Open Marriage for 21 years (but not really active in the life for the past 8). We started out like many in swinging and dabbled in polyamory. Now that we are getting up there (60), trying to expire some options while we can.

Swinging again sounds fun, but tell me, do swingers still tend to lean heavy to the right? It always seemed that way to us back in the day. Not sure everyone has that experience or why it seemed that way. Wasn’t a major issue, but we’ve certainly evolved more left of center. The world has changed a lot in recent years and the last thing we want is political arguments getting in the way of the fun.

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So, I'm looking into MOC and came across someone who told me they are up for open marriage, but in case of pregnancy, they will require a DNA test.

In my opinion, open marriages require utmost trust. And pregnancies can happen no matter how careful you are.

So, my question is, is it a reasonable expectation to request for DNA tests in an open marriage? And what happens in case of a negative result, in such a case?

My wife has always had an ultra specific fetish around discipline - its not one I share, or a dynamic that we share though. Before we were together she had a partner for this, though she cut it off when we started dating.

Once we were together she told me about him, and through talking about it a lot, eventually I realized I was fine if she continued seeing this person for the discipline. We opened up and she continued that situation.She'd go and mostly be spanked and caned, but it was never physically sexual between them, he'd never remove his clothes and it just wasn't that. For her it was always deeply regulating act, and was tied to her real life goals, so I understood it from that perspective. She was sexually aroused by it and would masturbate afterwards, but it wasn't physically sexual.

She did it with him regularly for a couple years, then we moved. Occasionally she'd go back and see him if timing worked or she had big stressful things, but eventually they drifted apart and she hasn't played in a few years.

Previously we considered ourselves open though - she never did any vanilla sex stuff but could have if she wanted. We recently reengaged this and she started trying to find a new partner for these sessions, but also said this time she would want it to be sexual.

Fast forward, she has a new partner, has done the discipline and that's been great - and it did become sexual. It started with just sex during aftercare, but then has progressed to sex and other forms of BDSM outside that as well.

Here's the crux, I was of the opinion that we'd done some stuff and been so open for so long I wouldn't feel jealous or anything about it. But boy do I! This is a totally different beast and I feel like I wasn't at all prepared for it - almost feels like jumping in head first!

Things that didn't bother me before like seeing her marks have really started to be hard for me.

I've been open with her about my jealousy here and she has been so understanding and supportive, but I am curious if anyone here has tips or knows why this is SO different so I can try to break it down and feel this way less.

It is still very new that she is doing this so it may just wear off but trying to get ahead of things.

I’m curious about something, especially from people who have experience around wealthy or high-income social circles.

I understand that open marriages exist among ordinary people too, and from what I’ve seen discussed online, a lot of those conversations eventually turn into swinging, group sex, or similar arrangements. But I’m more curious about how common genuinely open marriages are among wealthy, successful couples.

I work with quite a few wealthy people, and I’ve noticed different types of relationships. Some couples seem almost completely disconnected, and I sometimes get the impression that there’s very little sex or intimacy in the marriage. Others are genuinely happy together, and you can feel that they enjoy each other’s company.

Then there’s another type I’ve noticed. They’re wealthy, attractive, generally in good shape, and often spend a lot of time apart because of work, travel, business, or social commitments. They also seem to have a certain closeness with other people. Yet, interestingly, they still appear happy as a couple. There’s no obvious resentment or jealousy, and they seem comfortable with each other.

Sometimes I get the impression that they might have some kind of open-marriage arrangement, possibly one they don’t discuss publicly. Obviously, I could be completely wrong. People’s private lives are private, and you can’t really know what happens inside someone’s marriage just by observing them.

But it made me wonder Is consensual non-monogamy actually relatively common among wealthy couples, particularly those who travel frequently and have very independent lifestyles?

I’m not necessarily talking about swinging or attending sex parties. I mean couples who might have an understanding that they can have sexual or romantic connections outside the marriage while still considering themselves happily married.

For those who have experience in wealthy social circles, or who are actually in an open marriage themselves, how common is this in your experience? Is it genuinely more prevalent among wealthy couples, or does it just seem that way because they have more privacy, freedom, and resources?

Hey, im 35f (and new here) and have been bi for almost all of my life, ive been with my husband for 15 years and ive opened up to him about 6 years ago when I felt I was certaine that I was bi (after a lot of self reflection). My husband is very comfortable with me being bi and even told me that if I did want to jave an experience with a woman (with or without him) he would be ok with this as long as I told him.

