My wife (35F) and I (41M) have been married for 9 years, together for 14 years. We met when she was 21 and I was 27. We have four kids, ages 7, 5, 4, and 2.
We’ve always been very open and candid with each other about how we feel. I consider myself an emotionally self-aware person, and because of that, I’m not judgmental of errant or intrusive thoughts that she may share with me, because I’m of the belief that one can’t necessarily control what thoughts pop into one’s head, but they do control how they act on those thoughts.
Recently, my wife told me that she is happy in every other aspect of her life except our marriage. She says that when we met and started dating, she didn’t really know herself and who she wanted to be (which, at 21, who DOES know who they want to be?). She says she’s miserable because she “doesn’t want to have to pass her decisions by anyone anymore” and “wants more autonomy”.
She then expressed interest in having an open marriage. She says that she wants me to have that freedom as much as she wants it for herself. I listen calmly and patiently when she talks about it, but that’s not what I signed up for; I waited 5 years to propose to her because I wanted to be sure that she was the one that I could take this leap with. I’ve always wanted to be married and have a family, and that’s the commitment that I made.
After the third time that she brought up the open marriage idea, I said, “That’s just not something that I want.” She said, “You’re probably right”, then “I just have to figure out what’s wrong with me.”
For the record, I’ve been in therapy for the past year; my wife was in therapy for several months but stopped because it just “made her mad” and it “didn’t help”; and we’re both interested in and currently pursuing marriage counseling.
I don’t know why I’m posting this to Reddit; I’m not looking for the people of Reddit to fix my marriage. Maybe it’s just to get the “two cents” of people with an outside perspective.