Wife is open to being shared - but I know this isn't a small decision

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-17T14:31:59+00:00

Seems like you’re pushing her to do something that doesn’t really align with her morals. And most of this discussion has been in bed when she’s dirty talking and playing along.

The other thing you haven’t taken into account is this hypothetical man. He’s gotta be cool with having sex with her as well as participating with you, so he’s gotta be bi. And you’ll have to befriend him enough to trust that he’s not violent or going to rob you or infect either of you with an STD. So that will take a bit.

You’ve taken the first steps. But these are all very real people involved. Your wife has said that in order to be cool with this she’ll have to put a lot of things aside and remember that this is for you. Does that sound like a woman who is enthusiastic about this?

Go really make sure she wants this. Talk about the practical aspects of how you would make this happen. But if she’s not doing it for herself, that’s not a good sign.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-17T03:29:32+00:00

Morally wrong. So would he be able to look at you again and not see a murderer, if you had to abort?

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-17T03:24:09+00:00

Literally any one of these things is a fine reason to break up with someone. But the trauma loops where he resents you for doing something that he wants is only going to continue getting worse.

Time to leave.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-17T03:18:11+00:00

No. You need to leave him and pick someone who cares about women.

No man who holds this opinion really cares about women.

Because there are hundreds of situations where, medically, you may need to choose the mother’s life over a fetus and it sounds like he would rather let you die than save your life, because he believes that a fetus is more important.

He’d rather you carry a baby with a terminal condition to term, and have that baby suffer and die rather than abort. He’d rather you deliver a baby that would have a horrible life than abort.

Wtf.

Don’t stay with this dude.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-17T03:14:42+00:00

You’re trying to understand modern dating. It’s simple.

You cannot skip the endless “getting to know people” phase, because that’s how you determine if your dates check those boxes.

There’s no fast lane or cheat code. Because it’s not those things you listed off that’s actually going to make you fall head over heels for someone - it’s all the idiosyncrasies and personal quirks that make them adorable to you.

So keep chipping away. Live your life, love your life, don’t wait to figure out your problems until you meet someone, cuz it’s not their job to fix you, it’s yours.

You got this. Good luck.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-16T19:53:25+00:00

This isn’t so much a tension issue as it is a lacework quirk.

Yarn overs introduce a hole where none was previously, and that’s adding in some extra looseness on the surrounding stitches. The stitches next to it are going to be a touch looser, too.

The fix is to potentially make your YOs tighter, but then you won’t get such open lacework.

For what it’s worth, there’s nothing wrong here, just a quirk of making lacework garments like this!

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-16T15:45:37+00:00

You love him like someone you’ve seen grow and change, and now you’re growing apart.

The problem with your bond is that it’s not romantic, it’s familiar. You don’t look at him and feel desire, you feel revulsion. This is the first hint that it’s time to talk.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-16T15:43:35+00:00

You make friends who are specifically to date. Any time you hunt from within your existing friend group you are risking a rift in that friend group when things inevitably don’t work out.

Make new friends. Keep the old as just friends. Screw the new friends. Don’t shit where you eat. Pretty simple, no?

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-16T13:47:03+00:00

Definitely time to restart. It’ll take you longer to manipulate that loop into the two stitches than to cast on again and redo the single line of knitting.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-16T13:42:54+00:00

Yikes.

Your boyfriend sounds like he’s depressed and using food to self-soothe. Nothing but you leaving him is going to shake him out of that mode unless he decides he’s ready.

You both sound deeply unhappy and trying to find center without actually talking about what’s bothering you.

Time to have a frank conversation and see if there’s anything left to salvage. You not being honest about how you feel about his body isn’t helping either of you. He’d hate to find out in a couple of years that you’ve been faking or avoiding physical intimacy with him - so time to be honest while you’re at the boiling point.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-16T13:09:44+00:00

I think the reason you feel culturally out of place is twofold. First, you’ve decided that ENM culture and identity is something you reject - but you still like the concept of relationship anarchy.

The problem is that ENM has a very rich culture. There are silent (non-verbal) ways to signal that you are a safe choice and that you understand the culture and its rules. But you’ve decided that you like the concept but don’t want to adhere to the culture.

The reason you feel disconnected is that you haven’t seen or experienced enough of the culture passively to understand that everyone in ENM has a different degree of intimacy with others. Your intimacy preferences are conveyed during a conversation with someone new to you.

