A few months ago my husband of eight years broached the topic of experimenting with ENM. My initial question to myself was can our relationship withstand that sort of thing, and my answer was an unequivocal yes; we’re very solid. So I told him I was open to exploring that, and laid out one ground rule: it can’t be with anyone we know or with anyone from our wider community (friends-of-friends etc). He said “you really don’t have much of a problem with this?” And I told him in theory no, but that there was no way to gauge how I’d feel if we were actually in an ENM situation.

Since then we’ve talked about it only in passing, sort of as an abstract concept. Flash forward to last week, he asks if we can talk, then asks if I’ve acted in an ENM sort of way since we had that conversation. I told him I had not. He said “OK, I want to come clean about this as soon as possible, because it happened more quickly than I expected: I got on an app yesterday, met someone, and….we hung out last night.”

And I literally said “Cool.” Because my thought was, maybe this will be a good experience and he’ll be happy and who am I to deny him that. I felt that way for about 36 hours and then, all of a sudden, my mind started going to pretty dark places. Which is bizarre; I’m level-headed almost to a fault and haven’t experienced any feelings like that since I was much younger and prone to depression (which I’ve since gotten under control through therapy and medication, haven’t had a depressive episode in about 15 years). Both my husband and I are shocked that I had that strong of a reaction.

After much soul-searching I realized one aspect of the situation that made me so upset was that, unbeknownst to my husband when he first chatted with this person, she turned out to be peripherally involved in one of our social circles. It was a violation of the only ground rule I’d laid out, albeit an accidental one.

He saw how upset I was getting and asked me if I wanted him to end it. I said I didn’t want that responsibility, I don’t want to have to make that decision for you. He asked me that twice more, and after the third time I said “Yes, end it.” He ended it immediately.

And now I feel guilty (to be clear, he is not guilt-tripping me). He had a nice thing that was making him feel good and even better the experience forced us to take a look at some aspects of our marriage that needed tending to and we’ve been having some amazing conversations and sex over the last few days and we’re in a really good place. Yet I can’t shake that sense of “why can’t I just be happy that my partner is doing something that makes him happy, and that even ultimately benefits me!” How do people cope with that?

(He’s cis/straight; I’m demisexual, bordering on asexual…the disconnect in our libidos is part of what brought us here, but a) I thought this was going to be a purely sexual thing for him but I was sensing emotional involvement on his part and that freaked me out, and b) I’ve only begun to come to terms with my own sexual identity lately, but that identity scares me; feels like I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to keep up with allosexual people in order to be not-lonely, but in the process selling myself out of my own identity, which leads to loneliness anyway…double-edged sword).

Thanks for reading.