Babs how great to hear you are feeling totally *zen* about his time with his wife. And FN, I am already beginning to appreciate the bit about 'be prepared to do the work'.
Yes, zen this week. Who knows what will happen tomorrow, next month, whenever. I am susceptible to dementors swirling around me, amplifying all of my insecurities, and they can hit at any time. (Sorry for the Harry Potter reference! Best analogy I have though.)
I do have lots of questions but suspect they may be premature and will have to see how things develop. I wonder if you see one as being primary ( is that language helpful?), if FN still sexually desires his wife or if that has changed (I am assuming some shared feelings from years of being unwanted) has FN revisited any issues of grief and loss seeing things be so different, what do you plan to tell our son & family, and practical things like Christmas and holidays.
I suspect this paragraph is intended for FN's replies, but here's my perspective. Primary/secondary means entirely different things to each of the three of us - so it's not necessarily meaningful if we're not using the same vocabulary. What defines those words, practically? Is it amount of time spent with each of us? Is it a comment on length of history? Shared resources? Future plans/hopes? I suspect this is different for each group, depending on their own variables.
In our situation, I feel like we're limited in the time we can spend with each other by environmental factors (we live in different towns and I want to move v e r y slowly where their son is concerned.) Our history is 6 months. We do not share resources other than time. We do share future hopes. We do chat/text/talk constantly during waking hours. With his wife, he shares 17 years of history, they are close co-parents, their respective dwellings are in close proximity, they work together, have lunch most week days, and he spends at least 1 night/week at her place. They are already family. He and I are potential family - but I feel like I get the bulk of his romantic attentions.
Given that, not so interested in the whole label thing. Being called secondary makes me feel less and invites the dementors to attack - what saves me is reminding myself that I feel like all of my needs are being met right now and that even if he offered more, we're not in the place yet to take advantage of that. Nor do I want his wife to feel like she is less when she clearly is not. So I sort of reject those labels.
I'll let FN speak up if he likes, but my clear understanding is that yes, he very much still sexually desires his wife and this has never diminished, nor is it likely to. What I understand to be different now in the wake of understanding that she's asexual is that he does not want her to feel the pressure of being with him sexually. More recently he's internalized the idea that they can be physically close without that sexual expectation, and that's enough. (I think? Again, reading minds and restating what I've been told is sort of dodgy business that invariably omits important nuance.)
We've not discussed feelings of grief and loss. Though at the beginning of our relationship I did see tears in his eyes a couple of times when discussing the dissolution of their marriage. I have been through a divorce that was sorely needed and which liberated me from oppression, and even I felt grief and loss, so I imagine that both FN and his wife, who still love each other very much, are experiencing some of that. Though none of that has been shared with me. Possibly this arrangement mitigates some of that feeling of grief/loss? No idea.
As for telling the son/family - this is an arrangement we intend to keep to ourselves. It's not really anyone else's IRL business. We don't see any reason to tell outsiders or their son anything. That FN and his wife will remain close friends and co-parents is a no-brainer. People do that all the time. Additionally, I think we all agree that it's healthy for the son to see them getting along so well and mutually supportively. It's been discussed what will happen when it comes to the time when I am sleeping over at FN's place when his son is also there. We're not at that stage yet, but when we are, FN's wife has suggested that it would be the most appropriate thing for him to stop spending the night over at her place so as not to confuse the son or put him in a position where he has to be discreet about something to outsiders. But who knows what that will eventually look like.
Christmas and holidays. Sort of refusing to think about that as yet. They're hugely important to me. They're hugely important to her, I think. They share a kid - I think they should spend those times together. If I am not included in that, I am going to have a really hard time. Yet I have my own family and traditions, so yeah, ignoring that for now. It's only June, after all.
Again, I've gone on and on. Brevity is not my strong suit. Kudos to anyone who actually reads all of this.