CuriousGreg
New member
My title is probably a little understating how big the Now What? really is.
I have been married for 2 1/2 years and throughout that time I have on occassion felt a stong atraction and I mean physical and emotional to other women. I never pursue and in fact distance myself from the invoker of these feelings and then I feel guilty about it.
I have told myself that the honest thing to do given my traditional marriage is to either avoid some of these people or make it clear that I am married and that things can't go anywhere. I still feel bad.
Back in the spring my wife and I hit a big rough spot and we've been trying to save our marriage ever since from her point of view and trying to see if it can work from my point of view. I think I should say that I was never big into the marriage or life partner idea in the first time but I found someone that I thought it could work. I always have also thought that she is one of many loves that I could be with.
Part of what happened for her was she developed feelings for another man and told me about it. She broke things off and treated the situation as I would have essentially but this made her question the marriage. They were deffinitevely being emotionally intimate with eachother but never physically. She felt horribly guilty about the whole thing and was afraid to tell me.
I was not jealous and I wasn't mad. I would have been mad if she had engaged in a physical relationalship without my knowledge and at the time I didn't really consider what if I did have knowledge of it? She also has tried to question me since then as to where that line where inappropriate is crossed for me. The only definitve answer I have is that entering a physical relationship behind my back is a complete non-starter and terminator of a relationship. My response to the actual flirting was that I was happy that someone made her feel special.
She is the jealous type. She doesn't like it when I have other female friends but she trusts me and aknowledges that this is her insecurity and doesn't ask me to not be friends with anyone. She doesn't like women immediately if she perceives them to have been flirting with me. I, to make matters worse, evidently am not terribly perceptive to being flirted with.
So I began reading about poly relationships and taking those 'highly scientific' online quizzes and I score fairly poly on them all to varying degrees but always in the poly range.
I have decided to tell her about all of this today. I think its part of the reason I am not happy in the marriage.
So how did people come to terms with the idea of being poly? It was never a thought to me because its not something I ever encountered in my personal life.
Any tips on how to approach this conversation? My default is basically be blunt and leave as little ambiguity to how I feel as possible.
Advice pertaining to any of this? Line your opinions up, I am pretty open minded and thick skinned so have a field day and pick this apart.
The last thing I want to say is that I think the idea of everyone knowing eachother and at least being friends sounds amazing. I am straight and that means that I could not be intimate with a male in the same way as a women which I am actually okay with (all in theory at this point obviously) but I think ideally all parties would be intimate with eachother all on the same level.
The more
I have been married for 2 1/2 years and throughout that time I have on occassion felt a stong atraction and I mean physical and emotional to other women. I never pursue and in fact distance myself from the invoker of these feelings and then I feel guilty about it.
I have told myself that the honest thing to do given my traditional marriage is to either avoid some of these people or make it clear that I am married and that things can't go anywhere. I still feel bad.
Back in the spring my wife and I hit a big rough spot and we've been trying to save our marriage ever since from her point of view and trying to see if it can work from my point of view. I think I should say that I was never big into the marriage or life partner idea in the first time but I found someone that I thought it could work. I always have also thought that she is one of many loves that I could be with.
Part of what happened for her was she developed feelings for another man and told me about it. She broke things off and treated the situation as I would have essentially but this made her question the marriage. They were deffinitevely being emotionally intimate with eachother but never physically. She felt horribly guilty about the whole thing and was afraid to tell me.
I was not jealous and I wasn't mad. I would have been mad if she had engaged in a physical relationalship without my knowledge and at the time I didn't really consider what if I did have knowledge of it? She also has tried to question me since then as to where that line where inappropriate is crossed for me. The only definitve answer I have is that entering a physical relationship behind my back is a complete non-starter and terminator of a relationship. My response to the actual flirting was that I was happy that someone made her feel special.
She is the jealous type. She doesn't like it when I have other female friends but she trusts me and aknowledges that this is her insecurity and doesn't ask me to not be friends with anyone. She doesn't like women immediately if she perceives them to have been flirting with me. I, to make matters worse, evidently am not terribly perceptive to being flirted with.
So I began reading about poly relationships and taking those 'highly scientific' online quizzes and I score fairly poly on them all to varying degrees but always in the poly range.
I have decided to tell her about all of this today. I think its part of the reason I am not happy in the marriage.
So how did people come to terms with the idea of being poly? It was never a thought to me because its not something I ever encountered in my personal life.
Any tips on how to approach this conversation? My default is basically be blunt and leave as little ambiguity to how I feel as possible.
Advice pertaining to any of this? Line your opinions up, I am pretty open minded and thick skinned so have a field day and pick this apart.
The last thing I want to say is that I think the idea of everyone knowing eachother and at least being friends sounds amazing. I am straight and that means that I could not be intimate with a male in the same way as a women which I am actually okay with (all in theory at this point obviously) but I think ideally all parties would be intimate with eachother all on the same level.
The more