Dear Matt:

The concept of open marriage triggers a negative response in many people. I don’t like it myself, not at all. Thing is, in your life, your experience, “after seeing the love of your life struggle with this disease for so long, I might do anything just to see the old smile on her face… I am getting to that point where anything is better that the pill popping zombie that I have been married to”- anything is better. Your experience of watching the woman you love existing as a pill popping zombie is very powerful and is the real issue.

You wrote: “she tells me that she feels good because he does not look at her as a mom, wife, or daughter, but that he just treats her like her with no judgement”- what her statement reveals to me is that she may feel guilty as a mother, wife and daughter, that she feels she failed her mother, failed you, failed your daughter. With this new man, Jay, she has the opportunity to be guiltless, free of guilt.

If I am correct then, if she gets to a place of self forgiveness, she will find that freedom she needs. And if I am correct, then she may already be feeling guilty at the thought of meeting Jay. And she will feel even more guilty if she does meet with him and become intimate.

The freedom from guilt, the revival, I am thinking, may be at the thought of not being guilty in someone’s eyes (Jay’s)- could be anyone. She probably sees herself from other people’s eyes, and she has seen herself temporarily through a stranger’s eyes and … temporarily what she saw was a guilt free woman.

Did she express to you guilt feelings, in regard to her mother? Daughter? You?

anita