Cheating

[Eminence]

In a LogGrad sort of way maybe? It can be tricky to understand how others see a relationship.

Spouse and I are generally pretty open, I don't imagine we'd lightly label something cheating in an emotional sense.

Dated a few folks together with the spouse, weird experience that, generally a good one I think, I find myself to be my best me in mid-size groups, so enjoyed that. But damn is planning a nightmare.

 

[Miggs]

In a LogGrad sort of way maybe? It can be tricky to understand how others see a relationship.

Spouse and I are generally pretty open, I don't imagine we'd lightly label something cheating in an emotional sense.

Dated a few folks together with the spouse, weird experience that, generally a good one I think, I find myself to be my best me in mid-size groups, so enjoyed that. But damn is planning a nightmare.

You’re referring to swinging? Just being clear here.

 

[Eminence]

You’re referring to swinging? Just being clear here.

Swinging feels a little more casual than what we've done, but I'm not all that familiar with the swinging community, so I could be wrong? I'd call it some form of polyamory.

In college myself/future spouse/3rd person all dated one another for about a year and a half. She wound up being my 'best-man' and would still consider her my closest friend.

Few years after we lived with another couple of folks for about a year.

Few other first/second date type things that didn't go all that far. Lots of folks in the polyamory community seem to trend towards more 'casual' relationships, so not all that interesting to me, just not a casual relationship guy.

 

[bigb]

You’re referring to swinging? Just being clear here.

I have a friend who was born and raised LDS. Served a mission, married in the temple. He and his wife decide their done with that life for a variety of reasons. Decide to start swinging. They host parties. Open a business to plan, put together, do swinging parties. Wife has always felt some same sex attraction as well and he lets her explore that. They meet a woman at one of the parties and end up as a polyamory throuple. Wife and I go to their “commitment celebration” (or whatever they called it, I can’t remember the term they used). He gets a job in San Diego, but they don’t move the family. He comes home every weekend, but that leaves the other two home together a lot. The throuple is now a same sex marriage and a divorced guy.
My wife and I have always been supportive of them, and while we don’t “get” that lifestyle, supported him through it all; but also expressed some serious misgivings to ourselves about it.
Those that can live that and survive, good for you. My wife is a very jealous woman and there’s not a chance in hell she’d be okay with that lifestyle.

 

[Miggs]

I have a friend who was born and raised LDS. Served a mission, married in the temple. He and his wife decide their done with that life for a variety of reasons. Decide to start swinging. They host parties. Open a business to plan, put together, do swinging parties. Wife has always felt some same sex attraction as well and he lets her explore that. They meet a woman at one of the parties and end up as a polyamory throuple. Wife and I go to their “commitment celebration” (or whatever they called it, I can’t remember the term they used). He gets a job in San Diego, but they don’t move the family. He comes home every weekend, but that leaves the other two home together a lot. The throuple is now a same sex marriage and a divorced guy.
My wife and I have always been supportive of them, and while we don’t “get” that lifestyle, supported him through it all; but also expressed some serious misgivings to ourselves about it.
Those that can live that and survive, good for you. My wife is a very jealous woman and there’s not a chance in hell she’d be okay with that lifestyle.

Yep. Feelings are real. Almost nobody could survive that long-term.

 

[LogGrad98]

I will say the topic has come up in my marriage over the past few years that my wife has gone through menopause and completely lost her libido. I mean completely. She told me once that she would be fine if she never had relations again for the rest of her life. She cares about me and our relationship though, so she has sought medical intervention. They have done hormone therapy, and she had always done some form of regular therapy, all with mixed to no results. She is content with it, I am not. We have discussed adding a poly component to our relationship but haven't actually taken that step. For one, outside of pay-to-play I doubt I am finding anyone interested without losing 60 pounds or so. I mean, I am devastatingly handsome of course, in a Gaston kind of way, and laugh-out-loud hilarious as well as you all know, but Gaston and Chris Farley don't mix very well, you know?

 

[Gameface]

Yep. Feelings are real. Almost nobody could survive that long-term.

I've always thought people think they could handle an open relationship but I think very very few people are actually wired that way. Pretty rare for everyone in a poly relationship to actually be 100% good with it. I think usually there is someone who really wants to be with we'll say person A but person A wants to be in an open relationship so person B is just trying to please them.

 

[LogGrad98]

I've always thought people think they could handle an open relationship but I think very very few people are actually wired that way. Pretty rare for everyone in a poly relationship to actually be 100% good with it. I think usually there is someone who really wants to be with we'll say person A but person A wants to be in an open relationship so person B is just trying to please them.

I think this makes a lot of sense because no one is ever exactly in the same space as another person. So many different things affect us differently. I have been married for 30 years and I can tell you we have had times when she was the driver, times when I was (more than her, and I think that is normal in a long-term relationship where the women are drive more by bonding, imo, and the man by physical intimacy, at least in our experience an in our observations), and there have been a few times when we were just in sync. Like for about 6 years after my vasectomy we were both in the same space, intimately speaking, probably the best time in our lives for it. Then again when the kids were all out of the house, or close to it, so actually just a few years ago, for maybe 3-4 years. But then there is early on in our marriage when I was more the driver, but she was happy for that as we were both still young and stupid and twitterpated. Then there were the dark years around my cancer and the onset of my clinical depression before I got help, when she was the one left wanting as I was emotionally and thereby also physically unavailable a lot. This actually ended up being good for our relationship because she got to see what it was like to not necessarily hear a "no" being said out loud, but feeling the "no" in the other person's response, which frankly to me is worse than just saying "not tonight dear". And now, when she feels like she is just done, and I don't feel that way. But like you said, not many marriages could handle the emotional component of something like that without heavy if not fatal strain on the relationship as a whole.

 

[One Brow]

I've always thought people think they could handle an open relationship but I think very very few people are actually wired that way. Pretty rare for everyone in a poly relationship to actually be 100% good with it. I think usually there is someone who really wants to be with we'll say person A but person A wants to be in an open relationship so person B is just trying to please them.

My wife really wanted an open marriage for a short while, and then discovered how she felt about me seeing other women. Now my situation is similar to Loggrad98, except my wife wants her libido back and in addition to my weight, I just don't have the time for an affair.

 

[One Brow]

I have a friend who was born and raised LDS. Served a mission, married in the temple. He and his wife decide their done with that life for a variety of reasons. Decide to start swinging. They host parties. Open a business to plan, put together, do swinging parties. Wife has always felt some same sex attraction as well and he lets her explore that. They meet a woman at one of the parties and end up as a polyamory throuple. Wife and I go to their “commitment celebration” (or whatever they called it, I can’t remember the term they used). He gets a job in San Diego, but they don’t move the family. He comes home every weekend, but that leaves the other two home together a lot. The throuple is now a same sex marriage and a divorced guy.

A relationship like that only works if the husband and the new wife are also into each other. Otherwise, there's going to be jealousy over who gets to spend time with the first wife.

 

[bigb]

A relationship like that only works if the husband and the new wife are also into each other. Otherwise, there's going to be jealousy over who gets to spend time with the first wife.

In my friend’s case, he was all on board with it and definitely in to the new wife as well. He just started working out of state not too long after. The wives got to spend a lot of time together as newlyweds while he was away.

 

[JazzGal]

Polyamory would take very honest conversation. I haven't seen a relationship yet that has survived the attempt, but I've only known a few people who have tried.

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