controlled fashion it can relieve the pressure so that nothing floods in an unpridictable manner and nothing breaks out of control.

 

I think there is a difference in exploring something mutually agreed upon and someone who is behaving in an obsessive way causing impact to his job, friendships and marriage based on compulsions.

 

He said he wanted full blown relationships with others, so polyamory, but that he would grit his teeth and be monogamous. The therapy isn't to change the desire but the compulsion. Like an alcoholic who gets treatment vs one who just doesn't drink.

 

People can have whatever relationship floats their boat, but it needs to be good for both of them

[janedoe67]

Wow. I say yes to therapy for him. I am not usually this glib, but I think this guy should be his therapist:

 

 

I post that for a bit of comic relief (because if I were you I would need it), but really??? He will let himself down if he stops having imagined adultery at length in his office all day?

[oldshirt]

I think there is a difference in exploring something mutually agreed upon and someone who is behaving in an obsessive way causing impact to his job, friendships and marriage based on compulsions.

 

He said he wanted full blown relationships with others, so polyamory, but that he would grit his teeth and be monogamous. The therapy isn't to change the desire but the compulsion. Like an alcoholic who gets treatment vs one who just doesn't drink.

 

People can have whatever relationship floats their boat, but it needs to be good for both of them

 

I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing with me but yes, I agree he has an unhealthy compulsion that he is not dealing with well and which is causing problems in real life. He needs some serious therapy fast to deal with these compulsions in a more healthy manner.

 

And they as a couple need therapy so they can work together so that she can establish and enforce her boundaries so he is running like a wild dog throughout the neighborhood and he isnt quietly going insane feeling like he is trapped in a torture dungeon of monogamy.

 

Where my perspective may differ from the rest of polite society is when it comes to nonmonogamy a little leeway and flexibility can go a long ways.

 

To use your alcoholic analogy, the conventional wisdom is to be considered sober, an alcoholic can never take another drink again untill he/she dies.

 

And I'm suggesting that for some people they can have a drink with a buddy at Friday evening Happy Hour and its enough to take the edge off enough that they don't lose control of themselves and drink till they are falling down drunk and then crash the car and kill someone.

 

So what I am saying is that she needs to explore her feelings and boundaries and determine what she can and what she cannot live with.

 

Therapy may be able to help him not be so compulsive and delusional in his thinking and it may help him deal with and channel his feelings in a more contructive way but it will not make him stop yearning for sexual variety or make him him 100% satisfied in a completely monogamous marriage.

 

in oder to stay healthy and reasonably happy together, they are each going to hav to make some compromises and concessions so she is going to have to be clear on what her hard boundaries are.

 

This guy clearly have a problem that needs serious therapy and they as a couple need MC in addition to his IC in order to work through all of that.

Edited July 19, 2013 by oldshirt

[ansur]

When we started our discussion it did sound like my husband wanted to make these dreams happen in real life.

But apparently in order to be happy with an outside sexual relationship he would have to be in love with the partner, and also have an on-going sexual contact with her. Things that are not OK even in an open marriage.

 

I couldn't believe he was really so delusional as to think that this could work in a stable relationship. (With me, anyway. Or most women, I should think.) He admitted the fantasies "lacked a certain verisimilitude" so on some level he did realize that it was an irrational desire with no real solution.

 

But when we talked next, he seemed to have backed off from the making-it-happen-in-real-life thing. At that point it sounded a lot less alarming. More like he was saying he had a really strong sex drive and had a lot of fantasies because of it, but that he never had any intention to act on any of them (because he wanted to keep our marriage intact). Similarly with K.

 

I was OK with that -- and I could believe that the feelings he had let himself develop for K were really about things he was not getting in our own relationship. I thought we would be OK as long as we worked on strengthening our relationship (particularly our sexual relationship). I am the lower libido spouse (shockingly! heh), so I really just thought a lot of this issue probably came down to him wanting more and better quality sex from me.

 

But now I think my initial read on the situation was more correct.

He keeps wanting to talk about how big a deal these thwarted desires are to him -- and keeps referring to them as hopes and dreams -- and keeps openly weeping when talking about cutting things off with K. (Very hurtful as I don't remember him ever displaying an emotional response on my behalf of nearly that magnitude.) Oh and he shared that even after all this trouble between the two of us the thing he is mostly still thinking about at work...is fantasies about K. Thanks, honey!

 

I've been to see a counsellor once but he rejects the notion for himself personally, so far. Part of the reason I posted to this forum was to see if the obsessive-desires-but-committed-intentions issue warranted a major push from me that he see a counsellor. Whiiiich it sounds like the answer is YES.

