SS 289: Gang Bang the Mailbag 32 – “My Wife and I”

My wife and I each identify as Poly. We have been actively practicing non-monogamy for a number of years now. This past year however, I was diagnosed with depression and bipolar. living and coping with this condition has really brought strife into our relationship. Therefore, after much consultation with each other and my therapist we have decided to close our marriage for now. There were no active outside relationships at the time, so there was no pulling couple's privilege.

Now however, after this initial period of introspection, I found myself asking this question:
Why do people (huge sweeping generalization there) who identify as Poly or otherwise non-monogamous seem to default to monogamy when things get tough with one of the relationships (usually the “primary”)?

Shouldn't someone who identifies as Poly, have Poly as their default/fall back situation?

Dear Swingset.

My wife and I have been together for 5 years and my sexual experiences is quite limited. I have many fetishes and we stumbled into a FMF threesome one drunken evening. We have explored some of my fantasies together but many make her uncomfortable and we mostly stick to vanilla sex and light bondage.

We are both bisexual and I have never had a sexual experience with another man. I gently brought up the idea of us trying swinging and exploring the many M and F configurations together. This lead to fights and her refusing to even have the discussion with me. She would not let me do this on my own nor with her with the cost being our relationship. After several month I brought it up again and after a long and emotional talk we agreed that we would dip our toes but do everything together, she would set the pace and have veto powers. We started on Feeld and after a couple dates with couples found that she has no physical attractions to males with the exception of me. This is problematic as it leaves me with no males to pursue and us to go unicorn hunting.

Long story short we stopped our adventure with nothing gained except a deepened resentment towards me for ‘pressuring' her into uncomfortable situations that she didn't want to be a part of anyways. By making the rules that we did everything together she felt she had no choice.

Now I'm in a situation where I will not have a chance to be with any other men or women or explore my fetishes for the cost of exploring is my marriage. I feel resentment towards her and my level of physical and emotional attraction towards has suffered greatly.

What am I to do?