Sorry if this is really long/too similar to my previous post. But I'm hoping that writing down the specifics of what's happening in more detail might help me figure out what I actually want/need to do. I recently came out to my husband as lesbian. But now I'm in a weird spot as of like two days ago, well more weird than when I came out. Prior to getting married we had agreed upon an openish marriage. I've mentioned crushes I've had on women in the past to him and made out with other women occasionally. But it has come to my attention that he is ok with me having and acting on physical attraction (at least in so far as "drunk" make outs go) but not on emotional attraction. So random making out is ok while going on a date is not. We have talked about our relationship and how to go forward a lot in the last few days. He described some possible options and I asked for time to think about them because I feel so uncertain about what really is the right course of action for me. I have told him that I am not interested in sex with him at this time and then he suggested that I think about maybe doing more adventurous sexual things with him (which to be fair we have gotten into a rut lately) and see if that helps. He also asked that I consider an open relationship where I could potentially have casual relationships with women. I am thinking about it now. And honestly it sounds awful. All of it. I don't want to have sex with men. I'm not sure I really even ever wanted to despite identifying as bi for like 10 years. And I can't really see either of us being happy with our primary partnership bing totally without a sexual component. But I'm a little afraid that part of this is just that I have a crush/attraction to a female friend and she's also interested in me (we made out at a friend's party for.... a really long time and it was amazing... like I'm actually struggling for words to describe how great that was). I worry that I would be leaving him to peruse her which for some reason feels icky to me and that then some time in the future I would realize I made a terrible mistake and made 3 or more people miserable when I could have just stayed quiet and been the only person unhappy. And I feel awful because it seems like now he's trying really hard to be a good partner. He cleaned the whole house while I was away on Saturday and he just joined a gym, which he's been saying he wanted to do for at least a year now, despite the gym being literally walking distance from our house. I feel like such an awful person for leaving someone who is trying to be a good partner. Any advice would be really appreciated. Thanks.
Hey RollerWolf, From your description, it sounds like you are extremely unhappy with even the idea of remaining in your marriage and that it is holding you back. In fact, other women may tend to shy away from even casual relationships with you because of the fact that you are married. Your husband sounds like he's trying to do everything possible to maintain the marriage and he may be somewhat in denial about your sexuality. Is it fair to either of you to remain in this unhappy limbo? Only the two of you can decide that. Have you tried couples counseling in order to get a third-party objective input to help the two of you figure this out?
I have no advice, I wish I did. But you're not alone. My husband asked if I wanted to "explore" but I couldn't do that. There's no way I could without getting emotionally entangled. I'm not built that way. At the same time I don't want to sleep with him. At all. It's a tough situation. He seems to be of the mindset now that if we do more exciting stuff (mainly doing stuff he thinks lesbians enjoy totally ignoring the fact that everyone is different and I'm not even attracted to him anyway) our marriage will somehow get better. It's not that simple. Anyway, you're not alone.
I have no answers for you either. Similar situation with my husband, and with what you are feeling. You are not alone, none of us here are. We just didn't know it because no one talks about it.
