Nonmonogamy ruined my relationship with my wife [vent]
This is something I have been ashamed to admit for a long time, because it's painfully obvious that I had self-esteem issues that played into this problem, and autism that made me struggle with the "grey" areas that were treading on.
My wife and I tried nonmonogamy for a year or so a while back. We had several polyamorous friends, and I had become convinced that this structure was more 'evolved' and healthy. I also had a deep rooted fear of not being 'enough', which was made worse since my wife had been in a poly relationship before and had engaged in several nonmonogamous events at parties during college, and had asked me for a threesome one time. I started worrying constantly that I wasn't enough for her, and I ended up asking her if she wanted an open relationship, and she said yes.
I tried sex with others a few times and it made me depressed because it made me feel disconnected from my wife. Meanwhile, my wife had began to develop feelings for someone she claimed to only want sex with. I spent a lot of nights alone in bed, while I listened to her giggle with him until 4am in the morning on voice calls. She bought him expensive gifts, but had stopped buying me gifts because I'm "hard to buy gifts for and [she's] not good at getting gifts." She would get mad at me when I called their relationship into question. And then only admitted to being obsessed with him after he made it clear that he wasn't going to have sex with her.
I was heartbroken. She was the very first person I fell in love with and loved me back. For a while she didn't want me to talk about it, but she eventually seemed genuinely remorseful, and admitted she had "got carried away" with the nonmonogamy. I feel like an absolute idiot who did literally anything aside get therapy. But nowadays, I have such bad anxiety surrounding the topic of nonmonogamy/polyamory. I feel that there's only a matter of time before she wants to leave me, that I'm no longer enough for her, even though she tells me she is sure that she wants monogamy with me now.
Every day I wake up, I remember that several month stretch where she woke up and immediately texted him. When she was usually only in 'the mood' after talking to him. When she would stay up late for hours talking to him. Nowadays, when she is 'in the mood,' it's hard to trust that she actually wants *me*. It's hard to trust that she isn't just closing her eyes imagining she was with him, or another new, novelty someone.
I remember her asking me at some point during that time, "why should sex be treated differently than any other activity you might do with friends?" and it still destroys me. She still sees it that way too. It makes me feel like she doesn't think I'm special at all. It makes me feel like she's taking advantage of my willingness to provide income and housing, while she remains a stay at home spouse, that she's taking advantage of my autism and my struggles with grey areas. It is so difficult to trust her now.
I am still heartbroken after this and I'm just now accepting how horribly this has messed me up. I don't know what to say or do. I love her to death and she gets me on so many other levels and our connection is so much deeper than any I've ever had. I can't give up on this relationship but I have no idea how to move on from this pain that consumes me every goddamn day.
Sorry for the long rant, I didn't know where else to put this.