SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Let me preface this by saying that this is my first time in this or any forum, so I'm a little nervous and a lot long-winded :).

I guess it all started when my husband (of almost eight years now and who has been my partner for 14) got a DUI while I was out of state visiting my family Labor Day weekend. I was, of course, upset and disappointed about the DUI (it’s expensive, after all), but never yelled or got mad at him. Driving when you’ve had too much is a very human mistake, and it’s one that I have made more than I’d like to admit. So I get it, and I just tried to be as supportive as I could be.

My husband has never gotten in trouble before and felt terrible about himself. And for the first time in his adult life, he couldn’t drink or smoke pot, which made it hard for him to stay home and relax. So he started going out almost every night.

My husband is a musician in two bands, and he works for a nonprofit here in town that is centered around music. He’s always gone to shows and always been busy with music. But this was a new level, and to make matters worse, when he was home, he wasn’t really there.

The one night a week he’d grace me with his presence, he wouldn’t talk to me. He’d look at his phone silently from the other end of the couch, as I pointlessly tried to get him to talk to me about anything at all. At one point during this phase, I broke down and told him I was lonely. I asked him if he could just be home a couple more nights a week.

He got irritated and basically told me that he needed to be out because he couldn’t stay home. He felt too anxious without being able to smoke, and being out was the only time he felt OK.

Also during this time, he stopped touching me. We’re not every-night kind of folks, but our sex life was fairly consistent over the past few years. And even if we weren’t having sex, he’s always been an affectionate person. That all changed though; he didn’t even want to have sex on our anniversary. And that’s the main reason I started believing that he was likely having an affair.

This goes on for most of October, and then the 18th or 19th, I go to a show with him, and I met this woman (I’ll call her Other Woman from here on out). I knew right away something was weird. He’s always been friends with women, but at shows, he generally says a quick hi to his friends and then watches the band with me. This woman stuck around and hung out with us, and then her husband came and hung out, too. My husband acted like it was nothing, so I tried to brush off my doubts.

I tried to quell my suspicions and told myself that she’s married, it’s OK, but the doubts still lingered. She’s blond and kind of petite, like me, which is his type. And they openly flirted in front of both me and her husband, but we were having fun, so who cares about a little flirting, right? We then proceeded to hang out with Other Woman and her husband a few more times.

Then comes Halloween. We watched Hocus Pocus and handed out candy, and I thought we were having a good night. I also thought that maybe we’d have sex later...finally.

We didn’t. He saw that I was getting sleepy and said, “Do you mind if I go out if you’ll be asleep anyway? This is the last show at this venue in town, and I really, really would love to go.” I said OK and tried not to show him how disappointed I was.

The next morning, he casually mentioned that he hung out with Other Woman. He said he was picking her up to go to the show but that they ended up getting drinks (he can’t drink, remember?) with her coworkers instead (something he would only reluctantly do for me even when he was able to drink). I point-blank asked him what was going on and why he didn’t tell me he’d be picking her up. He said he didn’t even think about it and wasn’t trying to hide it, but that he’d never cheat on me.

I then proceeded to tell him that I believed him, but that if he feels himself falling for someone else to please take a step back and think of me. He said OK but was dismissive and a little defensive.

The next evening (Nov 1), we hung out with Other Woman and her husband again. We spent the entire night drinking. After we’ve had a few, the boys start talking and the girls start talking.

She and her husband had also been together for a long time — 13 years (which is fairly unique considering we’re all in our early 30s), and she starts telling me about how she wishes she had been with more people and asking me if I felt the same way. I say no, and that I think it would take a long time for it to even be good with someone else.

Later on, she starts telling me that she thinks she’s polyamorous and has the “capacity to love more than just one person.” I tell her that that’s cool but not for me.

