Open marriages

[sophie]

Why not? The odds of it being traced back to him seem really slim. And the advice you can get can be valuable.
Sounds to me like you are just shaming the guy.

Valuable advice from this website? *snort*, no. If this is really causing as much trouble in his marriage as it sounds then he needs to go talk to a marriage counselor. Preferably with his wife. Sounds like there are some pretty deep issues at play here and that stuff is only going to get sorted out through communication with his wife with the aid of a trained professional. Stewing on a problem and letting a website of mostly teens and 20-somethings with very little marital experience offer armchair psychiatric advice is more likely than not only going to serve to feed his frustrations until he does something truly harmful to his marriage.

 

[IglooDame]

Depends on how open-minded you are. Maybe propose a new condition that whenever she wants sex with the other guy, you'd have to be involved too? Maybe that would help with jealousy. I'm half serious.

It's an interesting thought. To take it a step further, how about that she'd have to bring a '9' female friend along to make it a foursome? Otherwise, it may end up being worse rather than better (aka ****olding).

I think I'm a little less than half serious here, though.

 

[Farm Boy]

Depends on how open-minded you are. Maybe propose a new condition that whenever she wants sex with the other guy, you'd have to be involved too? Maybe that would help with jealousy. I'm half serious.

Depending on what we mean by "be involved" this could get interesting. Maybe stipulate that the other guy has to be somebody interested in being the Oreo frosting?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Valuable advice from this website? *snort*, no. If this is really causing as much trouble in his marriage as it sounds then he needs to go talk to a marriage counselor. Preferably with his wife. Sounds like there are some pretty deep issues at play here and that stuff is only going to get sorted out through communication with his wife with the aid of a trained professional. Stewing on a problem and letting a website of mostly teens and 20-somethings with very little marital experience offer armchair psychiatric advice is more likely than not only going to serve to feed his frustrations until he does something truly harmful to his marriage.

Oh I fully agree that one shouldn't base ones decision on this thread or that a gaming forum is a good place for such a thread (I actually told the guy so via PM after the thread was closed), there is a lot of knee-jerk going on I think, but I already read things which I'd find valuable.
And at worst, the post of yours I just replied to would be valuable

 

[Narz]

If the wife was kind enough to explain that the other man is that much more attractive, then there is a basic lack of respect in the relationship that 'you' would be well out of.

Yeah, this is a good point.

An open marriage is an oxymoron, since the two are mutually exclusive.

Marriage is whatever those who marry want it to be.

My advice, try your damndest to find your own on the side.

Realize that humans are not built to be monogamous, don't get mad, just get yours, women more than men have 'types', maybe you aren't your wife's 'type' anymore but there are women out there that will go for you (unless you're 500 pounds & poor).

It hurt me when my ex went from being head over heels in love/lust for me & nowadays I only have sex with her once every couple months or so (and she's got a new boyfriend who sounds totally lame & I can't get out of my head who she would want to be with him & not me, I think it's because he's much, much, much more chill/low-key than me & doesn't have any expectations of her).

Women cheat, they get sugar daddies, they trick you into pregnancy. Women are at least as bad as men, just less overtly violent.

Also, I'd get your paternity checked. Just to take a load off knowing that for whatever she's doing @ least it's your kid.

Whatever you do, don't lose the power in the relationship & try to 'win back' her affection/attention. That's just weak & will only make things worse, use this time to build up your own value (as Hygro says) in your own eyes mostly.

It sucks but good luck! Do you really want lifetime monogamy anyway? I can't imagine not wanting to have sex with women in their twenties & thirties.

 

[Narz]

I've known of a few people who have been able to make that sort of arrangement work over the long term.

I've known of many more who have tried it and eventually suffered a crash-and-burn sort of situation.

Yeah, I've known quite a few married people too.

 

[Narz]

Appeals to evolutionary biology are always dubious

Why all the hate for evolutionary psychology? I find the stuff fascinating & the resistance to it strange (ideas like 'humans are outside nature' or 'humans just are' makes zero sense to me). Evolutionary psychology is among the most scientific sub-field of psychology, where most conditions are simply an assortment of symptoms with no objective reality made up to sell drugs & make people suffering feel like they understand themselves better (ah, nothing wrong with my life, society, my lifestyle or my adaptive skills, I'm just bi-polar/manic/etc. hit me with the dope doc!).

Obviously it's in its infancy & most of the theories are pure speculation now (though many of them can be tested) but at least psychology is finally breaking away from just being meaningless opinions that gained traction (Darwin was a genius, Freud was a guy with some interesting & disturbed ideas but certainly no scientist).

 

[Farm Boy]

If the child is anything older than a year or two, at the latest, you already know if it's your kid or not. Some dumb blood test is absolutely irrelevant to that fundamental fact.

 

[Narz]

If the child is anything older than a year or two, at the latest, you already know if it's your kid or not. Some dumb blood test is absolutely irrelevant to that fundamental fact.

What are you talking about? Men are ****olded all the time & don't find out about it until decades later (or the mom tells the kid after dad's dead or gone).

