This is us, 43 year old male in a committed relationship with my wife (36) for 15 years.
Earlier in our relationship we had a couple of very naive threesome experiences, but we made mistakes and decided not to go there again. What followed was more than a decade of guilt, anger, insecurity, and me caging myself in, never allowing myself to reach out emotionally to women again.
In fairness, life dealt us other curve balls too. I was treated for bipolar II, and the aforementioned events were framed from the perspective of hypersexuality induced by hypomania. However, after hospitalization last year, caused by medication, my wife, my therapist and I together decided that the bipolar label, expecially as far as medication is concerned, is not useful anymore. I am now entirely off medication, and, touch wood, relatively stable. It turned out that living authentically, true to myself, was more important than medication.
My wife has also started therapy more than a year ago. She is on a journey of discovering who she is, what her desires are, where her boundaries lie and how to set and enforce them. But hopefully she will tell her own story when/if she joins this forum.
Recently, she suggested an open relationship. This was not entirely out of the blue, but still a bit of a shock. What followed was an intense process of talking, crying, getting angry, but beautifully, untangling very old emotions. I have realized that, not having emotional connections with any women other than my wife is killing me. I feel lonely, empty and unfulfilled. I don't need sex, but because of who I am, something I cannot change, I need feminine emotional closeness.
My wife agreed to me having such an emotional, though non-sexual connection to a very good friend of ours, who has agreed to meet me for lunch at a restaurant every now and then. This in itself is quite difficult for her. For her, this is a bigger challenge even than sexual infidelity, and I appreciate her sacrifice for what it is for her.
Yesterday, after a much younger friend of mine told me a beautiful little story of how she got involved with her current boyfriend, I decided that it would be equally beautiful if my wife told me such a story. I told her I was ready for her to take that step.
However, she is still very reluctant and unsure, and I guess so am I. We know depression eats away at my self-esteem which is the perfect breeding ground for the green eyed monster. We don't know what we don't know, and what if something we did not anticipate at all causes an unbarable anxiety in me? Also, my wife, because of her own emotional problems, struggles with identity. What if this experience changes who she believes she is? Who is she now? She also has significant difficulty setting her boundaries, more so even than me. Myself, her lover or my lover, any of us could unwittingly overstep a sensitive boundary, and may only find out after the wheels had come off.
Is this for us?
Earlier in our relationship we had a couple of very naive threesome experiences, but we made mistakes and decided not to go there again. What followed was more than a decade of guilt, anger, insecurity, and me caging myself in, never allowing myself to reach out emotionally to women again.
In fairness, life dealt us other curve balls too. I was treated for bipolar II, and the aforementioned events were framed from the perspective of hypersexuality induced by hypomania. However, after hospitalization last year, caused by medication, my wife, my therapist and I together decided that the bipolar label, expecially as far as medication is concerned, is not useful anymore. I am now entirely off medication, and, touch wood, relatively stable. It turned out that living authentically, true to myself, was more important than medication.
My wife has also started therapy more than a year ago. She is on a journey of discovering who she is, what her desires are, where her boundaries lie and how to set and enforce them. But hopefully she will tell her own story when/if she joins this forum.
Recently, she suggested an open relationship. This was not entirely out of the blue, but still a bit of a shock. What followed was an intense process of talking, crying, getting angry, but beautifully, untangling very old emotions. I have realized that, not having emotional connections with any women other than my wife is killing me. I feel lonely, empty and unfulfilled. I don't need sex, but because of who I am, something I cannot change, I need feminine emotional closeness.
My wife agreed to me having such an emotional, though non-sexual connection to a very good friend of ours, who has agreed to meet me for lunch at a restaurant every now and then. This in itself is quite difficult for her. For her, this is a bigger challenge even than sexual infidelity, and I appreciate her sacrifice for what it is for her.
Yesterday, after a much younger friend of mine told me a beautiful little story of how she got involved with her current boyfriend, I decided that it would be equally beautiful if my wife told me such a story. I told her I was ready for her to take that step.
However, she is still very reluctant and unsure, and I guess so am I. We know depression eats away at my self-esteem which is the perfect breeding ground for the green eyed monster. We don't know what we don't know, and what if something we did not anticipate at all causes an unbarable anxiety in me? Also, my wife, because of her own emotional problems, struggles with identity. What if this experience changes who she believes she is? Who is she now? She also has significant difficulty setting her boundaries, more so even than me. Myself, her lover or my lover, any of us could unwittingly overstep a sensitive boundary, and may only find out after the wheels had come off.
Is this for us?
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