Having a hard time with my husband being intamite with his partner but not me.

Not sure how to process these feelings

Today I am struggling. When I met my husband, I was poly. We have not been poly for years. In fact, other than myself, he has never really been poly. Before we got married over 10 years ago, we had a very clear conversation that we were not going to be poly. I made sure we were on the same page before walking down the aisle.

This past November, when my husband and one of our long‑term friends wanted to be BDSM “play partners,” everything changed. He asked her to be a play partner — it was supposed to be just BDSM at first, maybe sex, but not a relationship. But very quickly it became clear that it was not going to stay “play partners only.”

I still don’t want to be poly, but I have worked very hard to be okay with this. There were a lot of fights in the first two months, but since then we’ve been better about talking through things.

One of my biggest issues, though, is that we are rarely intimate. We have a date night every other Friday now. He has one with her on the opposite Fridays, and he stays with her those nights. That’s not the only time they have together — they see or talk to each other every day.

I know he loves me and wants to stay with me. That part isn’t the struggle. The struggle is knowing that every time they spend the night together, they are intimate, while he and I live together and since November we’ve only been intimate about four times. Twice were quickies, one time was mutual pleasure but not intercourse, and a couple of weeks ago we had a great night that I planned and set up. Nothing has happened since, and I don’t want to feel like intimacy only happens if I create the entire situation. That doesn’t help me feel wanted.

Maybe that should be enough, but it’s not. He doesn’t take initiative to make the first move. We cuddle and such, and I tell him I’m interested, but nothing happens. Today when he called me on his lunch break, he asked why I sounded down. I tried not to, but I started crying and told him it’s very hard knowing that on the nights he stays with her, they’re intimate, while that isn’t happening with me. He said he’s trying, that we cuddle, etc.

I told him I’m not talking about cuddling — I’m talking about sex. He doesn’t make any attempts. He said we’ve been working on it and he’s trying to make it better. For context, he came to me in early September and we talked about how, with our work schedules, we hadn’t been connecting intimately. We put things in place to work on that. We were working on it, and even took a trip together in mid‑October. Then in November he came to me about the play‑partner thing.

For clarity: I have always been the more sexual partner in our relationship — the whole 16 years we’ve been together. That has caused issues from time to time because you start to feel rejected.

So I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this while watching her — from my perspective — get the benefits that I’m not getting. She is also married with two kids. It’s more complicated than that, but I’ll spare the details.

My struggle right now is: how do I work through this? How do I wait for him to come back around to wanting me sexually again while he’s having sex with her when they’re together and I get cuddles? How am I supposed to expect things to get better between us when he has her fulfilling that need? Why would it change? How do I get him to understand my point of view?

He told me today he wishes there was something he could say to reassure me or help me understand that he wants to be here. I told him there are no words — words won’t fix this.

Any advice would be appreciated. I love him, and he shows me he loves me. I just don’t feel it’s fair to ask me to wait for him to want to have sex with both of us. Honestly, it makes me want to tell him that until he can figure something out, or until we can fix what’s broken, he can see her all he wants but sex is off the table. But how do you take something away that already isn’t happening? You don’t.