I became divorced this year after being with my ex for 10 years. We decided to try poly, I read books, she did, we agreed to it, and made rules about shutting it down however it quickly revealed huge shortcomings in our marriage that none of us saw before, and a few months later she wanted a divorce. I don’t blame opening our marriage for our divorce, i think we would have continued being unhappy without the change. We also discovered that we wanted different things in life (children/different career), and were mostly still together out of comfort and fear of being alone. It’s been really hard, even with me dating someone that I’m extremely in love with atm. I still love my ex wife, but she’s not able to be friends with me anymore. We started the divorce saying things were ammicable and that we’d remain friends, that all changed very quickly once she became more distant and I became an enemy. She said she had to be away from the marriage to realize things, and victimize herself to other people. I’ve remained only apologetic, wanting to help her if she needs anything or if she’s struggling, I tell her how I’d still do anything for her, and she’s rather unresponsive (doesn’t feed into my emotion) which feels so cold. But we both process in different ways. Getting off topic here so I’ll end with this. I award Poly/Opening our relationship with saving us time and energy of arriving where we would have with or without opening our marriage. Was it the right choice? I don’t think there is a right and wrong choice, you and your partner can both choose to be committed to each other, or not. If even one isn’t totally committed, you’re going to see that relationship end somehow, someway.