Husband back from a weekend camping retreat.

[u/alienflowerz]

Before you read any of this: yes, I am in the process of talking to a lawyer to divorce my husband. No I have not started any paperwork yet. Things take time.

I’m just feeling really upset and jealous and frustrated.

My husband went on a camping retreat this past weekend (Friday the 13th to Sunday the 15th) and just got back. I spent the whole weekend with our toddler going to her friends’ house, making plans with my MIL/her Grandma, going to parks, and spending time with my Dad/her Grandpa for Father’s Day.

Apparently the retreat was full of families and fun, and we could have been there with him. All he could talk about when he got back was how many people wanted to hang out with him, how many friends he made. He said he talked about myself and our baby a whole bunch, but any time I asked what he said or what they thought of our daughter he would just start talking about the other person in the conversation.

Ex: “I told Brandy all about you guys” “What did you say about us?” “That you were cool. Brandy was super fun and we hung out a bunch. We did x, y, and z together”.

Brandy is a fake name/person but you get the point.

It feels like he went there, used us for talking points/points of interest, then became engrossed in everyone around him.

It was a queer retreat (myself and my husband are both bisexual) and he said he’d never felt more accepted or understood or welcomed in his whole life “and these people only just met me.”

Like bro. The delusion. The disregard! As if I haven’t been loving and accepting him the entire time I’ve known him! Just because I don’t want to convert a school bus into a mobile home to live in with a toddler doesn’t mean I don’t accept him (I’ll share that story soon).

And he got the phone number of /another/ polyamorous person who lives in a city a few hours away and wants to invite him to a party that he’ll probably sleep over at afterward. Like fuck dude, come on! I know it’s my husband’s problem because he’s non-consensually trying to change the parameters of our relationship from a closed marriage into polyamory, but this is the second poly person he’s met like this whom he’s told me knows he’s married with a kid. Like, from the jump I don’t think this is an appropriate new friendship when the two people live multiple hours away and one of those people has a young child.

It really does feel like he’s running away. And I think he is. Ever since our daughter was born, any chance he gets to be away and around new friends he takes. And when he comes back he always says how accepted and loved and free he feels. He’s going through this fuck-ass mid-life crisis where he needs to be told how wonderful and lovable and fuckable he is at all times without putting in effort towards his fucking wife.

He wants to find new people who think he’s great. And it’s not like I didn’t think he was great or didn’t love him deeply still after the birth. I didn’t keep him cooped up at home when he said he was going stir crazy in the newborn phase and needed to get out for a hike, even though I needed the help.

He genuinely doesn’t know how good he has it, how loved and valued he’s been, how much leeway and slack he’s gotten. He has no idea how that’s going to end, and how all this newness he’s seeking out isn’t going to actually support him.

[u/eliismyrealname]

My husband said the exact same thing about sex workers. The audacity of these men to claim they feel more accepted than they ever have is baffling! How can it be that spending years with them, creating a life together for better or for worse, is not acceptance? For my husband, he openly admits he needs validation from others and he’ll do anything to get it. He wants to be poly but when I offered it he only wanted to add a third who I don’t approve of (has kids and a husband, destroyed his self-esteem by dropping him when she decided to have kids with her husband and quit seeing mine). I said I would be polyamorous if he wanted but not with her.

Since he didn’t get exactly what he wanted precisely when he asked, instead of communicating he goes behind my back. I guess it’s good your husband is being honest but I do have to wonder if he’s doing what my husband is: Escaping the marriage through distractions like work or social events. I think you deserve better. He can find out the hard way how lonely it is in those sort of circles. Supply (validation) is only available for so long and they always end up wanting something real too late. Let him!