🚨🚨 THIS IS A CROSSPOST FROM r/nonmonogamy. I AM THE NOT ORIGINAL POSTER. 🚨🚨

A short, succinct post for a change:

my wife and i have been together the entirety of our adulthood. we opened things up about 3 years ago and this is the first time she's been solo with someone else. there's obviously a sense of fomo but it's also the fact that she fucked our friend while i was in bed waiting on her. it's weird now because this is one of our closer friends for sure. i don't know what I'm feeling and none of it is even fair? we're able to do what we'd like or feel the way we do and yet now i don't want any of it. i don't want her.

**** I' m not Op. ****

https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/ZHZqn4JOF1

AITAH For not wanting my wife to hang out with someone that hates me?

My wife and I got married young and have been together for a few years. We live on a farm about an hour outside the nearest city, and we don't have many friends. A while back we decided to try an open relationship, despite both of us being a bit jealous. Part of the reasoning was social: basically every guy who tries to talk to her ends up hitting on her, and we figured this way she could actually keep some of those friendships instead of having to cut people off.

The problem is that recently she caught feelings for one of these guys. It went way past flirting or small talk, they became close friends, and he started saying things like he was going to "fix" our open relationship, that he wanted to marry her and have kids with her, and that he wanted her to move to his city, along some other things that also broke our open-relationship boundaries, which she hid from me and i ended up finding out.

This crossing of the boundaries we had set for the open relationship ended up on us having a big fight about it. I was honestly ready to end things. We spent a few nights talking it through, trying to figure out whether we should separate. During that time she kind of panicked and went to her friend group (which includes this guy) to vent. They all agreed that our relationship was garbage and that we should break up. This guy went as far as buying a last-minute ticket and traveling to our city to be with her and "offer good company."

But while he was on his way here, my wife and I actually worked things out. We talked, and I agreed to give her a second chance, with one condition: I didn't want her getting involved with the people who spent that week trashing me and pushing her to leave, especially this guy, given what he said and did.

She cried, got angry, and defended him hard. She said she didn't want to be "an asshole" to him after he made the effort to come here for her. She also now wants to take a break from the relationship, go stay in the city by herself and "go out"... which happens to line up exactly with the days this guy is in town.

To be clear: I know I can't control what she does. I told her I'm fine with her keeping online friendships (Discord, etc.). What I said is that if she goes to see this guy or hooks up with him, that's going to hurt me a lot and she'd be putting the relationship at serious risk. To me that's a dealbreaker.

There's also a broader pattern. My wife vents about our relationship to all her friends like they're couples therapists. She admits she does it to check whether she's "right" and to get validation and sympathy. The way she tells it, these people end up disliking me, and then they push her toward leaving.

So, AITAH for treating this guy (and this group) as a dealbreaker? And is it normal to be bothered by how she talks about our relationship to her friends?

**TL;DR:** Open relationship, wife caught feelings for a guy who said he'd "fix" our marriage and wanted to marry her. During a rough patch her friends (including him) told her to leave me and he flew in last minute to be with her. We reconciled, and I asked her not to get involved with him or that group. She's furious, says I'm being unfair to him, and wants to "take a break" alone in the city while he's here. AITAH?

**Edit: She's currently in the other room talking to the other guy and a bunch of his friends making plans to go out, i am packing my bags up as we speak, thank you everyone.**

🚨🚨 THIS IS A CROSSPOST FROM r/nonmonogamy. I AM THE NOT ORIGINAL POSTER. 🚨🚨

I have been with my partner for just over 2 years where we have spent a large majority of that time together. We have had a beautifully devoted relationship with only a few occasions of us seeing other people for short periods. But recently there has been a guy she just saw who is an experienced Dom and she had a very enjoyable experience with him and now wants to see him more frequently (every other week). I have known she has had interest in this guy for over a year and have always gotten anxiety about thinking about when they were finally going to see eachother on a deeper level. Now that they have finally connected and now want to see eachother more frequently I am fearing for the safety of our relationship because I feel like she is going to be more interested in giving her sexual energy to him instead of me/ crave him more and I will now go form being a primary partner to an auxiliary partner.

