Open marriages

[Borachio]

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.

Oo-er!

 

[Narz]

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)

Life sucks indeed. Kids get abandoned everyday. I'd rather have a loving father than one who was there cuz he thought it was the "right thing" and it made him "noble" but he totally resented me. Screw that. I know what it's like to have a resentful father. I wish he would've hit the road.

Believe me, I used to be a do-gooder, its a thankless job. Nowadays I do what I feel is right & what I say I'm going to do, if someone starts putting shoulds on me above & beyond my commitment I tend to withdraw. Now this guy's married so maybe he should stay with the wife because he made that commitment (thats what one promised to do) but people break their vows all the time. Marriage is a joke (look at post two in this thread). If you can't handle it if your woman cheats you shouldn't be married in the first place. If you don't think women cheat look down at your penis & read up on why it is shaped the way it is.

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

Why were they unfaithful in the first place?

We're talking hypothetical if the kid's not his & his wife was with another man before she asked to be. If not, it's not cheating, it is a little disconcerting though. They should've talked about screwing other people & the rules behind it BEFORE the marriage (I certainly will should I ever get permanently shacked up.

 

[Narz]

But part of getting better would probably be to realize that I'm worth not cheating on.

What hogwash. There is no one above being cheated on. Look at all the stars with uber-hot spouses who cheat. You cannot control attraction.

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.

You're viewing it as 'taking it out on the kid', I'm viewing it as avoiding having a relationship with an innocent being who I'm going to severely resent & he or she is not going to know why, perhaps not even consciously notice why but feel it nonetheless.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm not above it Narz. I'm nothing particularly special. But I'm worth it nonetheless.

Alright, point taken. Perhaps a total bag of ass father is worse than no father at all. But yeesh, man. That's really dim territory.

 

[Commodore]

Your beloved wife has started having sex with another, much more attractive man. She asked beforehand and you reluctantly agreed to it. Now you can't bear the thought of it, but she says she can't stop it now and you're being blamed for not keeping your word.

To complicate matters further, you have a little kid with your wife and would hate to divorce her. She's okay with you seeing other women, so she want your relationship to be open, but you don't have any particular interest or talent for starting to date again.

Are there any good solutions to this? What would you do?


Mods can close this thread at request.

Does she have any solid evidence that you agreed to let her have sex with other people? If not then divorce her, claim it's because of infidelity to get custody of the kid and then sue her for child support. If this sounds cold, just remember that you want the open marriage to stop and she is refusing which means she is not as dedicated to you as you are to her, so she's no longer worth your time or effort and you should have no qualms about making her life as difficult and stressful as you possibly can.

My wife and I had an open marriage for about a year until she became uncomfortable with it. We agreed from the beginning that if either one of us no longer wanted to do it then both would have to stop, so when she wasn't cool with it anymore she stopped and I remained true to my word and stopped as well even though I was still enjoying the arrangement.

 

[Narz]

I'm not above it Narz. I'm nothing particularly special. But I'm worth it nonetheless.

Alright, point taken. Perhaps a total bag of ass father is worse than no father at all. But yeesh, man. That's really dim territory.

Being a father is being intimately connected to the mother whether you like it or not, unless you're super rich & can hire someone to pick the child up from the mother's & bring him/her back there.

If a woman is truly making you miserable it might be in even the child's best interests for you to detach for a little while (ideally not when the kid is 11-16 years old as those ages are kind of critical). If fatherhood is so valuable you have to take care of the source of it (you, the father) to keep it valuable. If you're so pissed off you're subconsciously taking risks in traffic you probably would best serve everyone by taking a break.

Does she have any solid evidence that you agreed to let her have sex with other people? If not then divorce her, claim it's because of infidelity to get custody of the kid and then sue her for child support. If this sounds cold, just remember that you want the open marriage to stop and she is refusing which means she is not as dedicated to you as you are to her, so she's no longer worth your time or effort and you should have no qualms about making her life as difficult and stressful as you possibly can.

That type of thing is sure to hurt all involved. Just tell her to stop if its that bad & if she doesn't, sure divorce but don't try to 'make her life as difficult and stressful as you possibly can.'. That would be a messed up thing to do even if she wasn't the mother of your child.

 

[Commodore]

That type of thing is sure to hurt all involved. Just tell her to stop if its that bad & if she doesn't, sure divorce but don't try to 'make her life as difficult and stressful as you possibly can.'. That would be a messed up thing to do even if she wasn't the mother of your child.

No more messed up than the emotional torment the OP's wife is putting him through right now. I'm not the type who believes in being the "bigger person" and just letting people who wrong me get away without consequence. I believe that is the sure path to letting people walk all over you for your entire life. I also believe that showing people that there are serious consequences for their actions is a good way to make them think twice before doing the same thing to someone else.

 

[Narz]

I still don't see value in making someone extra miserable just to send your point home. Just divorce the biatch & move on. Trying hard to make someone else unhappy is just investing extra emotional energy in them & rarely produces any benefit, in my experience anyway.

 

[IglooDame]

I still don't see value in making someone extra miserable just to send your point home. Just divorce the biatch & move on. Trying hard to make someone else unhappy is just investing extra emotional energy in them & rarely produces any benefit, in my experience anyway.

It gives me a little bit of a headache to disagree with you so much up-thread and then hit this at the end, where I couldn't agree more.

 

[Narz]

Sorry.

 

[warpus]

Making people miserable on purpose is usually not the answer anyway. I haven't read the rest of this exchange though, but I find myself nodding as well.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I also would hesitate to paint the fictional wife as an evil witch deserving all the scorn and punishment one can muster. Sure, what she does to her husband is horrible, but she as well may do it because she is really confused and torn and does not really know what she should do rather than simple malice. "Be faithful to your husband" is a simple enough armchair advise, but we are not in her shoes, do not have her feelings and perspective. I find it not just unproductive but small-minded and egocentric to want go after her like that. If one really badly betrays and tricks you or even enjoys hurting you, I can feel for the need of some revenge, but she seems to be pretty upfront with what is going on and doesn't seem to enjoy any of it with regards to her husband.

