u/Consistent-Net-2167

I've recently separated and begun the divorce process with my wife after a long marriage, which was open/poly for most of it.

My marriage was in many ways ruined years prior to the divorce, when my wife entered her first D/s relationship and we essentially went from open to poly. Her first D attempted to cowboy her (i.e., break up our marriage with young kids) and used his role as a dom to try to effectuate this plan. This D/s relationship ended when he went too far/got too obvious, and led to another relationship with a man who tried to do the same (more subtly and over a longer period of time), and the trauma of those two back-to-back relationships broke something in my wife regarding her desire for me that we were never able to heal, and stayed essentially co-parents and life partners with benefits for many years until this summer. There is more to the story (see my post history if you want to be depressed) but that's the core issue.

I'm not mentally ready to be in a monogamous relationship (i.e., I worry about potentially hurting a monogamous partner), but I thought that testing the waters in the ENM world (which I haven't taken advantage of much in recent years) would be safer. I've recently met a lovely married woman who I met as a third for her and husband, and I've seen her a few times separately since then. She has interest in me being a dom in the bedroom, which is something I've done before with some success (perhaps as a reaction to my wife's experiences), but at this point in my life I am extremely paranoid about the potential for a D/s relationship to do damage to an established marriage, even a poly one.

The physical aspect is fine, but I've caught myself having to call time when she says things that I should be fine with, such as elevating what we are doing (or what I'm doing to her) above what she does with others (which is almost vanilla play-talk), and on one occasion it really took her out of the experience. I want to give her what she wants, but it's almost like some part of my brain is thinking I can't trust her to do this responsibly, which I acknowledge is extremely offensive and paternalistic, particularly as she has given me no evidence that this is the case.

I also have a cognitive dissonance that is very troubling to me. On one level I enjoy her submission and her elevation of what I can do to her, but on the other it horrifies me. I think I get some sick validation being implicitly praised and treasured for the sexual aspect of our relationship (which never really recovered with my wife) and for being in the opposite position as in my own marriage, while at the same time the sense that I'm harming her marriage makes me sick. I've had plenty of other partners over the past decade, but this issue has never come up before.

While this relationship is very casual at this point, I would like to maintain it if I can. Does anyone have any advice how I can give her what she wants without guilt/shame? Obviously I can just tell her that D/s is off the table for now, or break up, but hopefully someone has some sage advice. I truly appreciate that I am the entirety of the problem here, just to be clear.

As a long-time lurker, I could never forgive myself for failing to provide an update, and a somewhat happy update at that. Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/nonmonogamy/comments/1ufi96i/how_to_console_my_wife_about_our_impending/

My wife came home very late last night. She also took the day off work, and apparently separately met or spoke with several of her friends, as well as her sister.

The first thing she did when she walked through the door was apologize for her reaction. She was ashamed for emotionally manipulating me and attempting to seduce me. As I mentioned in several of my comments, my wife and I have discussed our disparate feelings extensively over the years, so she confessed that she knew this day was coming, although given how long we have survived as we were, she expected me to wait until the kids were out of the house, and it was just a shock to her and she could not control her emotions in the moment. Of course I told her I completely understood.

While we talk about our feelings A LOT, my wife really bared her soul to me about her shame and regret and self-hatred, we were up until the early hours of the morning just letting it all out, with a lot of crying, and a bit of laughing. She begged my forgiveness for her "selfishness" (her words) in trying to hold onto me while I was clearly struggling with our divergent feelings, and knew that our dynamic was a significant stumbling block to me finding another romantic partner. She never gave up hope that I would find someone so that we would be able to keep our current dynamic, but after so long, and so many instances of romantic partners being scared off, she anticipated we would end up here eventually. By the end of the night she did the stupid joke that if we're both single when we're 60, I have to remarry her.

Our plan is to take our time. She is going to inform her partners (the long-term ones I know and am friendly with) that we are going to be getting divorced, and she needs time to plan how to tell our kids and prepare for the financial and logistical aspects of the change, and she needs some space this summer. As our oldest is about to go to college, we decided that it would be good for us to spend some time as a family this summer (which our kids, being teenagers, will probably hate, but too bad lol), and go create some vacation memories. I don't know how well her other partners will take it, but as she offered, it's not my concern to worry about it.

The biggest immediate issue is our oldest. They saw my wife kissing one of her partners out in public while out with friends, which precipitated our discussion and disclosure. The timing of this is horrible, and no doubt our oldest will feel some responsibility, particularly after we reassured them the day before yesterday that everything was good between us. Obviously not my finest hour in parenting. We will take some time to figure out how to mitigate that and reassure them. That is our primary concern at the moment. Telling family is another issue to navigate, but it's just really nowhere near as high a priority.

I'm not going to give a play by play of our discussion, even anonymously, because there is simply too much. However, my wife asked me one question that I think might be helpful to some of the commenters on my original post. She asked whether she believed I would be satisfied with our relationship if we were still monogamous and never opened but she still generally felt the same way. Obviously the question is counterfactual so there is no real answer, and while I was tempted to lie I owed her the truth as I saw it, and I told her that I think I would have been. There are a lot of monogamous couples whose passion fades over time (I would say this seems to be the case for most over a long enough period), and whose romantic life changes into something more comforting and familiar. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I will be opening up my heart to monogamous women at some point in the future, and given the numbers will likely end up in a monogamous relationship, and the passion will likely fade with time.

