Mono Wife is struggling - how to help?

Nudger

New member
About a year ago my wife and I opened up our marriage and I began a secondary relationship. Both women like each other very much and have become good friends but after a year my wife is still struggling emotionally on the night that I hang out with my girlfriend.

She doesn't understand how I can want to be intimate with multiple people. She is monogamous. I am poly. I want her to be happy and find her way in this but not sure what I can do. Any suggestions on how can I help her?
 
Hi and welcome.

What have you done together ...reading , counseling, talking with other poly people in person or online, etc.....and what has she done by herself in this regard in the past year?

Hard to know what to suggest if we don't know what has been tried.
 
This is my first attempt at using a website and my wife usually just likes to read the blogs and posts, never posts herself. She is a very private person

We have done readings, articiles, blogs etc. and talking about it with secondary. My wife is embarassed to let anyone know about what is happening...we are almost there, it is a slow process. She feels it is her deficiency that I need to have another partner.

She/We have considered counselling but it hasn't come about yet. I have a friend who is poly friendly and was thinking about asking her to be outside voice from me and my secondary.

Her issue is with the intimacy part of the relationship with my secondary, she feels that is very personal to her. I am trying to show her another idea about that.

I would appreciate any help and support that you may provide. I appear to be doing well with her, and we alway seem to find articles online that further my message.

Thanks
 
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Hard to know how to help when you are relaying information 2nd hand.

Do you have regular date nights with your wife? How often do you see your gf? What is the communication like between your wife and yourself? Does your wife have any outside activities that are hers alone?
 
The communication between my wife and I is great, we talk about everything. I am not afraid to raise anything and either is she...we tend to know when the other is holding back...many years of marriage does that.

Yes we both have regular nites where we are together...both with the wife and girlfriend. There are nites where all three of us spend together too. Dinner and a movie...it is a V relationship.

My wife has been taking some cooking and baking classes, but the distraction doesn't seem to be enough...there is an underlying ideology that is counter to what we are trying to do.
 
My boyfriend, Mono, had written here extensively. There are lots of posts by him and others if you do a tag search for "mono/poly." We have spent years struggling through a mono/poly dynamic and now facilitate workshops on the topic. Have a look at my blog too (lots to wade through), and see what resonates. Something to do together with her maybe? :)
 
I'm not sure I can offer much help. My "jealousy" tends to spikeover the day to day stuff, not sex. Sex has never made me feel threatened. But knowing that my husband is carving out time to console someone, plan fun activities .. day to day style things as examples -- those build relationships.

We've gotten throigh these by the somple expedient of talkong it through, his understanding, caring amd most important -- hearing my words as feelings that matter instead of hearing it as an accusation, that has been my key.

We have a rule now that i need to know his friends. What i didnt know is he wanted it that way the whole time.

She may benefit from having someone to talk to. Its hard when you feel you are differeft and no one will ever understand.

Until you two do decide what action to take, keep communication open is my best advice.
 
Does your wife have any other people in her life she enjoys intimacy with? I'm not talking about sexual intimacy here, but the pure content feeling of being close to someone and happy about that. If so, that might help her appreaciate that she is not in any way redundant and deficient - that she is an unique individual and loved for who she is.

Sexual intimacy for many people though, at least for most mono people, is something unique and no amount of "but you love both of our children don't you?" will make them change how they feel, and I'm not sure if they need to. It's about deciding what level of discomfort we are comfortable to live with on a day-to-day basis. All of my relationships have varied amounts of insecurities around "what if they secrectly want to be with someone else more than they want to be with me", and they tend to fluctuate with time (I'm most insecure when there are other life stressors either in my own life or in the relationship I'm getting the insecurity attack about).

Oh and btw, plenty of poly people struggle with insecurity too. That's a part of what fuels the whole OPP/veto/hierarchy debates. This is not some problem your wife has that she needs to get over alone. I frequently get desperation attacks about my partner having others, despite me having other partners myself! There's no shame in being human and in reacting in human ways.
 
