I (27m) w/ my spouse (26f(nb?)) left our extremely restrictive religion and now I'm terrified that none of my life choices are my own and that I'm going to be filled with resentment forever

Hi everyone. Title.

I'm kind of freaking out. My spouse and I grew up in mormonism (if you aren't familiar with it check out r/exmormon) and we got married while we were both in it. Now we have both since left as of a year or two ago and I'm realizing that most of my life choices were directly made because of this oppressive religion that I now see is false, mostly pertaining to relationships and sex.

I had never had any relationship last more than 3 months before dating and marrying my wife (in early 2018) and had 0 sexual experience going into the marriage. In mormonism you are encouraged to get married early and young, and I did that after meeting and falling on love with my wife in university. I love her very much and don't want to ever see her hurt but I'm feeling increasingly that I got married way too young and that I'm going to always regret never having any other relationship or sexual experience. I've asked about this elsewhere a few times and mostly the advice has boiled down to "just experiment with her instead" but it feels almost condescending, like I don't think ass play is going to make up for years of experimentation and self discovery down the drain.

My wife/partner is wonderful, they are intelligent, funny, have great taste, beautiful, and all around catch. I mentioned NB in the title because they are exploring their gender and sexual identity and identify as bisexual and possibly nonbinary (though still figuring out that second one) which I fully support. I love my spouse very much. There are some pretty deep seated self-esteem and insecurities being worked through and I try to be as helpful as possible there though I know that I'm not always the best.

That all being said, I feel a strong disconnect between what I did with my life due to religious pressure and what I would have done otherwise.

I have researched ethical non-monogamy and really resonate with the principles of it and would even say that I would be OK if my wife wanted to try seeing other people for the same reason, but I brought up that I was listening to a podcast about it (not even suggesting that we do it) and she grew distraught and to the point where I left work early the next day because she was feeling suicidal. So that's completely off the table

I don't really have any close friends and my family is still very Mormon so I can't talk to them about how I feel.

I feel like I'm becoming a different person than when I married my wife and that if I hadn't been Mormon for my whole life I wouldn't have gotten married in the first place, would have less shame resulting from a religion telling me I wasn't good enough, would probably be practicing polyamory and would be more true to myself.

As it stands I feel that I am unable to talk to anyone about these issues. I can't even talk to my wife about how I feel because she has lots of insecurity and if I bring up that I'm unhappy she automatically goes to a place of "I'm not good enough and he's going to leave me"

So are my choices limited to

1. Stay married but be frustrated and resentful the rest of my life because I never explored my sexuality

or

1. Make a move toward self discovery but devastate my wife?

If I'm simply an asshole please tell me. I'm really scared that happiness is going to be unattainable for me and I feel like the choice is between sacrificing my happiness or my partner's, and if that's what it is I'll choose to sacrifice mine lol

tl;dr got married due to religious pressure before having any other relationship experience, love my partner but feel resentment that I never got to experience anything else

Submitted December 06, 2021 at 07:43AM by throwaway_499131 https://ift.tt/3DvVOih