Reply To: Is love a bad thing?

In my opinion: no, it’s not a bad thing. But it depends a lot on how the man handles jealousy too…because love and jealousy can be flip sides of the same coin.

Personally, I’ve always thought that women have an amazing capacity for love; one that is far different from how men deal with love. That makes it easy for women to love more than one man and still maintain a necessary separation between the men.

In our case, as I’ve watched my wife in her relationships with all the other men who’ve seen her over the years, I noticed that while she often had several men with whom her relationship was simply about sex, she almost always also had one with whom she developed a deeper friendship, and more intimacy. I realized that while she needed the raw sex with most of her men, she also needed that emotional connection with a man. Interestingly, that emotional connection in now way displaced OUR emotional connection…that continued strong and stable and loving, in spite of the other man.

From the beginning, I’d always told my wife that she was free to see any man she wanted, free to see as many men as she wanted, and that I was fine with it if she wanted to take a lover or lovers as well. I think it took a long time for her to accept that last part…because of her fear of my possible jealousy. Her previous husband had shared her, but he was a jealous, controlling type, and I think she found it hard to accept that I wouldn’t be also.

But I’d done my stint, as a young adult, with jealousy. I’d realized how quickly and insidiously it corrupts relationships, and I’d decided I’d ban it from my life, and I did. Once my wife became convinced that I was not a jealous person, and that I meant what I said about her taking a lover, she opened up about her need for an emotional connection to create the real satisfaction she was looking for.

From that point, it wasn’t long before she found and took a lover…and now she freely admits she’s in love with him. She still sees other men for purely sexual pleasure, but has made it clear that she and her lover don’t “just fuck” as she does with the other men…she and her lover make love.

Personally, I find her relationship with her lover intensely arousing. While I love watching or hearing about her fun with one of her fuck buddies, nothing turns me on more than the look in her eyes and on her face when she’s going to see her lover…or the glow about her when she’s been with him.

Bottom line: For us, her being in love with him isn’t a bad thing. But it requires a very stable, open and honest relationship, and no jealousy at all, to make it work.