My Story... Looking for Advice. (Long)

marek28

New member
Well here goes..... my story.
When I was 17 I met a girl, I knew there was something special about her the moment I met her. Within less than a month we were dating. Within a month from then I knew that I loved her and wanted to marry her. We moved in together less than a year later, we got married 4 years later. We have two wonderful children together who are 4 and 3 years old. It has now been over 11 years since we first met and I still love her. We prided ourselves on our great communication and cooperation as partners, rarely fighting and agreeing on all the big issues. Sounds like a perfect love story right?
Rewind to fall 2010.
My wife brought up the idea of polyamory and having an “open marriage”. She said that she thought she may be bisexual and that she wanted to try dating women. At first I was a little anxious about the idea but then I thought, hey, why not? This could be fun!
I’m not gonna lie and say that our physical relationship was perfect. We had a miscarriage before the birth of our children and that combined with trying to get pregnant and the fact that my wife’s body and pregnancy do not go well together certainly had a toll on that aspect of our relationship. Plus I had just resigned myself to the fact that I had a much higher sex drive than she did. Not something that is too uncommon. All that being said we definitely were not celibate and did have some good times in bed.
Back to the story. So in the fall of 2010 we started looking for someone to date. We had decided that we were looking for a Triad. We found someone on OkCupid who lived in a nearby city and began dating. Things started out really well and really fast! She came and stayed with us at our house and we each had a great connection with her. My wife fell in love with her, as did I. However there were some issues as my wife was definitely jealous of our relationship (although she will never admit it and has always denied it) I could tell from her actions and it did cause some stress on things from time to time. We never did the threesome thing because of this and we both had our physical relationships separate (when she came and visited we alternated nights together). Within 3 or 4 months she was going to be moving in with us. I freaked out! I wasn’t ready for THIS. I started questioning everything... I wasn’t sure if I actually loved her or not. I knew for sure at this time that my wife wasn’t comfortable with our relationship and would have been more than happy if we weren’t dating. So I made the very poor decision to break up with her. I said some quite harsh things looking back and hurt her a great deal. She then decided to break up with my wife as well and then all hell broke loose relationship wise. I realized that I did love her, I wanted to make amends, I wanted things to go back to the way were. My wife wanted nothing to do with this and didn’t want me to hurt her anymore. It was a mess caused by my fear of the whole situation. Eventually after much pain all around, it all ended and we attempted to move on knowing that a triad would never work for us.
At this point I wasn’t sure if polyamory was right for me (I’m still not sure). However with my wife being bisexual she insisted that it was something that she needed to be happy. So I agreed to continue on with it.
After the failure of the triad my wife dated a few different women (none serious) and I dated one woman causally (who was great and understood poly). One of the women whom she was becoming great friends with and casually dating (who was also married and experienced in poly) expressed interest in me and I admitted that I was attracted to her as well. My wife did not take this well at all after what we had just gone through with the failure of the triad. Needless to say nothing ever happened between us and it was clear that I wasn’t to date any of my wife’s friends.
Then I got a job offer in another city. The family jumped at the idea of getting a fresh start in a new (and very liberal and fun) city. So we moved out to an unknown place away from all of our family and friends to get a fresh start.
Things started out well. My wife (the social butterfly that she is) met a number of great people online that became good friends and even dated a girl here. Things were going well, I wasn’t really interested in dating and I was fine with that. We had met another couple who were poly and became very good friends very quickly. They loved our kids and we all had tons of fun together (not sexual, just friendship). Then the girl told me that she really liked me (we already had kind of a flirty relationship). I was clear to her before and then that nothing would/could ever happen between us because I didn’t want to ruin the friendship we had. Then I made the mistake of not telling my wife that she had told me this. Fast forward to a month later. We had a party at our house and she was being flirty and I was being flirty back. It’s fun to be flirty and I thought that that was all that was happening as I was quite clear with her before. But she kept escalating things and I told her again that nothing would ever happen between us. My wife saw this exchange and got angry at her. Then I lied and didn’t admit that she had previously told me that she liked me. Big mistake. She told my wife this and I was in big trouble. Stupid, stupid mistake on my part. I believe that she over-reacted and she completely shut me out. I slept in a separate room for over month while she completely shut me out. Then feeling desperate to find out what was going on with her I made another big STUPID mistake. Her account on Facebook had the password saved on the computer and I looked at her Facebook messages. She found out and decided that we needed to separate for a while. She moved back to our hometown with our children. (There were some extenuating circumstances to the move however as we still owned a house there that we were having troubles selling and prior to this she was actually thinking of moving back but this was the event that pushed that decision to a sure thing)
This was November of last year.
Within a month of living apart we had reconciled and both said we love each other and want to stay together. I had made some mistakes, was unsure of what I had wanted but through it all always supported her in whatever she wanted to do.
Then about a month later she dropped the bomb on me. She told me that she was gay. That she loved me, wants to stay married, wants to remain best friends, wants to raise children, grow old together, cuddle but is not interested in me (or other men) physically anymore and of course will continue to date women.
So what do I do? We are still living in separate cities with me working (her staying at home with the children in our hometown), travelling back and forth whenever possible to see them and mostly alone in a city that I just moved to with very few real friends.
I love her, I want to grow old with her, I want to raise our children with her but I am still incredibly physically attracted to her and I’m not sure I can handle it all. She wants me to move back and live there but I’m not sure I can handle it all. The poly thing worked for me when I still felt that she was interested in me.... but now it’s clear that she is not. I don’t know what to do....
Any advice?
 
