Jealous husband wants to go back to monogamy

Camembert

New member
I could really use some advice here.

Before my husband and I married ten years ago, we discussed the possibility of becoming non-monogamous. We both came from broken homes where our parents’ marriages ended because of affairs and betrayal, and we thought our marriage could be strengthened by being open to other partners and honest about our needs.

Four months ago, we embarked on polyamorous relationships. We began sleeping with another couple who were married but separated. At the start, the rule was “no falling in love,” but my husband very quickly fell in love with his new partner, and it seemed like she did with him. She was still smarting from the breakup of her marriage though, and very erratic in her behavior.

Meanwhile, I’ve steadily been pursuing an affectionate, erotic affair with my lover. It’s been wonderful—we don’t talk about being in love, but we thoroughly enjoy one another’s company.

After a few months, things got very intense—there was talk of blending the two families, abolishing hierarchy, living together as a loving foursome.

Then my husband’s girlfriend bailed. Very suddenly, she just announced this wasn’t what she wanted and left. I think she was spooked by the intense intimacy, so soon after leaving her husband. Whatever the reason, my husband’s heart was broken.

He’s been devastated for nearly a month now, and it’s been awful. His immediate reaction to the breakup was to insist that I not see my partner anymore, because it was “killing him,” and “making him crazy.” He wants to close our marriage and go back to monogamy. Not only that, he can’t sleep, he dry heaves, he rages at me for “ruining our marriage,” and so on.

I do not want to break up with my boyfriend. For one thing, he is my good friend and I love him. I don’t see why I should summarily break off my relationship because my husband’s love affair ended. Moreover, I find that I love the polyamorous lifestyle. I have felt more beautiful, loving and erotically charged in the past few months than I’ve felt for years. I’ve had a taste of sexual liberty and I don’t want to give it up.

It seems we’re at an impasse and I don’t know what to do. I love my husband and I don’t want to end the marriage. But I think he’s being selfish and unfair. He even acknowledges that he’s being selfish and unfair, but says he “can’t help how he feels.”

On the other hand, I don’t want to live with someone who flies into a rage at me on a regular basis, or tells me I’m killing him with my behavior. I don’t want to “kill him”—the thought of hurting him makes me very sad. But I’m not doing anything that we haven’t already negotiated—the only difference is that now he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

Help! What to do?
 
I am sorry your struggle.

He even acknowledges that he’s being selfish and unfair, but says he “can’t help how he feels.”

He cannot help what he feels. He CAN help how he chooses to behave in response to those feelings.

These things? He chooses poor behavior, in my opinion.

On the other hand, I don’t want to live with someone who flies into a rage at me on a regular basis

That's him acting out at you. How is this loving behavior?

or tells me I’m killing him with my behavior.

That is blame shifting. If he no longer wants to be in a polyship, he could bow out. Get off the poly bus. Instead, he chooses to keep riding on the bus when he no longer wants to ride. That is what is killing him. HIS own choice. He just blames you for it rather than owning his choices.

I don’t want to “kill him”—the thought of hurting him makes me very sad. But I’m not doing anything that we haven’t already negotiated—the only difference is that now he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

You can firmly but gently tell him "I do not intend to stop. I see two ways this can go at this point in time.

1) I think you need to process this break up with a counselor because right now you are acting out at me and I do not like it. I would like for you to stop that behavior.

2) If this break up means you decided poly is no longer the journey you want to be on, I can respect that choice. I can respect that you need to get off the poly bus. We can stop and disband as peacefully as possible. Set you free from this. Then we both can continue separate journeys. And nobody is killing anyone any more.

Could you be willing to tell me which one you are up for?"

Hard to feel -- but it seems straightforward. I encourage you to have the honest, direct conversations that you need to be having with him.

Galagirl
 
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Hi Camembert,

What about the idea of taking a one-month break from poly? if your boyfriend would be willing. Maybe the time-out would suffice for your husband to pull himself together.

It's not okay for him to transfer his heartbreak into spite and rage at you. He has admitted that he is acting up. Now he needs to figure out what he needs to do to stop it.

Sorry you're going through this.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
A break could be good, my boyfriend and i took a short break last fall when my husband was having a hard time with my relationship. Although in your case you guys should do therapy during the break and your husband needs to accept the fact that your boyfriend and you will be resuming your relationship after the break.
 
