Open Marriage

My husband and I have an open marriage. To a lot of people this means a number of different things. The most common question I get is "does he like to watch?" Now, I'm not sure that I understand how one makes the jump from "open marriage" to "voyeurism" unless it has something to do with reading too much Penthouse Forum. "I never thought I'd write a letter like this, but here I am." Yeah... not happening.

I do have an open marriage that was started out of some form of necessity. It started when my military husband was sent out of the country for an extended period of time. At the time we were hardly talking (an effort to make the separation less painful). He went away an a few months later I went through the ultimate in loneliness and horniness. I began chatting incessantly and sent a dirty picture of myself through e-mail to a friend. I felt horribly guilty about it and told my husband. Somehow we ended up talking and it turned out that, basically, neither of us really cared what the other did while we were so far apart, so long as we were careful.

And so my erotic adventures began. My husband, meanwhile, spent most of his time with friends getting drunk. He found a cute girl to makeout with that he thought he might get the chance to sleep with but that didn't work out. So I had some sex with a few different guys and my husband had one rather nice makeout session.

When he returned we talked some more and decided the whole "sleeping around" thing was really okay and that it could continue. I found someone for him to sleep with and it was apparently anticlimactic at best. A few years went by and nothing else happened.

Then around a year ago I started to get really fed up with my mostly sexless marriage. And so I asked my husband if it would be a problem for him if I found someone to sleep with. He said no, and off we went. Of course, I did let him know it WOULD be a problem for me if he went sleeping around without sleeping with me on a regular basis, since that was the whole reason I was going looking in the first place. He agreed.

Every so often I bother him that he should get out and find some cute girl to sleep with. But, he doesn't. He doesn't feel confident anymore, doesn't feel like making the effort. I don't doubt he feels rejected by me on occasion, and I know what that feels like and how it can drag confidence down. He really deserves more sexual credit than I give him. With a little effort he could be a very good lover. But so far the effort has not been something he's wanted to put forth in a major way. And therefore, he remains faithful. But he's always got the option to get out there....