I’m 37, male, married, and bi. My wife did not know I was bi before these events took place. I've been married to the same woman for almost 15 years, two kids, house, all that.

A couple years ago we were vacationing/camping where the booze was cheap. One night we were sitting on the beach drinking/drunk and a random guy came up and asked if we minded if he went skinny dipping. We told him “go for it.” He then asked us to join him. We decided why not. We wound up back at his tent messing around, lots of touching, rubbing and sucking—which included me sucking him. The wife didn’t make an issue of it at the time and the next day (sober) I asked her if she would be cool with doing that again, and she said she would be. I told her that I’ve always been interested in experimenting with other men and she seemed to be alright with the idea as long as she was a part of it. That part was great for me, because not only was I interested in playing with other men, the idea of her in the mix was over the top for me.

Back home, several months later, I ask her if she is still willing to do this and she says she is so I start to set things up. Eventually we're looking through ads on Craigslist together and that becomes a bonding experience for us. We come to the point where we start to meet people, we meet a dozen or so guys, and about half a dozen times we have sex with the guys we meet, some great, some not so great, she liked some, I liked some, but we didn't seem to agree on which guys we liked. (By the way, you seem to be down on Craigslist, I have to say, none of the people we met through CL were creepy or weird. We were smart about things like meeting in a public place and maybe because it was the two of us we didn’t have issues, but I would say that CL is okay, you just have to be smart about it.) Then we meet a guy we both like, we all have sex and it is really good and that goes on for some time (meeting up once or twice a month), and we become friends. But that arrangement ended when he got a girlfriend. On to now...

I want to find someone new to join us, the wife does not want to look for a new person. She’s holding out for the old friend, hoping he’ll still want to fuck around with us sometime. Me, not fully getting what I want, go back to Craigslist. This time without her. First guy I meet up with for a “blow each other” ad, we blow each other (she hates to give bj’s) and for the first time ever in my life (I’m 37!) I come from a blow job. I meet him again and he fucks me (the second time ever I’ve been fucked). We meet again, and again, and by this time he’s fucking me and I start having the most incredible orgasms I’ve ever had in my life. During this whole time we're emailing and texting, and having some nice fun and sexy conversations. Then we start talking on the phone, we have a couple lunches together and even meet up at his place just to hang out (no sex). We have a lot in common and get along great. It’s been about two months now I really like him and I’m feeling really confused.

Back to the wife. She is not a full partner when it comes to being partners in life. She does not help with laundry, barely helps with cooking and dishes (usually picks it up after a big fight), and cleaning the house in general, but specifically the bathrooms, is not her thing. She puts it all on me. Once upon a time (aka before we were married) she was all over all this stuff, up early, cleaning, but once we were married it all went. She’s also gained a lot of weight. (The weight gain wouldn't bother me that much if she didn’t spend every waking moment parked on the couch with the remote in one hand and a fork in the other.) If she would have sex with me I could forgive all that, but she won’t have sex with me. She’ll text me at work with stuff like, “We’ve got to have sex today," and we’ll go back and forth a bit and it will be really hot and sexy, but by the time I get home she’s cold as ice. She won't have sex in the afternoon, or in the morning, only when she goes to bed. On my 35th b-day her gift to me was sex anytime I wanted it and she followed through for a good six months. We had sex every day at least once, usually two or three times a day. Yeah, that is a lot, but it made our relationship amazing. We were so close, enjoying each other and the little stuff didn’t matter so much, because the bond that sex created was unexplainable.

That faded and here we are. I am having more sex with this other guy that I also have more in common with than I do with my wife and I am becoming emotionally invested in this guy. At the same time she is falling into old patterns that ripped our relationship apart before. I thought the sex with this guy would just be sex, but its become more.

I am not “out” because I don’t want to hurt my family and I could live my life content in a monogamous relationship with my wife if she would be a wife and partner, but I am emotionally ready as a person
to be “out” to be in a relationship with this guy. I do love my wife, but at the same time life is short and we should be working toward happiness, not accepting misery. What do you think?

Basically Into Terminating The Endless Routine

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Whoa—long, long letter there, BITTER. My response is going to be contrastingly brief and beery (I'm knocking 'em back on the train to DC):

If you wanna leave your wife for this guy, BITTER, go ahead and leave your wife for this guy. Yeah, she's got her faults—a long list of faults (lazy, fat, slob, lazy, fat, slob)—but her faults don't seem to have bothered you all that much over the last 15+ years. I mean, if her housekeeping, couchsquatting, and forkholding were so intolerable, why didn't you leave her years ago?

Because years ago you didn't have a boyfriend, because years ago your children were small, because years ago you were closeted.*

Look, BITTER, it seems to me that your wife responds favorably to novelty. That sex-on-demand game, that one impromptu threesome with a skinny-dipping stranger, her husband's bisexuality (revealed after 15+ years together!), trawling the Internet for sex—each one of those things got her juices flowing for a time. (And one of those things—her husband's bisexuality—was a real bombshell.) So before you leave her, BITTER, before you bust up the only home your kids have ever known, I think you should march into your filthy living room, gently remove the greasy remote from your wife's pudgy fingers, turn off the TV set, kiss her on the forehead, and tell her you love her. Then ask if she'd be up for an open relationship—you know, the kind of relationship that would allow you to have a boyfriend and your wife-and-kids too. It's also the kind of relationship that would allow her, perhaps, to pursue things with Mr. Once Or Twice a Month Until He Got a Girlfriend, a man I suspect your wife has feelings for, should he pop back on the market.

I hear you, BITTER, I hear you: if my husband was a hot-and-cold running slob who let himself go and expected me to do all the housework (as opposed to 80% of it), I would be thinking about leaving him. But it sounds to me like you're actually pretty fond of your wife. It sounds to me like you're attracted to her still, you enjoy being sexual with her, and she sounds like an indulgent, understanding, and completely game sex partner, like someone you shouldn't be anxious to throw away.

I'm thinking you can have your indulgent, sexually-adventurous wife, your home and family, and your boyfriend too, BITTER. It's worth a shot.

*You don't mention any faults of your own, BITTER, but I spotted one: your failure to disclose your sexual orientation to your spouse before you married her. That's a biggie.