I'm sorry to see you're going through such a tough time. I would say that it's important to get the the heart of the matter. Maybe then, it will help guide all of you in the right direction.

Is he upset that you still have the happiness & he doesn't? Or is he simply heart-broken over the other woman leaving?

In either case, it's important to assure him that his feelings are valued, but with each possibility, comes different solutions. And neither would necessarily require closing your marriage back up. That is, unless he genuinely regrets opening the marriage to begin with. But, in that case, that's kind of his own cross to bear, and will need much more self care to overcome than anything.

I'm not poly, but my wife had recently revealed herself to be a few months back. I'm all too familiar with having to deal with the pain of just the thought of it. It sounds to me like you're husband is not poly either, but was willing to give it a try since there was something in it for him, other than just having to share you. I get that, but would suggest that he maybe didn't think it all the way through. I apologize if that sounded harsh. It's just that I know that these are often incredibly complicated situations, and our human brains don't always take enough time to really weigh all of the consequences.
 
I like the words from GalaGirl. I totally agree. I also agree that a break might be a good thing, but that is going to be really hard on you and you aren't at fault here. I think you might feel like you are being punished and that just isn't fair. IMO, your husband is being very childish and his jealousy needs to be felt and examined. HE needs to feel it and deal with it - not act out on you. I hope that you can find some resolution and that this situation rights itself.
 
The 'vibe' I am getting from your husband here is one of fear, not just jealously. He was in a relationship that seemed ideal. It was, as you said, something that got very intense, very fast. Then it all imploded. Clearly he never saw it coming.

The issue is less about your boyfriend and more about you and your marriage. I'd suggest that he likely feels a lot of fear about losing the marriage. If this other relationship could tank so quickly, he likely fears losing his marriage and ending up alone. Since men often aren't 'supposed' to express that they feel vulnerable, your husband is instead trying to do what he can to assure he won't lose you as well.

He doesn't see himself as being selfish, since he sees your marriage as something that pre-existed the other relationships that both he and you have/had. Your husband needs time to heal, but your relationship with your boyfriend is only making him feel that much more alone and isolated.

I'm not saying that you should (or should have to) give up your relationship with your boyfriend, but I do think you should consider how much your husband means to you, and what you are willing to help him recover. Think of it like an illness. If your husband was seriously ill and/or hospitalized and you needed to put the relationship with your boyfriend on 'hold' to care for your husband, would you be willing to do that?

This isn't all that much different.

Given the symptoms your husband is showing, this has savaged him emotionally and had done serious damage to his psyche. If you want to save your marriage--and your relationship with your boyfriend--then you need to help build your husband back up.

Men like your husband don't have the same emotional capacity to deal with these kinds of break-ups. He's probably used to being 'in charge' in his life, and this has totally shattered that reality. He likely feels like he has no control of his life anymore.

If you value your husband, I think it wouldn't be asking too much to take a temporary step back from the relationship with your boyfriend. NOT to end it, nor to go back to monogamy, but to take some time to help your husband heal himself emotionally. If your boyfriend loves and respects you, he'll be willing to wait until this blows over.

Like it or not, just as this woman leaving your husband has affected YOUR relationship with your husband, YOUR relationship with your boyfriend is doing the same. No relationship ever exists in a vacuum. They all impact one another, even if it shouldn't be that way.

My advice would be to work on healing your husband's shattered emotional state and rebuilding his confidence. Keeping the 'status quo' with your boyfriend will make that nearly impossible. Again, it's not about ending things with your boyfriend, but rebuilding the relationship inside your marriage so that your husband doesn't feel like he may lose you next month--just as he lost his girlfriend last month.

If your relationship with your boyfriend is strong, he will respect it if you need to take a little time to repair things with your husband. None of this is your fault of course, but it all comes down to understanding this is more about being there to support your husband, and not about poly. He's hurting, and you're the last person he has. If he lives in daily fear of losing you as well, he'll never get any better.

Try to put yourself in his shoes. Imagine how you would react if the opposite happened. Your boyfriend dumps you, and you see your husband in love with another woman as you sit scared wondering whether he'll leave you for her. How would that impact you? How would you feel in that case?

