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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2025-06-01 04:00:01+00:00.

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Normal_Ad_3542

AITAH For Demanding That My Husband And I Go On Video Consenting To An Opening Relationship Before Allowing One?

Originally posted to r/AITAH

Thanks to u/soayherder for suggesting this BoRU

TRIGGER WARNING: Infidelity and faslighting

MOOD SPOILER: Expecting schadenfreude

Original Post March 13, 2025

Throwaway Account

I’ve been debating about actually posting this for a while but since I don’t feel comfortable about discussing this with family or friends I thought I’d come here anonymously.

I (35f) have been with my husband (35m) since we were 15 in high school and married him at 25 after our first child was born. We are each other’s only partner for everything and I thought we were good until my husband told me that we weren’t.

It all started when our first child 10f was born and the dynamics of our relationship went through a shift. I admit that it was a bit of a challenge but I thought we were doing okay until I got pregnant a second time and we had our twins 6m and 6m. It was rough and between child rearing, both working, taking care of the home, and struggling to save for a bigger place I honestly started to wonder if we’d make it. We went to counseling and once all kids were in school I felt like my husband and I were going to be okay.

We moved into our house, we got a handle on our student loans, got help with child care, received respective employment advances and were able to make monthly date nights for each other where we could just focus on us. It wasn’t perfect but I truly believed that we were good. Then one day my husband approached me about wanting to bring more excitement into the relationship. At first I thought he just wanted to spice things up, which I was down for, and we did but then he started to drop little hints about wanting more and asking me if I ever had any regrets about WHEN we met. It took a while for me to be honestly with both him and myself but I finally admitted that there were certain I wish we could’ve done differently and he seized that moment to bring up opening up the marriage.

I was shocked, confused, hurt, and the thought of cheating entered my mind. He assured me that it wasn’t and sent me articles and videos about “ethical non monogamy” but I wasn’t initially open to it. Unfortunately, my husband didn’t stop and kept pestering me about it to the point where it would ruin our date nights and after a year I relented just to get it over with, but insisted on some ground rules. One of them being that I wanted us both to side down together and record ourselves consenting to allowing the other to have a partner.

When my husband asked why I showed him a post about a woman who was in an open relationship with her husband, and one day while she was out with her boyfriend a relative of the husband’s saw, took pictures and then confronted the wife with the entire family. They accused her of cheating and her husband just let her take the fall. I don’t ever want to be in that position but my husband dismissed it saying that what happened to her won’t happen to us and that no one else needs to be in our relationship, which I found laughably ironic. I told him no video confirmation of consent, then no open relationship. My husband thinks I’m being paranoid, unreasonable, selfish, unfair and unwilling to compromise. AITA?

RELEVANT COMMENTS

apoloimagod

“My husband thinks I’m (…) unwilling to compromise.”

LOL! That’s rich. You literally gave him a compromise. You accepted his proposal with one condition to address your concerns. I guess for him, a compromise is where he gets to do exactly what he wants, without restrictions, regardless of your needs. Must be nice to live in his head…

OOP

His idea of a compromise to my video request is just having something in writing instead of video.

~

fu7ur3pr00f

You know he wants to open the relationship because he has a very specific person he’s trying to fuck right? A coworker probably

OOP

No sleeping with someone from work was one of the ground rules and he didn’t give any push back on that, so at the very least I don’t think he wants to sleep with anyone at work.

OOP when asked why not sign a contract

It’s harder to challenge a video than it is a signed document.

OOP on the ground rules

I didn’t go into too much details about it but the other ground rules are that we would have to use protection when it came to other partners, get tested frequently, and if there was a pregnancy out side of the marriage (more likely on his end than mine since I’m on long term birth control) then the marriage would be over as I won’t be a stepparent.

Update May 25, 2025

Hello everyone! Some things have changed and because I still get the occasional PM about this I decided to give an update to my situation and it will probably be many months before I give any new information if I update again at all.

To get straight to the point I decided to give my husband what he wanted and will be filing for divorce. For more details please continue reading.

After having yet another argument about opening up the marriage my husband threw a fit and left the house and didn’t return until the following day. It was late and I know he had been drinking a few more beers than he usually does so I was worried and kept trying to call and text him. He didn’t respond but while I was walking around the house with worried I noticed a pinging sound around the time after I sent my husband messages. I eventually sound the iPad that he used to use and was planning on giving to his sister’s step kid and realized it was still linked to his phone. Against my looming sense of guilt, I checked his iPad and it turns out he’s been messaging another woman from work for months.

It wasn’t just work related or platonic stuff either. A lot of these messages were really spicy and had the occasional NSFW pictures. They didn’t show each other’s faces but I know my husband’s body and the chick he was communicating with forgot about the mirror behind her which showed a tattoo that she had on her back of her shoulder so even though she cut off her face, I knew who she was. According to the messages they haven’t gone all the way but they have done other stuff and made jokes/comments about me. To make it worse he’s also been messaging some of his friends and cousins about me, saying how disgusting he thinks my body has become since having our kids. How he hates that my breasts have tiny stretch marks and aren’t as high up as they used to be and resents me for “putting my desires of doing motherhood a certain way rather than considering the needs of my partner” a.k.a. my choice to breastfeed instead using formula like he kept suggesting. My heart broke and I cried as I read the messages.

I guess I wasn’t as quiet as I thought I was because my son woke up and asked me if I was okay. I ended up taking him to bed with me and we fell asleep snuggling. I woke up to my daughter giving me breakfast (toast with jam and a peeled tangerine with some cereal) and told me that she heard her father and I arguing and wanted to cheer me up because she knew I was sad. This made me angry inside, not at the kids but at my husband. How dare this man subject these beautiful kids to this type of chaos all because he wanted to get laid. In that next moment something in me broke emotionally, and I no longer held any care or love for my husband. Part of me was hoping something terrible did happen to him while he was out as it would be a much cleaner break for me and my kids and I would have the benefit of his life insurance policy. Maybe I should see a therapist about that?

After I finished having breakfast with the kids, I let them go play while I looked up divorce attorneys and google state laws on marriage and divorce. My husband came back in the early afternoon, still wouldn’t say where he was but I didn’t care. As he was showering, I told him that he had my permission to open the marriage no video or written statement required. He was ecstatic and suddenly the fun and attentive man my husband was came back and it made me sick. He agreed never to bring any of his conquests to the home where our children might see and use protection but his word means nothing to me now.

Over the next couple of days I used my lunch breaks to have phone meetings with lawyers and I believe I’ve found the one for me. Since I gave my husband the green light he’s not being covert about his adventures and even showed me his Tinder profile. I smile but say nothing and I’m just collecting whatever evidence I can pass on to my lawyer. My plan is to serve him and pretend to be the aggrieved wife who found out about his adultery and lie about giving him permission to family and friends. No one outside of my lawyer knows that I’m gearing up for divorce in real life and there is no changing my mind.

Thank you for reading.

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