Poly makes it more complicated for me, and on some basic level it's as simple as comparison, but not in the "keeping score" sense of the term, for some reason mutuality matters. It was very difficult for me to be satisfied with a passionless and relatively aromantic (as some people pointed out, these terms are ambiguous and can mean a lot of different things, but I'm using the terms that work for me) relationship with someone I'm infatuated with, while seeing that person still having passionate romantic relationships for others that outlast NRE. It's like feeling like I can't just settle into that comforting phase while my only partner is still living a romantic and passion-filled life, we just aren't on the same page. Maybe that's just insecurity, or envy, or jealousy, but it's a powerful feeling that extensive discussions and years of therapy has not been able to ameliorate.

Obviously some people, including my wife, can outsource romance and passion to others (it seems common in poly marriages), but that's never been successful for me, perhaps because of how desperately I still want those things with my wife, which my potential romantic partners flag as being problematic, and perhaps rightly so. Perhaps I'm just not made for poly, at least not with my wife involved, my feelings for her are too strong, and I don't know if I ever made enough of myself available (emotionally, although time is also very limited) for anyone else to feel secure.

In any case, we still love each other, but we are getting divorced (at some point). My wife is very sad, I am very sad, but we are also both happy for each other, and I hope this allows my wife to stop torturing herself over her inability to feel what she wants to feel for me but can't.

Thanks for all of the advice.

I am a long-time lurker, and I finally have a situation where I would love to get the wisdom of the crowd.

My wife and I have been open for over 10 years, poly in theory for most of that. We opened up after we had our three kids, and within about two or three years of opening (around the time we became poly), my wife realized that she doesn't have passionate romantic or sexual feelings toward me. I, unfortunately, still have these feelings for her.

We have had a situation that somewhat worked for us both. We love each other deeply, we are best friends, we are fantastic co-parents of wonderful kids, but we are essentially friends with benefits. I have tried to date over the past decade, and I've had several women that I became close to, but I've never had a relationship that lasted over a month or two. While some failed due to incompatibility, I've repeatedly been in a situation where a partner simply told me that they needed more from me than I could give.

I get it. I'm not a huge catch for a poly woman (much less a mono one), I haven't had a ton of free time given that I have had three kids who are my priority, a demanding (but financially rewarding) job, I still have a very close and mildly sexual relationship with my wife, and of course, I'm in love with my wife and she isn't in love with me, which I guess is sort of a red flag.

Despite having very serious romantic relationships, my wife has wanted to maintain our marriage, for both our kids sake and because she regularly says I'm her "soul mate." She repeatedly jokes that when she's old and decrepit she only wants to have me next to her on a beach joking and sipping on tiki drinks.

We have a weird sexual relationship. We rarely have penetrative sex (maybe once every 3-6 weeks, always at her request, I don't make overtures), but we do pleasure each other still, but it's not like romantic (at least for her, and I know not to ask to escalate), it's like how you would give your spouse a back or foot massage. We are still comfortable being naked around each other, hugging, kissing, jokingly groping, etc. Re the penetrative sex, my wife characterizes it as necessary for our connection, although she has admitted (long ago when pressed) she personally could "take it or leave it."

This post is not to complain about my wife. She is not the bad guy, I went into this with eyes wide open. But we had to have a talk with our oldest yesterday afternoon (who is 17 and a senior in high school) and the cat is finally out of the bag. We explained the broader points of our marriage (Mom has other partners, Dad has had them in the past, everyone is okay with this, and we both love you and your siblings more than anything, etc.). This conversation was difficult, but it was such a load off my chest. I ended up spending the rest of the day soul searching, and I realized that I'm in my mid 40s, and while I love my wife desperately, I don't want this life anymore, and my kids are old enough and doing well enough that I no longer feel guilty about embracing my desire to be on my own and find someone who truly loves me.

I brought this up to my wife last night several hours after our talk with our son. I almost teared up saying the words, which was unexpected, and while I almost couldn't get the words out of my mouth, I finally told her that I didn't want to do this anymore. This was not good phrasing, as she first thought I meant closing the relationship, and she seemed a bit nonplussed (like, the horse left the barn on that possibility many years ago), and then I clarified that I wanted to be on my own, and to my shock, she broke down completely.

I had thought that she was staying in the marriage for me, and just being kind to me due to our history, and because I think I am an amazing partner, friend, and father. I thought her jokes about us growing old on the beach were for my benefit, but she completely freaked out. She let out what I can only describe was a wail (even typing that sounds ridiculous but I don't know what to say), and began sobbing, begging, and bargaining. At one point, through tears, she started insisting to give me a blow job, which is something we don't do together by her choice, and it just broke my heart to see her clearly so desperate and out of sorts. I just gently shushed her, and held her to me, and she cried into me and begged me not to leave her for about an hour until she finally went to sleep on top of me.

When I woke up this morning, she ambushed me with cheerful and ostensibly sincere apologies for taking me for granted, and trying to talk about what she can do to make our marriage better. I told her that we would have a conversation tonight, but I can't work today, I don't know what to do.

I know that this is just her grieving our marriage and relationship, I know this is a shock to her, despite the fact that we have somewhat decoupled long ago. I know that she is saying things that she doesn't mean because she is desperate to avoid this scary change that she wasn't ready for, and that I sprang this on her unexpectedly.

What I want to know is the best way to console and sooth her about this change. Obviously her being single would allow her to escalate certain of her relationships. We would still be co-parents, and I would love to still be friends with her for life (I still think she is my soul mate and love her deeply), but its time for me to start the next chapter of my life. I hate the idea of hurting her, and it's surprising to me that she is reacting this strongly, despite the significant life change. Also, as an aside, financially we are in a very very lucky position, so divorce would not need to impact our finances in a meaningful way (i.e., she or I could stay in the house and the other could easily buy another house/condo).

Any advice would be appreciated!