My boyfriend of 8 years (m27) is on a long journey of accepting that he is attracted to men. He squashed this down throughout the relationship, and exploded with it a week ago - it nearly broke us up as he was scared he was gay (even though he is attracted to me) and was convinced we couldn't have a traditional future of marriage and kids because of it. We have since had a lot of therapy and want to move forward in a sex positive way. He mentioned a couple of years ago that he might be bi and I encouraged him to explore that if he wanted to. He squashed it due to internalised homophobia and self hate, and now we are back here again - but we don't want to repeat past mistakes of it being squashed.

Right now we need to build the love and trust in the relationship. I felt really blindsided out of no where last week and was basically broken up with over this. We are now in a much better place but need to work on getting the trust back.

In time - I think we should explore ENM. It would give him the time and space to safely explore his sexuality and give me time and space to date other men - which I've always fantasied about. Our main priority is maintaining the relationship safely whilst we do this, and making our relationship stronger than ever in time.

Does anyone have any advice if they have been in a similar situation? Better yet if you are comfortably married with children and have different orientations, or are open / ENM.

TLDR: Me and long term bf are thinking of ENM as a way for him to explore his "newfound" / newly internally accepted bisexuality.