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I'm in kind of a weird spot right now. I've been with my current girlfriend for five years, since I was 18. Back when we met, I thought I was straight. I've since realized that I'm bisexual. I came out to my girlfriend, and she's been supportive. However, I've recently felt like I missed out on being able to experiment with my sexuality. I love her, and I want to continue a relationship with her, but I also want to experiment and try things that she just can't do with me. She has a low sex drive and isn't really open to experimentation. I brought this up to her in 2017 after she drunkenly let me make out with a friend. I asked if she'd consider opening our relationship. She said no because she wouldn't be interested in having sex with anyone else,...
Vivamus dui velit, vehicula non sodales a, aliquet sit amet orci. In lorem nulla, porttitor a nibh ac, auctor sodales libero. Phasellus sit amet consectetur urna, sed congue neque. Mauris a commodo arcu, sed commodo libero. Nam vel orci sapien. Pellentesque ac magna hendrerit, efficitur purus dapibus, facilisis est. Maecenas tortor ante, lacinia eget ante vitae, aliquet interdum tortor. Suspendisse potenti. Morbi quis bibendum arcu.
...so it would be a one-sided deal, and an open relationship is not, in her words, what she signed up for.

I let it go until recently, when I've found myself getting more and more depressed at the idea of not being able to experiment and explore sexually. I brought this up to her, and she told me that she was upset because she feels that I'm guilting her into a type of relationship (an open one) that she doesn't want. After that conversation, she wouldn't touch me for nearly three months; when I brought it up, she explained she was reluctant to because she didn't know how to address the sexual problems in our relationship.

I try to understand it from her perspective, but ultimately I've found myself feeling more and more resentful. I don't understand why she won't even try an open relationship with me. Moreover, I've begun hooking up with someone behind her back who is sexually compatible with me. We rarely meet up because we live in different cities, but it's great when we do. I don't want to lie to my girlfriend about this, but I feel like I have no other option. If only she'd try this out with me, I feel like our relationship would be so much happier. Everyone says I should break up with her, but I genuinely do love her, it's just this one thing that's holding us back. What do I do?! Am I horrible for cheating? Should I bring up an open relationship one more time, or is that too pushy? I honestly feel like it's a lost cause at this point and we've reached some sort of stalemate. I brought up therapy, but she rejected the idea.

Basic Instincts Become Overwhelming Yearnings

She doesn't know how to address the sexual problems in your relationship—but she refuses to see a couples counselor or therapist to address the problems in your relationship. There's a disconnect here.

You don't want to lie to your girlfriend and you claim you love her—but you're cheating on her with someone in another city, a person of unspecified gender, someone with whom you're much more sexually compatible. There's a disconnect here, too. A couple of them.

She has a low libido, at least she does right now, at least she does with you, and she isn't open to any sort of experimentation—but you're so anxious to get out there and conduct some peer-reviewed, double-blind bisexual studies that you're already doing them even as you're wondering how or even whether you should ask for permission to do what you're already doing. Another big disconnect.

You wonder whether you should bring up an open relationship one more time—but your girlfriend refused to touch you for months the last time you raised the subject. And she rejected the idea of an open relationship then because it would be "one-sided," since she doesn't want to have sex with anyone else, or all that much sex with you. More and more disconnects.

I could go on like this, BIBOY, but I won't—because you know what you need to do. It's that thing everyone in your life has already told you to do and now some advice columnist you don't know is telling you to do: Disconnect for real. BREAK UP WITH HER. You aren't sexually compatible, and you aren't doing your girlfriend any favors by staying with her and cheating on her. The longer you hem and haw, BIBOY, the greater the odds that you'll get caught cheating, and then what could've been a sad-but-amicable end will instead be a big-and-ugly breakup. I sometimes advise people who are truly trapped to stay and discreetly get their needs met elsewhere. But in your case, and in your circumstances, staying isn't the loving thing to do. It's the cowardly thing to do.

Break up with her. Disconnect already.


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