Then we meet our other friends at the bar, who know both my husband and Other Woman (he taught drums to both of them). She (the drum teacher’s wife) buys me a shot and then starts to talk to me while everyone else was in the other room watching the band. She tells me how f-ed up she thinks my husband’s relationship with Other Woman is (I blacked out so I only know because she told me later), and then I get super upset about my suspicions being validated in such a way that I start to run home from the bar crying (suuuper drunk mind you). I guess Other Woman ran after me for a second, and I told her to f-off, among other things.

My husband eventually collects me a of couple of miles down the road, and we Uber home. I only remember patches of that evening, but it comes out somehow that he’s also polyamorous, or thinks he is or something.

The next morning, he makes me feel terrible about how I treated Other Woman and about the things I said to him. I guess I told him I hated that he needed to be “best friends” with so many other women, that I was leaving and that I wanted to kill myself multiple times that night, but I don’t remember.

The next morning, I am so hungover that I feel like I might actually die, and I send Other Woman a message over Instagram, apologizing profusely for my behavior and feeling terrible for what I don’t remember saying. We were supposed to have her and her husband over that night to play Risk, and I begged them to please still come.

She accepts my apology, and then she and her husband come to our house. Everyone is drinking except me (since I’m deathly hungover), and I have a terrible night. She’s wearing yoga pants, and my husband clearly checks her out multiple times in front of both me and her husband — not great. Also, by this point, I’m all but certain there’s something going on but still trying to tell myself that it’s nothing.

The next day, my husband and I really start to talk about the polyamory thing, and it comes out that he’s “always wanted” to be with other people throughout our entire relationship, making me question every minute we’ve ever had together. I spend most of the day crying about how I’m not enough. He tells me that’s not it, that he loves me, but that he just feels like he has “too much love to give.” He tells me that he’s going to be brutally honest with me about it, even if it hurts me, because he believes honesty is the most important thing. He also staunchly denies that there’s anything going on with Other Woman.

I do some research and learn more about polyamory, trying to accept it but knowing that I really will never be able to live like that. And then I ask Other Woman to meet with me, so she could tell me a little more about her experience exploring polyamory and her husband’s take on it (who is a monogamist, like me, and was upset about it, too).

I meet with her and cry to her about how my husband wants to be in love with someone else. She tells me that it’s upsetting to hear that you’re not compatible this late in the game, but that it just might be the reality of the situation. She also tells me that they’re just friends and that she’s not a threat to my relationship but will stop being friends with him if I want her to. I stupidly tell her that I’m glad he has such a good friend during this tough time and that I would never presume to tell anyone who they could be friends with.

The week was terrible. I missed a couple of days of work and thought my relationship was over. My husband wavered between feeling bad that he hurt me, asking me not to leave him and acting like I was totally overreacting and that I needed to get over it. We get through the week and find a shaky peace that weekend.

Then, on Sunday 11/9, my husband gets a call from Other Woman (who is traveling out of town for work or something). He sees it’s her, and then immediately runs outside to the front yard to take the call. I ask him why he need privacy if nothing was going on with them, and he says he doesn’t know.

Then he tells me that she got a text from her husband that said, “I know what you did with ___.” He tells me they didn’t do anything, so he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

We then go about our day running errands around town, all the while, my husband is constantly checking his phone waiting to hear back from Other Woman about what her husband thinks they did.

Finally, he gets the call while we’re at Barnes and Noble. I give him his space while he talks to her for probably 30 minutes. He then gets in the car crying and tells me they can’t be friends or even talk anymore.

After probing him for several minutes about why, he admits that her husband found her diary, detailing the fact that they were in love with each other.

I start crying on the way home, almost wrecking the car, and then we get home and he begs me not to leave him. He tells me he’s sorry and that he loves me, has always loved me and has never stopped loving me, even through this. He tells me that nothing physical ever happened between them, not even a kiss, and that they tried to just be friends by making it a point to hang out with their spouses.

I try to be level-headed about the whole thing, but the reality is that I’m just in denial. And then, a few days later, I really start to feel it, and the crisis begins.

