I recently started dating a man who talks about marrying me, but prefers open relationships. I get that men like variety, but what I don’t understand is what is the wife or girlfriend there for? If men want to connect with a new soul and crave such connection, what makes me any more sexually special than the next new soul he connects with?
Most men, and many women, don’t need to “connect with a soul” to be interested in sex with someone, and desire for sex outside of one’s primary relationship doesn’t usually result from “craving a connection”; most often, it’s just plain sexual attraction. When I was married to Matt, he would sometimes hire professionals while he was traveling; I also enjoyed some of the sex I had with clients or with other whores, and on a few occasions we had threesomes with girls either he or I (preferably both) found attractive. But none of those trysts were motivated by the kind of connection we had with each other; they were just sexual, and therefore posed no threat to our relationship. Eventually, he lost interest in me sexually, but that wasn’t due to another woman; furthermore, we still have a strong emotional bond and care very much for one another despite no longer having a sexual relationship. The inconvenient fact is that sexual desire isn’t directly linked to emotional connection; at the beginning of a relationship they usually are, but in the majority of cases it doesn’t stay that way for more than a few years. Every woman would like to believe she’ll always be the one her husband is most sexually attracted to, but that’s not usually the way it happens; the attraction which inspired him to choose her as his primary partner is emotional and/or spiritual, and may grow stronger even as his lust for her weakens with time and familiarity. Really, there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s why many an elderly man still deeply loves his wife long after her physical charms have faded. In short, it’s entirely possible that your man may find another woman he finds more sexually attractive than you, but it’s highly unlikely that would in and of itself present any serious threat to your bond with him.
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I think your advice is a little misleading here Maggie.
All relationships go through their ups and downs and need to be periodically renewed. While an outside sexual encounter might not be triggered by an emotional connection it could still precipitate one. And if that happens at a time the emotional connection in the existing relationship is strained it could easily reduce incentive to fix up the old relationship in favour of embarking on a new one.
Everyone likes to talk about zipless fucks but I reckon they’re relatively uncommon in the wild. Even for guys.
…which is why I think it’s usually inadvisable to become sexually engaged with others — except for prostitutes — unless one’s (what I’ll call here) primary relationship is sound and secure.
My wife (who, by the way, has used sex work to supplement our income over the years) and I have been married 35 years; for the last thirteen of those years she and I have had, for lack of what I consider a more-accurate term, a sexually-open marriage.
A mutually-agreed-upon fundamental for our extra-relational sex is that we suspend all and any of it if we experience significant emotional strain in our relationship. We’ve suspended for a couple periods during these thirteen years, worked out our issues, then resumed open-sex.
As a sidenote…although recognizing the great variation among people and that exceptions and outliers-on-the-bell-curve certainly exist; I’ve observed in my 59 years that many if not most women’s bio-wiring seems to intricately entangle “sex” and “emotional connection”.
I suspect it’s continually difficult, therefore, for those women — especially if they’re younger women and less-sexually experienced women — to fathom how sex can be enjoyed without some measure of complementary commitment/attachment. In light of that, I don’t advise any couple who are under 30 and have been together less than 10 years to engage in open marriage, swinging, nor anything similar. I’ve seen the unexpected emotional land mines (not only within the women but also within the men) explode too often in those situations.
Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
I get that men like variety, but what I don’t understand is what is the wife or girlfriend there for?
To put it simply, she is there for everything other than sex.
As is often the case, I am very much in agreement with Maggie on this one.
But as someone with a long-time (30+ years) happy marriage I would like to add some comments, relying on my experience.
The question posed is: what do men want a wife or girlfriend for? Obviously, it depends on the man, but for some of us, what we want is what many women also want: a long-time, affectionate partner with whom it is possible to share life’s ups and downs. I have this, other people I know have it, some don’t.
To me sex is important, but there is a lot more that I want, and there are few women indeed who could offer it on terms acceptable to me (and few men who could offer it to my wife). Compatibility in sex is relatively easy – the equipment is more or less the same, and so are the physiological reactions. Compatibility over how to run a home together, how to raise children, what kind of people to socialize with, what to talk about, what religion if any to practice – these are the difficult issues, forget about the sex.
So, the way it works out in my marriage is that my wife doesn’t mind my occasional visits to professionals, and was quite cheerful about my one extramarital adventure with an amateur. It’s just sex (and not even necessarily better sex than with her). What keeps us together is not sexual exclusivity, but because overall we prefer each other’s company, and we are full partners in the “life game”.
“what makes me any more sexually special than the next new soul he connects with”
I think the OP needs to stop looking for other people to validate her worth. In a world of four billion people, the answer to this question is “nothing” – the same answer that everyone else gets.