Goodness.  What does 'working through your jealousy and anger' so you can stay married look like?

Let's not forget these are real true feelings that you simply need to have over your wife being unfaithful.  Your feelings are completely natural and 'working through them' sounds suspiciously like being asked to stick a dagger in your own heart.

second question - do you think anything was deleted out of the texts she showed you?

In a heterosexual relationship what you are doing is fine - you are fighting for her.  you are fighting for love.  

But she is not heterosexual.  She is attracted to women, she cannot fight for you like you are fighting for her.  She can only compete with you to have the woman.

At some point you will need to start fighting in your own corner.

Wishing you all the best, Lily

Last edited by lily (December 3, 2018 6:03 pm)

Hi CD - Our stories are almost identical, except my wife didn’t act on her temptation at first. She came to me to ask permission...although the way she put it was “I’m afraid it’s going to happen regardless.” In hindsight that should’ve been a red flag as to what would come next.

I was in your exact shoes. I couldn’t fathom giving up my wife, my life with two beautiful daughters, house, etc. I thought I could make the open marrriage thing work. Or at least owed it to my wife to try it. After all, I wanted her to be happy, and I felt like if I told her no she would just end up resenting me for denying her this newfound side of herself.

I agreed to opening her side of the marriage temporarily. I had no interest in having sex with other women and thought that would only complicate things further. We agreed to a bunch of rules around what this was and what it wasn’t. It was never meant to turn into anything more than sexual exploration. We knew the possibility was there because you can never predict how you will feel about someone, but we believed our relationship was strong enough to endure anything. It was a test for both of us. For her to figure out if this was really something she couldn’t live without and for me to figure out if it was something I could live with.

We both started seeing individual therapists. She started reading books like “Sex at Dawn” and arguing that monogamy is not natural. I tried to be open minded, but the jealousy and pain were unbearable. She ended up falling in love with a woman after about 2 months. She denied it early on but I could see it happening.

We started couples therapy, where it was suggested that she end the relationship with the woman to take stock of our marriage. Over the course of the next 6 months we uncovered cracks on our communication style and I worked hard to fix them. All the while she said she was having trouble bringing herself back to fully commit to our marriage.

In July I found out she had been seeing the woman again behind my back for about a month. I should have ended it right then and there, but she convinced me not to make any decisions out of anger. We separated for 3 months, and at the end she concluded that she needs to be with a woman. Not THE woman in particular (she has moved on and is dating someone else currently but I can’t imagine she won’t end up dating her at some point). So now we’re heading toward divorce. (I concluded months ago that monogamy is a need for me.)

Sorry for the long-winded story. I tried to summarize but sometimes it’s hard. But I guess the moral of the story is, it sounds like you are willing to do whatever it takes to save your marriage. But know that the marriage you are in now is not the same as the marriage it was before, and it never will be. Your wife has changed the rules. You don’t have to agree to this. It’s ok to not be ok with it. You want your wife to happy, but at what cost? At the cost of your happiness? My biggest mistake was putting her feelings ahead of my own and ignoring what my gut was telling the whole time.

Someone in another group once told me it comes down to wants versus needs. Is being with a woman a want or a need for your wife? Is monagamy a want or a need for you? These are hard questions to answer and it will take time to figure them out. Most people say you should give it at least a year before you make any major decisions. But don’t rush into anything you don’t feel prepared for. One of my biggest regrets was plunging hastily into an open marriage without really weighing the gravity of what we were doing. I wish we had sought out a couples therapist before we did that. Maybe things wouldn’t have turned out as messy as they did.

There are two Yahoo Groups I would consider required reading for you. One is Making Mixed Orientation Marriages Work (MMOMW) and the other is Making Monogamous Mixed Orientation Marriages Work (MonMOM). I can’t remember the exact process of joining but I think you need to search for them in Yahoo Groups and then request to join each. Let me know if you have trouble and I’ll see if I can help you figure out the process. There is some good information there but it’s a little hard to search through.

Best of luck to you, and please feel free to reach out.

-Dave

Last edited by DaveRG (December 7, 2018 7:08 am)