It's up to you. In the end you need to decide how much your relationship with your husband is 'worth' to you. It may be difficult to scale things back with your boyfriend, but marriage often involves making compromises. Perhaps you and your husband can agree that you will take a temporary break from seeing your boyfriend if your husband agrees that he will respect that you can't simply become monogamous again--and perhaps that he sees a counsellor to talk about his how all this is making him feel.

Take some time to ask yourself how much your marriage means to you, and then decide whether you want to risk it by keeping the status quo and expecting your husband to just 'get over it' somehow. If it hasn't happened yet, it's not going to happen.

In the end, something has to give. If you don't make an effort to help your husband overcome his breakup, you may end up losing your marriage. While it's not fair to you that this is happening, it's the reality of what is happening in your life right now.
 
I would NOT recommend taking a "break" from the relationship with your bf. No way. Why not? Because that will not help your husband to work through his feelings and will only give him the idea that by exerting some form of control over you that he can make his discomfort go away. But he's looking in the wrong place. His uncomfortable feelings are his, and can only be managed by actually feeling them, weathering them, all without your "help." Basically, it's an inside job and not up to you to fix. If he can allow space for each of you to be yourselves, and feel what he feels, and be present, it will do a lot more good for him than you kowtowing to his emotions.

Your marriage is not an entity. You're a person and he's a person, and now you're involved with another person who also deserves to be treated respectfully and not kicked to the curb whenever your husband has a tantrum.
 
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With respect, the husband has had a month to attempt to 'work through his feelings' and it's gotten them nowhere. If he had the emotional capacity to deal with his feelings, he would have done so already. I don't need to tell you that men and women process emotions very differently. Men are trained from birth to repress their emotions. Yuno, "Big boys don't cry" and all that BS.

Men are expected to be emotional rocks, and when they break down, they often don't have the emotional intelligence to process what they are feeling. However, they are often told that they have to 'suck it up'. It's like telling a depressed person to 'get over it'. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't work. It's not about 'kowtowing' to him, it's about empathy. He's had his heart ripped open; I don't see how telling him to 'suck it up' is a very compassionate way to deal with his pain. And make no mistake, his actions are all based around emotional pain.

It would be different if the couple negotiated an open marriage and the husband did NOT get a girlfriend, but the wife did. If he was acting that way in this scenario, I would agree with you, since his actions would be solely driven by jealously. But that's not the case here.

You can't treat a burn while a person is still on fire, and you can't put out the fire if you keep pouring gas on it. The boyfriend is gas. If the fire is put out, then it's not a problem to have gas around. But the fire has to be put out first.

In the end it all comes down to what matters the most to the original poster. If she wants to salvage both relationships, something has to give. After a month it's clear that maintaining the status quo isn't going to work here.

There are two likely options. She can change nothing in regard to her relationship with her boyfriend, and 'hope' the husband somehow gets over it. Since it's been a month already, that's unlikely to happen. If nothing changes the marriage will continue to degrade. Sooner or later they will have to end the marriage, since things will have become too toxic.

The second option is to remove the 'fuel' (boyfriend) temporarily, as a means to calm the situation. Once the husband gets back on his emotional feet, she can pick up where she left off with the boyfriend, and the husband will (hopefully) be in a place where he is looking for a new companion too. It's not about kicking the boyfriend to the curb, it's about hitting 'pause' in their relationship while she puts out the fire in her marriage.

Marriage is for 'better or worse'. Well I think this counts as 'worse' in my books. Now is the time when partners in a marriage show just how much they care about one another. It's a choice only the original poster can make. She needs to decide how much she is willing to 'invest' in helping her husband through this. I don't see how crossing her fingers and hoping for the best is going to end well for her.
 
I think it's possible to do both. I think she can both have her new relationship And reassure him. I don't see why she would need to stop the new relationship to mommy coddle him.

At the end of the day we're talking about adults, and yes the husband is male and may be less able to deal with emotions but women aren't designed to fix men's emotions. I have had three sexual partners as of recently and was perfectly capable of holding all three relationships at the same time and reassure them in a variety of ways, emotionally, mentally and physically. I continue to do so with the two remaining, and lack of emotional processing time was never a problem. As I tell Rocky, he need not worry if I have sex with him because

1) it's my body, and my time body and life are a gift...to me the same is true if I were married or not...
2) they are separate relationships and
3) it's not a bloody contest.

