minoanmiss: Nubian girl with dubious facial expression (dubious Nubian girl)
minoanmiss ([personal profile] minoanmiss) wrote in [community profile] agonyaunt2021-11-09 03:32 pm

How To Do It: I Made a Sex Suggestion to My Wife. I’ve Made a Very Big Mistake.



I made a sex suggestion that didn’t go over well with my wife, and now I’m trying to figure out how walk it back. My wife and I have been married for 12 years. During the height of the pandemic, we were both working from home, teaching our kids “school” from home, and it felt like we never even breathed separate air. It was exhausting, and at the end of the day, the idea of sex with her seemed like just more of the same. I wanted privacy.

We went through a dry spell where I masturbated a lot instead, using porn and fantasies to get off. During that time, I thought a lot about other women, mostly as novelty, although I never crossed any lines. As our jobs went back to normal, my wife confronted me about our dry spell, and I explained that we’d been cooped up together too much, and that I wanted to explore casually with other women, perhaps opening our marriage. She lost it, and jumped directly to “if you want to have sex with other women, we should get a divorce.” It’s been several weeks of icy behavior, and now I realize that I would rather have this marriage (with enough space to breathe, not like the pandemic) than more variety of sexual options, but I have no idea how to tell her this in a way that she’d believe.

—Oops


Stoya: This is a case of very poor timing.

Rich: It’s hard enough to undo socialization that holds up monogamy as the ideal, so this case shows how important packaging can be.

Stoya: And I don’t know any person who would take having “We’ve hit a dry spell” met with “that’s because I want to have sex with other women” well.

Rich: Totally. This conversation is best introduced when things are good or at least consistent in that realm with one’s partner.

Stoya: 100 percent agreed. And when there’s time to speak privately and dig into complicated stuff where people might have strong reactions—when everyone is well rested, well fed and hydrated, and generally in balance, not after we’ve all lived through the stress of a pandemic and things have already become strained.

Rich: I think something our writer failed to take into account his the wife’s own frustration with her own pandemic stress and lack of sex. So our writer just kind of tried her at a really bad point.

Stoya: It’s possible that instead of, “We’d been cooped up together too much, and that I wanted to explore casually with other women,” she heard: “I’m tired of you and want other people.” And I don’t fault her for that.


How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. It’s anonymous!

Every week, the team answers an extra question in chat form.

Dear How to Do It,

I made a sex suggestion that didn’t go over well with my wife, and now I’m trying to figure out how walk it back. My wife and I have been married for 12 years. During the height of the pandemic, we were both working from home, teaching our kids “school” from home, and it felt like we never even breathed separate air. It was exhausting, and at the end of the day, the idea of sex with her seemed like just more of the same. I wanted privacy.

We went through a dry spell where I masturbated a lot instead, using porn and fantasies to get off. During that time, I thought a lot about other women, mostly as novelty, although I never crossed any lines. As our jobs went back to normal, my wife confronted me about our dry spell, and I explained that we’d been cooped up together too much, and that I wanted to explore casually with other women, perhaps opening our marriage. She lost it, and jumped directly to “if you want to have sex with other women, we should get a divorce.” It’s been several weeks of icy behavior, and now I realize that I would rather have this marriage (with enough space to breathe, not like the pandemic) than more variety of sexual options, but I have no idea how to tell her this in a way that she’d believe.

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—Oops

Stoya: This is a case of very poor timing.

Rich: It’s hard enough to undo socialization that holds up monogamy as the ideal, so this case shows how important packaging can be.

Stoya: And I don’t know any person who would take having “We’ve hit a dry spell” met with “that’s because I want to have sex with other women” well.

Rich: Totally. This conversation is best introduced when things are good or at least consistent in that realm with one’s partner.

Stoya: 100 percent agreed. And when there’s time to speak privately and dig into complicated stuff where people might have strong reactions—when everyone is well rested, well fed and hydrated, and generally in balance, not after we’ve all lived through the stress of a pandemic and things have already become strained.

Rich: I think something our writer failed to take into account his the wife’s own frustration with her own pandemic stress and lack of sex. So our writer just kind of tried her at a really bad point.

Stoya: It’s possible that instead of, “We’d been cooped up together too much, and that I wanted to explore casually with other women,” she heard: “I’m tired of you and want other people.” And I don’t fault her for that.

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VIEW TRANSCRIPT
Rich: Conveying the concept of retaining love for a person while being open to sex with others is often tough when the feeling isn’t mutual. What do you think is the path forward for our writer?

Stoya: I’m not super motivated to be gentle with oblivious men. Maybe it’s the clinical PMS, maybe my patience is wearing thin. My assessment is that if he has a chance of fixing this, he’s going to have to prove, over and over, that he values this marriage.

To start, one thing he can do is craft and deliver an actual apology. Here’s a checklist: What you did, the harm it caused, concrete actions you will take to repair the situation and prevent reoccurrence.

Rich: I agree. I think this is a matter of showing and not telling. He can revisit their conversation by affirming his commitment, and that he doesn’t want to get a divorce, and then he’s going to have to prove it.

