'AITA for sabotaging my husband's relationships with other women out of jealousy?' UPDATED

If you're not communicating clearly and keeping it 100 percent honest, your relationships will suffer.

"AITA for sabotaging my husband's relationships?"

In my country, arranged marriages are very common and this was how I (24F) got married with "Jason" (24M) (note that I said ARRANGED marriages, not FORCED marriages. An arranged marriage is basically when your family plays matchmaker with you and someone else, but it isn't forced).

It's important to say I never wanted to get married and am for sure placed somewhere in the ace spectrum, because s*x was never something important to me. But I knew Jason since we were kids and he was always nice to me, so I accepted to spend some time with him and see where it would go. Turns out Jason and I had a lot in common.

Our country is pretty religious, but neither of us saw that much importance in religion and just pretended to our families to not cause problems. We are both more on the introvert side and don't like crowds or big family reunions. When I told him about my feelings about s#x and s#xuality, he was sweet and understanding.

We ended up becoming good friends and it was obvious the idea of marrying each other seemed appealing for us. So we got married two years ago. We made a deal to be basically good friends who are married, to not have s#x and sleep in different rooms. He was allowed to sleep with whoever he wanted since he was not getting this from me. Everything was perfectly fine.

Our families, however, really started to pressure us to have children this last year. Since this was so important to them, we agreed to, well, try. But first I asked him to make an ST! exam since he had his fair share of casual s#x and, even though he reassured me he always used protection, I wouldn't feel safe otherwise. After the exam showed he was clean, we had our first time together and it was great.

Way better than I could ever imagine. After that, he noticed I liked it and asked if s#x was in the equation of our relationship now. I said yes. This was a few months ago and since then we've been having s#x pretty regularly, but we also started to spend more time together outside of that, and I think my feelings of friendship for Jason are starting to change.

Not only that, but I started to feel jealous of his casual relationships, especially his affair with this "Anna" girl (20sF) who he's been seeing regularly for the past months. I'm scared he starts to fall in love with her, because he always speaks highly of her and he seems to like her. So I kinda started to sabotage his dates with her and other girls, in a way?

I pretend to have headaches, to feel sick or sad or any other excuse so he has to stay with me instead of go see them. I know it's childish and maybe I should just talk to him about it, but I'm so scared he doesn't feel the same and things get weird between us. It's not like we can escape each other. AITA?

The internet did not hold back.

fromperdition4 wrote:

YTA - talk to him. Also, it isn’t fair to call that an ‘affair’ when he’s following rules for your marriage that you both agreed on. Also, I hope you’re both seriously considering whether you actually want kids or just want or placate your families (s#x aside) - because it is very much not fair to kids to bring them into the world when you don’t actually want to be a parent to them.

samsincerely wrote:

Super soft yta/nah, I feel like this is totally understandable and really not that big of an “AH move.” You’re just coming to terms with things and now it’s time to talk to him. But without him knowing this about you there’s no way he can help. I hope this works out for you both!

psychiccat wrote:

YTA, talk to him, if/when he figures out you are doing it on purpose it's going to do long lasting maybe irreversible damage to your relationship

kattymajin wrote:

Very soft YTA. Just talk to him. I know it’s scary but it’s for the best.

summer-fruits-and-cream wrote:

I'm probably gonna be in the minority with NAH for this bc like, I get it...but I'll be in the majority in saying you have to talk to him. I know that's a scary thing and wishing you best of luck here.

A few days later, OP shared an update.

OP here.

The responses here were very...enlightening, although some of you should probably learn how to be kinder to others. Not my fight to have, anyway, but I listened to your advice and talked to Jason yesterday.

It went...well. It went great. It really made me wonder why I thought this wasn't an option. He actually knew I was trying to sabotage his dates, but it didn't matter that much since he was thinking about stopping with them anyway. In fact, he told me he already told the women he was seeing that he wanted to stop going out with them around two weeks ago.

I apologized anyway, but he thought it was cute and said I'm a terrible liar. I asked why he didn't talk about it either, he said he felt I needed some time to reach the point I would feel ready for this conversation. Most important: he said he always loved me.

That he accepted our early dynamic because he knew it would be hard for me to find someone who would understand and respect my relationship with s#x in our culture (and he's right; I don't think people even know what an as#xual or a demis#xual person is here, and I think people would mostly see it as some sort of mental illness or deviation).

So he wanted to at least be able to give me protection and companionship on my own terms. He was over the moon that I am in love with him too, but he assured me that it would also be fine for him if it never happened, and I believe him.

I also showed him this post and he found it really funny that I was able to open up to a bunch of strangers before talking to him. It was a little embarrassing, but I wanted to be completely honest with him.

Also, answering the people who asked if we wanted to have children or if we were only doing this because of our family's pressure: we talked about it before starting to have a sexual relationship and yes, we want to have children. Now that everything is out in the open, we're even more excited for that. Thank you for the advice, anyway. Some of you were harsh, but I needed a wake up call, I guess.

People had a lot to say in response.

matchamagpie wrote:

A reminder to adults in relationships that you need to TALK TO EACH OTHER. It would solve like 90% of the relationship problems posted online.

Peter096837 wrote:

I don't understand why couples thinks its so difficult to communicate with one another. Like bro, the lovers HAVE to talk to one another. Seriously if you can't have the time to communicate or try, why are you even married or in a relationship at this point.

thethird197 wrote:

I agree with you that communication is a magic super power that we all have access to but one that seems oddly elusive for many people. But, the only thing I would push back on, is when you say "not know how to communicate anymore?" I mean, let's not pretend like social media or smart phones or whatever has fundamentally changed people's willingness to communicate.

Sure we may communicate in different ways, I for one start crying and can't think clearly if I have to look someone in the eyes so if the other person is willing I prefer to have conversations over text so I can really pause and think and not just get overly emotional and shut down, so too me that's a positive in how things have changed.

But also, like in the past, communication was also not great. Spousal ab*se was actively accepted and joked about, spousal r*pe wasn't a legally defined term until like the 90s, lots and lots of people were in unhappy marriages back then, they just didn't have the tools or even legal options to do anything about it. I think the kids of today and tomorrow will be alright.

knittedjedi wrote:

"He actually knew I was trying to sabotage his dates.I apologized anyway, but he thought it was cute and said I'm a terrible liar."

I've never understood finding someone's poor behaviour "cute" personally. But each to their own.

wormhole222 wrote:

Because despite it being poor behavior it is behavior that is being done because she loves him. Also after spending years wanting to tell her he loves her, and taking all these actions to show, but not tell, his love, she was finally doing the same thing back.