Ellexoh_nz wrote:
YazPistachio wrote:
.........I didn't want to be the reason he COULDN'T have sex outside our marriage. I wanted to be the reason he DIDN'T........
I love this sentence
It's a paraphrase from a Dan Savage column, one that might actually be relevant to this discussion, so I've linked it below. If all our husbands could have read this letter BEFORE asking to fulfill their fantasies, I bet a lot of heartache could have been avoided. I asked my husband to read it, and it helped him understand my dilemma in ways I could not explain before.
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/01/30/38463458/miserable-woman-gives-happily-married-man-her-permission-to-see-a-trans-escort
In our case (and I'm certain in most situations like this), the woman is NOT intentionally setting up a trap or a test... we want to believe our partners wouldn't intentionally hurt us, we want to believe we can genuinely be as gracious and generous and tolerant as our husbands are asking us to be, and when we find out just how awful we feel after the fact (a million times worse than we ever anticipated, and we weren't exactly anticipating happy happy joy joy in the first place), we decide that nothing is worth feeling this bad. The fact that something our partner enjoys is hurting us and they STILL want to do it clearly puts our needs and worth and stable marriage far below their fantasy fulfillment.
I think these conversations and understandings need to be clear as a bell long BEFORE anyone even thinks about asking to open their marriage. This is one time where the ounce of prevention is worth several tons of a cure!