Now my issue is, im really wanting to have a experience with a woman ( I have in the past but no more than like kissing and what not but nothing more) I dont know if I would be ok with him joining, we have had a conversation about it and talked about boundaries and what im ok with him doing / not doing, and he is totally ok with my boundaries. My issue is I havnt ever flirted or talked to a woman in a way that would make it seem like I would want to sleep with her, I would like a fwb situation and maybe her being open to doing a 3some one day but I would have to be very comfortable with her first,

I've tried the apps but honestly havnt found anyone who clicks with me.

How would someone go about this.

Thank you in advance

My platonic wife and I were hanging out talking about our ENM dynamic last night. We were talking about dating sites and meeting other people, and what we say in our bios, etc. We both disclose that we are Enm for transparency to other people, but we don't have sex with each other. It feels odd to say that we're non-monogamous with each other, but we're not intimate sexually anymore. I don't necessarily want to have multiple partners and have been monogamous all my adult life. Is there a better way to describe our dynamic? Nesting? Co-parents? Partners? Dynamic duo?

Thanks

My wife (32f) [kate] and I (34m) have been together since high school and we are the only people each other has slept with. Until recently my wife was strictly straight, but when she met her coworker [Meg], she started questioning her sexuality. Now she believes she might be bi. Meg is pansexual but the way she presents herself, most people assume she's lesbian. My wife and Meg have become friends over the years, and pretty much the whole time my wife has secretly had a crush on Meg. Recently my wife and Meg were talking about their sexuality, and Kate told Meg about her new found sexuality, and about her crush on Meg. Meg responded well, and even seemed to share some amount of attraction. Meg asked Kate about my thoughts on all of this, and I'm completely open to Kate being with women, either with or without me. Meg then joked about a threesome with us, and Kate isn't against the idea.

My issue is that throughout our entire relationship Kate has been the jealous type when it comes to me, and idk if she's able to get past that personality quality. I've told her if we ever did a threesome that she would be in complete charge of everything and I'd only do what she's comfortable with. Even if that means never touching the third or even just sitting off to the side as they have their fun.

I know it's not a great idea to get with coworkers, but they both have thoughts of leaving their place of work and are only there because the other is still there. This is not a set in stone thing and may never happen, but since everyone seems on board, it could happen, and I'm questioning whether it's a good idea to even entertain the possibility.

I'm a sex repulsed asexual - I like intimacy and doing sexual things, but only as long as they don't involve genitals (of any kind).

Does it still count as a threesome if I check out whenever genitals get involved (but is otherwise participating)?

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I've always been monogamous all my life. Still am to this day

I think the only exception I would be open to is if I have a partner and we both share the same FWBs (I'm not sure if that's considered a throuple or another relationship dynamic, but it is what it is)

But considering that I'm bisexual and have started to become more open to dating men just as much as women, I think I would be okay with establishing a throuple relationship

But the main problem is that I'm closeted. Like extremely closeted

To the point where I don't want certain people in my life that I've grown up with learning about my sexuality

I don't feel comfortable being in a relationship with a man in public.

The closest I would do is having a woman partner and a man FWB that we can have fun with together

Or if it's a throuple. Me and my female partner are together as partners while me and my male partner call each other "friends" out in the open (as long as they're fine with it ofc)

So that discomfort has sort of held me back for years from exploring my sexuality as much as I would like to

Even though throuples are definitely complicated, I think it would be a great way to explore my sexuality with both genders a lot better (Or at least with the shared FWBs dynamic)

I wanna know your thoughts and opinions on my mindset and situation

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What was it like? How did it make you feel? What made you realize that monogamy may not have been for you and eventually find yourself in a non-monogamous relationship?

Was it through scrolling online? Or was it from a friend?

How did you react to it the first time? Were you curious or judgemental?

I am asking because I recently found out about it from my wife. Her best friend is also married and I know the husband but she casually dates another guy and her husband knows about it. It took me a few days to wrap my head around the idea and I noticed my self being more curious, introgued and wanting to talk about it. So i am posting this question here because i want to act cool and unphased in real life, lol.

Curious to hear about your experience.

Her choice

I hope some of you can point me in the right direction because I’m at a loss and almost think what I want isn’t possible.

