Iâm a straight male in my 30s. Iâve been with my wife for 12 years. I have had several affairs. Not one-night-stand scenarios, but longer-term connections. I didnât pursue any of these relationships. Instead, women who knew I was in an âexclusiveâ relationship have approached me. These have included what turned into a one-year affair with a single woman, a three-year affair with a close friend of my wife, a seven-month affair with a married coworker, and now a fairly serious four-months-and-counting relationship with a woman who approached me on Instagram. On the one hand, I do not regret my time with any of these women. On the other hand, I have been deceitful and manipulative for almost my entire adult life. I am a terrible husband in this respect. Also, Iâm going to get busted eventually, right? Finding out about this would crush my wife. I love her, we...
A Seriously Shitty Husband On Losing Everything
P.S. Iâm expecting you to rip me to shreds.
It doesnât âjust keep happening,â ASSHOLE, you keep doing it. And these women didnât âturn intoâ one-year, three-year, seven-month, and four-months-and-counting affairs on their own. You turned them into affairs by continuing to show up. And while you claim that each of these women pursued you despite knowing you were in an exclusive relationship, it doesnât sound like you ran from any of them. At best, you broke into (or slowed to) a trot, which allowed each one of these lady predators to overtake you.
The first step toward holding yourself accountable for your appalling actionsâa close friend of your wife? really?âis doing away with the passive voice. Donât ask yourself, âHowâd that happen?!?â as if the universe were conspiring against you somehow. You werenât hit by a pussy meteor every time you left the house. You did these things. You had these affairs. You.
Zooming out: If all it takes for some rando to get her hands on your otherwise committed cock is to DM you on Instagram, you have no business making monogamous commitments. If youâd sought out a partner who wanted an open relationshipâa wide-open oneâyou could have had concurrent, committed, nonexclusive relationships and avoided being âa liar, a cheat, a user,â etc.
Seeing as youâre a reader, ASSHOLE, I suspect you knew an honest open relationship was an optionâthat ethical nonmonogamy was an optionâbut you didnât pursue that. And why not? Maybe because you donât want to be with a woman who is free to sit on other dicks. Or maybe the wrongness and the self-loathingâthe whole bad-boy-on-the-rack routineâturn you on. Or maybe youâre the wrong kind of sadist: the un-self-aware emotional sadist. You say you love your wife, but you also say sheâd be crushedâdestroyedâif she discovered what youâve been doing. Be honest, ASSHOLE, just this once: Is the destruction of your wife a bug or is it a feature? I suspect the latter. Because cheating on this scale isnât about succumbing to temptation or reacting to neglect. Itâs about the annihilation of your partnerâa (hopefully) subconscious desire to punish and destroy someone, anyone, fool enough to love you.
The tragedy is how unnecessary your choices have been. There are women out there who arenât interested in monogamy, there are female cuckolds out there (cuckqueans) who want cheating husbands, and there are masochistic women (and men) out there who get off on the thought of being with a person who would like to crush them. So long as those desires are consciously eroticized, fully compartmentalized, and safely expressed, you could have done everything you wanted, ASSHOLE, without harming anyone.
So what do you do now?
It seems like you want out, and your wife definitely deserves better, so cop to one affair, since copping to all of them would crush herâor so you think. People are often way more resilient than we give them credit for, and convincing ourselves that our partners canât handle the truth is often a convenient justification for lying to them. But on the off chance it would crush your wife to be told everything, just tell her about Ms. Instagram. That should be enough.
P.S. Get your ass into therapy, ASSHOLE.
Iâm a 42-year-old gay man. Iâve been with my husband for 21 years. We met in college and, except for a six-month break, weâve been together ever since. I made an open relationship a requirement at the start. While my husband had jealousy and trust issues, he hooked up with others regularly. After a few tense years, we started couples therapy. During therapy, my husband revealed that he was never in favor of the openness. After trying some new arrangementsâonly together, only at sex parties, DADTâhe realized he wasnât comfortable with any situation. He told our therapist that every time I hooked up with someone, he was retraumatized because it reminded him of the time I broke up with him for six months 20 years ago. I agreed to a monogamous relationship, and Iâve gone a year without hooking up with anyone else. He seemed genuinely relieved and said he felt more secure. But almost immediately, he began talking about how he wanted to hook up with others. Iâm at a loss. I feel tremendous guilt for even thinking about splitting up, so I keep hoping weâll stumble on the thing that will work for us. I donât know what to say when he says I should be monogamous to him while he gets to hook up with others. He says this would be best, since my hooking up triggers him. We are at an impasse. It sucks that we could break up over this.
Gay Marriage Having Crisis
Iâve written about a few gay couplesâand a few straight onesâwhere one half gets to hook up with others while the other half doesnât. But they were cuckold couples, GMHC, and the half who didnât âget toâ hook up with others didnât want to hook up with others. The cuck half of a cuckold couple gets off on their partner âcheatingâ on them. While people outside the relationship might perceive that as unfairâone gets to cheat, the other doesnâtâwhatâs more ideal than both halves of a couple getting just what they want?
But if an eroticized power imbalanceâan honestly erotized oneâdoesnât turn you on, the creepily manipulative arrangement your husband is proposing certainly isnât going to work.
Which means itâs both ultimatum and bluff-calling time. So long as your husband thinks he can dictate terms by pointing to his triggers and his trauma, GMHC, he has every incentive to continue being triggered and traumatized. So with your couples therapist there to mediate, tell him your marriage is either open or closed. Youâre not interested in being his cuckold and he canât point to his trauma to force you into that role. Youâre a handsome coupleâthanks for enclosing the lovely picture (sometimes itâs nice to see the face of the person Iâm responding to!)âwith a long history together, and hereâs hoping things work out. But if they donât, GMHC, neither of you is going to have a problem finding a new partner. He can get himself a guy who likes being dictated to, if thatâs really what he wants. And you can find a guy who wants an open and egalitarian relationship, which is what you deserve.
P.S. If your therapist is taking your husbandâs side in this, GMHC, get a new therapist.