Now, a little more than two months later, we’re in marriage counseling and trying to work through it, and it’s a day to day thing. I’ve gotten to the point where I have moments of happiness, but I spend a lot of my time hurt and angry.

After finally admitting to himself that he had an emotional affair (at first, he very much believed that he did absolutely nothing wrong because he didn’t have sex with her), he now feels terrible and is questioning everything about his life and who he is. He’s thinking about quitting his bands, leaving his job and even moving to a new city if I would go with him. He says he’s depressed and that he hates himself for what he did and just wants to be the person I need him to be.

He also says that he loves me and wants to be with me, but now I feel like the consolation prize. I’m now that crazy, jealous, paranoid wife who disregards her husband’s privacy in an attempt to ease her own insecurity, and I found a message he sent to his friend a couple of weeks into recovery.

He said that he feels bad about everything, but on top of everything else, he misses Other Woman, and that it was nice to have someone love him for who he really is for once. Ouch, and that certainly didn’t help with the consolation prize feeling.

I want to be with him, I really do, but after everything, how do I trust anything he says? How do I believe that he wants to be with me — and just me, which is what I really need out of a relationship? How do I stop comparing myself to her and hating the way look and talk and act, and that I’m not this cool, bisexual, polyamorous girl who plays the drums and wants to have threesomes?

I can’t even get to the bottom of what they talked about, the timeline of all of it or if they were actually in love, because he says he doesn’t remember. How can he not remember if he was really in love?

While I hate the fact that he had feelings for someone else, I’ve also had feelings during our relationship, but the difference is that I never shared them with the other person or had a secret relationship with them behind my husband’s back. What I really hate is that he lied so often, even after telling me that he was being honest. I hate that he could so easily disregard my feelings. I hate that he forced me to hang out with this woman because he just couldn’t stand not having her in his life, even though, at that point, he knew his relationship was over the line. I hate that he told that he was in love with her. How can you love someone you’ve never even seen without makeup on or had an argument with? His cavalier use of the word makes me feel like love doesn’t matter to him.

I sort of hate the fact that they didn’t have sex. I guess I’m glad that he at least had the foresight to draw the line, but in my opinion, the fact that he allowed himself to get so far in that relationship that he was able to fall in love with her is so much worse than a purely physical relationship. And if they had been physical, at least there would be no question as to whether or not he had an actual affair from him or any of the other people who know.

I also hate the fact that I tried to open up to Other Woman. I’m an introvert and have always only had a few close friends with a lot of friendly acquaintances, and it’s never been easy for me to really reach out to people. I was really trying to tell myself that I was crazy about my suspicions, and I genuinely thought we could be friends. The fact that it was so easy for her to lie to me hurts, too.

I don’t want to give up our life together. I love my husband, and I know he loves me. He’s the person I send funny memes to, and when anything at all happens, he’s the first person I want to tell. I hate the fact that he hurt me, but he’s been my best friend for almost 15 years; I can’t just give up on that, can I?

But I feel like, at this point, we’ve said everything there is to say on the matter to each other and that we’re stuck with no way to move forward. I guess I just want to know, will it ever get better?

Polyamory is multiple ethical romantic relationships. What your husband is doing is not ethical in the slightest. Neither was Other Woman, since apparently she was cheating on her husband, too.

You can't get to healthy polyamory from cheating. Even if you decided that this is what you wanted, that you would want this in your relationship even if you divorced your husband- it still won't work with him having someone waiting in the wings like this.

When you open a relationship, it not only has to be a joyous yes on both sides, but you have to deal with the broken trust first. What he did was cheating, not poly. Even if you both wanted to be poly, he would need to end things with Other Woman.

