You bring up some very good points. I have not mentioned opening up the relationship during our couples sessions. I don't think our counselor is properly equipped in this area.
They may be willing to upskill, or they might be able to make a recommendation about someone else who can help.
I would be interested in examining and possibly dismantling monogamy core beliefs. Any suggestions.
I'm sure there are resources out there for this but I'm afraid I don't have any to hand. I'd start with sitting down with pen and paper and writing down everything that monogamy means to you. You may want to do this with your wife, but start doing it as a separate exercise then share your ideas with each other and see where they overlap. Core beliefs are usually formed in childhood, modeled by the adults around us, both nuclear and societal, or even by what we watched on TV/read in books. Then ask yourself, can I identify where this belief came from? How is it serving me? What could be an alternative? Would that alternative serve me better?
Often our core beliefs go uninspected, I know I fell into that trap in my late 20s/early 30s when I believed it was time to "settle down" with my then partner. We didn't have the communication skills or even self awareness to build a life that we really might have thrived in. But I learned about myself during that relationship and didn't allow the same mistakes to happen when I met my now husband.
I have talked to my wife about meeting emotional needs and I know that I am not filling her needs just like she is not filing mine.
Have you simply grown apart? Do you envisage growing back together? Or should the conversation really be about kindly moving on from this status quo?
Of the two of us, I am the jealous one. About 1.5 weeks ago, I told her that if she felt she needed to go outside our relationship to get the emotional fulfilment she needs, I would be OK with that if that made her more happy. She asked, "do you mean you want me to have an affair"? I said, "I want you to be happy and emotionally fulfilled, and be able to do what you need to obtain that, and if that means going outside our relationship, that is OK".
But right now she still thinks you're encouraging an affair rather than a mutually defined open relationship. You might want to look into developing your vocabulary (because that's a large part of what learning is) so you can communicate more effectively about what an open marriage could look like for both of you. You also may not have considered that she might not just stop at one extra person but might develop emotional connections to a few until she's polysaturated (see, vocab).
I continue to dig deeply into my brain to find out why I fear divorce, why I fear being alone, what will allow me emotional fulfillment, and how do I proceed without hurting my wife. She is a very good person, and I want to make sure she is taken care of, no matter how this turns out
Oh, I suspect she's already hurting, you can't start discussing extramarital partners after 30 years and not experience some emotional reaction that is likely to resemble hurt and fear.
But let's examine emotion for a moment. We have colloquial terms that reflect what part of the body something is felt in. "A lump in the throat" (sadness) or "heart is jumping out of your chest" (fear) or "get something off your chest" (relief) or "butterflies in your stomach" (often excitement) indicating the upper abdomen or "gut feeling" more related to the lower abdomen. All of these have a physical cause, but are generally preceded by a thought, however fleeting or potentially subconscious, that signals the endocrine system to react accordingly. But if the thoughts can be developed positively then the body is likely to react favourably and the resulting emotions become enjoyable ones.
I hope that you and your wife can navigate the retraining of the thought patterns from monogamy to whatever form of ethical non-monogamy that you settle on. I hope that any notions of scarcity and lack (which I suggest might be fueling your fear of divorce) can get tempered with ideas of abundance. Jealousy is, at its root, a fear of loss, projected outward. If you learn to not fear loss (by choice such as divorce), either due to secure attachment or acceptance that sometimes letting go is a way of moving forward, then the jealousy is likely to greatly diminish.