'AITA for how I responded to my BF getting no dates after he opened our relationship?'
"AITA for how I responded to my BF getting no dates after he opened our relationship?"
My boyfriend and I (both 37) have been dating for just over three years. Before this, I was single for eight years. Overall, it has been a healthy relationship. We are both independent with our jobs, living situations, and so on. I love spending time with him, and I don’t really have any complaints.
However, something that startled me happened about six months ago when he said he wanted to open the relationship, meaning going on dates and sleeping with other women. I had never been in a dynamic like this, so I naturally had a lot of questions.
He told me that I could also go on dates and sleep with other men. I was skeptical at first, but after doing some research and having time to think, I agreed. He told me that if at any point I wasn’t comfortable, we could stop and close the relationship again. One of the rules was that we would not discuss what we were doing or who we were going on dates with.
I signed up for a dating app, and within a few days I had over 500 likes. It has been pretty steady since then. I started matching with people, texting, and arranging dates. On average, I go on one or two dates a month.
There are also some people in similar open relationships that I see and sleep with regularly. I actually like that everything is noncommittal, so even though I was skeptical at first, I have been enjoying the open relationship. As we agreed, I didn’t tell my boyfriend about any of this.
The other day I was at my boyfriend’s house, and my phone was on the kitchen counter. He saw my notifications and went through my phone, reading my messages and looking through the dating app. To say he was angry is an understatement. It turns out he opened the relationship so he could take out a younger colleague from work, who misread his idea of a “date” as just a work lunch.
He then told me that he wanted to see if things would work with her so he could ultimately leave me for her. However, she wasn’t interested, and it seems like no one else was either. In the last six months, he has had a few rough dates but no one else to sleep with. I feel somewhat embarrassed for him.
He demanded that we close the relationship immediately, and I told him that maybe we should just end things or at least take a break. He was outraged and called me names, but he was the one who wanted this dynamic, so what’s the problem? I left, and as I walked home, I contemplated fully breaking it off with him. He has been blowing up my phone, and I’m not sure what to say. AITA?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
LadyofSwanLake says:
Dude’s like a monkey swinging between vines. He won’t let go of one till he’s got a firm grip on the next. NTA, dump him the way he’d dump you in a heartbeat.
t-mckeldin says:
It sounds like you were right to break up with him.
Know_the_rules says:
You should join the rest of the population in not dating him as well.
Competitive-Bat-43 says:
He admitted that he was stringing you along to see if this younger woman wanted him. If she had wanted him he would have broken up with you for her and you are asking if you are the AH?