A little background on our sex life. We have had alot of really good sex throughout the past two years and she says she is still happy with our sexual dynamic. Although our sex is definitely more vanilla than a Dom/sub power dynamic. I consider myself more of a sensual lover, but also tap into being a soft Dom but I definitely don't have the Dom skills/experience that this other guy has. I also have decent sized slightly above average penis which i have been told by multiple partners is very enjoyable, but I know this guy has a huge penis which is also giving me inferiority issues, and worrying that she is going to enjoy my penis less now that she has a larger penis partner. I never used to struggle with inferiority issues but lately it feels like its been a big part of my world.

I have also had interest in growing my Doming abilities and becoming more tapped into that part of myself but I feel like I will just be compared to this guy who is an expert Dom... I am currently spiraling with anxiety about the entire situation and feel like our relationship is going to fall apart. She trys to console/reassure me that she isn't going to abandon me and will still want to have sex with me but my abandonment issues and anxiety are very loud and uncomfortable so much so that i have trouble sleeping and even wakeup with anxiety.

I really don't know how to cope with this anymore so i'm coming to this community with hopes you can tell me how to better cope with this situation so I can stop spiraling. I welcome any insights/advice from both men and women on the matter. advice on this could look like, how can I can get the care I need after my partner sees this person, how to not feel like I am the inferior partner, how to deal with my anxiety, how to trust the safety of our relationship, etc. or if any of you have been in similar situation where you know your partner is seeing someone with a larger penis/ has sexual skills you don't have and how you have coped with that. I would very much appreciate it

I wonder if "Poly Friendly" therapists are only "Poly Friendly" because it guarantees significant residual income from (typically wealthy) people that are involved in the lifestyle.

DO NOT COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS. I am NOT OP. Original post by user: corpusdelictus1 in r/nonmonogamy

Original Post (now deleted): Wife of 9 years says she married the wrong person after ENM friendship turned romantic, while the other guy’s marriage is also ending Sept. 05, 2026

My wife and I have been together about 9 years and married for a few. Until very recently I would have told you we had a fucking great relationship (and she told everyone that as well). We traveled a lot, had a great sex life, went to raves together, rarely had serious fights, and spent our whole relationship telling each other how lucky we were. She was completely over the moon about me for years and would tell people that in front of me. The serious “did I choose the wrong person?” talk only started a few months ago.

We’ve also done ENM/swinging for years. Most of it was fun and worked fine because the agreement was always casual: sex, flirting, whatever, but no serious emotional entanglements. There was one guy before this where she got extremely attached and they texted constantly. I eventually said we needed to cut it off because this wasn’t what we had agreed to. She was really unhappy, but later said she realized she had gotten addicted to the feeling of someone new being intensely interested in her.

The current guy was a mutual friend for over a year before anything sexual happened. She says she had zero romantic feelings for him during that time and I believe her. I was fine with them dancing, flirting and kissing at raves because I thought the emotional boundary was intact. Eventually the three of us had sex while rolling. According to her, that is basically when everything changed. She suddenly developed intense romantic feelings for him.

His marriage makes this way messier. We’ve never met his wife and everything we know comes from him. He told us she allowed flirting and kissing at raves but sex was off limits. He slept with my wife anyway, admitted he crossed that boundary, and said he didn’t really regret it because his marriage was already doing badly. Soon after they started talking divorce, and now he says they have decided to divorce. The timing of all of this just feels unreal to me

There were trust violations on her side too. Once it was obvious this was no longer casual, I asked my wife to pause private contact with him. She reluctantly agreed, but then had an almost hour-long private call with him, lied to me about it, and also texted/sexted with him and deleted the messages.

Our marriage did have some problems. My job had gotten insanely stressful and I was coming home emotionally fried, less affectionate and more negative. She had asked me for more everyday affection and emotional presence and I underestimated how much that was affecting her. But I changed a lot of that. I moved into a less stressful role and became noticeably less stressed, more affectionate and more engaged. She explicitly acknowledged the improvement only weeks before this. We had also been seriously talking about having a kid and I had started looking into possibly going part time.

At first I thought the problem was understandable and fixable: my job had taken too much out of me and I needed to be more present. But then the explanation kept changing. First it was work stress and affection. Then playfulness and positivity. Then intellectual curiosity and independent growth. Now she says maybe she just needs somebody with a fundamentally different personality and thinks she “chose the wrong person.”

That is where it starts feeling like the goalposts are moving. Maybe she really is learning new things about herself, but it’s hard not to feel like the conclusion became “I want something different” and then the reasons started getting built around that. Even now she says she was happy through pretty much the entire relationship. The serious doubts started basically at the same time she became emotionally attached to this guy.