Ok so maybe husband will need more time, but I would suggest if he's so torn up he see a sex positive therapist, because his wife won't have any more emotional experience in poly than he does, since they are both new to it. He has a duty to the marriage to be responsible for his own emotions too and not take them out on her.
 
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I think what she meant is that society expects men to be stoic and not allowed to have emotions whereas it's expected that women will be emotional. Not always but a lot of men just don't have the practice that women have when it comes to working through things. . Men are also seen as weak if they share their female partners so there could be a little machismo in play here.
 
Have you guys read "more than two"? It is brilliant, and if he is willing, I would recommend you and your husband read it together, I have also heard great things of The Jealousy Workbook, but not looked at that myself.
 
To give in and accept a stereotype about what men are or are not capable of only reinforces that stereotype and leaves no room for growth. I would have no interest in doing that because it is disrespectful and does not honor the man as a fully-rounded human being with enormous potential.

I don't want a man putting me in a box labeled "Equipped for emotions with no ability for logic," so why would I willingly set a man in a box labeled "Unable to handle emotions?" That is just silly and ridiculous.

Of course, we ALL have been programmed by society to focus on and develop certain areas of our inner life, according to stupid beliefs about what men and women are supposed to be about, but to play into them only makes those stereotypes right, creates imbalance, and neglects the larger part of a human psyche.

Husband feels upset over girlfriend breaking up with him, thinks forcing his wife set aside her other relationship will make the upset go away, but it will only stunt his growth as a person not to feel his feelings of loss, grief, rejection, confusion, anger, unfairness, sadness, and so on, not to mention how it dismisses the boyfriend as entirely unimportant. Bending to his demand helps no one.

Would love to see an update from the OP!
 
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Before my husband and I married ten years ago, we discussed the possibility of becoming non-monogamous. We both came from broken homes where our parents’ marriages ended because of affairs and betrayal, and we thought our marriage could be strengthened by being open to other partners and honest about our needs.

Marriages can be strengthened by being open, but it's not all wine and roses. Did neither of you ever consider that, in beginning another relationship, there was a chance it would only last X number of months or years? Surely you both experienced breakups before you met each other. It's naive to not see that as a possibility. Some friendships, some love relationships, are not meant to last forever. People come into your lives, you enjoy them, you learn from them, and sometimes you, or they, move on! Fact of life. Yes, loss hurts, but the pain doesn't last forever. Nor should it! Heartbreak can make one so depressed it feels like the pain will last forever. But it doesn't! We heal. We are resilient.

Four months ago, we embarked on polyamorous relationships. We began sleeping with another couple who were married but separated. At the start, the rule was “no falling in love...”

Another mistake. We can't make rules about "falling in love," or avoiding "new relationship energy." It is emotional and chemical. We can only control our behaviors in response to our feelings.

...but my husband very quickly fell in love with his new partner, and it seemed like she did with him. She was still smarting from the breakup of her marriage though, and very erratic in her behavior.

Meanwhile, I’ve steadily been pursuing an affectionate, erotic affair with my lover...
After a few months, things got very intense—there was talk of blending the two families...

Then my husband’s girlfriend bailed. Very suddenly, she just announced this wasn’t what she wanted and left. I think she was spooked by the intense intimacy, so soon after leaving her husband.

Another not so great idea was each of you dating a member of a couple that had just split. Both are in rebound mode. And why would they even want to consider living as a foursome, when they couldn't even make it as a duo? They were just carried away, as you two are, by happy lustful endorphins and infatuation.

He’s been devastated for nearly a month now, and it’s been awful. His immediate reaction to the breakup was to insist that I not see my partner anymore, because it was “killing him,” and “making him crazy.” He wants to close our marriage and go back to monogamy. Not only that, he can’t sleep, he dry heaves, he rages at me for “ruining our marriage,” and so on.