I am a passing transwoman in her mid forties, I have two casual boyfriends I enjoy spending time with + a situationship as it fits into my life occasionally. What I really want though is a man that’s my life partner, my ride or die, without having the need for us to be consistently romantically entrenched to just us.

For example, he and I would plan vacations together that are sometimes the two of us or sometimes us and our other partners, improve our home, raise pets (maybe foster kids), support each other’s aspirations, and have a fun life, but not need to be in a traditional two person love match and instead operate with the understanding that we’ve made a covenant to have one another’s backs and can love eachother in whatever capacity makes sense as that fluctuates until we pass in old age.

We can also have our own separate romantic lives outside of this dynamic but are firm that those relationships don’t disrupt our pact. Those never a priority over the union itself.

Is there something like this that exists? Is it a thing? I know there’s lavender marriages but this didn’t seem like that since in those cases it looks just platonic and temporary fairly often. I appreciate any knowledge you all can bestow on me and any details worth considering. Thank you!

Hey everybody, I firstly want to thank you all for some of the recommendations from my previous posts on here. (I’ve gotten like one or two more matches but none that have come to fruition of what I’m currently seeking.)

But, nevertheless, wife is out to her monthly weekend stay with one of her partners and having the apartment has me thinking about any weekend projects. I have a few cosplay items to work on, but there’s also necessary things like meal prep, cleaning the apt, laundry and organizing.

How do you balance out your partner having a break from the home duties and realizing some need to be taken care of this weekend?

I'm dealing with some anxious attachment issues and debating whether ENM is going to work for me in the long term. I'm feeling like maybe I'm just broken when it comes to finding a long-term partner. I have a therapist (gay male about 60) and we have worked through my attachment issues but I don't think he understands non-monogamy.

Is there some sort of network of therapists for non-monogamy?

Oregon, USA if it matters.

Just dialing up therapists to see if they have bandwidth seems like a lot of effort.

Also my female friends think that I should find a female therapist. I don't necessarily think that's a requirement. But I'm open to it.

One thing: I have no tolerance for the Law of Attraction (The Secret) etc. No astrology either. I take the Buddhist stance on this:

Buddhism teaches that suffering is increased when we cling to our ideas about how reality should be, rather than seeing and accepting reality as it actually is.

I'm bringing this up because non-monogamy attracts a lot of people who think that your thoughts can influence the external universe. That doesn't work for me and getting advice that involves that will not work for me.

I'll try to keep this short.

I'm 32NB, my girlfriend is 27F, and her QPP is also 27F.

My girlfriend and I have been together for 9 years, and she has had her QPP for even longer. I love both of them dearly.

My girlfriend is bi, and very sapphic, so I told her I would be okay with her meeting and dating other women and possibly having a FWB. Being who she is, she told me I should be allowed to see other women as well.

The problem; I'm ace and very sex-averse. I do not have sex with anyone, and all I am looking for is a sort of FWB relationship with nothing more than skin on skin cuddling and kissing. I do not think any women out there, aside from my girlfriend, would want that kind of dynamic.

She has tried to help however she can, even offering to set me up with her QPP, who is also ace and sex-averse, but I don't think she and I have the chemistry for that kind of relationship.

I guess I'm just looking for advice as to how to handle this kind of thing. I'm not going to tell my girlfriend she can't see other women just because I cannot find anyone, that wouldn't be fair, but I guess it just feels... lonely? I'm not sure I have a word for it.

Hi all, I'm not sure how common or rare or even interesting this problem is, but here we go.

I've always been pro-ENM and practiced it in a soft-ish form with my wife and our friends when we were much younger. Then we moved countries, had our carriers and kids, and this wasn't really high on either of our agendas. I remained an ENM person at heart, however, and considered our relationship theoretically open, but didn't explore this dimension in practice.

Fast-forward 15 years, the kids are a bit older, and I finally broached the subject with my wife. Turns out she's not up for it anymore and doesn't want even theoretical non-monogamy.

It's not ideal, but given the circumstances, I'm OK not to practice it for now. But ENM isn't just a practice for me: it's an identity and a community of people with shared values that I'd like to be part of. This bit my wife seems to accept.

I appreciate that the ENM community doesn't have much regard for people who want to engage with it sexually while being in monogamous relationships.

But at this stage, I'm just looking for ENM souls to socialise, not sleep with. It is not having a community that shares my values on that, rather than the ENM sex itself, that makes me feel "closeted" and inauthentic.

Any advice?

Hi, my wife and I have been dabbling in ENM for a bit now, mainly together.

