Warning. The language of this column is direct and explicit.
Straight male in one way open couple. My wife and I have opened up the couple just for her and only with women, so that she could explore her bisexual side of her. I am proud of her for deciding to come out and I wanted her to feel satisfied with her. When we decided that, I naively thought that her experiences with her were only going to be sexual. But then she fell in love and now she has a girlfriend. He sleeps with her a couple of nights a week. When she is there, I get jealous and I feel really bad. She has the classic energy that relationships give in the beginning and all she talks about is this girlfriend. Jealousy aside, I feel that I’m not a priority for her. I hope my mood improves over time. For the rest, everything is fine between us. I am very much in love and I want to support her. Can a one-way open couple work? Am I right to feel the way I feel? And what can I do to feel better? Her reasoning, when it came to opening up the couple just for her, was that I could never satisfy her desire for femininity. However, being straight, I have no “unfulfilled” desires.
– Home Alone
Your wife is certainly not the first bisexual to declare herself after choosing monogamy with a partner of the opposite sex, and then ask for permission to go with other people without giving it to her heterosexual spouse. Since you are straight and you don’t have a pussy at home (at least when she is in the house), you are not entitled to the same leeway. But as your wife proves, HA, she doesn’t just get cunt around. Outside of the couple, he doesn’t just satisfy a specific desire, which in fact you can’t fulfill, but he gets much more: variety, adventure, unique experiences, newborn relationship energy and two nights away from home a week. Why shouldn’t it be the same to you? Not to settle the score, but to feel like an equal partner, who as such is entitled to fair rules, treatment and benefits.
It does not seem to me then that you were aligned on the consequences of the opening of the couple. You, it seems, assumed or imagined that your wife elsewhere would seek sex and just sex, while she fell in love and has a girlfriend. Accepting the open one-sided couple is not the same as accepting one-sided polyamory. If you didn’t accept that, HA, your wife didn’t have the right to expect or care.
That said, one-way open couples may work, HA, but they work best when the one who isn’t looking for sex elsewhere is doing it because they don’t care, or because the power play of getting banned from something their spouse is entitled to excites them. Between you, in practice, it might work if you liked cuckolding. Which you don’t like.
I am a heterosexual who has been married for 35 years to a gorgeous woman. She has never been with anyone else. Over time she has become a very generous companion, as well as open to anything that excites me. I am proud to be able to make her have multiple orgasms, even if she wants to do it about once a month. She is more than willing to please me even more often, but she talks about it as if it were a job (“marital duties”) and she asks me why I always want it so. I explain to her that it is normal for a man to have more desire and I wish she had more too! I have been masturbating with porn since I was a teenager. My wife accepts it because it means less work for her, but she doesn’t like it. For some time now I have started shooting her with the phone during oral sex, because I like to watch her and so I cut down on porn. One day she went through my phone and was upset. I apologized, but she told me I had to ask her permission. I replied that I would have asked her for permission if I hadn’t known that she would have said no! Of course she would have said no, she said, because they are filthy like perverts! I tried again to explain to her that for most men it is normal behavior and that only I would see her! As I mentioned, over time she has evolved and many of the things she has in the meantime learned to do for my pleasure as soon as we got married she would never have done them! In summary: I would like an opinion on this activity that is exciting for me and much less for her.
– Sincerely Appreciate Your Advice Sweet Savage
Photographing or filming a person during a sexual act without their consent is not okay, SAYASS, even if it is your wife. Not even if she has a less intense libido than yours, if she would rather you not watch porn, or if she likes most of the things you ask her to do. Not only is this bad, SAYASS, but it’s a crime. It is not normal behavior, it is assholes, and – I repeat – almost everywhere considered criminal. Your wife has every right to be upset. You violated her privacy and did it knowingly. You say you didn’t ask her permission to take her back because you knew she would deny it. You realize? If she had been the one to write to me, SAYASS, I would have told her to find a lawyer and divorce her.
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There is a lot of talk about how important monogamy is in marriage. But what about the less stressed but obviously equally important commitment to maintaining a healthy sex life? I am a straight man, married for twenty years. I’ve never cheated on my wife, even though I’ve come close in recent years. For the top ten, we had a healthy sex life. Then the sex disappeared. We both go for our fifties, we are attractive and fit and neither of us have any particular physical or mental problems. My wife is so taken up with work and her personal affirmation that sex has ceased to interest her. I understand who says “you have to talk to her”, but years of experience have taught me that it would be useless. She refuses to talk about it and has made it clear that if I ever do anything outside the couple, it would be an unforgivable betrayal for her. I oscillate between resignation, frustration, resentment and deep anger. It’s true: I accepted to be monogamous. But what is his counterpart? In a monogamous couple, can one of the spouses unilaterally interrupt sex for no reason and still expect or demand monogamy? What duties do I have towards her? And you in mine? Beyond that we are good companions, good friends, and good parents to our two teenage children. It is to protect them from the trauma of a divorce, and not to hurt my wife, that I remain married. But it doesn’t seem to me neither nice nor fair that I should remain monogamous and never know physical intimacy again, not even a kiss or a caress, for the rest of my days just because my wife has decided that with that part of her life she is done. How do others think?
– Saddened Over Love’s Omissions
Lately, in the comments section of Savage Love, they began to scold me for the ease with which I would give the green light to betrayals, so instead of answering in first person I turn the question to those who follow us: in your opinion ONLY what should he do? Personally, I don’t think one can ask for monogamy if one refuses to satisfy one’s partner’s reasonable sexual needs. He has tried to talk to his wife about it – he’s been trying repeatedly for ten years – and she refuses. I ask you people: what should he do? Choose the “logical” option and get a divorce? Or do what he has to do to preserve marriage and mental health? See you in the comments section.
(Translation by Matteo Colombo)