Man in open marriage overhears wife and her BF humiliating him; asks for advice. UPDATED
'I (36m) heard my wife (40f) and her 'boyfriend' insulting me and I’m seriously questioning our future together.'
Been ENM (ethical non monogomy) with my (36m) wife (40f) for over a decade. We’ve had our ups and downs but generally it’s been great.
We have our rules, the most fundamental one being that even in the context of ENM, we would always operate on a bedrock foundation of mutual respect for each other and each other’s partners
We had agreed that if one of us gets home and the other is there with a partner, then we don’t disturb them.
I got to my house and she was there with her longest-term partner, who has been in our lives for about 6 years at this point. They didn’t know I was in the house and I started listening from the landing - they were talking about me in an incredibly humiliating way.
He would give her prompts, asking her questions about how pathetic and useless I am, and she would agree, and pile on with name-calling and degrading comments about me.
FWIW I know it’s part of a power/humiliation dynamic, but I don't care. I was f***ng furious. It’s not an ego thing, I know I’m a good attentive husband and if I can allow myself a moment of conceit, I know we have no issues in the bedroom.
I would not EVER tolerate any partner of mine saying a bad word about my wife, and I would never participate in anything that humiliates her even if she’s not there. At no point in our ENM journey did I consent to become the object of my wife’s derision and disrespect when she’s on a date, especially with her closest and longest-running partner.
I walked in on them (big no-no) and told him to get the f**k out. My wife was livid and said no he’s not going anywhere, but I put my foot down and kicked him out of the house. We had a massive fight, she told me I was being a huge p***y, I told her she doesn't respect me, and some harsh words were said from both sides.
That was Tuesday night and we haven't really spoken since (I certainly won’t be the first to make contact) and she’s been staying at his place all week, which is a mmaajjoorr violation of our ground rules but I also broke them by kicking him out.
For 13 years I've worshipped the ground she walks on, and I refuse to accept the way they talk about me, even in the heat of the moment. It's not right and I won't stand for it.
It's really put the future of our marriage into question, because I won't move forward with him still in the picture and that will cause a volcanic amount of friction (she really likes him and has known him for almost half the time she’s known me), it would severely disrupt our system and I know she would resent me for it, but I also know I will resent her if he stays.
I feel steadfast in this, but I'd appreciate a sanity check before I make any drastic moves.
Here's what people had to say to OP:
RelsircTheGrey writes:
H*ll no you're not crazy. If you have to explain to someone why that's not okay they're already a lost cause. And it's clearly not just roleplay if she's dragging out calling you a p***y during the argument after. If it was me they could both get thee f**k out of my house and the next time she came back in would be to supervise her moving crew.
rcubes90 writes:
Yup, OP do you want someone that feels those ways about you to be with you? Why would you want to be with them? You deserve love and respect.
First update from OP, the next day:
My wife came home last night and we had a very long and incredibly difficult conversation. She texted me yesterday and asked if it was okay with me if she came home after work, I said it's her home too and that I'd been waiting for her for three days.
There's no way I could go through everything that was said so I'll just summarise what I feel were my biggest takeaways. Basically, there was some good and some bad, and we're taking baby steps on crackling ice:
As soon as she walked in the door and saw me she broke down and started apologizing. For what they said, for what she said afterwards, and for leaving, all of it. The s** talk about me has been going on for nearly 2 years. Started around the time lockdowns.
She said she never means any of that stuff, but he likes it. Dude has his own major insecurities apparently, and she had taken it upon herself to make him feel more like a man, and she never thought I'd ever hear or be hurt by it.
The way she phrased it was that when they s**t talk like that, it pretty much tends to be around stuff that he doesn't feel he measures up about, and she always knows it's false and has never spoken a bad word about me outside that headspace.
Her initial burst of anger when I barged in the bedroom, she says, came from a place of extreme embarrassment and shame.
She apologized unreservedly for not acknowledging my feelings on the night and for not apologizing straight away. She regrets the things she said during our big fight and that I was totally right to feel the way I did and that she was just feeling humiliated and cornered, but that she knows I must have felt even worse.
I asked her if she loves him. Of course not she says, they have chemistry and she cares about him alot but they would never be compatible in real life and not once has she ever contemplated a future with him. It somehow upset her that I would think that.
However, she confessed that she has known for over a year that he has been in love with her since at least before lockdown. He tells her frequently but she never says it back. She said that it made their time together more intimate and enjoyable and since she knew she could never reciprocate his feelings, it wasn't a threat.
She's made it clear to him plenty of times that a future between them wasn't on the cards. This part has been really difficult for me to process.
She said they would stop that kind of talk going forward. I said not good enough, I want him out. She started crying and said she feared I would want that but hoped I wouldn't. She asked if there's any way they might be able to continue, I said she could hang out with him all she wants but she'd be doing it as a single woman.
