Polyamory Community Group
A place to discuss living a polyamorous lifestyle - the joys, the challenges and everything in between. Polyamory (a hybrid word -poly is Greek for many and amor is Latin for love - coined by among others Neopagan poet, author, lecturer, and priestess Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart) means "The practice, state or ability of having more than one sexual loving relationship at...
I am a 49 year old male in a committed marriage. I am an out-going introvert and really don't have friends I can turn to. I had a rather conservative single life, my wife had an adventurous youth. She is 11 years younger than me. We have known each other almost 19 years, friends for 2 years, dated for over 2 years and married 14 years. When she was single, she had a friend with benefits. When we were friends, I knew of his existence. When we started dating, he drifted away and was gone for (as far as I know) about 6 years. They were friends before they started sleeping together at age 16. They were never committed to each other, if one was horny, the other was there to serve a purpose. It was that simple. The were just friends who fucked and their sex was good because of a mutual respect and trust and desire for each others happiness. But able to maintain an emotion disconnect.
Throughout our marriage, i have never been jealous and have a full acceptance of her sexual past. I have embraced her past because it helped make her who she is today, the woman I love. He would drop the occasional "hey, how's life, just checking on you" but never asked about her status. He fed her heart as a friend.
Last year he was involved in a public charity event and my wife and a friend of hers went. I had no issues, there was drinking involved, my wife got too drunk to drive home and she got a hotel in the city for the night. I had no issues, I trusted her.
He came to town one night while I was away for work. He was at our house, drank, couldn't drive home, stayed on our couch. My young kids met him, he had breakfast with my family, again I felt no jealousy, I had no worries. He moved from 3 hours away and into the city, half hour away from us, again, I had no issues. I work a fly-in fly-out remote job where I am gone 7 days and live in a work camp and home for 7 days. He recently got a job on my same worksite, granted, there are about 1700 people on site every day. I have never met him but I have always known of him.
My wife and I have always had a strong relationship, full of trust and respect. After 14 years of marriage, I can count the number of major arguments and it is not many. We have a very sexual relationship and I have never questioned her fidelity.
Two weeks ago, she asked if I could handle the idea of her with another man, purely sexual, basically a masturbation toy for when I am away working. It was a hypothetical discussion. We have joked for a couple years about him being her boyfriend. I thought is was all hypothetical. And I told her that with her history with THAT guy, I might be able to handle that but only because of the level of respect and ability to keep emotions out of it. She told me that she had considered the possibility of restarting what they had years earlier, and wondered if I may be able to handle that. That evening we were good. The next day, she left for a girls weekend, and I know it was just the girls, there was no need for jealousy.
I got hit with such immense jealousy, I have never been so absorbed in my life. I was convulsing, nauseous, never slept, my thoughts consumed me and took me to dark dark places. I have never been in a headspace like that. I thought there must have been a plan in place, why else would he move closer to us, and a job at my work on a shift that provided them time to be together. There were too many things that just seemed to prove intention. I stewed in it and never phoned her because I wanted her to enjoy her weekend away and to not have to think about home, all the while, I suffered.
she got home and talked me off my ledge. I believe her and have full faith that nothing was intentional. He just needed a change in his life so he moved in with his brother near us and his brother got him a job (yes, his brother works on the same site). There is currently no facet of my life that is untouched by him - he is in my wife's sexual wants, my kids met him, I live in a small town and my wife told her good friend about the situation, he is at my work, his brother knows friends of mine, friends who were at my wedding. Nothing in my life is currently excluded from him.
I have become subconsciously destructive of her wants. I thought I was good with her having a one nighter with a stranger to see if that would satisfy her needs rather than being with HIM, we got her on a hook-up app, neither of us could go that route because the guys contacting her were trash. I convinced myself I was good with her moving forward with him. We talked and she needs me to be alright before she could proceed.
mentally I understand and respect and accept what she wants. It makes logical sense. I want it for her. We have discussed that I would never affect OUR life, when I am home, she will not see him, our life comes first. I am the one she loves. (I now have found it to be called ethical non-monogamy). It would be be something for her to control, for her to set rules with him, for her to arrange times and places, a completely separate existence that would never encroach on my life with her. A fully respected arrangement. She asked if I need anything from her, I told her I needed her wedding rings to never touch another man's penis, I told here I needed discretion and respect from him (he is now so closely entwined in all points of my life). We had an agreement on how we could move ahead.
then I had a setback.