 

This is incredibly stressful for me. For us both, actually. We are having trouble even eating. I do believe him when he says that he loves me and our marriage is important to him. But I am having a really hard time reconciling that with his apparent unwillingness to admit that these fantasies are becoming destructive.

For the sake of self-pity.. we have a 16 month-old daughter, and I am pregnant with our second. I am trying not to reflect on that part too much.

[ansur]

oldshirt, if your wife had not been open to the idea of an open marriage, what would you have done?

[AlexDP]

I don't know. To me it just sounds like he doesn't like his wife. But what do I know?

[tbf]

ansur, it's a question of time when he'll cheat. If this bothers you and you can't handle an open marriage, it's time to put the boot to his arse out the door.

[It-is-what-it-is.]

When we started our discussion it did sound like my husband wanted to make these dreams happen in real life.

But apparently in order to be happy with an outside sexual relationship he would have to be in love with the partner, and also have an on-going sexual contact with her. Things that are not OK even in an open marriage.

 

I couldn't believe he was really so delusional as to think that this could work in a stable relationship. (With me, anyway. Or most women, I should think.) He admitted the fantasies "lacked a certain verisimilitude" so on some level he did realize that it was an irrational desire with no real solution.

 

But when we talked next, he seemed to have backed off from the making-it-happen-in-real-life thing. At that point it sounded a lot less alarming. More like he was saying he had a really strong sex drive and had a lot of fantasies because of it, but that he never had any intention to act on any of them (because he wanted to keep our marriage intact). Similarly with K.

 

I was OK with that -- and I could believe that the feelings he had let himself develop for K were really about things he was not getting in our own relationship. I thought we would be OK as long as we worked on strengthening our relationship (particularly our sexual relationship). I am the lower libido spouse (shockingly! heh), so I really just thought a lot of this issue probably came down to him wanting more and better quality sex from me.

 

But now I think my initial read on the situation was more correct.

He keeps wanting to talk about how big a deal these thwarted desires are to him -- and keeps referring to them as hopes and dreams -- and keeps openly weeping when talking about cutting things off with K. (Very hurtful as I don't remember him ever displaying an emotional response on my behalf of nearly that magnitude.) Oh and he shared that even after all this trouble between the two of us the thing he is mostly still thinking about at work...is fantasies about K. Thanks, honey!

 

I've been to see a counsellor once but he rejects the notion for himself personally, so far. Part of the reason I posted to this forum was to see if the obsessive-desires-but-committed-intentions issue warranted a major push from me that he see a counsellor. Whiiiich it sounds like the answer is YES.

 

This is incredibly stressful for me. For us both, actually. We are having trouble even eating. I do believe him when he says that he loves me and our marriage is important to him. But I am having a really hard time reconciling that with his apparent unwillingness to admit that these fantasies are becoming destructive.

For the sake of self-pity.. we have a 16 month-old daughter, and I am pregnant with our second. I am trying not to reflect on that part too much.

 

Wow.just.wow

 

Some questions if you don't mind.

 

Are these "Hopes and Dreams" new? Or has he always felt this way? You have been together long enough to have one child and be pregnant with another so I assume you have a couple years.

 

Reason is, he is acting like a person who has obsessive compulsive disorder, and has some dillusions. The unrequited love is terribly concerning. Obviously not a diagnostician, but this is concerning enough that you need to find out. Not your typical behavior.

 

I don't get the I pressing that this is a desire to have an open relationship? You didn't say he wanted to open up the marriage, rather he said he would try to live with your marriage killing his dreams....maybe I misunderstood?

 

I would be really curious how he would react to your asking if you could go find a little romance, love and sex on the side?

 

Normally I would suggest something to shock him into reality or a good frank conversation, but I am not sure he is stable enough to understand. But lets pretend for a moment he is not delusional.

 

You should sit him down and tell him that you are unwilling to be in a relationship that includes multiple people. Real or imagined. That although he is offering to "suffer" to manage his obsessions, you do not want to be in a marriage with someone who wants to be with someone else, who loves someone else, or who is always looking for someone else. You are unwilling to live under the stress of knowing he is always on the verge of cheating and could bring home disease at any point when he is not strong enough to manage his compulsions.

 

You are willing to out in an effort to strengthen the marriage and meet his sex drive, but that would require work on both your parts including psychological and medical supervision.

 

That living with a disfunctional relationship like he is suggesting is not acceptable to you, and while you love him, you love yourself and your children more and cannot subject them to a life of the stress and uncertainty that it would bring.

 

Ask him to leave. Let him experience the world he wants to live in. Warn K first that he is a stalker. Tell her to call the police if he shows up since he is unstable.

