Hello, new here and new to the scene. My partner (28F) of 8 years and I (32M) recently decided to open our relationship. She is queer, and isn't sure exactly where on that spectrum she lies, so we wanted to open things up at first only for her to explore with other queer women. Our conversations and feelings evolved, from wanting a threesome (which we never seriously acted on), to her now encouraging me to also explore the dating pool with women. I had been thinking of asking for her thoughts on it anyway, so I agreed.

However, we are in a pretty small city of about 60k people, in a pretty rural and very liberal area with a ton of gay and trans people about. When we started opening things, she was sure it would be much more difficult for her than for me as she thought there was a very defined prejudice among the lesbian community against gay women seeking to do exactly what she was. We thought we would have roughly similarly low number of dates. Well, turns out that was an incorrect assumption. Between dating apps and real life, she has people basically lining up, while that has not been the case for me.

At first I was incredibly, thoroughly happy for her that she had so much interest. She's struggled with body image issues and self confidence our entire relationship, and I have felt her confidence growing every day as more and more people tell her how attractive she is and want to be with her. Between this and the journey of self-exploration she's on, I don't want to close things off again. I think this has been incredibly positive for her and I want it to continue to be that way. But I am starting to feel incredibly dejected and unappealing, and feel my own self worth and self confidence really dropping. I'm under no illusion about my own attractiveness, I think I'm anywhere from a 5-7/10 if I had to "rate" myself, I work out a lot, have passions and hobbies, and am left wondering what I'm doing wrong (or what's wrong with me). Apps are... Not great, particularly in a sparsely populated area, and women seem particularly opposed to the idea of ENM on them. In person isn't much better, as I think with a lot of how men tend to act towards women, they are deservedly quite closed off to the idea of being approached in public.

I've tried going out with friends when she goes on dates to keep my mind off things lately, and sort of am hoping to be able to meet someone out at a bar or something, but I'm quite introverted and struggle with loud scenes and groups of new people, so I wind up just talking with them and going home and devolving into a bit of a pit of negativity until I'm able to process it the next day.

Has anyone experienced anything like this before? Any advice or tips on how to wrestle with this experience, and get to the other side in a happier and healthier place?