I guess the most important question to start with is, does he truly believe he is polyamorous, and if so, where do you want to go with this? I would be seriously concerned that if this is what he believes he wants, that he decides to try and suppress it to keep you, and then it will come up again in the future. That's the biggest difference between someone who is "just" cheating, and someone who believes they are poly. The cheater has a much better chance of rehabilitating their worldview because they only believe in loving one person at once. Someone who identifies as poly and believes you can romantically love more than one person is going to fall in love again, and the same issue is going to come up.

If he really believes he is poly, and you don't want to be- realistically your only option is to walk away to save yourself future heartache. You deserve better than being strung along while he tries to figure himself out.

If he doesn't really believe he is poly, then he was using that to whitewash cheating, and then you have that extra level of lying and deception, that he was trying to make it okay with you. That's pretty awful, too. He is not being honest with you. Being honest would have meant discussing his thoughts on polyamory before he was cheating on you!

I wouldn't even think about forgiveness or reconciliation or any of that before you have sorted this very important issue out. I don't think marital counseling is going to be the winner, here.

If it helps any, he didn't love her. He was experiencing New Relationship Energy (NRE). You can read a lot about it online. It's basically a hit of cocaine to the brain that makes us think that a new person we desire is perfect and amazing. It's not love, but it feels like how movies stereotype falling in love. That doesn't change how much it hurts, though.

Best friends don't lie and cheat on their best friends, do they? Think about that. You don't "have" to do anything just because of time put in. What you have to do is make the best possible decision for a happy future. Walking away is big and scary, but it's always an option.

What is possible is that you may want very different relationship models, and there's no good way to fix that problem. He could choose not to act on his desires, if he is in fact polyamorous, but then he's suppressing part of himself and I strongly believe that most of the time, it comes out again later. People have a hard time suppressing things that are part of their identity. If you want a monogamous relationship, he may not be able to hold up his end of that even if he says he will. You deserve to have a partner who wants the same basic type of relationship model that you want. That should be one of the very first places that you need to be compatible for long term relationships! It's literally the foundation of your interactions.

If he genuinely has been feeling this way for your whole relationship, you seriously need to take that into account. When people show you who they are, believe them. Don't force yourself into a relationship style that you're uncomfortable with. A good, ethical partner would have discussed these desires with you long before he was interested in anyone else.

[This message edited by PSTI at 8:25 PM, January 12th (Sunday)]

For R to happen, you need the truth. Cheaters lie a lot, so the first thing I would suggest is to contact the OBS and ask him everything he knows. Don’t tell your husband.

Later on, if he gets upset that you talked to the OBS, you will know those two are still in contact.

Secondly, when two adults are having an affair, and they are in close proximity, it usually turns into PA. That would be why your WH stopped having sex with you.

Ask him to write a timeline and tell him it will be verified with a polygraph. Then, go through with it.

You can’t have a marriage without trust. You can’t trust a cheater; they lie, minimize, and trickle truth.

Get the truth before you decide what to do next.

Oh and polyamory is an agreement between all involved parties and you didn’t agree to this did you? It’s as if your WH took the neighbour’s car one morning because he decided the neighbours would share his car (without asking him). And the "too much love" excuse? It’s bullshit.

I wish you strength!

[This message edited by ShutterHappy at 6:02 AM, January 13th (Monday)]

Oh and you should ask the mods to move this thread to JFO, you’ll get a lot more responses there

@ShutterHappy - Thank you!! I wasn't sure what qualified as "just" haha. I was overthinking it for sure.

I actually did ask her husband about it a few days after I found out. He told me that they had an emotional affair, thought they were in love with each other and, at some point, decided to try to end it by just being friends and bringing the spouses into the relationship because they didn't want to hurt their marriages.

So much for that haha.

Had I not talked to him, I doubt I would ever believe my husband when he says nothing physical happened.

As far as the timeline goes, he says he doesn't remember. He doesn't seem to remember a lot of things, like if he actually loved her or not – you know, little stuff /s.

