She Wants an Open Relationship — and I Think I Know Why

We’ve been together 8 years, and the sex dropped off about a year and a half ago when I went on anti-depressants. I ended up switching anti-depressants and now my sex drive is back, but our sex life isn’t. my appearance has changed a lot over the past few years and i think she’s just not attracted to me anymore.

and now, she wants an open relationship.

her best friend is in a newly polyamorous relationship and having the time of her life and won’t stop talking about it, so surprise surprise, now my partner wants to “explore.” i have genuinely considered being poly for myself in past relationships. this is not a philosophical objection.

my partner says flirting with other people will reignite our spark and get our sex life going again, like it did for her friend in a sexless relationship. she swears she’s still attracted to me, that we’ve just gotten into a routine, we have stress from work, et cetera. i’m so afraid that she’ll feel for other people what she just can’t feel with me anymore.

i don’t know what to do, or how to stop this train from leaving the station. should i agree to a ‘trial period’ to see how it goes?

Valerie: I am no expert by any means, but I can’t imagine going into an open relationship without enthusiastic consent from both parties would end very well. You “giving in” to a trial period would likely result in exactly what you’re afraid of – her having sex with other people when you two haven’t rekindled your own sex life yet, and you resenting that. It doesn’t seem like a good idea. My recommendation would be to work on your own sex life first – either going to a couples’ therapist or even sex therapist, trying new things that don’t involve other people, etc – before you consider opening things up. And if that doesn’t seem like something she’s interested in, it might be time to discuss if the relationship is the right fit for you both. Like you said, you have been open to poly in the past, and I think if you wanted to be poly or open with this person it would have come up long before 8 years in. I don’t think opening the relationship (since it sounds very much like you’re not interested in it) will do anything to help, and that only conversation and working things out together will. If you guys rekindle your sex life a bit and then BOTH decide you do want to open things up, it could definitely be an option, but I don’t think it’s going to be the solution to your current problems your partner is selling it to be.

Summer: The first rule of polyamory is consent plus communication leads to good times.

The second rule of polyamory is that polyamory will never, ever fix an ailing relationship. Just like those couples who had a rocky relationship and decided a baby will fix things. It ain’t gonna work.

Your partner definitely wants to open up the relationship. I mean, that’s why she brought it up right and is explaining that it will Make Things Better in the relationship. I’m not going to make value judgments about her, but what I will say is that relationships that drag people into polyamory don’t go well. You can talk this out further or attempt a trial run on polyamory, or take any other option. All I’ll say is that I see plenty of warning signs and no assurances flowing toward you.

Ashni: I’m hearing a lot about what your partner wants, but what do you want? You said that you don’t know how to stop the train from leaving the station, but you’re just as much the conductor. Don’t be in an open relationship unless you actively want to be! If your sex life is already fraught, introducing new, unknown variables will almost definitely make things more complicated. Your relationship isn’t exactly the same as your partner’s best friend’s relationship, so there’s no guarantee opening will have the same results. Open relationships aren’t a silver bullet for bed death (speaking from experience here). Obviously, I’d love to be wrong, I’d love if this went perfectly for y’all, but I can’t help but wonder if there are ways you could reignite the spark together before introducing others into the mix.

That said, if you’re really keen on doing the trial period, especially given that you’ve considered polyamory in the past, a couple questions to keep in mind: What happens if only one of you goes on a date during the trial period? Does the period still end? What’s within bounds? How much do you two want to disclose to each other? What happens if one of you wants to continue the trial period, and the other doesn’t? How will you navigate jealousy? Communication and trust are going to be paramount if you do decide to open, but again, I really don’t think it’s the right fit for right now.