He is grieving. That is normal for a breakup. In the future, once he recovers, he may be able to handle a breakup better. Live and learn. But you are not ruining the marriage. He is blame shifting. He (and you, for that matter) chose to date a woman in rebound mode, while his wife dated her ex husband! Of course that would/could feel weird and sticky all around.
I do not want to break up with my boyfriend.

Of course not. But remember, your h is in a very bad place. I went through an extremely bad breakup last year (although we had been together 2 1/2 years, not just a mere 4 months), and it took me a good 6 months to recover. But my gf dating others, or not, had no bearing on my recovery. That is totally separate thing. She was extremely supportive of me as I healed though. And she wasn't seeing other loves several days a week. She was there for me. I could see you getting out to see your bf once a week at least! You could limit the meetings for a while, since your h is in a crisis. But just because your h broke up DOES NOT mean you need to! That doesn't even make sense! Misery loves company? How would it help for you BOTH to be missing your OSOs and grieving? Your bf can give you a break from the sadness and therefore more strength to go home and support you h in his grief. He must be made to understand the way he is bargaining here, grasping at straws to avoid doing the work of coping and healing from his loss.

On the other hand, I don’t want to live with someone who flies into a rage at me on a regular basis, or tells me I’m killing him with my behavior. I don’t want to “kill him”—the thought of hurting him makes me very sad. But I’m not doing anything that we haven’t already negotiated—the only difference is that now he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

Nope, he is reneging on your agreement. Poly isn't "fair." In a couple, there is never ever ever a guarantee you will both have perfect OSOs. Sometimes you will both be happy, sometimes you will both be struggling, sometimes you might have 3 lovers and he has none, or vice versa. It's all part of the game.

I'd let my h vent about his sadness, but walk away if he starts to blame shift. You don't deserve to be treated that way. If he is being emotionally abusive and seeming out of control depressed, he should see a counselor. Talking it through with a 3rd party, and perhaps an antidepressant medication for a while, might calm him down enough to do the healing work.

He is treating you as if you are cheating on him, and the only thing to do is give up your lover, or end the marriage with him (like your parents' marriages both ended). There are better solutions!
 
With respect, the husband has had a month to attempt to 'work through his feelings' and it's gotten them nowhere. If he had the emotional capacity to deal with his feelings, he would have done so already.

I couldn't disagree more!! It can take a helluva a lot longer than a mere month to recover from a breakup, especially if you are new to poly. One month is nothing. It can take several months, to even a year or more, to get over a bad and sudden, unexpected breakup. The husband was naive, and he was blindsided. He needs to move through all the stages of grief, just as if there were a death. And we all do that at our own pace, and in our own fashion.

Men are expected to be emotional rocks, and when they break down, they often don't have the emotional intelligence to process what they are feeling....

It would be different if the couple negotiated an open marriage and the husband did NOT get a girlfriend, but the wife did. If he was acting that way in this scenario, I would agree with you, since his actions would be solely driven by jealously. But that's not the case here.

You can't treat a burn while a person is still on fire, and you can't put out the fire if you keep pouring gas on it. The boyfriend is gas. If the fire is put out, then it's not a problem to have gas around. But the fire has to be put out first.

After a month it's clear that maintaining the status quo isn't going to work here.

There are two likely options. She can change nothing in regard to her relationship with her boyfriend, and 'hope' the husband somehow gets over it. Since it's been a month already, that's unlikely to happen. If nothing changes the marriage will continue to degrade. Sooner or later they will have to end the marriage, since things will have become too toxic.

Again, I disagree. And we don't even know how often Camembert is meeting with, or talking with, her bf. Is it every day? Once meeting a week? Constant texting because of NRE, while her husband writhes in agony? We don't know.

]The second option is to remove the 'fuel' (boyfriend) temporarily, as a means to calm the situation. Once the husband gets back on his emotional feet, she can pick up where she left off with the boyfriend, and the husband will (hopefully) be in a place where he is looking for a new companion too. It's not about kicking the boyfriend to the curb, it's about hitting 'pause' in their relationship while she puts out the fire in her marriage.

It's not black and white. There are many more than "two" options. A counselor may be needed to find a balance, so the wife can continue to be nurtured by her new friend, while also having time to nurse her grieving husband. And he can look for other resources for healing. Websites and books about poly, specifically poly breakups (there are many stories here, for example) and/or a poly friendly counselor.