I totally agree about your take on polyamory, or rather, using it as an excuse for cheating. I do think that people who agree ahead of time to be polyamorous could be happy — though I think it's probably challenging and takes an exhaustive level of communication — that's not what this was at all.

Thank you for your response :)!

@PSTI

I totally agree. Cheating is not the same as ethical nonmonogamy because there's no consent, or even an opportunity for consent.

He has ended things with her, or rather, I don't believe they've talked since the day she called and told him that her husband found out. He swears that they haven't communicated at all and told me that he would tell me if they had. Haha is it stupid that my first inclination is still to believe him? Ugh.

Yeah, I agree, that is the most important question. He now says that while he thinks he could be in love with more than one person, he says he doesn't want to be now that he knows how much it hurts me. He says he doesn't need it.

I don't know though. I think he's really afraid to actually explore the question for himself now, which is ironic, seeing as how he wasn't afraid of it when the only thing on the line was our marriage and entire future together. (Bitter, me? haha)

He has literallly never brought it up in our relationship, ever. And to my knowledge, he's been at least content being monogamous with me for the past 14 years. We've had a great time together, and there's always been a lot of joy in our relationship. It's hard to imagine him longing ot be something else underneath all of that, but maybe that's what was happening.

However, he does say that he always feels restless, and I do wonder if the polyamory thing is what he's restless for, but then I also think that's kind of BS.

He's totally a "grass is greener" type of guy. He's hated every job he's had — even the one he has now, which is his "dream job" — and always thought he'd be happy with the next career move. Same thing with the house and city we live in — "I'll be happy when we move to ___ or ___." You get the gist.

I think that, in his mind, having a girlfriend is what he needed to finally be happy. But to me, it really seems like it's just a symptom of his inability to smell the roses, so to speak, and to appreciate what he has in the moment.

Anyway, so I'm not sure if he's actually polyamorous or not. I have a feeling he's not, but that it sounded like the perfect way to explain away these feelings that he was feeling bad about and make them OK (i.e. I can't help it, this is just who I am). I'm not sure that he did this nefariously or intentionally.

I think that, under Other Woman's influence, who was in the early stages of exploring the question of whether she was polyamorous or not when they met, he probably genuinely thought he was polyamorous.

But here's the thing, in all of my research, I've learned that in order to actually be succesful in those relationships, you need to be committed to honesty and communication — two things that he's obviosly sorely lacking in. I think there's a difference between being able to love more than one person and being able to do so sucessfuly. I doubt that he could ever do the latter.

While I totally respect people who can succesfully navigate polyamorous relationships, I know myself enough to know that I am not one of them. This is not a journey I'll be going on with him, or likely anyone. I just couldn't do it. I'm selfish in life and in love haha.

And thank you, it does help to know that he likely didn't love her. I think the same thing, at least when I"m not at my worst haha. I think the added bonus of it being a secret relationship made the NRE that much stronger. Ugh, makes me want to puke.

Thank you for your thoughtful response!

Joanna, I don't know if you saw my signature, but I'm polyamorous myself. If I can help with anything specific, please feel free to ask here or PM.

The point that I just hope you do consider seriously is that I think that your husband is at a very high likelihood of cheating on you again, much higher than the "average" cheater, if there is one such. Especially the way you describe that yearning... he could very easily promise you the stars, and mean it- and only later realize he can't keep this promise. His words mean nothing- not only because he lied to you, but because if he feels he has changed in some way in the future, he won't want to keep it.

If you do decide to consider reconciling with him at some point in the future, I think you need to have your eyes wide open to the fact that this may happen again. Is that really something you want to have to worry about?

If he's such a "grass is greener" guy, what makes you believe that it won't come up again?