I was married to my girlfriend 8 years ago. We had a long distance relationship at first for 18 months. Then she got pregnant (planned to be a single mom by choice.) I proposed, and was so excited to be her blended family. We got married and were so happy with one another, feeling a once in a lifetime connection. I was all in! She moved from out state, so didn’t have her family and friends postpartum. Before our baby was born, we moved in together and we were doing a great job of getting to know one another better, and were talking a lot and connecting on emotional, mental and spiritual levels. Then she got severe post-partum OCD and depression, and completely shut me out. I took maternity leave to help out, but she was very fearful he would hit his head, and she wouldn’t let me near him without hours of reassurance. I was so worried about her, begged her to get therapy and psychiatric treatment. She refused and became fixated on how little support she had from her family and friends, and when we talked about it, she said she needed to go and stay with her family to recover. Her family and friends were 12h away by plane. I just wanted her to be happy and healthy, so agreed to her staying with them for 3-6 months. She wouldn’t (couldn’t) commit to a return flight. I didn’t want to push her, and stress her out anymore, so dropped her off at the airport 3 months post parum. I’m a very intuitive person, and knew she wasn’t coming back. We talked daily on the phone while i working full time and was a single parent to my 12 & 4yo kids. I was devastated that she left. My kids and I were both confused about why she left and wouldn’t set a return date. I told her it was hard on the kids not having clarity. While we talked it became clear she had a reaction postpartum to one thing I did (I have head injury migraines and there wasn’t a bed I could sleep in the hospital, so I went home and slept 4h in my bed and returned right away. She felt I abandoned her, and started to mistrust me. She didn’t tell me this until 7 months later.) As we talked, we tried very hard to problem solve the distance. She let me 6 months down the road that she needed to live around her family. I understood, but had purchased a home, and a child in middle school. I didn’t want move my kids at the time and asked her if we could be long distance again until my oldest was at a better point in school to potentially move. I was very open to selling my home and moving to be with her. I was concerned that she had a tendency to make me the enemy when stressed, and that when I brought the move up she said “maybe that would work if we lived in different houses near one another and could date.” I was so thrown by this, because we were married, and she wanted me to move closer but didn’t want to live together. I didn’t want to make any big decisions while she was postpartum. I asked her if we could check in monthly and problem solve. She said she didn’t see the point. She broke up with me because she said she didn’t want to be long distance while we figured things out. I am still devastated and completely heartbroken still. My oldest is now in college, and my job is 100% virtual. I moved to her state with hope of rekindling our relationship at some point. (I really like the area and have family here too.) I reached out to let her know I was in the area. She said “I’m in a committed relationship and neither of us talk to our exes out of respect for our partnership.” I am willing to wait, but feel sad and miss her every day. I don’t know what to do at this point. I have had 1 other long term girlfriend of 3 years, but I didn’t love her in the same way and we broke up due to this & other differences. Im not sure what to do at this point.

Summer: I… wow. Your experience is above my paygrade, but I can say what comes to my mind first: It’s probably over and you need to start grieving for the end, not wishing for past joys.

As an outsider looking in, your now-ex wife seemed to be a deeply unstable presence in your life and the addition of children from both sides didn’t make it easier. With such a long gap in time and connection, it’s normal for her to start a ‘new’ life. She ended your relationship and set a communications boundary. That should be a clear sign that this can’t proceed. It can’t proceed if you want what’s best for her (she understands her own needs when she turned you away). Given your children’s past interactions with her, I also don’t know if it’ll be good if their caregiver is pining for a lost love who was not always a stable presence during childhood.

Everything you’ve outlined here—the narrative, the timeline, your feelings, your experiences, the impact… it’s something that should go to a stable voice. Like a counsellor or therapist. I hope that kind of aid is available to you, because I think it’s warranted. Given the length and depth of these emotions – not all negative, I’m sure – I can’t recommend pursuing someone who has made it clear that they’ve moved on. Given the behavior you outlined while you were together, it’s difficult for me to understand why she’d mistreat you so much in the first place. Please don’t tread toward her.

Valerie: As Summer said, and as hard as this will be to hear, it’s time to move on. Do whatever it takes to do it, but this person is in your past now and there’s no two ways about it. I know you said you’re willing to “wait” but there’s nothing to wait for, she made her intentions clear and there’s no going back to her now. (And based on everything you shared, I don’t think it would be a good idea anyway.) I agree that a therapist would definitely help, so that you can get to a better place and maybe someday start dating again. Just because your last long-term relationship wasn’t quite right in the end doesn’t mean there’s not still someone out there for you, if you want that. But if you want to find them, you have to heal yourself first, let yourself mourn the relationship truly, acknowledging its true ending vs just a long pause, and figure out how to be happy now, in the post-her world in which you now firmly live.

Riese: I know how frustrating it is to feel like you had something so amazing going with this person, that it was real soulmate shit, only to lose it all through her post-partum OCD and distance — this sequence of events, I think, enables you to feel this sense of if only, that if only that hadn’t happened, this thing that wasn’t your fault or her fault, really, that you would still be together. That if you lived somewhere else, maybe, none of this would have happened.

I think what makes a relationship work is not just who we are to each other during the good times, but who we are through the bad times, too. This story really turned for me into “there’s no coming back from this” territory when she claimed, many months in, that her issues with you stemmed from you having a very real and valid reason to leave the hospital for four hours. You also say she has a pattern of making you the enemy when stressed that continued consistently, which is a really unhealthy place for you to be mentally. You could potentially spend the rest of your life worrying that one non-malicious choice you make for yourself could blow up your entire life and relationship forever again. You can’t do that. It’s not good for you. Even if she wanted you back, I don’t think there’s any way for you to be in this relationship without driving yourself crazy.

As a very mentally ill person who has dated, almost exclusively, other people with mental health diagnoses — of course we aren’t necessarily our best selves to our partners during those periods of unwellness. But more often than not, relationships worth holding onto can make it through those periods together, or if the illness is so extreme that a split is necessary, can find their way back to each other afterwards. Within reason, of course— I know there are exceptions to this, which I have experienced, where a split might never be reconciled despite it being nobody’s fault, which is tragic and sad in and of itself, but no less final.

Now she’s moved on and is with someone else, and the best thing you can do for yourself is move on too, I promise! She’s not the right person for you.