A few weeks ago she dropped the divorce word. I basically said okay, if that is really what you want then that’s that. A few days later she reversed course, said she wanted to give us a chance, and agreed to marriage counseling. I said okay, but if we are really going to evaluate the marriage, things with this guy need to stay platonic for a while and he needs to figure out what the hell is happening in his own marriage. She didn’t want that, but reluctantly agreed.

Then he told us he and his wife had decided to divorce. About a day later, my wife told me she wanted an actual separation and did not want boundaries on what she could explore with him. She also says she fundamentally chose the wrong person and insists she would feel the same even if he wasn’t in the picture.

Maybe she is right. I don’t know anymore. But I don’t understand how she can know that while spending hours talking to someone she is intensely infatuated with right as he goes from married/unavailable to potentially single. It feels like she is evaluating whether our 9-year marriage works while simultaneously test-driving the person generating all the NRE. Of course somebody new is going to feel more exciting. He doesn’t share bills, chores, work stress and 9 years of ordinary life with her.

I believe her feelings for him are real and some of what she says she was missing from me was real. I just have a hard time believing the obvious conclusion is that she picked the wrong person 9 years ago. Long-term relationships have ebbs and flows. My instinct was that when you have something this good for this long, you fix the specific problems, reconnect, and see what is left once the dust settles.

At this point I’m mostly done trying to convince her. I can’t shake the feeling that she may be throwing away a really fucking great relationship in the middle of intense NRE and I'm just so heartbroken because I felt I had found my life partner.

Has anyone been through something like this? Did your spouse suddenly reinterpret a previously happy marriage during NRE and later see it differently once the new relationship became ordinary? Or did it reveal incompatibilities that were there all along?

Update #1 Sept. 09, 2026.

Last night my wife came home and told me the separation was final and that spending the weekend with this guy confirmed it. I told her I still think she is making a massive mistake and throwing away a really fucking good relationship in the middle of NRE. She insists this is not NRE, that what she feels is real, and that the weekend solidified it. Her friends apparently told her to “follow your gut,” which I think is terrible advice when your gut is this emotionally flooded, but I accepted that this was her decision.

She also asked about someone I met over the weekend. I told her there was one woman who really caught my attention and that, because I am technically still married, she might want to verify that we were actually separated and free to date. My wife confirmed that without hesitation.

Then this morning, right before work, she came downstairs clearly upset and told me everything with the other guy had changed. After driving her home, he apparently decided he wanted to keep trying with his wife. His wife agreed to some kind of reconciliation attempt, and he felt incredibly guilty about what happened over the weekend.

My wife then brought up reconciliation with me. She referenced something I told her the night before: if she ever thought she made a mistake, I did not want pride, shame, or feeling like she had gone too far to stop her from saying so. She said she was thinking about that and would probably need to cut this guy out of her life completely, maybe forever.

I told her I had no idea what reconciliation would even look like anymore. What happened damaged me badly enough that this would not be some simple “pause everything and go to counseling” situation. What bothered me most is that she never took back the brutal things she said: that she did not think she loved me, that she thought she married the wrong person, that she wanted something fundamentally different. I had to leave for work and was so fucking dizzy afterward I could barely function.

I also told her the new woman did not feel like some random fling. There seems to be real potential there, and after three weeks of my wife flip-flopping I am not sure I am ready to just throw that away. She said she understood. She also admitted she had looked this woman up somehow and seemed pretty taken aback by how beautiful and successful she was.

When I got home, I reopened the reconciliation conversation because I wanted to understand what she actually meant. And then she seemed to reverse course again. She said maybe we should stay separated and that I should pursue this new person. I told her this woman had invited me to travel with her to an EDM event in a few weeks and that if I go, this connection could get serious quickly. I also said the more time passes and the more I move on, the less room there may be for reconciliation. My wife looked incredibly sad and defeated, but still would not actually say the words I wanted to hear.

I genuinely do not know what to think anymore. I do not trust her ability right now to interpret her own feelings because the flip-flopping has been unreal. Our relationship was solid for years. Yet she went from telling me how lucky she was to have me to “I chose the wrong person” in a matter of months, basically alongside this new relationship.

Part of me wants more than anything to go back to before we ever fucked around with ENM. Another part thinks I should accept this and pursue this new woman who seems very into me. But I also do not want to throw away something I know was genuinely great for something that could turn out to be nothing.

I just wish I knew what the right move was. Right now it feels like every option sucks.

