[WesternSwing]

The short answer is that for many the concept of a spouse being okay with it is just too hard to wrap their mind around.

The long answer is - we, as a society, have been taught from the day we were born that a marriage is between one man and one woman, and any variation upon that is wrong. Or that what you are doing would be okay if there wasn't that piece of paper between you saying you're married because when you get married you're supposed to "own" your spouse. Or they simply can't get over their own insecurities, they would never let anyone else have sex with a person they were serious with much less be in a poly situation, and therefore don't understand why you don't feel the same as they do. People tend to think that love = jealousy and the more jealous you are the more you must love someone.

This is a reason we've have trouble finding those that we are interested in having a relationship with. For Mrs. WS, other men just don't get it. As your wife's friend is, they also can't understand how I'm okay with it and why I'm not jealous. In fact, some of the men Mrs. WS has met don't even want to meet me much less think of the possibility of a threesome happening. Cheating wives they can understand. Wives with permission and a non-jealous husband simply blow their mind!

There are also two women outside the lifestyle that Mrs. WS and I know that I have lusted after for years. Regardless of whether or not it could turn poly between us, these women have told Mrs. WS that they'd love to be with me but they just can't get over the married man thing... at least with the wife knowing and with her happy consent. They've both been the other woman in affairs with married men, but doing it with permission again is something they just can't wrap their mind around because that's not what they've been taught their whole life. Having sex with me, with Mrs. WS's permission and then seeing her later on in a social atmosphere without some kind of friction or jealousy or weirdness is just a foreign idea to them.

My only advice is to keep on being his friend and hopefully he'll eventually come around. But it's been so many years already that I think unless he has some epiphany not much is going to change.

Mr. WS