 

[Whomp]

Then the simple answer is both need counseling to get through it. He's not happy if she's in another relationship and she's not happy if she's not getting fulfilled.

I went thorough counseling for other reasons with my ex. Ultimately it didn't work but the counseling helped sort through it.

Now I'm married again and we are really strong together.

 

[Hygro]

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).

Evolutionary psychology only works if we can show how a certain psychology bears selective pressure we have real evidence of transhistorical sexual selection of the behavior.

The narratives are fairly arbitrary and are created to describe current behavior. Make up just about any human social behavior and I could tell you why evolution drives it.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Then the simple answer is both need counseling to get through it.

Some say the point of counseling is to feel better about a divorce.
And I remember reading about a statistic according to whish the success of counseling in terms of saving a marriage is extremely low. Personally I don't think I'd ever go to a counselor with my wife in the interest of saving my marriage. Alone.. maybe. I think when attending together this setting really favors finishing a marriage whereas understanding found on personal terms favors the continuation thereof (though as you are a living example - that of course must not be the most desirable thing) Just something about the dynamic of counseling, I think. How it works. Human relationships are I think not really meant to be logically deconstructed and then put together again. That is just not how it works.

 

[IglooDame]

Some say the point of counseling is to feel better about a divorce.
And I remember reading about a statistic according to whish the success of counseling in terms of saving a marriage is extremely low. Personally I don't think I'd ever go to a counselor with my wife in the interest of saving my marriage. Alone.. maybe. I think when attending together this setting really favors finishing a marriage whereas understanding found on personal terms favors the continuation thereof (though as you are a living example - that of course must not be the most desirable thing) Just something about the dynamic of counseling, I think. How it works. Human relationships are I think not really meant to be logically deconstructed and then put together again. That is just not how it works.

On the other hand, sometimes the issues are failures of communication, and the counseling provides a structure (and requirement) for resuming that communication.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Where is Caesar Augustus when you need him?

Marriage has a specific meaning and that is of exclusivity between one man and one woman. By having a sexual relationship with someone outside of the marriage is a violation of an agreement made when you got married. Pretty simple.

Or in some places, all that is required is that the marriage consist of two consenting adults who are not too close of kin under the law.

I agree with the rest of your post. If you can't keep the vows you made during the marriage ceremony, have the decency to get divorced before you run off with someone else.


I never married, and likely never will. There are a lot of reasons why I made this decision, but trust is a huge part of it. I've seen a lot of people in my family (parents, aunts, uncles, cousins) have to deal with cheating spouses, and have heard the "stay together for the sake of the child(ren)" advice.

If the marriage isn't stable, staying together for the sake of the kids is not really going to help the kids unless there's absolutely no other way to make sure they're fed and have adequate clothing, shelter, and medical care. My parents were divorced when I was 8, and it's one of the best things that happened. It would have been disastrous if they'd stayed together for my sake, since things were already thoroughly messed up.

 

[Angst]

and have heard the "stay together for the sake of the child(ren)" advice.

If the marriage isn't stable, staying together for the sake of the kids is not really going to help the kids unless there's absolutely no other way to make sure they're fed and have adequate clothing, shelter, and medical care. My parents were divorced when I was 8, and it's one of the best things that happened. It would have been disastrous if they'd stayed together for my sake, since things were already thoroughly messed up.

FWIW I agree with this, even if my last post read differently...

I think kids should ideally be a priority and something you work for. But only if the relationship is feasible to begin with.

This wife of the OP's hypothetical (or actual situation) cares more about her newfound affair than having a stable family. In that situation, divorce is ideal, simply because the relationship will not work, even if another situation (nuclear family, or heck, an open relationship where the hypothetical husbond is fine with it) would be ideal.

While kids are important, and that sacrifices should ideally be made for those kids, if the sacrifices aren't coming from the heart, they're not worth it, then everyone will be unhappy.

The wife in the OP doesn't care enough about her husbond or her kid to end an affair. This is a premise for divorce: because that's all she values her husbond.

I personally have experience with open relationships and think it's great, much better than normal relationships. But I wouldn't end my current closed relationship because of that; it's too much of a personal sacrifice to lose her. I value her much more than my ability to boink random chicks or guys out in town.

The op's wife, however...

(Well, I'm sure she'll be able to parent well even if divorced. This is not intended as woman-blaming)

The point is that she does not like the husbond's idea of relationship anymore, and he doesn't like hers, so they should probably end it.

God damn it I'm rambling a lot right now.

 

[aelf]

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.

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?

If I was the guy in this situation, I'd probably seriously consider this option. Of course, it might not help at all if he has little self-esteem and confidence, since he might just end up feeling 'overshadowed'. But then again, if he had those things, he probably wouldn't have any problem dating around again, which might render the problem moot.

I guess if I really liked being with my wife, and having an open thing is required to save the marriage (seeing that marriage isn't just about sex), I'd not necessarily want to date around much even if I could, so the option is back on the table. Having some kind of reciprocity would probably help the situation, i.e. it's not just her bringing home other dudes all the time.

Obviously, all this might be considered rather immoral, and I can be partial to that sentiment. But I don't want to pass judgement without knowing what it's really like in such a situation, hence this hypothetical.

 

[Tigranes]

Why no one wants to consider "talk to the other guy option ". I have seen a situation when it worked. The third party felt guilty, wife felt sorry, everybody went back to their lives.