37 yo bisexual male here. My wife and I struggled for years with discrepancies in our libidos. It is complicated by sexual trauma my wife has been carrying for her whole life, and also by me coming to terms with being sexually attracted to guys almost three years ago.

It was too much for us to navigate alone and we started seeing a queer-friendly and kink-friendly therapist who has been amazing. My wife is deeply attached to monogamy and believes that true love means her partner "wants no one else." I am far more high libido and adventurous, and have spent years and years trying to pull my wife out of her shell. It lead to a lot of resentment and anger towards her on my part that I have been working with the therapist to unpack and deal with in a more healthy way...but at the end of the day, my wife doesn't have a dick, and unfortunately my dumbass brain had to wait until I was married in a monogamous relationship before it realized that having a need to suck/fuck a dick so strong it ached meant I was probably not 100% "straight."

My wife thought she would be okay with me exploring my sexuality with other people as long as there was no romantic component to it, which was fine by me. We started by going to a swingers club, but the experience was negative; a guy came onto my wife very hard in a way that was triggering to her trauma and his approach towards her sent me into "fight mode;" I was ready to fuck him up (in a bad way) but my wife put up hard boundaries to him and he backed off. My wife and I left fully-clothed and pretty upset.

My wife had initially been against dating apps because she was afraid of me getting romantically attached to someone else, but after the swingers club she agreed that it'd be okay if I tried an app as long as I was explicit about my boundaries. So, I set up a profile on Feeld, and after a couple of misses, I found a guy who was cute with a lot of shared interests.

We met for coffee because I wanted to make sure he was who he said he was and that our personalities aligned at least a little - I'm very political and am not about to let a libertarian stick his dick in me. We got along REALLY well, he was very respectful of my boundaries, I was totally transparent with him about everything, and we agreed to make plans for a "dick date." We both went to the doctor to get tested for STDs and I started taking Prep just to be safe, even though we planned to use protection.

So, the date was supposed to be this upcoming week, but during a date night with my wife, despite her having told me she was okay with me meeting with the guy as long as I didn't have a relationship with him, she flipped out. It got really bad, with her screaming at me "why don't you just leave me." She dug in and reiterated that she only wanted someone who wanted her and her alone. I made the very difficult choice to cancel my plans with the guy because I'm not willing to risk my entire relationship with my wife for one evening of fulfilling my fantasies.

I'm not going to lie, I'm really struggling. I love my wife to death, she is my favorite person, we have been through absolute hell together, we have a kid, a house, and pets together. We have a lot in common and we have fun together. Our politics align. The one area where we just CAN'T see eye to eye is on what sex means. To her it is this sacred, holy thing that has very little to do with physical attraction. For me, it is fun, it is lusty, it is adventurous, and both people take joy in making the other feel good.

This is all complicated by the fact that I'm bi. Sometimes I want to be with a guy so bad it hurts. I feel bad about this, like a whiny kid who wants a shiny toy, and maybe I have to do more work on myself here. Bi means "both" - I DO find my wife incredibly attractive but when the bi-cycle swings towards guys it's incredibly difficult not to get bitter and resentful towards her.

I don't know how to navigate this. I don't know if she's ever going to get over the capitalistic, patriarchal, heteronormative fairytale of monogamy. I read "Opening Up" by Tristan Taormino and I loved it but I think she'd be angry if I even suggested she read it, because I think she's on cloud nine now that I've finally "given up" on ever being with a man. We've both been very stressed leading up to my date with the guy, and now that I've cancelled it, she's been walking on sunshine and I've never felt more lonely in my life. I'm trying to put on a happy face but even just watching porn feels incredibly depressing because the connection and fun and physical attraction to another person's body that I see there feels so out of reach.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to leave her. If other people have navigated a similar situation I'd love to hear your stories.