I may be wrong but I truly feel that there needs to be a sexual buzz for her when you see this women for it to work. My husband and I talked/fantasied about him having sex with another woman (we've been married and monogamous for 18yrs). We have now done this with a friend of mine, but I am there, I enjoy being in another room and then am required to join them. In other words we are 3 equal participants. The correct term for me is cuckquean (although I hate the term) it works as I am sexually submissive and enjoy/need the 'humiliation' my husband is dominate and gets pleasure out of my demise (in a good way). I have no desire to seek sexual encounters on my own, but it really works for us.

Just a thought, but maybe your wife would like to join in but can't admit this to you or herself? With me as the primary encourager they had sex while I was not in the house but text me with what they were going to do. I have never been so turned on in my life.

I also know though that if it was upsetting me my husband would stop as he says if it doesn't do it for me, it won't do it for him, we are equals in a loving relationship and our 'friend' is as close to me as him.
 
There is nothing in the original post to suggest that the wife/girlfriend are bi and interested or into a BDSM dynamic. While it's a thought, triad experimentation can go completely haywire. I see a lot of people (not saying you in particular, since you seem to have a whole different dynamic going on) wanting to bring their original partners into their new relationship, because they want to share the excitement (when we are in love, we can't understand why someone wouldn't feel the same way about the object of our passions), because they think it will make the more reluctant original partner get on board with poly, or out of some misguided sense of fairness or coupledom (if I'm getting laid, so should they).

If the wife in question is mono, she will not be interested to seek additional sexual action for herself and will probably be turned off by the thought of her hubs being with someone else, as the OP seems to indicate.
 
Just a thought, but maybe your wife would like to join in but can't admit this to you or herself?

The OP says that his wife is monogamous and struggling with the situation whenever he goes out on dates with the gf. I highly doubt that she would want to participate or watch.

Nudger, I would suspect that her discomfort might be related to insecurities, which are usually underneath any jealousy people feel. She probably took your need to have an additional partner as a blow to her self-esteem and questions her value and worth. She is mono, she doesn't understand how you can want someone else when you are all she wants.

The best thing you can do is reassure her, and make sure you are as loving with her as you are with the gf. Do you romance your wife? Make an effort to let her know she is not insufficient in any way? Make sure that the time you spend with your wife isn't only relegated to household/bill-paying/family stuff, while the girlfriend is all about hot sexy times. I say take your wife out on dates and invite the girlfriend over to fold laundry.

There are also some email lists/groups for people in poly/mono relationships. She might find some good support here, which is for the monos: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PolyMono/
 
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Thanks

I agree that my wife isn't interested in expanding her sexual exploits at this time and that alot of her issue is around insecurities from a previous marriage/divorce. I am doing much of what you suggest already, romancing her, bring the gf over for quiet regular household stuff.

I think that she just needs to work through her feelings, and understand that she loses nothing by allowing me to have gf. I am trying to ensure that she feels special and that soon she will tell someone so she can have someone to talk to outside our group.
 
If your wife has discomfort and insecurities around you having a gf then maybe its not right for her. I reiterate I believe for these types of relationships to truley work each participant needs to have equal fulfilment whether sexual or not.

I accept there are other views, notibly a suggestion that you 'romance' your wife. but what does that mean in reality? I would be genuiny interested to know what effect this has had on your intimate relationship with your wife, as often this is key to the health of a marriage. Im assuming that taking a gf has a strong sexual element/need for you, but if as one person suggested, your wife is turned off at the thought of you with another woman, then I feel it may have a detrimental effect on your wife's own sexuality and self worth.

I suppose it ultimatley depends on whos needs take priority.
 
I think that she just needs to work through her feelings, and understand that she loses nothing by allowing me to have gf.

Well, in reality, she's not "allowing you" to have a girlfriend. You're both adults and make your own choices. You chose to have a girlfriend (ultimately that is true, even if you moved forward in small increments to get there), and your wife chose to stay with you. She could have chosen to leave. "Allowing" and "giving permission" sounds like a parent, not a spouse. You two are basically working out how to live with the choices each of you made. Maybe if she starts to think of it that way instead of looking at it as if she now has to put up with what she "allowed," it will feel more empowering for her.
 
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