My wife is my best friend. How do I tell her I want an open marriage?

I am a thirtysomething woman and have been with my partner for six years– we’ve been married for about half that time. In many ways, we have a wonderful marriage: she is my best friend as well as my wife. The issue is our sex life. She has a very low sex drive, whereas mine is high. She won’t ever instigate sex, due to past trauma, and I can no longer tolerate always being the one doing the chasing. As a result, our sex life is pretty dead in the water. I do not want to end our marriage, but I want to be desired. We have tried to talk about this, but nothing ever really changes and I am now at the point where I have become less and less attracted to her sexually and we’ve both stopped trying. Last year, I developed an infatuation with someone at work. It lasted for a year and I spent a lot of time imagining what it would be like to be with her. It has died down only because I have distanced myself from her. But it made me realise how much I want to have sex with someone else. I have no idea how to go about telling my wife that I want to stay married, but sleep with other people – yet I don’t think I could live with the guilt if I had a secret affair.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly

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