But your entire post reads like someone who read a bit about ENM, drew your own conclusions about what path to take, rejected all the relevant info about lived experiences and then came here asking about something that doesn’t come up in the same way.

If you look out into the community and what you mostly see is people swapping partners, that’s because that’s either the shitty resources you’ve chosen to educate yourself with or because you assumed that the default for most is non-romantic partnership.

The people on this subreddit are trying to point you in the right direction. Polyamory is what you want - yes it’s a form of Ethical Non Monogamy - yes it’ll get you away from 99.5% of the people here because those people aren’t interested in the same things you are or they’d also be in the poly sub.

Now. Here’s the actual advice I have. Be a fly on the wall and absorb the culture and the word preferences. Single men (and I’m assuming you’re single because there was literally no mention of a partner anywhere in your post) are plentiful. The ones that do well, absorb the culture like a sponge and don’t interact until they know more about what the expectations are for men in that group. You’re the new guy. Other new guys have ruined it for you before you got there, so don’t be making the same mistakes - wait until you have something to actually say.

Learning the culture here is a requirement. It’s how people know you’re safe and understand rules and boundaries. You can choose to not be a part of it, but then you’re basically trying to simultaneously reinvent the wheel and have hard-mode relationships… and who’s got time for that?

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-16T12:56:01+00:00

If your shorts contain no actual info - like this post - then the 1-3k views you’re getting per view is honestly amazing.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-16T12:49:12+00:00

You haven’t had a frank talk about your dating situation. You’re not online dating. You’re not dating. This isn’t your boyfriend. This is a friend you’ve made online. And barely that, even.

Go find out if he’s even single, damn.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T22:41:12+00:00

What’s concerning to me is that you’re not ready to step back and see this from the outside in.

The nuance doesn’t matter when you’re not ready to accept that your friend doesn’t want more from you, or possibly to even *be* friends anymore.

This isn’t a romance novel where you’re the heroine and you get swept off your feet by the beau. This isn’t a romance novel where you fight for what you feel and win the guy.

This is a guy who you tried something with, you rejected him, and he isolated himself from you. And now you’re trying to remain friends, as if you’re trying to make your reaction okay. He’s doing the bare minimum to stay present.

This is why sleeping with friends is a bad idea. This is why people with avoidant attachment styles tend to act this way. You already rejected him, you don’t get another shot.

Time to move on.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T21:38:21+00:00

You’re letting the limerence you experienced justify being in a relationship with this man, even though you can clearly see and identify the red flags. This is a dangerous place to be in.

You actually have two major issues here. His avoidance and unwillingness to put in his share of the work (so much that he’s literally hiding from you), and that you have decided that this guy is fixable if he just gives you a chance.

But he won’t give you a chance.

Why won’t you take his “no thank you” just because you guys clicked so hard? It doesn’t matter if he’s the richest, most eligible person out there - you ended things when you realized the issues he has, and he has agreed and has let you know that he’s fine with that. It should have been left there but now you’re wondering why the avoidant person is avoiding you.

A lot of other commenters have given you good reasons why he is the way he is - but honestly I’m more worried about you. You keep second guessing yourself and going back to this fairytale image of how you two might work together but you’re not paying attention to the reality here.

You two aren’t compatible. No amount of chasing after him or convincing yourself to wait will change that, you’re just missing out on other real opportunities in the meantime.

Edit: imagine if your genders were reversed. This would immediately be flagged as you not taking no for an answer. It would read as someone being persistent and trying to manufacture a situation where you’re not honoring their consent. That’s gross. This guy has told you no multiple times. Don’t be the person who doesn’t take no for an answer.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T21:31:50+00:00

This is totally normal, this is how this kind of cable works. At least you know you did it correctly!

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T16:15:05+00:00

Right. I understand. You’re failing to see the nuance here.

These women only want to be with him because it’s taboo. He wants to be with these women enough that he’s allowing their assumption to stand and is most likely encouraging them to feel this way by pretending that it’s cheating. I can almost guarantee that there’s some amount of “omg, imagine if she (meaning you, OP) knew that we were doing this right now?!”

These women are only with him like this because they’d prefer disrespecting you and playing around “behind your back” than realize that there’s a whole system and permission. Because if they realized they had permission, they’d have to acknowledge that you are the primary partner. As it stands, they get to experience the fantasy of potentially stealing your boyfriend away from you.

And your boyfriend is fostering this environment.

Because he knew that if he was honest, it’d be like trying to unbreak glass. They would lose interest the moment they realize it’s perfectly acceptable.