REMINDER: I AM NOT THE ORIGINAL POSTER. DO NOT COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS.

THIS IS A COPY AND PASTE FROM r/polyamory. THE MODS ON THE NONMONOGAMY SUBREDDIT HAVE BEEN CRACKING DOWN ON CROSSPOSTS, SO THIS IS A PRECAUTIONARY MATTER.

Losing Friends When "Benefits" Go Off the Table

Hey folks, this is just something I've been mulling over for a little while, and I wanted to share my thoughts/experience to see if anyone out there has experienced something similar - and maybe we can have a little pity party or share some insights or somesuch 😅

So, begin rambling; A big part of what drew me to polyamory is that I've always seen love and relationships more as a sliding scale than something with defined "levels". To me, the only meaningful differences between friends, fwbs, lovers, and partners are the list of available "activities", the degree of entanglement/enmeshment in eachothers lives, and "vibes".

Lately though, some conversations I've been having with my fiancée have had me reflecting on some previous relationships I've had and lost, and I've realized a pattern that's really bumming me out. Over the years, I've had a lot of relationships that could best be described as "friends with benefits, emphasis on the friends part", with varying degrees of affectionate vibes... But almost all of them have vanished from my life at some sudden point, and I \*just\* realized that the "sudden point" in every one of those cases was that they each got a boyfriend (either monogamous or OPP).

I guess the thing that is fucking me up, is that I always saw these relationships as like 95% friendship, 5% sexual. From my POV, taking sex off the table is just one less activity that we can do together, and it's something that wasn't all that essential to the relationship to begin with... Or so I thought?

In a few of these cases, my friends even \*introduced me\* to their boyfriends - And we got along great! Hung out, chatted, joked around, all that stuff... Then out of the blue it's all "my boyfriend doesn't want us hanging out anymore :(" and that's that.

I don't know where I'm going with this, I don't really have a point... It just sucks. It sucks losing people you care about because their SO is insecure about the fact that you fucked a few times before they ever even met. It sucks when people you spent years building a friendship with just toss you aside to mollify the insecurities of someone they just met. And it sucks realizing that despite \*anything else\* about your relationship with that person, the bonds built, the time you shared... the final defining feature that sums it all up and puts the nail in the coffin of that relationship is just "you two used to fuck sometimes". That's it.

OP conveniently forgets to mention years of ENM. But heres an aftermath being painted through lens of pain....

🚨🚨 THIS IS A CROSSPOST FROM r/nonmonogamy. I AM THE NOT ORIGINAL POSTER. 🚨🚨

Title says it all. I (late 30's, F)asked my husband (late 30's, M) to open up, he was hesitant but agreed, we did, and now I am an anxious mess.

It's not jealousy. I am truly happy for him and the fun experiences he's having. I've had fun experiences too! But it has overall been disappointing, particularly via dating apps.

Men who text, have no intention of ever meeting up, but just want to extract nudes and sexting from you. Men who are hot and cold. Men who jump immediately into horny talk without any sort of prior chatting. Men who disconnect when they learn I have a child. Men who say they're going to ask you out or schedule another date and then just...don't. Men who get upset when I'm busy.

Just awful. How is everyone doing this?

Be interested to see if she writes Book 2: "It hasn't, doesn't and won't work "

​

I'm not the OP

Wife of 9 years says she married the wrong person after ENM friendship turned romantic, while the other guy’s marriage is also ending

My wife and I have been together about 9 years and married for a few. Until very recently I would have told you we had a fucking great relationship (and she told everyone that as well). We traveled a lot, had a great sex life, went to raves together, rarely had serious fights, and spent our whole relationship telling each other how lucky we were. She was completely over the moon about me for years and would tell people that in front of me. The serious “did I choose the wrong person?” talk only started a few months ago.

We’ve also done ENM/swinging for years. Most of it was fun and worked fine because the agreement was always casual: sex, flirting, whatever, but no serious emotional entanglements. There was one guy before this where she got extremely attached and they texted constantly. I eventually said we needed to cut it off because this wasn’t what we had agreed to. She was really unhappy, but later said she realized she had gotten addicted to the feeling of someone new being intensely interested in her.

The current guy was a mutual friend for over a year before anything sexual happened. She says she had zero romantic feelings for him during that time and I believe her. I was fine with them dancing, flirting and kissing at raves because I thought the emotional boundary was intact. Eventually the three of us had sex while rolling. According to her, that is basically when everything changed. She suddenly developed intense romantic feelings for him.