I don't normally post on threads where people have just found out, and I'm a big proponent of ethical nonmonogamy myself- but I feel that I need to caution you as strongly as possible because I have seen this before in so many of the lifestyle communities, especially BDSM and poly. People start to realize they have desires for alternative things, and either they're afraid to tell their spouses so they cheat, or they do tell and are directly refused, so they either cheat or feel like they have to divorce years down the road when it becomes unbearable to keep repressing part of themselves. In either case, they waste years being unhappy, and their spouses can't be happy either.

I would urge you in the strongest possible words to do some reading on this specific kind of cheating, where it's couched in language of wanting something different. I don't know your husband personally, but I would bet the farm on him not being a good candidate for longterm reconciliation.

I hope you at least consider what I'm saying. I know it's very easy to brush someone aside and think, well she doesn't know us, and you're right. But this situation? I've seen it over and over hundreds of times.

Please take care of yourself. One day at a time, however you proceed.

I'm sorry you find yourself here. I know how awful being betrayed feels.

What I read is that your H doesn't know himself, can't deal with his feelings, doesn't understand the ramifications of his feelings, doesn't remember memorable events, etc.

IMO, he needs help figuring out who he is and what he wants. That means IC/therapy to me, not MC.

MC treats the M. Your M didn't fail him; he failed your M and you.

What are you doing in MC?

If you're being taught how to communicate better, it's probably not going to help. If your MC is primarily confronting your H and guiding him into IC, it may be useful.

Right now it looks like your H is wrapped up in himself and in his pain - not only the guilt and shame of getting caught, but also, in all probability, a lifetime of pain that he has stuffed.

R is possible, but he has to get himself out of his self-absorption for him to become a good candidate for R.

I recommend drawing up your requirements for R and making therapy/IC one of them. If he's willing to meet your requirements and then actually satisfies them, he will earn back your trust. If he's unwilling, or if he doesn't deliver what he promises, you'll know.

Common reqs are:

Honesty - answers all questions, no more lies (about anything)

Transparency - keeps you informed of location, activities, and companions at basically all times; gives you access to all electronic media

NC - no contact with ap at all, reports any attempt at contact from ap to you, and together you decide how to deal with it

IC - for WS, and for BS if desired

MC - when either of you want it, but IC takes precedence when you're constrained by time or money.

I believe many (most?) of us who set requirements also have some individual reqs. For example, my W had to arrange weekly dates.

I recommend reading the following to get an idea of how a WS who is a good candidate for R behaves: https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=324250.

*****

To R, you have to heal yourself. Your H can give emotional support, but you can heal yourself with or without his help.

To R, your H has to heal himself.

To R, both of you work together to heal your M.

Right now, your H is continuing to hurt you and your M. I urge you to heal yourself. He's heading down the tubes; there's no need for you to go there with him.

[This message edited by sisoon at 10:08 AM, January 13th (Monday)]

PSTI

I very much appreciate it. I have a ton of questions about it and what it means for me and our relationship.

My main quesiton, though, is what do you think makes some actually "polyamorous."

My husband says he knows he poly because he had crushes on multiple people when he was younger. It seems oversimplified to me. Also, I've had not just crushes but actual feelings for more than one person, so by his logic, I'm poly too?

The thing is though, I have no drive to be in that kind of relationship. I can appreciate and love multiple people, but that doesn't mean that I want to divide my time or attention between them.

From what I've read, there's a poly spectrum. According to people on Reddit anyway, some people are more oriented to be polyamorous — the people who actually have a hard time staying in a monogamous relationship — and some just have the ability to love multiple people but can be content in a monogamous relationship or even just alone.

Do you agree with that? Do you think someone who is poly can be monogamous?

In the beginning, when I asked my husband about it, he told me he thought he was more oriented to be poly, but now he seems to have totally shut the door on it and says he doesn't want that anymore at all.

I'm not sure what to make of it, honestly, but we were succesfully monogamous for a long time, and I trust that we could be so again.

I very much apprecaite the warning though, and I am planning on bringing it up again with him tonight. At this point, I don't care if it hurts him to reopen the door and examine it; I need to know.

sisoon

Thank you! You're spot on about him not knowing himself or what he wants, and I do think individual therapy is the way to go to hopefully help him figure it out.