Stoya: But not like, prove it for a week. Prove it over and over again. Opening up the relationship is a dream he’s going to have to let go of for a long time, likely measured in years.

Rich: One thing harder than convincing someone that you love that sex with other people will not affect your relationship is rebuilding trust. He has a lot of work to do.

I think it’s also important to note that our writer wasn’t thinking about what was going on in his wife’s head at the time and her various pandemic-related issues, and that he is now considering her. That’s a start. Now he has to show his work.
gingicat: deep purple lilacs, some buds, some open (Default)

[personal profile] gingicat 2021-11-09 10:07 pm (UTC)(link)
I can think of several (mostly male) local polyamorous folks who do not take either piece of your advice.
laurajv: Holmes & Watson's car is as cool as Batman's (Default)

[personal profile] laurajv 2021-11-11 11:25 pm (UTC)(link)
honestly with fuckboys some books are best administered internally
kshandra: A cross-stitch sampler in a gilt frame, plainly stating "FUCK CANCER" (Default)

[personal profile] kshandra 2021-11-09 11:24 pm (UTC)(link)
(and now I miss my "polyamory bingo" userpic from the halcyon days of LJ...)
bikergeek: cartoon bald guy with a half-smile (Default)

[personal profile] bikergeek 2021-11-10 01:15 am (UTC)(link)
"Relationship broken, add more people"
kshandra: A cross-stitch sampler in a gilt frame, plainly stating "FUCK CANCER" (Default)

[personal profile] kshandra 2021-11-10 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
*dingdingding!*
bikergeek: cartoon bald guy with a half-smile (Default)

[personal profile] bikergeek 2021-11-10 01:19 am (UTC)(link)
I so miss dot_poly_snark.

Strangely, there's a nonpoly variant of the "Relationship broken, add more people" square where a couple thinks that having a baby together will fix their relationship.
kshandra: A cross-stitch sampler in a gilt frame, plainly stating "FUCK CANCER" (Default)

[personal profile] kshandra 2021-11-10 01:33 am (UTC)(link)
The bingo card had "relationship broken, make more people" as well.
bikergeek: cartoon bald guy with a half-smile (Default)

[personal profile] bikergeek 2021-11-10 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
Heh, I'd forgotten that one.
fred_mouse: line drawing of sheep coloured in queer flag colours with dream bubble reading 'dreamwidth' (Default)

[personal profile] fred_mouse 2021-11-10 10:58 am (UTC)(link)

I was wondering whether that topic was going to come up, because I've seen that dynamic more than once.

leeshajoy: (Default)

[personal profile] leeshajoy 2021-11-10 04:14 pm (UTC)(link)
There's also the extremely common single-person variant. Acquiring a partner will not fix your broken relationship with yourself.
movingfinger: (Default)

[personal profile] movingfinger 2021-11-09 11:17 pm (UTC)(link)
It's not clear from the letter that the OP actually wants an open relationship. Rather, it sounds as though he was lashing out after focusing on porn and masturbation fantasies ("During that time, I thought a lot about other women, mostly as novelty, although I never crossed any lines." --Apart from the emotional affair possibility, which the advisors don't touch on.)

He must work hard on building trust back, yes, and I think that the next thing he says after his apology should be that he wants to go into marriage counseling solo and with her to improve their communication. In daily life, he needs to 110% visibly commit himself to their family and start centering his thoughts and emotions on his real, present wife. However---when the letter was written, it had already been "several weeks" and this situation does not improve with time. His wife has had that time to think about it, to consider the possibility of life without him, and to look for advice of her own.
cereta: River Song (River)

[personal profile] cereta 2021-11-12 12:05 am (UTC)(link)
Your first sentence was my exact thought. I don't know what LW means by "with more space to breathe," but in context, it sounds like "less doing everything together" not "adding more people."
xenacryst: "My fandom has threesomes" - White Collar - Neal, Peter, and El around a table (White Collar: threesome)

[personal profile] xenacryst 2021-11-10 12:56 am (UTC)(link)
From the playlist of "How not to introduce the concept of polyamory, top hits" ...
xenacryst: Peanuts charactor looking ... (Peanuts: quizzical me)

[personal profile] xenacryst 2021-11-10 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I question LW's commitment to sparkle motion. Specifically the comment of "it's been several weeks" and "now I realize." That doesn't sound like someone who started out secure in their relationship. If LW went from essentially a marriage ultimatum to several weeks of pondering, LW is either pathologically introspective or they were starting from a place of "well, maybe divorce is a good idea, who knew!" And if those intervening weeks were simply them thinking in the shower rather than, say, real conversations with their spouse or talking to a therapist, I'm not sure that counts as the kind of self reflection that I would want to see in a spouse. Maybe LW does believe that they want to save the marriage, but I really don't see any external evidence of that. Notably, as others have said, I see no evidence whatsoever that LW has even considered that their spouse has their own feelings on the matter, much less care that they tromped all over those feelings wearing big stompy ass boots.