I needed this to be approved and accepted. I reached out to him on social media and told him I give him my blessing to fuck my wife. I stole the responsibility of the conversation for her, I outed her to him, he had now idea where she was with it. I showed such disrespect. It was a setback for both of us and a shock to him.
my wife was able to deal with me, I recovered, but like I said earlier, I am an outgoing introvert with no friends to turn to who could help me. I have used her as my sounding board to get through this. And I am sharing too much of my pain and I am damaging her. I am taking away the beauty and simplicity that she wanted.
I have made peace with it, last night I slept for the first time in 10 nights. I saw the improved communication between us, I saw the sexual chemistry strengthen between us. I saw the positives.
then I saw that she had more positives and that I had harder negatives and I sabotaged by telling her I am at peace and I can handle it but I don't like it. I again threw my pain in her face.
I need a coping mechanism before I destroy my marriage. Her asking to fuck somebody else is no longer the biggest issue in our marriage. How do I stop the unintended destruction?
This strategy consists of the five things that are essential for any healthy relationship.
1. Communication
2. Honesty
3. Appreciation
4. Respect
5. Time
For simplicity's sake, I call this the CHART method. If you consistently apply these elements, no matter what the outcome is, you will be able to navigate through your situation, and regardless of how it turns out, you'll know that it's how it's supposed to be.
That doesn't mean it will be exactly what you might have wanted or expected. It will just be as it should be, and knowing that will allow you to adapt and evolve in a positive way. From the content of your story, you have the potential to make this work well.
Beyond this there are a couple of other things to bear in mind. The first is that the term "poly" is an umbrella term for non-monogamous relationships, while the term "polyamory" is a subset with its own definition and corresponding principles. Secondly, you will likely encounter resistance to this truth, but if element 2. ( Honesty ) is to be maintained, then it's something that requires more than a casual & personally biased perspective on what it means to be polyamorous.
At present, the relationship between you, your wife, and her FWB, is not polyamorous, and the relationship between you and your wife is by definition monogamous. When I say "by definition", I mean literally by the legal definition of marriage in Western culture. If either of you engage in a romantic relationship outside your marriage, you are breaching that contract, and in many jurisdictions it is legal grounds for divorce. For clarity, a "romantic relationship" permits but doesn't necessitate sex.
My suggestion is therefore not to be dismissive of the gravity of the situation e.g. "It's only a piece of paper". That isn't being honest. Personally, I don't believe in marriage because it pits human nature against social control — but if you do sign-up for it, then IMO it needs to be treated like any other serious contract - own it and mean it. In other words, when you got married, monogamy is what you both signed-up for, and that means voluntarily denying yourselves the freedom to give-in to temptations such as you describe. There is no honest way to negotiate them into the contract without breaching its terms.
I put too much pressure on myself to give her an answer. I should have been more honest with myself and with her and told her I needed time to absorb info. I should have spoken to someone other than her about it all. She is in the middle of it with me. She struggled before me and found the courage to talk to the person she trusts most -me.
I took the trust and twisted it into a mess.
I have unknowingly sabotaged it because I did not take the time to absorb it.
Also glad you recognize that ethical non-monogamy and polyamory are different. If poly is the big umbrella, then ethical non-monogamy is a smaller one under it, and under an even smaller one is polyamory.
In your case, the variable of concern is "ethical". What constitutes ethical in relationships tends to be self servingly interpreted by those within them rather than by any universal principle, and that is very problematic.
Without getting into a long-winded explanation, Western legal marriage and any form of non-monogamy are mutually exclusive. Therefore unless you're both single there's nothing "ethical" about it. It's a breach of a legally binding agreement witnessed by the state, and perhaps whatever God you believe in, and whatever congregation may have attended.
A mutual agreement between you two to break it doesn't make it ethical any more than a mutual agreement not to pay a debt you're both on contract for. This is the unbiased truth of the situation. To make it ethical, you either have to get legally released from the contract, or uphold your vows — there's no other option.
For now, I would suggest that if possible, you both take a step back and give yourselves the time you need to get things in perspective without taking any actions that will compromise your marriage. Then carefully, apply the CHART principles toward navigating your way through to a resolve.