Man calls out wife for 'violating boundaries' of open marriage, she threatens divorce. AITA?
"AITA for calling my wife out for violating the boundaries of our relationship?"
For context, my (31M) wife (32F) is bisexual and has a way higher libido than I do. Even before we got married we figured out that I could never fully satisfy her and as such we have always accommodated ourselves so that both of us could feel happy and satisfied in the relationship.
We decided to have an open marriage, meaning that my wife will hook up with dudes she meets on dating apps provided she informs me whenever she does so, mostly for safety reasons.
This is all fine with me. We have, however, set up some other rules for these encounters. Firstly these people shouldn't be considered boyfriends, as they are there to satisfy her sexually and neither of us feel we are in a position to enter a polyamorous relationship, especially considering we have an 18 month old child. Relating to this point, we decided it would be the best not to bring these men into our house.
Yesterday after I came home from work after picking up our daughter from the daycare I could hear my wife was hooking up in our bedroom. This made me instantly feel uneasy, since we had set up the rules for a reason and this was in clear violation of them.
I did let them finish and waited until he had made his way out until I confronted my wife about the issue. She instantly got defensive and said I was suffocating her and claimed that there's no real difference between hooking up here or elsewhere and made the argument that booking a hotel - which she sometimes has to do - is a waste of money when we have a perfectly good house of our own.
I said that I didn't feel comfortable with having strange men in our house and that my feelings should also be taken into account. Then she for some reason started talking about the fact that I'm circumcised and that that's the reason I couldn't satisfy her, when this had never been an issue in the past.
This spiraled into a huge argument after which she suggested a divorce. I was stupid and said that if she couldn't handle not hooking up with people other than me then maybe we should indeed consider a divorce. She then stormed out and slept the night at her parents' house.
I know I made some dumb comments but I don't feel like I'm in the wrong calling her out for clearly violating rules we had specifically set up to avoid situations like these. She is now seriously threatening me with divorce though, so maybe I did step over a line somewhere in there. AITA?
Here's what top commenters had to say about this one:
Capresesandwitch said:
NTA. She is the one who violated your boundaries, not the other way around.
lanah102 said:
She’s bringing guys into your house, your bed and you waited for them to finish. It’s a huge breach of rules and she’s turned on you? Should you choose to stay, you have no further right to complain.
Fine-Geologist-695 said:
NTA, she doesn’t respect your boundaries and is clearly willing to knowingly hurt you.
panachi19 said:
NTA. She’s stepping all over you and the boundaries you agreed on. She thinks you’ll crawl back. Prove her wrong. First get a DNA test to see if the kid is actually yours. Then file for divorce and if it’s your kid go for custody. An endless roster of strange dudes is no good for your kid to be around.
Old_Cheek1076 said:
She sounds profoundly selfish. NTA.
Odd_Welcome7940 said:
You finally stood up for yourself. Don't be the one who ruins it now. Divorce her and move on. NTA.