I have nothing but hugs to give at this point...

and a question...

At the end of the day... what is more important to you... your ongoing loving relationship with your wife... or being able to have sex with her? It may be that you need to remain separated for a little while longer while you reconcile your physical feelings for her... but also, it may be that you are unable to have that loving relationship without the physical expression... this is a question only you can answer...
 
Oh man, what a sad story.

I hope it helped to get it all out there. It must really hurt to be told by your wife that she thinks she's a complete lesbian, not bi, and that she doesn't desire you anymore.

That, coupled with her hypocrisy in her dating women, but being jealous when you date and/or flirt, really sucks!

Many hugs.
 
That must be hard. I'd like to share my hugs as well.
Since you ask for advice... I don't have much experience, but I have a friend whose parents "broke up" when she was a little kid. However they stayed together, lived together, raised the kids together. At that point they were friends, roommates and parents, but not partners.
They stayed married as well, and only divorced after all of their kids had left the nest.

What was hard for my friend was that she only learned about it when they got a divorce. They basically told her "we haven't loved each other for 18 years but stayed together for you guys". That made her feel guilty and was painful. So I guess my advice would be, if you do a similar thing, to be honest. I think kids can get used to what they are raised in, and a lot of kids have parents who aren't together. Here, they'd just have the advantage of still living with both, which would probably be much more stable for them.

What I don't know is how that would work for you. You obvioulsy not only still love her, but desire her as well, and it could be hard for you to keep living with someone and be constantly reminded that she is not attracted to you or any men. It would be a very difficult transition, but I think it might be possible if you both try hard to make it work.

You might need time off from dating for a bit to get over it, you say you were fine with poly when you thought she liked you, but not now that you know she isn't attracted to you. Maybe a break is what you need. Afterwards, though, I think if you date you should make the circumstances clear to any girlfriend you have: "my wife is a lesbian. We are staying together to raise the kids and as friends, and I love her and care about her." It's important that they don't think you're staying together as a facade, when you actually do love each other.
Your relationship can be of friends, or non-sexual partners. You just need to be clear about that. It wouldn't be fair to a girlfriend of yours if she thinks you're together for now, but will leave your wife once the kids are grown, if that's actually not your intent at all (for instance).

I think you will need to work out some issues with your wife, namely her jealousy. I think it could be due to her insecurities as she knows she can't satisfy you sexually, and therefore might think other women are a threat to your relationship. Either way, it's important to sort that out so you can have a sex life / love life outside of her. I think that will be an important part of the success of this relationship with her, if you do stay together, that you have an outlet to make up for what she can't give you. If she tries to prevent it, it could make both of you unhappy and ultimately destroy the relationship.

So there, that's all the advice I could think of, I hope I helped somehow... if I made wrong assumptions about your situation, feel free to correct them. And good luck with everything!
 
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