Iâm a 38-year-old bi woman who has been sleeping with a married male coworker for the last eight months. Weâre a walking clichĂ©: Iâm a nurse, heâs a doctor, and one night he ended up spilling a lot of personal information about his marriage to me (sexless, non-romantic, she might be a lesbian) before asking if he could kiss me. I declined. Three months and many text messages later, I met him for drinks. The next thing I know we are falling in love and spending as much time together as we can manage. Even though he is married and has kids, this has been one of the best relationships of my adult life. He loves me in ways I never thought possible. (He even savors my COVID-19 curves.) The obvious problem here is that he is married and his wife allegedly doesnât know about his unhappiness in their marriage. We have to arrange our dates around his work schedule and his lies to his wife. I find myself becoming increasingly jealous of the time he spends with his wife and his inability to spend more time with me. I want him to confront the issues in his marriage and I want him to at least attempt being honest with her so we can figure out if itâs even possible for us to move forward.
My question is this: How do I have this conversation with him without it seeming like an ultimatum? I adore him and I don't think heâs lying to me about his marriage. But I long to have more freedom in our relationship. I love that I finally found someone who treats me so well when we are together but my heart is breaking because our love exists in the shadows. Itâs a win/win for himâhe gets his marriage, his kids, his âreal life,â and me too. But I canât even text or even call him freely and I certainly couldnât rely on him in an emergency. I want this to work. I donât necessarily want him to get divorced, Dan, as I fear it would cause him to resent me, but that would honestly be my preference. What should I do?
Outside The Home Exists Romance
What are you willing to settle for, OTHER?
If you canât live without Dr. Married and you can only have him on his termsâterms he set at the start, terms designed to keep his wife in the darkâthen youâll have to accept his terms. You can only see Dr. Married during office hours, you canât call or text him, and youâre on your own if you have an emergency outside office hours. But agreeing to his terms at the outset doesnât obligate you to stick to his terms forever. Terms can be renegotiated. But unless youâre willing to issue an ultimatum, OTHER, Dr. Married has no incentive to renegotiate the terms of your relationship.
Zooming out for a second: I get letters all the time from women who ask me how to issue an ultimatum without seeming like theyâre issuing an ultimatum. I donât get many letters like that from men like that for good and not-so-good reasons: men are socialized to feel entitled to what they want, men are praised when they ask for what they want, and consequently men are likelier to get what they want.
To get what you want, OTHER, youâre gonna have to man up: feel entitled, act entitled, make demands. And you gotta be willing to walk. You have to go in fully prepared to use the leverage you actually have hereâyour presence in Dr. Marriedâs lifeâor nothing will change. His circumstances have required you to live in the shadows if you wanted to see him and maybe that worked for you once. But it doesnât work for you anymore and Dr. Married needs to understand that if his circumstances donât changeâif he doesnât change themâthen heâs going to lose you.
Thereâs a middle ground between divorce, your preferred circumstance, and things staying exactly as they are. Dr. Marriedâs wife is surely aware that her marriage is sexless and non-romanticâassuming heâs told you the truthâand if his wifeâs actually a lesbian, well, perhaps sheâd like the freedom to date other women too. (Or date them openly, I should say; for all we know sheâs been getting some pussy on the side herself.) If they want to stay together for the kids, if they have a constructive, functional, low-conflict loving partnership, and it would be possible to daylight you without anyone having to get divorced, maybe you could settle for those terms.
Iâm a bi man in a straight marriage. We have two young children. My wife and I have been working through some relationship issues. Because of these, she has not been open to sex with me and for eighteen months our marriage has been essentially sexless. Iâm not happy with this, but we are working on things. Since we stopped having sex, I have been using my wife's used panties to masturbate. I work from home and do a lot of the household work, including laundry. Every couple of weeks, I will take a couple of her panties from the laundry. I rub myself with one pair and sniff the other one. I enjoy the way the fabric feels and am turned on by knowing that theyâve been rubbing up against her pussy. It makes me feel very close to her. I finish by ejaculating into her panties and then I rinse them out and wash them. Iâm very careful not to stain or damage them. This is something I do to feel more connected with her sexually. I don't get hard thinking that she's wearing panties I came in; I get hard thinking about coming in panties she's worn. But I worry that Iâm violating herâwhich is not something I want to do. I know that if I were doing this with a stranger's panties, or with the panties of someone I knew but was not in an intimate relationship with, it would be at best creepy and at worst a sex crime. But sheâs my wife, and although we are in a hard place right now, weâre trying to find our way back to each other. So, is this an acceptable way for me to get off while we work on our relationship? Or is it a violation?
Wonders About Nuzzling Knickers
Iâm torn, WANK.
If you and the wife were fucking, WANK, she might enjoy knowing that, however many years and two kids later, youâre still so crazy about her that youâre down in the laundry room perving on her dirty panties. But you arenât fucking and things are strained for reasons you didnât share. So you need to ask yourself whether this perving, if your wife were to find out about it, would set you two back. If you think it wouldâif, say, your wife isnât fucking you because she feels like you donât respect her opinions, her boundaries, her autonomy, etc.âthen the risk (further damaging your marriage) has to outweigh the rewards (momentarily draining your sack).
That said, WANK, if perving on your wifeâs pantiesâwithout damaging or staining themâis helping you remain faithful during this sexless period of your marriage⊠and sustaining your attraction to your wife though this difficult time⊠well, an argument/rationalization could be made that your wife benefits from this perving. And these arenât stolen pantiesâthese arenât a strangerâs panties or a roommateâs pantiesâthese are panties your wife hands over to you for laundering. That you derive a momentâs pleasure from them on their way from laundry basket to washing machine could be self-servingly filed, I guess, under âwhat she doesnât know wonât hurt her.â
But if you feel like your wife would regard this as a violationâand Iâm guessing you feel that way, WANK, since youâre asking me about it and not herâthen you might wanna knock it off.
Quick question: Why get married? I'm a 29-year-old lesbian who got married to a woman at 26 and divorced at 28. We had a pretty low key wedding, but we still stated to all of our friends and family that we were in it for the long haul, people wished us well, bought us gifts, gave us money. When I realized it was a huge mistake (we rushed into it, we ignored huge incompatibilities), I felt terrible for all the usual reasons involved a break up, Dan, but I also felt like we were letting down our friends, family, and all gays everywhere. Iâm jaded right now, I realize, but seriously: WHY DO THIS? Why get married? Why do this thing that adds so much stress and pressure to leaving a relationship that might have run its course, as MOST relationships eventually do?
Marriage-Averse Dyke
Quick answer, MAD: People get married for loveâideally, at least these days, and it was not always thus. (Suggested reading: Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz.) But sometimes I think people marry for the same reasons you think no one should, MAD: the stress of ending a marriageâthe pressure to stay in a marriageâoften prompts a couple to work through a rough patch. Of course that pressure can keep two people together who really shouldnât be together anymoreâor never shouldâve been together, MAD, like you and your ex-wifeâbut sometimes two people stick it out to avoid the embarrassment, expense, and drama of divorce and eventually get to a place where theyâre genuinely happy to still be together. Maybe a wedding isnât a promise that two people will stay together forever, MAD, but rather a promise that two people will have to think long and hard before parting.
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