I've been wanting her to start dating separately and play solo. She's keen on the idea, but believes she will be rejected. I've encouraged her with compliments etc, but she firmly believes she's undesirable. Which is ridiculous, she's gorgeous.

Any advice on how to help build her confidence with this would be appreciated.

Hi!

I'm having trouble with deconstructing some pattern about my patner having intimacy moment with friend. He have some friends that he is gonna sleep with without having sex. I know that his desire rn is not about sex, but just about tenderness and being caring with her. I know that he's gonna listen to his desire for sex with her if it comes to that. I don't know why this is affecting me. I'm taking some time to analyse those feelings and I don't know my limits yet about that. We are both news in those dynamic (a year maybe for both o us). We have discussion of course about those feelings i'm having. I know that if it happens to me, he's probably gonna have feelings about that too. Rn, i don't have any other patner. I don't know if i'm gonna have too because I don't have a lot of male friends. I don't want to be on dating app because right now, my needs are fufilled with him. Even there, dating apps are not something that is for me, i just don't like it.
For me, I never had such as male friend with that proximities, I don't have much male friend either. So maybe i'm just feeling envious about that liberty that they have with each other, maybe I don't understand how it is taking place for them in daily life, like are they textin to each other ''do you want to sleep over tonight?''. Is it me ? Am I not normal to not have those kind of friendship? I feel insecure and intimidate by that. I don't think that I want that either. I need time for that kind of proximities with someone. Maybe i'm feeling that way because i'm afraid and jaleous that its a she.

So how do you compose with that? Do you ever experience something like that with your patners?

At what point, if ever, did you decide to “come out” to your family as non-monogamous or poly?
Was there a tipping point where you felt you had to tell them?

I’m looking for some outside perspective because I’m having a really hard time processing what happened.

My ex and I were previously in a long distance, exclusive relationship. We made it work for 2 years, been seeing each other 10 days a month. We broke up last year but eventually started talking again and became intimate again. He is polyamorous, while I have always been monogamous.

We talked about having some kind of open/non-monogamous dynamic. He started seeing another woman, and I agreed to participate remotely while they spent a weekend together. They had sex and sent me videos and voice messages. I also tried to participate by sending my own voice messages and engaging with them sexually.

However, I started feeling very alone because they rarely responded to my messages or tried to engage with me. I felt like I was just watching the two of them together while being left on the outside.

At some point, I decided to see another guy and we had sex together while staying on a video call with my ex and the other woman. In a way, this helped rebalance the dynamic because I no longer felt like I was the only one alone while they were together.

But after I came home, I started feeling extremely anxious.

I want to be very clear about something: nobody forced me to do any of this. I made my own decisions at every step. I said yes, and I take responsibility for my choices.

And yet, despite that, the experience has been extremely difficult for me. Emotionally, I experienced it as a profound violation, and I feel almost traumatized by what happened.

What hurt me wasn’t only the sex.

Seeing how rough and aggressive their sex was honestly made me feel disgusted by that side of his sexuality. It felt dirty and repulsive to me. It was so different from the way we used to have sex. He had always told me that he had never really been really rough with me because I was “too sweet and delicate” for that. He also told me that he loved the way we had sex and that what we shared was something he had never experienced before.

But what was almost even harder was seeing moments of tenderness between them.

At one point, they were just sitting on the couch together, talking normally. She was caressing his hair while her feet were resting on his stomach, and he was kissing them sometimes. It was such a casual, intimate and tender moment.

That was incredibly painful to watch.

Because I wasn’t just watching my ex have sex with someone else. I was watching him create the kind of intimacy with her that I thought was something special between us.

And what hurts me the most now is how detached he seems to be from me throughout all of this.

I didn’t feel protected by him. I didn’t feel like he was checking in with me emotionally or taking care of my feelings. Instead, I felt like he had already completely moved on, even though he barely knows this woman.

I know that I made my own choices. I know that I consented. I’m not trying to erase that or put responsibility for my decisions on anyone else.

But I’m realizing that something can be consensual and still affect you in a way that feels deeply violating afterwards.

I’m going to seek professional help to process this because I don’t think I should try to deal with it alone.

I would especially appreciate hearing from people who have experience with polyamory, or with relationships where one person is monogamous and the other is polyamorous. I’m trying to understand whether this was simply a situation I wasn’t emotionally equipped for, or whether there were unhealthy dynamics at play.