Interesting development. My partner has stopped kissing her friend but both still want to do it. Now she has lost interest in kissing me with any passion. It is a weird lesson in wanting and when you get it you still want something more. I am faced with giving in to her desire to kiss him and hope she kisses me with passion again or accept she is not kissing him but the kissing with me is not great. She brought up this issue in a recent conversation but I had noticed the lack of passion and put it down to tiredness and hardwork. It is hard not to judge her
Learning a lot about letting be and letting go and that nothing is perfect.

Update #1
After working on our relationship by spending time together there have been some shifts and changes. Letting go, staying in the moment and being kind and compassionate helped me a lot. She has decided to stop kissing him. She told him she was not going to kiss him anymore because I didn’t like it. She still wants to kiss him but has stopped because of me not because she has lost the desire to do it. She still loves him, has sexual desires and thoughts but isn’t acting on them. This all happened the week before they went on an overnight camping trip. She denies breaking her promises so I have to just trust her. I wonder if she compromised on the kissing to be able to maintain contact with him. She clarified her definition of an open relationship for her is to be able to kiss who she wants including him but I suspect it would also to be able to have sex but she knows it could break him and his wife up and be a serious challenge to our relationship. She has repeatedly told me I am free to have sex with who ever I want as long as I am emotional present with her. She wants me to be free so she can be free I guess but I am not really wanting that freedom. She also said I should find some one else as she thinks I judge her too much and don’t accept her way of being. She agreed that if she really wanted to start a real open relationship she would request it so it is a bit like waiting for that to happen.

So we are in a weird set of compromises -no kissing/sex but she still texts/talks/sees him. I also now have the freedom to “cheat” if I want to and I have mixed feelings. It would be great to have guilt free sex with who ever I want when I want as I have a high sex drive but the Buddha felt adultery was destructive to relationships and causes suffering. I wonder if I am getting sexual satisfaction elsewhere it would lead to emotional intimacy and break up our relationship or enhance it.
Should I begin an open relationship and see what happens or just what for her to ask more directly if she does (we may heal to the point they just can be friends with strong feelings) or stick with our compromise
Any thoughts welcome

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Sunday.

Anita
I am not comfortable with an open relationship as I don’t want to have sex/intimacy with someone else at the moment.
However I love her and want to be with her so her being in an open relationship with him is part of the new deal unfortunately.
My choice is to leave and be unhappy or try and see how I can manage my jealousy and loss of trust and reconnect with her and suffer a little with my ego and expectations. She is starting to understand the impacts on making selfish choices that people get hurt in real life not as some abstract idea.
I have decided to go along for the ride and see how it feels and how far she goes in exploring her relationship with him. Life with her is 95% good 5% uncomfortable/challenging because she loves and wants to be in a parallel relationship with him. If she lies/manipulates then I can leave knowing I tried my best to love her but she couldn’t respect our relationship anymore.

Thanks for the questions. I have pondered over them the last 5 days.

Thank you all for the advice. Last night she admitted she was selfish and loves him and has sexual desires for him which at the moment is only kissing but that may change. She says she loves me and wants to be able to love two people at the same time with everything remaining the same. I feel better knowing the reality of the situation but finding it hard to process that she wants an ongoing affair with the knowledge that it is hurting me. I know I have a choice about how I feel about it but all the same it hurts.

Inky: Yes he is a married 56 year old and my partner is 42. I do know his wife, we have even been on holidays together. I haven’t spoken directly to her about what I know. His wife actually called my partner to talk about her relationship with him because she was uncomfortable about the frequency and intensity of it. My partner didn’t tell her the truth but says she is a woman and he has had an affair before so she probably knows what he is doing. My feeling is that she knows and is like me struggling with staying or leaving.

Michelle: I do wonder about if I start another relationship with someone else would it upset her or make her feel her position is more justified because we are both doing it. She says the only dealbreaker for her is if I am not emotional available in our relationship.

Anita: I am glad to read your answers because I have felt that she is being a complete hypocrite saying that I am clinging and craving to our old monogamous relationship but she is craving and clinging to having a lover and not giving that up.

I have let her know that her having the affair is making it hard for me to stay but she says she doesn’t want to give it up to make me feel better as her feelings of love for him are real and she would be unhappy being with me without him and probably leave anyway.

Thanks so much for helping with working through this.