Yeah, we've been learning to communicate better in MC. Really, so far though, we've just been talking through everything about the affair with guidance from someone who can redirect us when things get too emotional or heated.

And he is wrapped up in his own experience right now, but he does feel bad when I'm the one who comforts him. It tears him apart though when I get upset about it too. It's all just incredibly painful and confusing, honestly.

I appreciate that list of requirements. I've had a hard time figuring out what I need to more forward, but that seems like a good place to start!

PSTI

I very much appreciate it. I have a ton of questions about it and what it means for me and our relationship.

My main quesiton, though, is what do you think makes some actually "polyamorous."

My husband says he knows he poly because he had crushes on multiple people when he was younger. It seems oversimplified to me. Also, I've had not just crushes but actual feelings for more than one person, so by his logic, I'm poly too?

The thing is though, I have no drive to be in that kind of relationship. I can appreciate and love multiple people, but that doesn't mean that I want to divide my time or attention between them.

From what I've read, there's a poly spectrum. According to people on Reddit anyway, some people are more oriented to be polyamorous — the people who actually have a hard time staying in a monogamous relationship — and some just have the ability to love multiple people but can be content in a monogamous relationship or even just alone.

Do you agree with that? Do you think someone who is poly can be monogamous?

In the beginning, when I asked my husband about it, he told me he thought he was more oriented to be poly, but now he seems to have totally shut the door on it and says he doesn't want that anymore at all.

I'm not sure what to make of it, honestly, but we were succesfully monogamous for a long time, and I trust that we could be so again.

I very much apprecaite the warning though, and I am planning on bringing it up again with him tonight. At this point, I don't care if it hurts him to reopen the door and examine it; I need to know.

Joanna, I think that being polyamorous as an identity just means that you are able to and desire to love more than one person deeply and romantically in a pair bonded sort of way. There is just a difference in emotional wiring- monogamous people tend to fall out of love with one partner when they fall for someone new and polyamorous people don't.

That's part of the reason I'm trying to caution you so strongly- because your husband's thought process "sounds" poly. He definitely did not BEHAVE in a poly way, though.

Just getting a crush or developing interest in someone? That's normal and it happens to everyone. Serious romantic interest? Less so. I'm pretty sure if you developed a crush in the past you found it affected how you felt about your current partner and you made a point of refocusing your attention. You probably didn't come home buzzing with romantic energy and then having it spill over onto your current partner, right?

There's nothing wrong with not wanting to have multiple relationships. It is in fact a lot of work, and openness and honesty and good communication are paramount above all. It sounds like your husband is not ready for any of that in the first place.

Do I think people who identify as poly can be mono? I think the answer to that lies in whether poly is a part of their identity, or just a relationship style they prefer. If it's part of their identity, if they're further down on the scale, then I don't think they are likely to be successful in a mono relationship. I believe it will keep coming up. If it's more of a thing that it's a want and not a need? Sure. I know lots of poly people who are currently in closed relationships. Just like I know lots of bisexual people who are in monogamous relationships.

Frankly, I wouldn't believe a word that comes out of your husband's mouth right now. Like I said, he can promise you the world, but if his feelings change, I suspect he will feel justified in saying, sorry but I don't feel that way anymore, I need this. Look at his behaviour through this whole thing. It sounds like he is very confused, so if he doesn't even know himself what he wants, how can you expect him to tell you?

I'm so sorry you're here, Joanna, but at the bottom line, you've been betrayed and gaslighted. Both your WH and OW knew that they were involved, and yet each of them treated you like a mental patient who was just imagining things until the truth couldn't be hidden anymore. And frankly, I'm not buying that there was no sexual relationship. Motive, means, opportunity. You'd most likely have to polygraph to get the truth. Make sure you get STD testing. Seriously, you wouldn't believe the number of cheaters who try to claim it was just an emotional affair and then it's discovered to be physical. Same is true about claims of condom use.