She cried but she agreed to break things off. She asked if they can meet up one more time because they never got the chance to say bye, I agreed on the condition that they leave me out of it and that she makes it clear to him that that will be the last time they ever even speak. Any further contact of any kind after that will be the end of us.
We had to take around a half hour break when I told her I had gone as far as making an appointment with an attorney for next week. She didn't handle that well at all and had a severe panic attack. She said she never imagined that would ever be on the cards, and that she would have come home days ago if she thought I was even remotely thinking about it. That she can't imagine life without me.
Finally I asked her how I'm supposed to believe the things she's telling me or if she's full of s**t. She said she promises she's being truthful and she's never broken a promise to me before (which is true). So I'm inclined to mostly believe her explanations but there's still alot of things I need to work through, process, ask about and convince myself of.
We decided we would close the marriage for a couple of months to focus on our own relationship and then reassess. I've cancelled my meeting with the lawyer and we're going to go to counseling (any suggestions on how to find ENM-friendly therapists would be helpful. I never thought we'd ever be here so I have no idea where to start looking.)
She offered to close her side unilaterally and let me keep seeing my partners but this is about both of us. I'm not interested in having her punish herself for the sake of it.
I still have to figure out if 1) I really fully believe what she told me and 2) if I'm satisfied to continue. I'll take our time while we're closed to make up my mind. It'll be tough but I'm willing to at least try and work on it. I've been steeling myself for divorce all week so that's the mind set I've been in, and I acknowledge that I owe it at least to the relationship we had to give it a hard try.
EDIT: A lot of you in the comments have been asking why I would ever allow one final date between them, especially a private one. I’ve given some explanation in replies but I feel it might be worth expanding on. Believe me I’ve considered a lot of the same things that you’ve mentioned (Why would she even want to? Does she really not love him? It’s only adding to the disrespect. etc.)
The main reason I’m agreeing to it is, counterintuitively, to give our marriage the best chance going forward. I don’t want there to always be the chip in her head of “I wish we had one last day” on top of whatever other resentment she might already feel from having to break up.
I’m only doing this under the strict understanding that any more bulls**t, or any more contact after this in any way whatsoever is an immediate guillotine to our marriage. No trial, no appeal, just the end then and there. There’s no way I could have made this more clear to her, so the ball (balls?) is in her court.
Underpinning my decision, though, I have to admit that for the past week I’ve been painting myself a light shade of apathy. My mind has been so focused on the divorce process and life after marriage, that the prospect is less scary to me. Logically I should have been furious that she even asked to see him one last time, but honestly I just didn’t care.
If it helps you move on, go for it, it seems I’m the one more mentally prepared for divorce than you are so if you want to blow it all up, go for it, I’m ready - type of thing.
I should also mention that I insisted we wait to close our marriage until after we’ve had a chance to be with our other partners as well.
Don’t know if that’s good or bad, maybe it’s bad, but not only does that give me a chance to meet with my FWBs (friends with benefits) one last time for god knows how long (she’s not the only one with attachments to other people), but it also means that his memory is diluted. He won’t be the last “other guy” she gets with before we hibernate. Maybe that’s petty or counterproductive, but f**k him.
They’re meeting up tomorrow and she has made it clear to him that this will be the last time. If she wants to violate that pledge or any other, then I’m already 3-4 steps ahead on the other side, so I’m just not scared even if it backfires.
Here's what people had to say after OP's first update:
SlapDashUser writes:
Wow. What a remarkable update, thank you. I have no advice for you. You are literally doing all the right things here, taking all the right steps to correct not only behavior, but communication. And in a very mature way.
You're correcting the mistakes from your last encounter, recognizing where you both screwed up, and focusing on strengthening your relationship before engaging in other relationships again. Good for both of you, and I hope you are successful in this.
lilacpeaches writes:
Yeah, OP has handled this situation with incredible maturity. I’m hoping that his wife can do the same — she seems to be doing okay-ish so far, but I’m still seeing some yellow flags with her behavior.
Second update from OP, 2 weeks later:
I didn't really plan to write another update, but a bunch of you have DMd me asking about what’s been happening so maybe it’s worth one.
Firstly, we found an ENM-friendly therapist with some really good references, so we’ve gone to see her four times so far, which she said was a pretty intense schedule and that usually she recommends weekly or biweekly appointments.
Given the crisis we are in we think we would benefit from more frequent sessions in the short-term and saving our arguments/fights/discussions for our sessions with her so things don't get out of hand.
We’re officially closed now. We both saw who we needed to see and it's just the two of us. The therapist said two months was nowhere near long enough so we’ve closed indefinitely for now, and we’ll see down the line when we open back up.
My wife’s FWB didn’t take their split well. He came to the house to talk to me and try and change my mind but I wouldn’t open the door to him. Ended up calling the cops after he started getting aggressive.
He’s out of the picture now, and the even better news is that he was too upset to even consummate that last meeting of theirs. His last memory of my wife is me busting in on him, and now he has to live with that.
