Talking to a married man, am I wrong?
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Some people are in open relationships, and that’s fine. But I’m pretty sure that in most healthy open relationships, you’re not supposed to disparage your marriage to the other person or share intimate details. Even if it’s true that it’s OK for him to be getting involved with you (and honestly, we don’t know if he’s lying or not), he’s handling this in a way that is probably going against what is agreed upon with his wife. Plus, my assumption is that if two people are in an open marriage and the marriage is struggling, they should probably close it for a bit. Obviously, that’s their call, but what your describing doesn’t really sound like the kind of open marriage where what he’s doing with you is actually OK and wouldn’t hurt his wife if she knew.
But a question that came up for me while I was reading this was what you want out of this? What’s your purpose in talking to him? I don’t know you and what you want, but I guess I feel like it’s doubtful that talking to a married man who is having marriage problems is probably not your ultimate goal.
I think the reason he’s been somewhat distant is because he told me those things about his wife. I know that he had regrets about it, and I wish he didn’t either. Really I think he just made a not sober mistake, because prior to that things were okay. He didn’t tell me her business, he would really only tell me good things about her.
An open marriage has NOTHING to do with inappropriately sharing someone else’s intimate, personal, emotional issues with a stranger. Nothing. Having an open marriage doesn’t mean that it’s OK to betray your partner’s confidences to some rando you met on the internet several weeks ago.
What this guy is doing is 100% wrong, open marriage or not. And you’re encouraging it because you’re into him, no matter how much you want to insist that you’re blameless. You’ve encouraged the closeness and the emotional intimacy. If you weren’t, as soon as he started to share personal information about his wife and his marriage you would have told him that he shouldn’t be sharing that stuff and you didn’t want to hear it.
what do I want out of this? Nothing really. I guess a friendship? I would never want to be sexually involved with someone who was married. Really we just have a lot of things in common, and I just enjoy talking to him. Lets say in a dream world I met up with him, I wouldn’t be comfortable with anything sexual happening between us. I don’t know what exactly I want really, a companion?
I’m not questioning whether or not it was wrong for him to disclose that to me, I do think it was a mistake. I guess it’s more of a question of whether or not that’s something to stop talking to him over. He hasn’t talked about her since, and I have a strong feeling that’s why he’s been so distant. I do think he regrets it. Prior to that it was nothing but good things about his wife, and he really just talked about his past and various random things.
If he is in an open marriage, he should have no problem letting you speak to his wife to verify it.
I think the real reason you wrote on the forum is because he is distancing himself and it bothers you, not because he is married.
This sounds like bad news, you know it. He doesn’t deserve and explanation nor its rude to just ghost him. He is slowing distancing himself from you, he doesn’t care about your feelings. You shouldn’t either.
how would I even go about talking to his wife? i’m not going to talk to her on the phone?
Him distancing himself does bother me, I’m not denying that. Thats not the main reason I posted this. once he started distancing himself I began to really question whether or not this was even okay. If his relationship isn’t open then 100% this is wrong, and I wouldn’t continue to talk to him knowing this. If it is open I’m just not sure if I should feel bad or stop talking to him.
Also, we live in two completely different states. Thats another big reason why i think this is somewhat harmless because the odds of us meeting up, are not high. I’m not even sure if I would want to.
Slow fade. Polite chat for a few days, then stop responding. He’s going to do it soon anyway – guys like this always do. He’s meeting some need in his life by distracting himself online. People in healthy open relationships don’t tell internet strangers there’s something “different” about them while complaining about their wives. By all means, if this is fun for you and you’re not getting too emotionally invested, keep chatting. But I suspect it’s keeping you from your own romantic goals. Maybe redirect all this energy you’re spending on him into messaging a few guys on OKCupid or Tinder tonight – go on some dates!
he’s going to fade away quickly? this is fun for me, and I can’t say that I’m not emotionally involved. I would have to know what that means to give you a concrete answer. I don’t have a romantic goal, I’m not looking for a serious relationship right now honestly. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, but it isn’t that.
You’re looking for male attention.
Best case, he’s also just looking for attention/distraction too. But in his case, as we keep saying, he’s siphoning off all this time and attention he should be funneling into his marriage. You’re both wasting time. Please stop trying to make someone’s husband into your pen pal / companion. It’s not appropriate or productive.
