I’m in basically the same situation, but a few years down the road.

We’ve had this conversation many times now, the two of us agreed upon a monogamous marriage- I’m still committed to that and if you’re not we need to pivot this conversation entirely to ‘what are our next steps?’.

It has been about three years since my wife came out as bisexual. A long and sometimes excruciatingly painful three years, but worth it if it makes us stronger in the end. I love her, after all, and MY commitment to a lifetime with her has yet to dissipate.

It started with me catching her making out with another female. My heart was broken, I had never been cheated on before and I love this woman with all of my being. After she articulated that she doesn’t want a divorce and it was a mistake, I was faced with a decision that needed to be made almost immediately: can I forgive and move past, or is this the end of the road. Like I said, she means the world to me so I was willing to do anything in my power on my side to make this marriage work.

We went to countless therapy and counseling sessions, and things were going great. She would have waves of feeling like she wanted to be with a girl, but she would work through them and come out firm in her acknowledgment that she wanted to be with me and me alone.

At some point I conceded to having a threesome with another woman. My animal brain said “it could be fun, why not give it a shot.” It ended up being very hurtful to me. It was on while it was going on, but at the end I realized that I didn’t want to ‘share’ my wife with anyone else, that’s not why I got married.

Father’s Day of last year we get home from dinner with my family, and she tells me she’s 99% sure she’s a lesbian and that she ‘thinks’ wants a divorce. We talk for a while, and then go to bed with the understanding that in the morning I’m going to take some of my stuff over to my parents’ house and stay with them while we go through the divorce process. I wake up the next morning, and she’s already in tears saying she made a mistake and only wants to be with me. Back to therapy and counseling, and back to feeling like everything is going to be ok.

We are currently going through a wave of her feeling like she needs the affection of a woman. This time she asked me if I’d be ok with her having a girlfriend. The answer was a resounding ‘of course not’. She accepted that and we’re trying to make it work.

There have been a couple key things for me to stay conscious of through all of this:

1) Am I still willing to fight for this marriage. The answer is still yes. She’s my best friend, I love her dearly, and I’ll do everything I can without majorly sacrificing my own health to make this work. If I ever stop be willing to fight, it’s time to end this regardless of where she’s at. Her sexuality isn’t a sickness, but some of the psychological impacts of it are (intermittent depression and anxiety primarily). My job as her husband is to support her through sickness and health, and I will continue to lovingly and patiently do that so long as I’m committed to this marriage.

2) What are my hard set boundaries. Protecting her at the cost of my own happiness does no good for either of us. I’m not ok with her having a girlfriend, I’m not ok with another threesome, and I’m not ok with being cheated on again. If she can’t meet those terms, then I can’t be happy and it’s best for both of us to move on separately.

I hope in some way this helps, and I wish you luck. Feel free to DM if you want to talk more about it. Maybe a ‘Husbands of Bisexual Wives’ groups wouldn’t be the worst thing.