My husband and I have an open relationship. We have been together for 8 years, married for 2, open for about 7 years to varying degrees. The openness kind of happened naturally and with appropriate discussions as our friends are quite progressive and open and often treat sex as a friend activity rather than always as a romantic activity.
Our agreement is that we are romantically monogamous, but sexually open, provided we don't do anything the other would be uncomfortable with and that we would stop if the other needed at any point.
However, over the last year and a half my mental health has been really bad, and over the time, as I went out less (and eventually not at all), my husband was continuing being open with current and new friends I don't really know.
As I've been recovering in the last few months, particularly from bad physical medication reactions, our relationship needed to be rebuilt and I envoked our relationship clause because I felt really uncomfortable with him connecting with other people sexually when our relationship wasn't strong.
He agreed, but the process has made him realise that stopping for any length of time is something that he can only do at the detriment of his own mental health, that being open is more a part of his identity than he realised, and that my asking him to stop makes him feel trapped and controlled.
He has realised he can connect with friends more closely and bypass awkward social anxiety to become friends with people he otherwise wouldn't get a chance to, and when things are difficult between us, that's the time he needs friend connection and support the most.
Because the relationships started with sex, they suffer when the sexual side is taken away and he is struggling to maintain these friendships, especially as they often hang out at parties where sex is happening. He likes this side of him and doesn't want to do without those connections because they are part of him and who he is, and he likes the progressive openness of the friends we meet this way (me too).
I believe him that this is about him connecting with people, and that physical contact means more to him in terms of love languages and comfort and closeness.
But I have no need for sex with other people - I like it when we do things with people together or around each other, but I don't feel any compulsion to do it more than it's just a bit of fun, and I've never done anything without him on my own or had any desire.
I thought until now that he felt the same way as me, that the sex was a fun extra we had that we didn't NEED.
In his ideal world, our revised agreement would be no rules, just trust that he would take my feelings into account when deciding whether or not to do something sexual with someone else - the thing is, he clearly has judged recent times as times he would need to, as he was hurting so much. I don't know if I could deal with him making a decision like that - weighing up our hurts and deciding his hurt meant sexual contact was needed from a friend, even though it would hurt me. It feels like it would break my heart even though I know it wouldn't be a romantic thing.
We both love each other and want the other to be happy and together as in almost all other ways we are perfect for each other, but can it ever work when there is a mismatch of openness needs/feelings?
Tl;dr my illness has made my husband realise his needs for openness are different than mine and he wants to change our open relationship agreement to something that scares me... can it still work?
Submitted August 29, 2019 at 03:53PM by SittingInACosta https://ift.tt/2ZBbr4a
No comments:
Post a Comment