Our third therapy session was really brutal. She came clean about a bunch of stuff that really shocked me, maybe even more than the whole insult thing. She had been breaking ground rules pretty much left and right for the thrill of it, often in really specific and deliberate, and pretty hurtful, ways.
My trust in her is pretty much non-existent right now, and regardless of therapy I’ve given myself until the end of the year to begin feeling some trust in her again, otherwise I don’t see much point going on.
I’m struggling with bitterness due to the fact that trying to save my marriage means I’ll likely lose other relationships with people special to me, and it could all be for no reason in the end. Right now it’s just one step at a time. Not much more to do than fight through it, but I am a fighter.
PS. None of you warned me how damned expensive therapy is, but you best believe it’s coming out of the joint account.
Edit from OP:
Hey folks I know that obviously this is a really bad situation, and she's done a lot wrong. But I should explain a bit about why I'm willing to fight for it (and why I'd rather not see people denigrating her in these replies).
Despite everything I've explained in these few posts, we're talking about a truly incredible woman. She's warm, she's loving, she's kind, she's so intelligent, she's FIERCE. She's always been the first to help whoever needs it, the last to leave when more still needs to be done.
She takes care of her family, she's HILARIOUS with a wicked sense of humor, she's adventurous, she loves life, she loves to laugh and she doesn't suffer fools. She's also incredibly gorgeous, I mean like actual magazine cover stunning. She's been the love of my life, she's made some life-changing mistakes, but if there's any way to go back to what we had, I'm prepared to slog through pain to get there.
Here's what people had to say after update 2:
raziphel wrote:
Therapy is expensive, and so is divorce. It's hard on your heart. No one wants this merit badge.
MBandDN wrote:
I'll just throw this out there, but really all of reddit should be a grain of salt in consideration compared to your counseling. You have a LOT of anger, and I think most of it is justified. It seems you're clearly apathetic about whether your marriage continues or not, and I think that's somewhat understandable.
That being said, I think you need to consider the effort your wife is putting in to resolve things at counseling and through honesty, albeit way too late. I don't think anybody would blame you for leaving at this point, but it just seems better to actually put in effort and try to care more about repairing your marriage!!
I actually think you letting the frustration out in therapy is way healthier than just letting it turn to apathy. I say this as another husband that has a tendency to get mad then just get apathetic, it's not a healthy response
BrokkenArrow OP responded:
It's a weird paradox for sure. I am very angry about the things she's admitted to, but she did admit to them so it's like there is hope. Ironically I think that if I didn't already have one foot out the door, I would have left that session and our marriage right then and there. If anything apathy has saved us.
Final update from OP, 1 1/2 months later:
Hi everyone - just one final update here. We tried our best but unfortunately, it has not worked out. I haven’t been able to get past it.
There is no trust there anymore. There’s fondness, but I don’t know if I can even call it love any more. She’s pretty devastated, which I don’t take any pleasure in. At least I’m doing a pretty decent job of letting go of the anger, therapy has helped a lot for that.
Maybe if it was just our relationship impacted we might have been able to make it work, but it’s had a ruinous effect on a number of other relationships as well, and an impact on my life beyond just my marriage. Among other things, she had sought out and slept with a couple of close friends and a work subordinate of mine.
Those friendships (which I’ve had for decades) are now over, and that person at work has been let go. All of it is having knock-on effects on other parts of my personal and work life. It’s not something I can get over.
The separation and divorce will at least be amicable. We won’t be battling it out in the courts, we’ve already agreed on a division of assets that we both agree is fair (luckily neither of us has had to rely financially on the other while we’ve been together). I’ve decided that after the divorce is finalized, I’ll have no more contact with her whatsoever, I need a clean break.
One silver lining is that I’ve been able to meet back up with a couple of my partners from before and had a grand old time. I made the mistake of saying, genuinely and with no bad intention, that at least now she can meet back up with the other guy again. She didn’t take that the way I meant it and thought I was having a dig at her and we had a big fight but then it smoothed over.
In any event, it’s on to the next adventure now. May enjoy single life for a while - I’ve still got a good chunk of my youth left and fortunately I still look like it. I’ll take my wins whenever I can get them. I’m in mourning but also excited about what life has in store - one major thing is that she never wanted to be a parent, and I did before we got married.
The prospect of fatherhood is open to me again and that’s really life-affirming. Onward and upwards.
Here's what people had to say after the final update:
raziphel writes:
I'm impressed that you can stay impassionate and amicable about this, because frankly... good f**king riddance. You deserve far, far better.
Sorry to hear it man, but trust is the single most important feature of any relationship. You're doing the right thing moving on.
theluckywife writes:
Damn. I’m usually the one siding with saving a marriage. People make bad choices. However, definitely not in this case. Friends and a coworker? Nope. Such disrespect and I can’t see anyone coming back from that. I’m so sorry that happened to you. Single life might just be a good fit right now! I wish you the best!
Editor's note: Some explicit details were removed from the original posts, which are linked to at the bottom of this page.