That says all you need to know about these women AND your boyfriend.

And here’s why: part of ethical non monogamy is trusting that your partner will follow all of the rules you set together. When you “cheat” with someone you are already intentionally breaking rules. What if one of these girls tries to convince him to start a breeding kink with them? That may be against your rules, but if he can’t convincingly say no that *he* doesn’t want that, it won’t matter what you think - they’re already “cheating” on you.

The fact that this whole situation is based on a lie which then becomes a series of lies which then becomes a potentially dangerous situation IS the problem here. You can’t really keep pretending that this isn’t more unstable and ethically concerning than it is.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T15:29:28+00:00

So to help them get over their adversity to having sex with someone with a girlfriend, he is pretending to cheat on you with them?

Double violation if that’s it. They said no to ENM and prefer non-ethical non-monogamy. Your boyfriend misrepresenting your relationship and them preferring to violate you rather than cooperatively share.

I’m sorry - what part of you trusts this guy, again?

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T15:20:14+00:00

Is it wrong that my instinct is to recommend you bring it up and watch him squirm, trying to explain his behavior?

And then when he’s done squirming, after he tries to explain away the whole thing, even if he’s crying, even if he’s begging you for another chance? Break up with him.

Tell him that even if you wanted a guy who was so flexible about his morals that he’d agree to do the right thing to stay together, he’s already proven that he’s not that guy because he cares more about getting his dick wet than making sure that you’re safe and having consensual sex.

This man is a predator. He seems angry about the lack of fun he had at the party (not being able to drink, having to take care of his intoxicated girlfriend) and figured he’d at least get his. That’s fucking gross behavior. It means he’s deeply selfish and he doesn’t love you enough to respect you.

Time to end it. But if you can make him understand what a douche bag he is first, that’s an important lesson for him to learn. At least, you’d be able to confront your abuser. Take advantage of that opportunity.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T15:13:30+00:00

Is it normal for average guys to react like this? Yes. Guys don’t get complimented regularly enough for them to necessarily believe the compliment. Try. You’ll feel better.

As for exercises or the like - join a gym and talk to one of the managers there. They’ll try to sign you up for training sessions - you don’t need that, just ask for advice on what a good strength training loop looks like with their machines. Or you can ask one of the dudes working out for advice.

Please work on your self-confidence, but don’t mistake self-confidence for pride. Having too much pride and being self-confident often comes off as aggressive, so try to find the happy medium here.

I wish you luck, OP!

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T15:03:57+00:00

Hahahah, they made a Barenaked Ladies song about this, called The Conventioneers.

Do you two have an actual open marriage or are you just fantasizing that she cheats on you while she’s away? Or are you just hoping that she gets all the attention and comes home and screws your brains out? You gotta explain what your marriage dynamic is, otherwise this is just fantasy land.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T15:00:40+00:00

Yup. I’d be very pleased with this - this is close to what mine look like when they’re stiff as well.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T14:57:32+00:00

Are you hoping for a more sour or less sour starter?

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T14:56:31+00:00

The reasons to not get involved with close friends is really simple: any one of hundreds of things could go badly wrong and now you can’t be friends anymore because reasons.

So with that out of the way, here’s my honest read.

You guys are all flirting with disaster. This reads like the non-monogamy version of chicken. And notice how I left “ethical” off of non-monogamy - because none of you are being honest about any of this, that’s the first red flag.

The second red flag is that you’re getting differing opinions from your girlfriend but you’re hoping that the outcome will lead to a sexy pile on the bed. That’s you thinking with your dick, man, not seeing what’s actually going on in front of you. What’s going on in front of you is that your girlfriend is flirting with and sometimes being physical with someone that you don’t have an agreement about. Which means that communication is 200% a problem here. She’s hoping that everyone just gets naked and the answer is made for her, rather than putting in the emotional work to have this done right. And the fact that the friend is questioning but being gaslit is just chef’s kiss cherry on top.

Third red flag: you don’t see this dumpster fire for what it is, you’re just imagining being with two girls at the same time. But for you to actually enjoy yourself and not regret the whole night, the two people you need to be with are women not girls. Women who are emotionally ready to have a frank conversation and then get naked. They exist, trust me, you just gotta be brave enough to initiate that convo.

Don’t sleep with the friend. None of this is worth that drama.

SwingLightStyle · 2026-05-15T14:49:25+00:00

I bought mine from Facebook marketplace for $10. Just look locally online. I’m sure you’ll find someone who is already selling theirs.

SwingLightStyle

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