Also, you don't need a blood test, just some of your saliva & the kid's.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm aware.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

He's saying that being a parent is about more than who donated the sperm. Which is right, although if there is a potential divorce in the offing, it might be good to know the biological parentage for sure anyway, since courts tend to care about that kind of thing.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

He's saying that being a parent is about more than who donated the sperm. Which is right, although if there is a potential divorce in the offing, it might be good to know the biological parentage for sure anyway, since courts tend to care about that kind of thing.

Unfortunately, not everyone subscribes to this belief.


On the thread:

The marriage is over. Granting the open marriage option was a desperate attempt to keep something alive that was already dead. You have my sincere sympathies but there is no way to 'win' this other than to end the marriage and start over. It's the least painful option given a ton of really crappy options. Things will only get worse from here on out - you can't undo what's already set in motion, both with granting the open marriage and then trying to rescind it.

Sorry.

 

[Narz]

He's saying that being a parent is about more than who donated the sperm.

I guess that's what he's saying but no way I would want to raise another man's kid that my wife tried to pass off as my own. I'd rather detach while the kid is still an infant that later in life when it's more traumatic both for the child & for the so-called father (note : if I got with a woman who had already had kids I would happily play somewhat of a father figure role but would never allow them to call me dad, that's just weird & inaccurate).

To me it's win-win, if the kid is his own at least he gains a little faith back in his wife, if its not he knows its really time to pack up & GTFO.

 

[Farm Boy]

Heh, as if the harm caused by an unfaithful wife to an innocent husband is incomparable to the harm caused by an unfaithful father to an innocent child bailing on them with the rationale, "not my blood, not good enough, bye twerp!"

Sure, maybe at a day or two old, but over a year? How about at two? Or six?

"So called father" eh? Telling verbiage.

 

[Narz]

So now along with the shame of being ****olded we're going to insist men who abandon their cheating wives & illegitimate children should be ashamed as well?

Taking care of your seed is a moral obligation. Taking care of someone else's is a personal choice. I find kids a pain in the ass generally & usually charge $60+/hr to deal with them. Perhaps that makes me a horrible person. But I'd rather be a horrible person than a sucker (I've tried both).

 

[Farm Boy]

Ashamed of moving on from an unfaithful spouse? No. Ashamed from abandoning a child, your child, of two for no fault of their own? Oh you better believe it. I was fooled, life sucks(not sarcasm). Oh woe is me(not sarcasm). Better do one of the cruelest things possible to a person who in all sincerity calls me Dad, because that's what I have been their entire life?(sarcasm)

 

[Borachio]

You wouldn't be ashamed of moving on from an unfaithful spouse?

Why were they unfaithful in the first place?

 

[Narz]

It's impossible to say how I'd really feel if I found out my kid wasn't mine. Probably I wouldn't have thought she was so cool in the first place if I hadn't noticed little similarities. I would probably still love her but no way I would be as attached. IIRC, stepfathers abandon, neglect, abuse & kill their stepkids at a rate of 100-fold or so higher than biological ones. The anger & resentment @ knowing the wool was tried to be pulled over your eyes would make it even worse I imagine. It's hard enough being a father with a difficult mother, knowing its not yours I would probably do a very poor job fathering & best best off just abandoning the family & letting the wife either become a better person & a good mother or... either way, not worth the stress. It takes a special type of person to adopt, I'm not that type. Most people I know aren't even particularly good parents to their biological. I'm ok, I love my daughter but I don't much enjoy the day to day of parenting (within a loving marriage with lots of moral & social support I'm sure I'd do better).

It's not my place to judge someone going thru a trauma like this.

I will say that I think people are way too fast to get married. I know myself well enough to know that there is no way I could handle that type of LIFETIME commitment. Most people think their above-average drivers just as most people think their marriage is above-average likely to succeed & most people are wrong. If I thought I was so much more self-aware I'd merely be a tragic-comic statistic too (everytime I do think so I tend to be).

 

[Farm Boy]

You wouldn't be ashamed of moving on from an unfaithful spouse?

Why were they unfaithful in the first place?

I probably would be. Through and through. But part of getting better would probably be to realize that I'm worth not cheating on. A fact that would probably start being pretty questionable if I was giving testicle juice some sort of omega fatherhood-revoking importance.

Narz: I'm not anything particularly special. But that stuff where you realized you're getting super attached, way after the fact, and you notice little similarities that your kid has picked up from you? Or strangers laugh when they do something just like you that you never would have noticed? Or the facial expressions are so similar that people mention you "look just alike?(we really really don't)" Happens with adoptive fathers too.

I guess I get you on the betrayal. That needs no explanation. But if somebody is going to take that out on a kid, a kid who has done nothing wrong other than considering the person who has been their father as their father. I'm just at a loss. I have no idea what to do with that steaming pile or real world other than hope it gets flushed.

 

[Angst]

Don't open your relationship if you can't deal with it.

Then again, what is wrong with her for not wanting to close up again. In the hypothetical, you have a kid. She should invest just a baseline into the family then.