Dear Queenie, I am married for 7.5 years now and my wife is no longer in love with me. There are a lot of circumstances to where we got here and it is a shared blame, but mostly my fault. I have accepted that and am willing to make up for it with all my heart and fervor.
We have 2 kids of our own, 5 and 7 and a step child 9. She expressed that she no longer loves me as a husband and will probably never love me that way ever again. We have agreed to stay together for the kids sake and try to have an open marriage, have our own friends and alone time with them male or female.
We have exclusive sex between us now, but she wants to have the option to choose if the opportunity should arise. She is okay if I have a g/f to myself as well. I am not okay at this point with an open relationship as I still love her and want to make amends, but she is turning 30 soon and feels that she has not lived her life as she has wanted to, freely without having to worry about others and making them happy before her happiness.
I can understand this as she has had a hard first marriage and an overbearing and critical mother, which live on the same driveway. The question is, how can I come to grips with this scenario and live with her as her friend and possibly have an open marriage in order to save the kids from living through a divorce or separation? I am at a loss and am feeling very selfish to not let her go and be free, sort of speak.
She has friends that she goes out with by herself, but she recently met a male ‘friend’ that tried to seduce her as a married woman, but she quickly put him in his place. She likes him as a friend only and wants to hang out with him as a friend, but wants to have the choice to either sleep with him or not should that situation come into play. All she wants is the freedom of that choice, and she reassures me that she only wants to hang with him a friend.
I am having a very difficult time with this and explained that I still have too many feelings for her at this point in time and asked her not to see him personally, but they can still talk and text to one another as friends only. I do not mind her having male friends, but this one just was disrespectful to us both trying to seduce her as my wife. For that reason, I do not like this guy very much and it really is painful for her to still be his friend and her wanting to hang out with him as well.
I do want to stay together for the kids and do the right things for her to be happy too. I just cannot get to that point of living with a woman I love and have deep feelings for and care for without her feeling anything other than friendship for me. I feel that I have to kill my heart and at times I feel anguish and heartache and frustration and anger towards her, but I know that is all not going to help the situation.
We cannot separate, economic times are harsh for us, and divorce is a last resort that we both do not want to jump to. I would like to stay together, and see if I can be her friend only and probably live in an open marriage, but at this point I cannot.
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An open marriage will only work if both of you truly want it. You don’t. An open marriage goes against the marriage vows and opens the marriage to the very real possibility that your spouse will fall in love with someone else — supposedly with your “blessing” due to agreeing to the open marriage.
You want to stay together for the kids… why? Because you think they need to be in a home with a mother and a father? In an open marriage, there may be a revolving door of new and confusing people coming into the home. Is that good for the children? What does that teach them about marriage? Or about the roles of husbands and wives?
Life is far too short to spend it in a hurtful relationship, and this is a very hurtful relationship, regardless of who is to blame or what type of life y0ur wife used to have in a former marriage.
If you had the money to do it I would suggest one of you moving into an apartment to put some distance between you and to provide privacy for the “open” part of the marriage. And I would suggest getting a legal separation which might be the first step toward a divorce.
It’s your life and I don’t envy it. Good luck with whatever you decide to do. ~ Queenie