I’m hoping for opinions from both sides on this, but we’ll see.
In this situation, a spouse (Spouse A) has developed a deep friendship with someone that inadvertently turned into an affair (the sex was technically allowed, but falling in love was not). The marriage has been turned upside down as a result (there were many problems in the marriage before, most caused by Spouse B, but the affair caused everything to blow up), and the two spouses are now separated, but trying very hard to put things back together.
Spouse A has promised sincerely to leave behind the sex with 3rd party. However, the friendship with that party remains very important. The 3rd party, oddly enough, was cheated on before, and the spouse who had the affair finds the counsel of the 3rd party very important and useful for perspective. In addition, Spouse A enjoys activities with the 3rd party that Spouse B doesn’t have any interest in.
Spouse B has agreed not to stand in the way of Spouse A’s friendship under the understanding that Spouse A can rein in any feelings of being in love and simply enjoy the friendship and counsel of the 3rd party. But Spouse B still expresses disbelief that such a reining in is possible, and doubts Spouse A’s ability to honestly evaluate Spouse A’s emotions and capabilities at this time.
So my question to you is, is this a circumstance where it is possible for Spouse A to maintain a friendship with the 3rd party without doing further, and possibly irreparable damage to the marriage?
No, absolutely not. It is possible that years later, after the marriage has been patched up, they may meet again, and be friends, but there should be an absolute cut-off while they are trying to patch up the relationship.
I think that if you’re talking about the type of marriage where sex with a 3rd party can be “technically allowed,” you really have to explain the context. It’s like one of **Skald the Rhymer’s **science fiction hypotheticals to most married people. It’s as foreign to me as if you were asking how I thought it would work in Saudia Arabia. Under what terms are they polyamorous?
I’m confused. If they are broken up, and there were problems with the spouse then why not simply go for the affair and build a relationship with that person?
The two spouses agreed to an open marriage a while back, meaning that each were allowed to pursue sex outside of the marriage. However, both spouses were novices and very naive about it. They didn’t understand that it was a mistake to pursue open marriage as a solution to the marital problems they were having. Spouse B had zero interest in open marriage to begin with, but went along with it because of the knowledge that Spouse A was unhappy with their sex life. And both spouses failed to create a solid set of ground rules for the terms of the open marriage.
Both spouses walked away from the agreement with different ideas of what would happen. Spouse A felt the agreement was to be able to pursue sex outside of the marriage without any restriction other than that Spouse B was not to know about it. Spouse B thought that Spouse A could go out and experiment and not tell Spouse B about it, but that if Spouse A wanted further such relationships, then perhaps the two spouses would have to come together and discuss what it meant for the marriage.
Does a divorce irreparable damage a marriage? Or, in other words what was the purpose of the marriage?
I knew this man who bought his wife a house next door and moved his wife and kids there because they clashed all the time over almost everything.
After the kids went to university she divorced him and remarried. When I met him they still lived next door to on another, still had a joint bank account, still entertained the now adult kids together.
The problems are out in the open now, whereas they weren’t before. And both spouses believe they are problems that can be addressed and fixed to the point where both spouses can truly be happy together.
As for the affair, Spouse A enjoys the time with the 3rd party, but doesn’t believe that that relationship would be romantically fulfilling on any kind of long-term basis. In fact, the 3rd party has been heavily encouraging Spouse A to work things out with Spouse B because that’s what seems most likely to make Spouse A happy in the long term.
Based on this single sentence, they should really just get a divorce. A polyamorous relationship where one person is perceived to be the cause of problems and unhappiness and the other one is falling in love and having sex with someone else is, in a word, a mess. I’m guessing they’d both be better off in the long run if they saw the writing on the wall and split up now.
But, if they do want to save it, Spouse A can’t continue the “deep friendship” with Friend C.
Also, I know you’re trying to frame this as a hypothetical to get more impartial advice, but you’re really, really obviously Spouse A in this scenario so it’d probably be easier (and you’d get better advice) if you just dropped all the Spouse A stuff and said “I” instead. Just my humble opinion.
I don’t understand why the two spouses are trying to make things worse. it sounds like the relationship was falling apart even before the introduction of The Friend and the attempt at an open marriage. If the relationship is worth saving despite the various issues, then Spouse A should dump the friend. If Spouse A is not willing to make that sort of sacrifice for the sake of a marriage, then I would doubt Spouse A is really committed to fixing things.
Hmm… call me old fashioned and unreasonable and irrational and all, but no, you don’t get to continue to hang out with the person you cheated on me with while we “work on” our marriage. I’m a bitch like that.
No. That person has to be completely off this couple’s radar for a long, long time if you hope for the rebuilding of the marriage. Plenty of fish in the sea, such a “friend” is not indispensable, if he/she is really a friend at all.
As for the spouse who is contemplating keeping a friendship with an ex-lover while mending fences with a spouse, he/she is not realistic and wants to keep the cake (have your cake and eat it too?).
You have it backwards, friend. I’m Spouse B. And I’m not just saying that; there are those here who know me, as well as another thread I started a few weeks back that would make that pretty clear.
So basically, A upset B, not by having sex with 3rd Party, but by falling in love with 3rd. A now wants to remedy the situation by ceasing the not-upsetting thing (having sex with 3rd) but still maintaining the upsetting thing (the relationship with 3rd). And the reason A wants so badly to maintain the relationship with 3rd is that it provides A some important things that are lacking from the relationship with B.
Yeah, that’s not going to work.
My perspective: Spouse B agreed to an open marriage without especially wanting to (the “don’t tell me” clause seems to often end badly). Spouse A then had sex with someone that s/he had a deep emotional bond with. Spouse B feels replaced in every possible way.
1.) Spouse A may very well be fooling him/herself into thinking that they can keep their feelings for 3rd party on a leash. Even if no infidelity occurs, the emotional connection of the 3rd party can compete with Spouse B.
2.) Spouse B may believe 1 even if it’s not true.
If putting the marriage back together is priority 1, then the 3rd party needs to be much less available. Think of it as a cooling off period or whatever. I’d say that the friendship is possible, but that it needs to be put on hold.
Heh. Started typing, but exactly what Heart of Dorkness said. In what way is Spouse A trying to fix the marriage if they’re maintaining a friendship with 3rd party when the non-sexual relationship between A and 3rd party caused the problem in the first place?
Agreeing to those terms was perhaps an unwise thing for Spouse B to do, especially given that Spouse B doesn’t trust Spouse A to hold up his/her part of the agreement.