Hey ya'll. So I'm in a little bit of a weird headspace about all this, I'll do my best to explain the situation, and apologies if I go too much in detail but it feels important for me to include.

Backstory:

For the past 6 years, I've been with my husband and have uprooted my life from North America to Europe to marry him, get my visa to live here, and start attending school to learn the language and form a life here. It has not been easy, with covid and unemployment/unstable employment, immigration costs and the difficulty of me trying to learn a language when I'm neurospicy and have migraines, but we've gotten to a comfortable place now and things feel really solid between us, (besides my own concerns listed below this backstory).

About 3 years into our relationship (shortly before we got married), I talked to my husband and told him that I wasn't sure we were making the correct choice. He is aroace and sex avoidant/repulsed and rarely intimate with me. There is almost no romance or physical intimacy in our lives, beside the cuddles he wants in the evenings before bed, and the seldom want for sexual intimacy.

I started opening up about potentially seeing other people, since I was in an open relationship when I met him and had since been monogamous with him, and we started the conversation and attempts from there. He wanted to remain monogamous and I respected that choice fully, but told him if that changed or if he wanted to have any one time intimate encounters, that I would support it. I was his first ever partner and I would never want him to feel like he was forced to be monogamous while being with me.

The beginning of my poly adventures were difficult, seeing that we made a rule that I wasn't allowed to date in the same country, and that to his friends and family, we were a normal couple. I made posts to reddit, joined poly communities and attempted to form relationships where I could, but they were all disasters. I ended up closing my relationship status for a year to recover from the last serious heartbreak I had, where I was dumped in favour of a real life partnership overnight.

Relevant Stuff:

Fast forward to December of last year, 2023. I was connecting really well with a friend online when said online friend expressed interest in me, and I in them.

I took a month to see how things developed and really tried to consider what being polyamorous meant to me personally, and came to the conclusion that it was a non-negotiable for me. I had had the capability of loving multiple people for the majority of my life, and no matter how closed I wanted to be, that I would always want the chance to explore new relationships and experiences with new people.

I had a talk with my husband, who fully accepted me, and said he knew this was just who I was and that it had nothing to do with him. He's never felt like I love him less just because I have interests in other people.

February came and because all 3 of us play the same online game, we've been teaming up together and my husband has been getting to know my boyfriend, and everything is seemingly going well. They might even be starting to become friends, which honestly feels really incredible.

I had a chat with my husband last night and said that I still have my own personal reservations and road blocks, and that I struggle not being able to talk about things going on in my life, basically that it feels like I need to have this second hidden life because I'm scared of his reaction. He clarified that he's never given me a reason to feel like he would react badly, and told me he'd rather get small snippets than a whole day of information at once, and that he wants me to talk more about it if I'm comfortable. He's even openly said that he approves of who I'm seeing, and the only issue he's had is hearing me say "I love you" at the end of my calls with him, but that he's adjusting and doesn't see it as a negative.

As of this week, I started to feel the NRE of my new relationship fading and wanted to pay more attention to my husband, which I also mentioned last night. He told me he's not the kind of person that can sit and do nothing, and doesn't want to spend time with me for the sake of spending time. He has always been very independent and focused on his goals and he wants our time together to be planned time rather than just time. He's reassured me that our marriage is secure and that he's happy with what I've been giving him.

TL;DR:

I'm having a really hard time not seeing the lack of what I'm giving in my marriage, rather than the positive from his perspective. I suspect my husband would be the forever-alone type, had we not met and decided to be together, but I'm feeling really weird giving him only a few hours a week while my boyfriend gets the majority of my other free time.

I'm not sure how to manage these feelings I have inside about it. Everything I've ever been taught about marriage and your spouse being your priority doesn't functionally work for us. It feels hard to adjust because adjusting feels like a threat to this whole life we've built and a threat would mean that being here and learning the language and all the effort has been a waste of time.

I would love some advice, but especially from any of you who have similar situations of de-prioritizing your spouse/anchor/nesting partner and how you adjusted to that.