Caveman Circus

We’ve been together almost 10 years, married for 7, and started dating in our early 20s. We have two young boys, ages 2 and 4. From my perspective, our marriage has been solid. Life is busy with kids, so we don’t go out much, but neither do our friends since they’re mostly parents too.

A few weeks ago, my wife went out drinking with mutual friends while I stayed home with the kids (we take turns about once a month). She came home pretty drunk and randomly asked what’s something I haven’t done that I want to do. Then she asked if I’d ever consider opening our marriage. This completely shocked me because she’s usually very risk averse. I asked if she was worried about jealousy (she said no), if she had someone in mind (she said no), and how it would even work (she suggested maybe starting with a threesome). I told her we should talk about it when she was sober.

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Next month marks four years for me (28F) and my boyfriend (30M). We live together with our two dogs, and early on, we both agreed that marriage and kids were in our future. About a year ago, I asked him when he thought we’d get married, and he mentioned he always imagined dating someone for 5-6 years before tying the knot. That worked for me, as I wanted to be married before 30.

Now, as our anniversary approaches, I’m starting to feel like we’re not moving in that direction. When I brought it up, he admitted he feels emotionally inadequate, worried he can’t meet my needs for affection. He said the differences in our emotional needs are draining for him, even when we’re not actively addressing them. He also expressed concerns about being a people-pleaser and how our differences could chip away at him over time.

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My parents have struggled financially for as long as I can remember. They refuse to work traditional jobs because they don’t want to deal with “corporate America,” so they do gigs like DoorDash and GrubHub, barely getting by. Last year, they lived with us for six months, crammed into our two-bedroom apartment with my wife, 1-year-old son, my parents, little sister, and their husky. It was suffocating and put a huge strain on our marriage. We couldn’t kick them out because I didn’t want to leave my sister without a place to go.

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Tonight my wife and I were looking through a “memory” folder her phone automatically created, mostly filled with photos of our family and kids.

For context, about five years ago my wife had what I’d describe as an emotional affair with a coworker. At the time I found a lot of messages and photos on her phone. She always insisted nothing physical happened, but some of the conversations were very detailed and clearly crossed boundaries.

While scrolling through the photo album tonight, two revealing photos of her from around that same time suddenly appeared. I had never seen those pictures before, and they definitely weren’t sent to me. They were date-stamped from five years ago. She quickly deleted them and said she didn’t remember taking them and that they must have been accidental.

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I work in a creative field, and my partner works in tech and has a strong engineering background. Because of that, she tends to believe she understands anything remotely technical.

Recently, the heating system in the house she owns stopped working and started throwing error codes. She immediately wanted to open the unit herself and “see what was going on.” I wasn’t comfortable with that because these systems involve high voltage and refrigerant, and a mistake could mean serious damage or huge repair costs. So I called a professional technician to check it out.

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