I always heard love your spouse, everything else is just sex. I am now looking at it from the loving others stand point. it broke my heart because after 8 years, I was no longer everything she needed. all of a sudden she needed more and I didn't know why. was I doing something wrong?? no, I don't believe I was. she just developed feelings for someone else. sometimes I still believe that all she was doing was ask for permission to be unfaithful but I'm working through that.
Sorry, but who ever perpetuates this myth that I bolded above is full of shit. It's fucked, seriously, to think that peoples bodies come together in an intimate way and there won't be some kind of transference of energy.... connection energy? Really? I suggest that if people don't want to fall in love or care about those they have sex with don't engage them in that way. In my experience it almost always ends in unwanted feelings that are inevitably life changing. The choice is in moving toward more of those feelings or less. That is the decision that couples make when involved sexually with others.
She isn't REALLY asking for permission to be unfaithful. She is not the culmination of your coupledom.... she is an independent person. She isn't
really asking permission so much as seeing what your reaction will be. She has ever right to do as she wishes, she is her own person, not joined at the hip with you... but as she has committed to you, she is asking you to engage in possibilities that she wants to pursue.
I'm pretty sure that is hard to fathom independence in committed relationships. Especially as a person who has grown up in a monogamous culture, where we were raised to believe that we should strive for co-dependence with our partners rather than walk together in life independently. The idea of poly is to support and encouraging each others life path and love them regardless of the pressure that builds when they do something that makes us think that they will leave us. All of in the realization that they are their own person and we have no hold on them and what they feel they need to do. At least that is what I have surmised.
Its hard, I know it.... there isn't one person on this forum that doesn't get that. The up side is that you get to be independent too and be completely safe and secure in the knowledge that when you do actually let go of trying to mold her to what works for you, that she will likely be more in love, more faithful, more willing to stay with you and more complete, confident, and have a bigger self esteem, because her life and yours will be your own... no more responsibility to the other in terms of "making" them feel better temporarily by doing as they say.... not many feel better in the end with that way of conducting relationships, it usually ends up in resentment and sometimes even divorce.
(by the way; the quote above? It seems to me that those in the military use this idea often to justify cheating while they are on tour.... if only there was more tolerance for loving and sex than ruining marriages through cheating.... sad really)