By the way, the husband may not be ready for another partner for quite some time. It can be true that dating a new person can heal the pain of a breakup, but it can take much time to really be ready, get out of rebound mode, so you're not bringing a full suitcase of shit into the new relationship. It's not a panacea.
Marriage is for 'better or worse'. Well I think this counts as 'worse' in my books. Now is the time when partners in a marriage show just how much they care about one another. It's a choice only the original poster can make. She needs to decide how much she is willing to 'invest' in helping her husband through this. I don't see how crossing her fingers and hoping for the best is going to end well for her.

Who says she is merely crossing her fingers and hoping for the best? But she needs to look out for herself too. Her husband is out of control, raging and awfulizing ("you're killing me!"). She shouldn't just sit back and take his craziness. She is looking for resources for him, wisely. Breaking up with her bf won't heal her h's broken heart.
 
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(Sorry, I didn't get a reply notification, I'll respond to your points below)

I couldn't disagree more!! It can take a helluva a lot longer than a mere month to recover from a breakup, especially if you are new to poly.
I wasn't suggesting that a month is enough for someone to 'get over it'. What I was saying is that if he hasn't been able to make any kind of 'progress' in a month, that says to me that this is a lot more serious to him. As such, it's a bit much to expect him to just 'get over it', which seems to be the prevailing opinion here.

However, I wasn't saying she needs to *break up* with her boyfriend, I was saying take a 'step back'. It's like kids in a house where one parent dies, and then (the parent they are living with) starts dating right away. I agree there needs to be a grieving period, but that is not going to work if he has to compete for his wife's affection. When the husband says it is "killing him", he is saying that because it is killing him *emotionally*, and yet no one here seems to care about him or his feelings. All he is getting is criticism for not 'sucking it up like a man'. All I see here is (paraphrased) "your wife has a boyfriend, deal with it." With respect, I fail to see how that kind of advice will be helpful to him.

The bottom line is that if the boyfriend stays in the picture it may kill the marriage. Whether it *should* happen is irrelevant, since it shouldn't be this way--we both know that. But we're not dealing with someone who is seeing things rationally right now. This marriage is on shaky ground, so it really depends on how much the wife wants to hang onto it. Sometimes in marriage we have to face choices that aren't 'fair', but that we do for the relationship. (Like moving to a new city when your partner gets a job.)

There are times when a person can have their cake and eat it too. My personal belief is that this isn't one of those times. What could very well happen is that the husband could 'force' the issue, and then the marriage crumbles. The wife will now be left with a solo relationship with the boyfriend, but maybe he doesn't want that kind of relationship where he is the 'primary'. It may end up that it could indirectly torpedo that relationship as well, so both husband and wife will end up alone with a broken marriage. All because the husband got 'emotional'. (And people wonder why men are forced to swallow their emotions.)

As I said, it boils down to how important her marriage is to her. If keeping her marriage means temporarily scaling back the relationship with her boyfriend, then it's a choice she has to make. Alternately, if the relationship with her boyfriend is more important than her marriage, she should likely end the marriage now so that the husband can move on and they don't have to live in a tormented relationship. She shouldn't *have* to make that kind of choice, but life isn't fair. Personally I think it is taking a huge risk right now waving the boyfriend in the husband's face every time she sees him, but that's just my opinion.

I wish her all the best, and I hope she is able to work it out.
 
Some random thoughts...

When a person in a monogamous relationship breaks up, they are forced to go it alone. They may latch onto someone else in rebound mode. Maybe that is what is happening here? This couple was monogamous. Hubby suffered a breakup. Several things are running through his head. Poly failed so he wants to go back to mono. He is sitting there hurting while wife continues to have fun. He'll never find anyone else again. Yes, that is what us non-emotional guys go through when we lose someone. I went through a major depression when Elle and I de-escalated.

So...hubby wants to run back to something that is safe. It is up to wife to talk him down. Isn't that one of the "jobs" of a hinge, which is what she is right now? Sure, it's not all on her, but there is some responsibility there.

Perhaps point out to him that her dumping her guy would make him feel as bad as hubby feels? Assure him that he will be ok? These aren't fixing his emotions. It is being there for your partner when they are down.
 
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