Room to Breathe, Space to Grow

In a marriage, you tend to not have room to breathe and space to grow.

My big growth experiences in relationships were all men I never actually met in the flesh who lived extremely far away.

And I probably shouldn't try to write about it. No one ever understands and it comes back to bite me in the ass.

Years and years ago, I read an article where a woman was in an open relationship and had a fight with her boyfriend where she said something like "What do you care if I'm NOT sleeping around casually like you?"

I had some very long distance relationships that were nominally open relationships because we never met. It made no sense to claim it was an exclusive, committed, monogamous relationship. 

This would have never happened in the flesh. There are serious germ control issues and financial costs and social consequences.

And it gave me maneuvering room to figure out what I need. And one by one, I stopped talking to other men until there was one man left and after years of feeling like damaged goods and incapable of being faithful, I understood that if my needs were met, I could be faithful by choice and not want anyone else rather than feeling like monogamy was a prison or gun to my head and nothing satisfactory. 

And it ended up being a little like that article where she was free to see other people but didn't want to, minus the part where some idiot boyfriend is upset that she's not sleeping around like he is.

So think about that. Pretend it's a Buddhist koan.

The only thing I can suggest is work on communication because I have yet to meet anyone who can readily understand the concept that "I don't really care what you do while we are not physically together so long as 1. You aren't hurting me and 2. You are taking care of my needs." Much less "I don't really want to see other people and you will be the only one for me IF you meet my needs, but understand that so long as you don't belong to me, I don't belong to you. I'm not your property and I can see others, I just would rather not."

Because people have these bizarre ideas that x, y and z all go together and can't be separated and also both people must be getting the exact same thing out of the relationship.

Most people aren't getting the exact same thing out of the relationship. In a heterosexual marriage, he's typically the primary breadwinner and she's responsible for the women's work. They have different roles and take care of different things but then you discuss sex or whatever and suddenly LA LA LA not listening! Don't confuse people with the facts.

Get some negotiation books. A fundamental point of negotiating is that value is found in your differences.

Last, start with some ground rules similar to brainstorming that we can TALK about ANYTHING and that does NOT mean acting on it. 

Brainstorming works like this.

Step one: Everyone tosses out whatever pops into their mind, no matter how zany and someone writes it down without judging it.

Step two: You evaluate the ideas, weed out the bad ones and edit it.

So in step one you may say "God, I would like to stick my teenaged daughter on a rocket to the MOON. I'm so done with her!" And in step two that becomes "I'm sticking her on a bus to my sister's house for the weekend to give us a break from each other."

I've seen online discussions where the wife says something like "Yeah, he's attractive." and the husband leaps to "So you're saying you want an open relationship and permission to have an affair?????????"

Uh, dude, get a grip. She said no such thing. Maybe if you weren't such a spaz she was trying to say "I would like you to grow a beard. THAT'S HOT!"

Married couples seem to generally be truly pathetic at talking about FEELINGS because both parties live in absolute terror this will have CONSEQUENCES.

If you are AMAB and have a wife and hope to both transition and KEEP her, this is the problem you need to solve.

How? I don't know. I divorced the butthead I couldn't communicate with for 22 miserable years.