 

Of course he will cheat so I would give him a free pass, tell him he cannot subject the children to any external "loves". Returning to the family requires a clean full pannel STD TEST. Commitment to see a IC. MC and MD with you able to speak to the doctors. If he gets anyone pregnant you will divorce him.

 

My thoughts. Sorry.

 

Take care of your precious child and that baby you are carrying.

[pteromom]

He keeps wanting to talk about how big a deal these thwarted desires are to him -- and keeps referring to them as hopes and dreams -- and keeps openly weeping when talking about cutting things off with K.

 

Holy cow. This guy sounds majorly effed up and delusional.

 

Yes - it is normal for a man to fantasize about being with other women. It's even normal for them to go through GIGS phases (mid-life crisis, for example.)

 

But your husband has issues. No, you are not over-reacting. The fact that he feels letting go of his delusional fantasies would be letting go of his "hopes and dreams" is QUITE repulsive to me. His "hopes and dreams" should be about the marriage he has and making it fulfill his fantasies rather than idealizing a friend to the point where you have to dump her. Ugh ugh ugh ugh.

 

And I can't even imagine the blow this makes on your self-esteem and feelings of worthiness. You are in front of him giving himself to you, and he is just looking around to see what else is there, and focusing on FANTASY instead of what he has.

 

Your husband needs a reality check and a major shift in perspective. He has convinced himself that these fictional relationships with women are the most important thing in his life, which is ridiculous.

 

He needs counseling. Badly.

 

And you would be well within your rights to walk away and find someone willing to focus his attention on YOU, if your husband refuses to get help.

 

Oldshirt - I have nothing against open relationships or threesomes or anything else as long as both people are into it, but this guy isn't you. He's got some ISSUES with a capital I and SSUES too.

 

Part of the reason I posted to this forum was to see if the obsessive-desires-but-committed-intentions issue warranted a major push from me that he see a counsellor. Whiiiich it sounds like the answer is YES.

 

Yes. With a capital Y and ES.

 

I do believe him when he says that he loves me and our marriage is important to him. But I am having a really hard time reconciling that with his apparent unwillingness to admit that these fantasies are becoming destructive.

 

As you should. His actions are NOT saying your marriage is important to him.

[janedoe67]

I normally do a pretty condescending eye roll at people who forum-armchair diagnose someone. But this has narcissistic personality disorder written all over it.

 

I am just so so sorry. I wish I could hug you.

[Mycteria]

Print out It-Is-What-It-Is's last post on the first page and modify it to where it sounds like you wrote it and give it to him. Seriously. That's how good it was. If you want to save your marriage, you'll do it.

[Eggplant]

My husband of 7 years has just told me he has fallen in lust/love with our friend K. He says he wants to stay married etc., and has decided that we must terminate all contact with her in order to keep his sanity.

 

Then he went on to describe how the "only thing he's ever wanted" is to have relationships with other women. Not just sex, but full up relationships. He describes it as an all-consuming desire that makes him miserable because he knows he can never fulfill it without doing irreparable harm to our marriage.

 

He apparently devotes much of his time at work to building and maintaining elaborate adulterous fantasies. This is why we can no longer see K -- because his fantasies have gotten so all-consuming and fever-pitched it is simple torture to try not to act on them. Thing is, there was NOTHING about their relationship that fed into this. She is not a very close friend, and they have had zero flirting or any interaction of this nature. They have no emotional connection. It is a completely internal and one-sided mania that my husband developed all on his own. He talked about how he was deliberately feeding and building these fantasies up, over the course of years.

 

But he doesn't think that this kind of behavior is a problem. He doesn't want to try to redirect his sexual drive towards healthier outlets, like his wife, porn, or at least unattainable women. He feels these fantasies are his "hopes and dreams" and that he would be "letting himself down" if he tried to stop having them. That it would be crushing his hopes and dreams.

 

I think this is a problem. I think if you are feeding fantasy to the point that you have to destroy a relationship with one of your only friends (from something that is COMPLETELY in your head alone), that you are engaging in destructive behavior. He fully intends to deliberately cultivate his adulterous desires, even though he has no intention of acting on them, for the rest of his life. Even though he says that it makes him miserable "most of the time." But he still doesn't think it is a problem to be living this way.

I don't like the idea of being with someone who is so miserable about being trapped in a monogamous relationship. It is hurtful to hear, but I would be OK with living with him and working on improving our relationship if he had the slightest desire to change his habits as well.

As it is, he vehemently wants to change nothing. What is to stop him from repeating this in the future with another friend? I don't want to have to keep cutting my own close friends out of our life because my husband is incapable of controlling his thoughts about someone who is OFF LIMITS.

