Hello from Austin!

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GoodTimeAustin82

New member
Hello,
I'm an early 50-something man who has been married for 20 years in Austin. Recently my wife and I decided to open up our marriage because of problems with our sex life.

Our sex life has been bad from the very beginning of our marriage. We waited until we got married until we had sex because she was saving herself for marriage. Unfortunately, we were in a for a rude surprise as sex was painful for her for the first three years until our first child was born. After that point, sex became neutral for her. Because of her upbringing, she worked hard to repress her sexual feelings. As for me, I had great sex with my prior girlfriend of six years. But I lost my virginity to her so wasn't that much more experienced in terms of partners.

So for the first 10 years of our marriage, I just put up with the bad sex because I thought that was a part of married life. And then I started reading forums about getting better sex life in your marriage. I learned my wife had hormone issues that made conceiving difficult our two kids. So we tried hormone therapy, couples therapy, and sex counseling therapy over the next 9 years to try and get things better. And unfortunately, nothing really helped.

At this point, I was pretty miserable and my wife could tell. I didn't want to divorce her over this because...fortunately, the rest of our marriage is actually pretty good. We have a good, happy family life. We agree on how to parent the kids and we don't get in many arguments. And we're both actively involved in our kids lives. And I would consider her a really good friend. If I wanted all the lifeless sex in the world, I picked the perfect partner for that. But I want sex with a partner who enjoys sex...and not just lay there because its her Christian duty.

So my wife proposed opening up our relationship so that I could see others. And I agreed to it. The challenge for us having an open relationship is that we can't really tell anyone. My wife works at our church...which would not approve of this arrangement at all. And most of our family would not approve of this either.

So I can't exactly go on any mainstream dating website looking for a partner. I've tried AdultFriendFinder...but that appears to be more of a meat market/hookup site. I'm looking for a partner I can enjoy doing things with and still stay in my marriage. So I was hoping getting plugged into the Poly community would be a good resource for finding partners.
 
Greetings GoodTimeAustin82,
Welcome to our forum. Please feel free to lurk, browse, etc.

It sounds like you and your wife are perfect for each other in every way, except for this one little thing. Sex. One little thing, but not so little. But because everything else is perfect between you, you must not divorce her. There must be some other way to deal with the sex problem, and open/poly might be it.

I should let you know, Polyamory.com isn't usually a very effective way to find people to date. I mean we do have a dating section, but it doesn't seem to produce much in the way of results. Mostly Polyamory.com is for having discussions about polyamory, and for getting advice. Now that doesn't mean people never find new partners here; sometimes that does happen. It just doesn't happen all that often.

Really, there are no good poly dating sites/apps. There's a few that used to be good, but now they are rife with problems. Really the best way to look for a new partner is to get out there in the real world, and start meeting people in person. Making new friends in person. It still takes a long time to come across a friendship that becomes romantic, but at least you can find a truly good match that way. Anyway those are just some thoughts.

Sincerely,
Kevin T., "official greeter" :)

Notes:

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Welcome aboard!
 
Welcome! You are in a tough spot. Its hard to meet people for sure! Sometimes finding groups that have a shared interest like gaming, hiking, cards, books, etc is a way to meet people but dating apps are not out of the question if you dont mind spending a little. I believe both bumble and ok cupid have a paid feature that the only people who can see your profile are people you swipe right on so nobody sees you unless you okayed it first. i recommend being up front with the first conversation as women can sniff bullshit from a mile away. The more honest you are the more likely youll get a response. Beware, youll still get a lot of flack if being poly isnt in your profile, or someone doesnt read your profile. Let it go and move on.

okay cupid works best if you answer a ton of questions. Skip the boring ones and focus on jealousy, poly, monogamy focused questions to signal you are poly, would date multiple people at once, would have no problem with your partner sitting on others laps, etc. Good luck!
 
This story resonates with me. Things took a different turn when my wife got frustrated with my sexual needs and first suggested opening up, but I shot the idea down due to my mono programming. We’ve been working on things since then and made some fantastic process, but the non-mono switch got fully flipped on a few months later. It does make me wonder what would have happened if I took her up on that offer instead of making a snap decision. Maybe disaster, so I can’t honestly be regretful about that moment.

If we get to the point where we open up as well, I’d probably be connecting with other kinksters and finding my groove in that community. So my contribution is to consider FetLife, if you have some specific kinks as an entry point.
 
Bobbi said:
Welcome! You are in a tough spot. Its hard to meet people for sure! Sometimes finding groups that have a shared interest like gaming, hiking, cards, books, etc is a way to meet people but dating apps are not out of the question if you dont mind spending a little. I believe both bumble and ok cupid have a paid feature that the only people who can see your profile are people you swipe right on so nobody sees you unless you okayed it first. i recommend being up front with the first conversation as women can sniff bullshit from a mile away. The more honest you are the more likely youll get a response. Beware, youll still get a lot of flack if being poly isnt in your profile, or someone doesnt read your profile. Let it go and move on.

okay cupid works best if you answer a ton of questions. Skip the boring ones and focus on jealousy, poly, monogamy focused questions to signal you are poly, would date multiple people at once, would have no problem with your partner sitting on others laps, etc. Good luck!
Click to expand...
Thanks for letting me know about bumble and okcupid. I'll check out okcupid's paid option.

And I definitely will be upfront about my situation. One of the reasons I'm seeking a poly woman is that I don't want a partner who's going to want me to leave my family. Plus, I think keeping the fact that I'm married with kids would an incredibly challenging secret to keep hidden...so would much rather just be upfront about my situation to any potential partner..
 
Blaincorrous said:
This story resonates with me. Things took a different turn when my wife got frustrated with my sexual needs and first suggested opening up, but I shot the idea down due to my mono programming. We’ve been working on things since then and made some fantastic process, but the non-mono switch got fully flipped on a few months later. It does make me wonder what would have happened if I took her up on that offer instead of making a snap decision. Maybe disaster, so I can’t honestly be regretful about that moment.

If we get to the point where we open up as well, I’d probably be connecting with other kinksters and finding my groove in that community. So my contribution is to consider FetLife, if you have some specific kinks as an entry point.
Click to expand...
thanks for sharing your story. Yes, I setup an account on FetLife and attended a poly meetup advertised on there earlier this month. It was fun but didn't really meet anyone. I hope they schedule another one...I'll keep attending those.

I'm not really into BDSM so a little leary about that. I guess once vanilla sex happens more frequently for me I'll start developing a kink and maybe consider it.
 
GoodTimeAustin82 said:
thanks for sharing your story. Yes, I setup an account on FetLife and attended a poly meetup advertised on there earlier this month. It was fun but didn't really meet anyone. I hope they schedule another one...I'll keep attending those.

I'm not really into BDSM so a little leary about that. I guess once vanilla sex happens more frequently for me I'll start developing a kink and maybe consider it.
Click to expand...
That's perfectly fine, and maybe you're vanilla as fuck, which is also fine. BDSM is not so scary if you break it down to its component parts. You realize quickly that just about every sexual encounter is asymmetrical, and therefore, can be expressed in terms of top/bottom/dom/sub roles. It can refine and define the elements of an encounter that gives you the best fulfillment. It's also a great way to let our shadow side out and integrate aspects of ourselves that we might have repressed. That journey appears to be open to you, if you ever felt like taking it.

I hope that gives you something to think about, because kink and BDSM could widen your net for both partners and experiences, since there's many places BDSM and non-monogamy can comfortably overlap.
 
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