I've been lurking for a while, but I've felt poly for a long time. I finally built up the courage to open up to my wife (been married 10 years, together for 12 years), and the discussion was a complete disaster. I am in love with my wife and we've had a good marriage to date. I respect her enough not to cheat on her. I told her how I felt, and she got really angry. She thinks being poly is just an excuse for cheating, and she told me I "need to get over it". She thinks it's just a choice, but I told her it doesn't feel like a choice to me. It doesn't seem like something I can just turn off like a light switch. She wanted to know why she wasn't enough for me. She wanted to know what she had done to make me feel this way. I tried to explain that it didn't have anything to do with her, but she didn't understand that. She felt really threatened by the whole discussion, and she refused to even consider learning about why I feel this way. I'm not trying to convert her to being poly, but she's not even making an attempt to understand how I feel (to her I should just be able to turn off feeling like this). She said if I brought it up again, she would take the kids and leave me. So I'm a mixture of sad (I thought we had good communication), frustrated, and angry. I didn't really want to be backed into the "be mono with me or get a divorce" corner, especially only 2 minutes into the conversation.
So that's where I am at this point. There are a lot of threads on here where one spouse opens up to another, and there's support from the other spouse. This is not one of those situations.
So that's where I am at this point. There are a lot of threads on here where one spouse opens up to another, and there's support from the other spouse. This is not one of those situations.