 

I am working to improve our relationship in other ways -- reconnect sexually, etc., but would just like to hear if people think I am reacting too emotionally to this, or if it seems like something that is going to be an on-going problem if my husband refuses to at least acknowledge that it is a problem.

 

Do some men just enjoy being a **** and creating misery? Who forced him against his will to get married? Why is he being outrageously defensive of his adultery? He's forcing you to leave him with his outrageous lack of cooperation whatsoever. I mean seriously, what kind of person has the balls to cheat, ask his wife to stay married, want to keep cheating, not be sorry, and act like he's trapped and miserable (but wanting to stay). You can't deal with as*****s -- you're not married to a reasonable human being. What's the point? I hate divorce, but he's already left you, so you may as well leave.

[Eggplant]

It's as though these guys are playing a game: how big of a prick can I get away with being? What about now? What about if I cover you in **** and call you a **** and stick voodoo pins in a doll of you? Can I get away with that? What other ways will you let me take advantage of you?

 

(This isn't love.)

[oldshirt]

oldshirt, if your wife had not been open to the idea of an open marriage, what would you have done?

 

Just to give a little definition, we were involved in swinging but did not have an open marriage. There is a difference.

 

In open marriage both parties are able to pursue outside relationships, date and have various sexual activities within certain guidelines as individuals.

 

Swinging on the other is primarily pursuing recreational sex with other people together as a couple.

 

In otherwords it is something we did together as a couple and it was strictly recreational sex with no dating, strong emotional connections or relationships as individuals.

 

Now to address your actual question. I think if she wouldnt hav done it, I am sure I would have accepted it and lived a rich and full life but I always would have felt like I had missed something in my life and would have felt the void that people feel when they dont pursue a dream.

 

However I need to reemphasize that your husband has some kind of dysfunction and disorder taking place here and needs to see somebody about it. I had a yearning and an orientation towards mutually consenting nonmonogamy, but it was not making me miserable and conflicted and nor was it negatively impacting my marriage or relationships with friends etc.

 

If we had not pursued swinging I would have been bummed but it would have been similar to someone who never made it to Disneyland or to someone who bought the minivan to haul the kids around and never got around to getting that '68 Mustang they always wanted.

 

Your husband has internal conflicts and maladjustments that he cannot sustain without going off the edge into the abys somehow. I cant stress enough, this is not a man who has a typical underlying want of a little extra sexual spice in their marriage but someone who has a very maladjusted, compulsive and delusional disorder that is causing conflict, pain and damage to relationships.

 

You are not out of line or over reacting here, HE NEEDS HELP!!!!

[oldshirt]

 

Oldshirt - I have nothing against open relationships or threesomes or anything else as long as both people are into it, but this guy isn't you. He's got some ISSUES with a capital I and SSUES too.

 

 

 

Yes, I agree completely.

 

I provided my background for three reasons -

 

- to explain why I dont react with the usual shock and horror most people do any time the topic of nonmonogamy is brought up why I dont automatically think it is always a bad thing.

 

- because I dont believe he will ever be "cured" and that these feelings and interests will ever go away completely. Therapy may help his obcessive and delusional thought processes and help him/her deal with these feelings in a more contructive manner, but if they are to remain in a somewhat healthy marriage she is going to have to give a little. She is going to have to be self-aware of what here hard boundaries are and then enforce them without compromise.

 

- and thirdly, when church-ladies, moralists, bible-thumpers and traditionalists say, "dont do it!" It doesnt really mean much because they want everyone sitting in church all day anyway.

 

When someone who has lived out a lifestyle choice of nonmonogamy and loved it and had no negative outcome says, "this isn't right. You need to get some help." It carries a lot more weight.

[stillafool]

Your husband is in love with K. He will cheat given the first opportunity and more so get ready. I'm sorry for you and your babies Ansur, I don't know how you can live a happy life with this man.

[DawnR]

I would not terminate a friendship... if K is your friend too... then we have a problem. In my opinion. Also, how do you explain this to K...? How do you tell her, FOR NO REASON OF YOUR OWN - WE CAN NO LONGER BE FRIENDS WITH YOU... MY HUSBAND HAS THIS ALL CONSUMING UNHEALTHY FANTASY CONCERNING YOU....

 

that is odd. She probably would create her own distance. I do not mean to sound harsh. It seems you care and want to get to the bottom of the situation.

[Coolit]

Perhaps he has watched sister wives or any of those multi wofe love marriage documantaries or tv shows and secretly wishes you would agree to a second wife for him to love and cherish.