Please don't contort yourself into something you're not. There are good, honest, decent people in the world. Your WH isn't one of them. That's not to say he can't change and LEARN to be a better person. But you don't control that, you only control you.

You can put on your therapist's hat and try to unravel this guy's psyche, sublimate your own wants and needs in an effort to appease him... and he still might walk out anyway in the fullness of time, when some OW comes along who insists on MORE for herself or ends up pregnant. Why would you put yourself through all that when you can insist on MORE for yourself right now?

Please, please be true to YOU. When there's no one else in the world you can count on, be that one steadfast person for yourself. Decide what it is that you want for this, your one and only life, and accept nothing less.

((big hugs))

At the end of the day, you were never asked and you never agreed to a polyamorous relationship correct?

Monogamous spouse don’t sneak around and fall in love (and/ or have sex) with someone else behinds his/her spouse’s back.

I suspect (and PSTI can correct me) that a polyamorous person doesn’t go have EA/PA without their partners knowledge either.

So he can declare himself to be poly all he wants, it doesn’t matter. It’s moot, it’s irrelevant. He cheated on you, gaslighted you, you are understandably hurt and you need a way out of infidelity.

Are you contemplating R or D at this point? Because, right now, he’s not a safe spouse.

I suspect (and PSTI can correct me) that a polyamorous person doesn’t go have EA/PA without their partners knowledge either.

Shutterhappy, of course they don't. As I said in my first reply, polyamory is multiple ETHICAL romantic relationships.

PSTI,

Thank you for your response and for answering my question.

And I think you're right. When I had feelings for other people, it's not like I stopped loving my husband, but I definitely think I looked for things wrong with him maybe? I don't know, but I think you maybe it did change things.

However, he definitely didn't treat me like he still loved me during the affair. He has staunchly denied again and again that his feelings changed toward me, but he constantly acted annoyed that I was even there and definitely didn't treat me like he loved me at the time. Maybe that means he's not actually poly either. I don't know.

I brought it up to him tonight. He says that he thinks that he has the capacity to love more than just me but that that's not what he wants or needs. But I know you said not to trust him or believe anything he says. And it's hard to believe it, because when I asked him the same question before he said that it was a part of his identity.

I really do believe that he thought he was polyamorous because it made what he was feeling and thinking OK — or at least he could rationalize it to himself. Maybe I'm a fool. I don't know.

ChamomileTea,

Thank you for your rely. I'm fairly positive that no PA happened. I talked to OW's husband a few days after he read her journal, and he said that the journal said that they had an emotional affair, thought they were in love with each other, and then tried to just be friends and bring the spouses into the relationship because they didn't want to ruin their marriages.

I don't trust my husband, but OW is an idiot and wrote a lot about the relationship in the diary she didn't hide from her husband, and I have no reason to believe her husband would lie to me about it.

Your words were hard to read but definitely important to consider. Thank you!

ShutterHappy,

No, I absolutely never consented to be in a polyamorous relationship. We never even talked about it until he was already having an affair. That's never what we had, what we agreed on from the beginning, or what I ever wanted.

Yeah, I know that, even if he's poly by orientation, he's still a cheater, a liar, and, frankly, an asshole. If I thought otherwise, I wouldn't be here.

We're reconciling and trying to heal. I know that may make me weak or naive, but I also can't imagine my life without him. I know he screwed up, but I do believe that he loves me. I can't just throw that away.

I've never cheated but, like I said, I've had feelings. If I were feeling bad about myself, and some cute guy made that go away, I might make the same choices. I don't know, maybe not. But he made a mistake that he feels terribly about. I'm not ready to forgive him, but I'm not ready to irreversible change my life either.

Please refer to the duplicate thread in Just Found Out.