Every week in Living in Sin,Jen Sincero provides advice to LA's sexually confounded. Sign up for her newsletter and have it sent to you every week. Ask Jen your questions: all are posted anonymously.
Dear Jen,
I'm thirty-three and have been married for ten years. For several years now my wife has exhibited an attraction for other women. I've walked in on her watching girl-girl porn, she's always talking about lesbian sex and she checks out women all the time, sometimes right in front of me - I don't even think she knows she does it, but the affect of a beautiful woman on her is very noticeable. I've freaked out on her a couple times, and now we can't talk about it without an argument. We've been in a low-sex marriage for about six years, and we're in couples therapy to deal with this, as well as other issues. I love my wife very much and want to know how I can talk with her in an understanding way, and how I can stop being threatened by her same-sex desires.
- Jealous of the Other Women
Dear Other,
I was good friends with this couple who were totally head over heels in love. She was an enlightened, hippie chick and he was an effeminate, nelly sort of guy. About seven years into their marriage, she came into a bunch of money and told him he could spend some however he wanted to. He decided he'd like to permanently remove all the hair from his arms, back, legs and chest (he was incredibly hairy. Probably cost in the millions). All she asked was that he leave a patch on his chest because she loved to run her fingers through it. Eventually, however, he informed her that the whole chest had to go, because as it turned out, this wasn't just about his transformation from an ape man to a baby mouse, it was about something much bigger. He was a woman trapped in a mans body.
His wife freaked out for about a week, and then I got a phone call from her: "Jen, I had a breakthrough! The person I love more than anything on this earth is finally becoming who he/she really is. How could I be anything but thrilled? So I guess I'm a lesbian now!" She then began the task of helping her husband learn to walk in heels and sit in a skirt, and she did it with joy, like she had a new doll. And she got there in one, thin week.
Your situation may take a similar, super-human show of egolessness. If being with a woman is all-important to your wife, there's nothing you can do about it except, as you said, learn to understand and talk to her about it.
You have every right to be upset, but you can't stop someone from wanting something or from being who they are. All you can do is tell her how it makes you feel, and hope she gives a crap about that. Unfortunately, it sounds to me like she's being a bit of an insensitive twat about it. As if the fact that it's another woman doesn't count - she still made a commitment to you and sleeping with anyone else is a big deal.
If this is about her not wanting to be with you anymore, there's nothing you can do. If this is about getting married at twenty-three and feeling like she didn't get to experiment, that's something else. Stay in therapy, try to not come from a place of anger and hope your wife can get back to remembering why she married you in the first place.
