I'm hoping to correspond with any folks that have been in long term relationships that were monogamous and then opened up successfully. I'm deep into this process. We've done lots of homework, therapy, reading, etc over the last 3 years. My wife has been on one date, and I've been on one date. Not much to write home about in either case. I'm 47 and she's 40, we're deeply in love. This came up as a topic of fun, our relationship has always been strong, we didn't try to open up to "spice things up" or "save the marriage". So I think we came from a strong starting point and continue to be communicative and very much in love and still very much into each other physically.

My motivation here is specifically to expandon what I've heard from my wife in her experience, I'm trying to strengthen my support of her experience. Right from the beginning she expressed very strong feelings of compersion when she would think about me being with other people, but I didn't feel that in return. Honestly, I felt terrified and threatened. It took a lot of self work to work on that. I'm still not full of compersion when I think about her side of it, but in talking to her and seeing the potential for her to have new experiences and to grow as a human, it's really helped me to feel more comfortable and supportive in this venture.

I don't have a particular goal in mind other than hoping to learn more about other folks' experiences (not looking for sexy details here at all, just stories of growth and understanding and connecting, how it has altered your connections with your long term partner, etc)

This process has required so much work, it has been intense, and it has been right on top of me also working on all of my family of origin stuff. At times it's been brutal, but I'm grateful for it. It took THREE YEARS to feel like I'm finally tunneling out of the other side of the mountain I started tunneling into at the beginning of this journey.

Thank you for any insights!