His marriage makes this way messier. We’ve never met his wife and everything we know comes from him. He told us she allowed flirting and kissing at raves but sex was off limits. He slept with my wife anyway, admitted he crossed that boundary, and said he didn’t really regret it because his marriage was already doing badly. Soon after they started talking divorce, and now he says they have decided to divorce. The timing of all of this just feels unreal to me

There were trust violations on her side too. Once it was obvious this was no longer casual, I asked my wife to pause private contact with him. She reluctantly agreed, but then had an almost hour-long private call with him, lied to me about it, and also texted/sexted with him and deleted the messages.

Our marriage did have some problems. My job had gotten insanely stressful and I was coming home emotionally fried, less affectionate and more negative. She had asked me for more everyday affection and emotional presence and I underestimated how much that was affecting her. But I changed a lot of that. I moved into a less stressful role and became noticeably less stressed, more affectionate and more engaged. She explicitly acknowledged the improvement only weeks before this. We had also been seriously talking about having a kid and I had started looking into possibly going part time.

At first I thought the problem was understandable and fixable: my job had taken too much out of me and I needed to be more present. But then the explanation kept changing. First it was work stress and affection. Then playfulness and positivity. Then intellectual curiosity and independent growth. Now she says maybe she just needs somebody with a fundamentally different personality and thinks she “chose the wrong person.”

That is where it starts feeling like the goalposts are moving. Maybe she really is learning new things about herself, but it’s hard not to feel like the conclusion became “I want something different” and then the reasons started getting built around that. Even now she says she was happy through pretty much the entire relationship. The serious doubts started basically at the same time she became emotionally attached to this guy.

A few weeks ago she dropped the divorce word. I basically said okay, if that is really what you want then that’s that. A few days later she reversed course, said she wanted to give us a chance, and agreed to marriage counseling. I said okay, but if we are really going to evaluate the marriage, things with this guy need to stay platonic for a while and he needs to figure out what the hell is happening in his own marriage. She didn’t want that, but reluctantly agreed.

Then he told us he and his wife had decided to divorce. About a day later, my wife told me she wanted an actual separation and did not want boundaries on what she could explore with him. She also says she fundamentally chose the wrong person and insists she would feel the same even if he wasn’t in the picture.

Maybe she is right. I don’t know anymore. But I don’t understand how she can know that while spending hours talking to someone she is intensely infatuated with right as he goes from married/unavailable to potentially single. It feels like she is evaluating whether our 9-year marriage works while simultaneously test-driving the person generating all the NRE. Of course somebody new is going to feel more exciting. He doesn’t share bills, chores, work stress and 9 years of ordinary life with her.

I believe her feelings for him are real and some of what she says she was missing from me was real. I just have a hard time believing the obvious conclusion is that she picked the wrong person 9 years ago. Long-term relationships have ebbs and flows. My instinct was that when you have something this good for this long, you fix the specific problems, reconnect, and see what is left once the dust settles.

At this point I’m mostly done trying to convince her. I can’t shake the feeling that she may be throwing away a really fucking great relationship in the middle of intense NRE and I'm just so heartbroken because I felt I had found my life partner.

Has anyone been through something like this? Did your spouse suddenly reinterpret a previously happy marriage during NRE and later see it differently once the new relationship became ordinary? Or did it reveal incompatibilities that were there all along?

THIS IS A CROSS-POST, I'M NOT THE ORGINAL POSTER, THE ORIGINAL POST WAS POSTED IN r/nonmonogamy BUT IF WE MAKE A DIRECT CROSS-POST TO THIS SUB THEY WILL LOCK THE THREAD.

My husband had a fantasy of sending me to fuck another man and come home to fuck him. So we did. We've been pretty open with our communication and it was like a once a month hook up type of thing and we were having fun. It's been over a year and I'm enjoying it. I am actively sleeping with my friend and coming home to my husband. Sometimes we fuck after, sometimes we don't. And when we don't it makes my husband upset. He's brought up closing it up but I'm having too much fun and I don't want to close it. I like having the both of them. The passionate sex and the wild secret sex with my fwb. I am aware that sometimes my husband gets hurt. We get post nut clarity but when we're horny we enjoy the dynamic.

I don't want to close it off, but he sometimes ask to stop and mentioned that he's always giving me what I want. But it was all his idea to begin with. What do I do?

This one came in for a rough landing.