How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. It’s anonymous!
Dear How to Do It,
My wife and I have been married for 11 years, together for 14, and we have two kids. I thought everything in our marriage was fine, but two days ago she made an announcement that left me reeling.
She suddenly said she has been sexually dissatisfied for the past seven years—and my options are either to allow her to open the marriage or to end it. My pleas for us to attend couples’ therapy have been brushed off. What can I do?
—Stunned Spouse
Dear Stunned Spouse,
Well, it seems like you can agree to the open marriage or end it. That sounds like an ultimatum to me. What’s disturbing about the situation is its surprise—it sounds like your wife gave you little indication that she was dissatisfied or interested in an open relationship. Usually, we’d expect some amount of conversation leading up to this fork in the road that she has presented. This sounds pretty rough on her part, but in fairness to her, consider why she may have dropped this on you. Are you closed off or unwilling to talk about difficult things? Does she have any reason to feel that she wouldn’t be heard unless she resorted to such a drastic measure? Did she try to talk to you, and you just weren’t hearing her?
I would try to retrofit these kind of conversations/negotiations in. This may involve concessions on your part. Maybe that looks like you telling her you’re open to ethical non-monogamy, but only if you can attend couples therapy while doing do. One for her, one for you. But you should know that if she hasn’t been communicative about her sexual issues and interest in exploring other partners, that doesn’t really bode well for the open relationship. Healthy open relationships typically require communication and adjusting, as you feel your way through and learn what works and what makes you uncomfortable. This is not a relationship setting to flick on and forget. It seems like at least part of her doesn’t want to end your relationship as is right now, so hopefully she’ll be open to working on this with you. If she wants to take the same hands-off approach that she apparently did when getting to this point, and she does not want to work with you on this at all, what can you do? You can’t work with someone who won’t work with you. I think in that case she’d be making the decision for you and effectively ending the relationship.
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