Dear Dr. Harley,

My husband and I attended your weekend seminar about a year ago in San Francisco. We've been stuck on Emotional Need 4 for several months now and can't resolve our problems. We have tried to improve our sex lives together, but he is still not satisfied.

My husband doesn't think he can be happy with a monogamous sexual relationship and I don't want to deny him his heart's desire. However, I also don't want the risk of a sexually transmitted disease or the complications of having other people involved in such an intimate area of our lives. It would also violate my conscience to participate in sexual relationships with other people or to continue to be sexually active with him if he is involved in sexual relationships with other people.

Another issue that complicates this situation is that I am pregnant with our fourth child. This pregnancy is the fulfillment of one of my most important needs and it seems unfair that I am anticipating having my need for another child met while he continues to be unhappy.

One last detail is that my husband carried on an affair for three and a half years (almost half of the time we had been married at the time he revealed the affair to me) with his girlfriend from college. So the level of trust I have for him is not as high as I would like it to be. I am concerned that if I tell him that having extra-marital sex is out of the question, he will just sneak around and do it anyway while I continue to have sex with him and unknowingly risk catching a disease.

I don't want to wind up divorced over this, but I am at a complete loss since I'm not willing to go along with what he wants, either.

Dr Harley doesn't post here, but I will offer an opinion if you don't mind.

I would suggest that you have 2 options and you already know what your choices are. You can accept him how he is and live in an open marriage or you can divorce him.

You can't change him so you just have to accept him how he is. At least he is up front and honest about it. There is nothing we can tell you that will help you change his personality and character.

Most men would like, deep down in their souls, to have multiple partners. Most PEOPLE would like it.

If you're seriously considering this course, I would suggest that you do a TON of research on the possible outcomes of a multiple partner relationship.

And what exactly does your husband want? One night stands? A second wife? The opportunity to do whatever the heck he wants? I suspect that your husband has more issues than he realizes, and I personally would like to ask him a TON of really really hard questions about what his very specific and very practical and pragmatic plans are for exactly how he thinks this will work.

And since I'd be asking from the perspective of someone who's done it and seen what can happen, he might well not like the pointedness of some of those questions.


Okay, that's about your husband. Now. Let's talk about YOU.

Can you HONESTLY say that you would be enthusiastic about this? Forget fairness, forget what he deserves and what you deserve. Is there ANY WAY that you could be enthusiastic about your husband sleeping with another woman?

Whatever the answer is, please put your boundaries at a spot where you'd be jumping up and down and litterally CHEERING for him to go do what he's going to do. Without one speck or hint of reservation.

And don't feel guilty about putting your boundaries there. It's NOT ABOUT limiting your huband's fun. It's about protecting your marriage.

(Grrr. Now I'll stomp off and mutter imprecations at myself for a while. I wish someone had given us this lecture a few years ago, and that I would have been mature enough to listen.)

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