But of a conundrum ...

[JessicaMay]

Wow what an incredible set of responses....and way more than I thought this kind of thing would garner.

I'm not going to try and respond to everyone individually, I think that would be insane . I will, however, try and respond to everyone's comments as points and see if we can clear this up a bit.

1. Firstly from what I've heard of from those with first hand experience. It's not a seedy, rundown sticky floored, screw house. It's a gentlemen's club. There's a bar, dance floor, meeting rooms, party rooms, etc. It is fully accredited and inspected by the appropriate health groups, and such.

That being said, it doesn't remove the "icky" factor of it being a hook-up joint. On this I don't disagree. What I can say for certain is it's not nearly as bad as I made it sound. The rooms are for rent, there are full showers, hot tubs, sauna, etc. Condoms are provided free of charge (they're in little dispensers all over the walls) and they have several health staff available to provide free screenings upon request. Of course that doesn't remove all the danger (which provides even more reluctance to go) but does lend itself to their credibility.

Without going into specifics of where I am, there's no way a place like that could exist here (legally) without providing all of the above services, with recent (and internet searchable) inspections from various agencies. So it's really not a dark seedy underground screw hole to goto, it's just an option to be once you get there.

2. Talking to my wife, that's pretty easy. We do that just about everyday. Infact on Saturday we had spent the entire afternoon together shopping, trying on new clothes and then relaxing at home just talking. It was an awesome day.

Please understand that all of these discussions are not an overnight thing. It wasn't decided Saturday afternoon to table the discussion about the spa, as they themselves refer to it, we have discussed it numerous times over several years. It's only recently that the direction of the discussion moved from reasons why I shouldn't go, to reasons why I should.

The reason, as she has told me, for the recent push in that direction is that there are other issues in this avenue as well. About 6 years ago I told her I was bi (I was already dressing for her a little bit at a time even back then). About 4 years ago we decided to start searching for an appropriate "third" for me to experience. We set out our rules and boundaries and such. In 4 years I've managed to meet plenty of nice people, but it always comes down to the same thing. They're either too flaky and want it now (random hook-ups I guess you'd call them) or they're more interested in her. I'm not interested in some random hook-up, nor someone on from a dating site pretending to be interested in me hooking up with her.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned earlier that I am honest, 100%. I have never told her a lie, or held a secret from her. She's read every post I've made on these forums, she's seen and met everyone I've met, read all my chat logs (or at least any that she was interested in). I'm not lying when I say I am 100% truthful to her in every way that I can be. Which brings me to ...

3. We don't have an open marriage. There is no "open" marriage. As someone stated before once you hit that arrangement your roommates and little else. Obviously why I have a problem "playing" without her present as that has never been the case ever before, and very likely will not be the case in the future.

That being said we're not adverse to the idea of including other people in our bed. We've done so from time to time before. It's nothing new at all. We have well established rules and boundaries that we settled on years ago. Opening the marriage is not open for discussion, for either of us. That doesn't mean (to use a tired old analogy) we want to eat peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of our lives, no matter how much we like peanut butter sometimes you want something else.

We're both open to that idea, we discuss things well in advance and plan out our activities accordingly. I'm not at all adverse to the idea of her being with someone else, and visa versa, provided the rules and such are respected.

Some smaller points,

Sometimes, when a woman says "Go ahead" it's not permission, but a dare.

True I thought of this. Though I don't think she'd be the kind of person to do that sort of thing. In the decade and a half we've been together I have never seen anything to indicate she would do that.

You could go, but just recline any advances made toward you. You could say you where
just seeing what it is like, and you are already in a commitment. You would not be lying.

This was kind of my plan. The question became, could I resist temptation to just go downstairs and get it over with. The answer is, I'm not willing to risk it.

Maybe she was upset because she had plans for the night.. what's good for the goose and all ... just saying.

Obvious thought. As it turns out the look she gave me, and follow up questions she had were a result of shock. She wasn't expecting me to not bother even going. She assumed I would at least have a drink or two before coming home. She apologized profusely for the mixed signals.

My point with all this is that no one here knows why your wife suggested this. You should ask her until you feel that she is telling you the truth.

I've done. We had a nice chat about it last night. I don't have reason to believe she's not telling me the truth any longer.

You two should not agree to do anything that BOTH of your are not comfortable with.

Agreed, clearly as I wasn't comfortable doing it. I didn't. When I returned I informed her as such as well as using the "stop" word which halts everything until we get the opportunity to talk things over and figure out what went wrong, where and how to fix it.

From what I gather, I have to think that your sex life with your wife is just about non existent.

I cannot imagine a statement more wrong about our marriage than this. At all, ever. I'm not going into details with you here, but if we had no sex life, this thread wouldn't exist at all.

Same here. "Marriage", by definition means, among other things, being faithfull to each other. If you claim to be married but are having sex or affairs with other people (same gender or not), it's not a marriage, it's a living arrangement. You and your wife are "roomates".

If you really want to see what it feels like to have sex with a man, why not just dress your wife up as a man, buy her a set of prosthetic genitals, and have her do what you want to be done to you? Who knows, she might enjoy it as well.

Faithful is a sliding term. I'm not unfaithful, nor have I ever considered being. She isn't either, but has considered it. No one is having affairs, please stop assuming such. (edit: forgot a line here ... ) Faithful being sliding means that you can be unfaithful according to someone's scale but not your own. Unfaithful on our scale means anything you're unwilling to share with your partner. If we're aware of what is going on, where and why, then it's not a problem. Otherwise it's cheating. This particular issue (note, I still call it cheating, but she doesn't agree with that term because she gave permission) isn't an issue of fidelity, or trust. It's how far should one go, when given the opportunity to see how far you can go. I think, and standby, my choice to not go speaks volumes to how I view the subject.

Also that last thing, it's been done ... a lot

Anyway we're more on the same page here. I'm still intent on not going. She's agreed that we'll move far more slowly on that front, and that any push from her will stop at this point. For now we'll continue with the dating sites and such, continuing to go out and meet people. It's been 5 or so years now, I can continue to wait it won't be the end of the world for either of us.

Unless it is. In which case ... stay safe classy people.

(also in case it isn't evident, thank you everyone for your responses. You've helped me wrap my head around this and find the right questions to ask. Golf clap all around.)