DP takes a mistress with your approval

[NCmistermistress]

Would anyone be willing to share the "lived experience" of allowing, with full knowledge, your DP to take a mister/mistress? No deceit, lies, just an arrangement that works for both partners, even if only one wishes to take a mister/mistress. I'm realising now it's far more common than I thought.

Please, no judgment/morals etc, just the lived experience.

I don’t think it is that common if I’m honest.

It tends to not work out well due to the partner getting jealous or the person taking the mister/mistress falling in love and leaving the partner. There is more chance it will go wrong than right.

I don't see the point myself, if any party wants to sleep with someone else then it's over surely?
Each to their own but not something I would consider

I don't know anyone with this arrangement and if it came to this it would be over for me. I could not bear to think of my dh being with anyone else and him with me.

Never heard the term ‘mister’ for a male affair partner 😂

or the person taking the mister/mistress falling in love and leaving the partner

Yep.

I don't think it's common at all. I think that most people would be horrified. I don't anyone / have never known anyone, for whom this would be acceptable.

You need to think about how easy is it for a man to find a woman who does not want anything more than sex, doesn't want him to leave and won't catch feelings .....very hard to find.

It'll go pear shaped.

(A mister who doesn't want anything but sex doesn't want her to leave, and won't catch feelings however; well theyre in great supply).

Did you make up the term " mister" , that's hilarious!

No lived experience but I have two friends who did it to try and be the Cool Wife.

Both are now divorced.

One of them because her husband was out shagging his mistress while wife was in labour and missed the birth of his first child. No coming back from that really.

The other because the husband fell in love with the mistress because she was providing the passion and intimacy their marriage lacked. He picked that over his wife.

I know of two couples but the wife did not agree to it, she just didn't leave the husband when he set up the mistress and kept her. Both were v long term arrangements. In one, I believe the mistress was built a house near/pretty much in the grounds of the family home.

In one case the wife became depressed, and almost self destructive.

The other, I don't know what the impact on the wife was.

Yes, I made up the term "mister!" seemed to work, ykwim !!!

.... and please, I accept that in England this arrangement may not be common, but we're not all English living in England.

Does anyone have a "lived experience" please?

Why do you keep putting lived experience in quotes?

I can think of two different pairs of married friends who’ve done this, and it seems to be working amiably — in one case, the marriage had been celibate for a long time as the husband had lost all interest in sex, so his wife, with his approval, sought sex elsewhere, because they still love/d one another and want to stay married. In the other marriage, it was more a matter of the woman wanting to add something to a marriage she didn’t want to leave, and she’d always had an unexplored attraction towards an old (female) friend. This couple are still also sexually happy together.

These are just the ones I know about, I’m sure there are others. I don’t think it’s all that unusual.

so not even a husband, but a partner? does that mean you're the kept mistress now?

I've just started watching open house on channel 4 about couples moving to more open relationships. I'm not sure I'll get through episode 1 but the show might be of interest to you.

We practice ENM. We tend to refer to ourselves as romantically monogamous, ie. Our relationship comes first

We both prefer ongoing but casual connections with other parties, so not quite the same as just swinging but everyone knows where we stand from the start.

The key thing is though we aren't trying to fix something that's broken in our relationship. It's an addition and clear frequent communication is very much at the centre of it

@FourTeaFallOut Is that not right then?

@PaintedEgg No

@InFlagrante thank you.

You'd likely find more info on reddit, there are a few subs for this sort of relationship and the users are a bit more varied than here on MN
https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenMarriage/

https://www.reddit.com/r/polyamory/

https://www.reddit.com/r/nonmonogamy/there are likely others but I've not looked.

We have this exact set up. We have other partners on a casual basis but our relationship always come first. Works really well to be honest, the key is to keep communication open and have clear boundaries from the start.

I know one married couple in an open relationship. It worked well through their 20's. When children came into the mix he continued and she didn't (couldn't), he happily gallivanted and she was "left home with the kids". They are now divorced.

Female friend of mine was the one who did it. She and husband agreed through therapy, as he was not interested in sex and she felt neglected. I do think the reasons behind the decision is everything though, as that affects the outcome.

It didn't last long for her as she felt it conflicted with her religious beliefs (and tbh I think Purity Culture was to blame for her ending up in a sexless marriage in the fist place, but that's another topic) so they now cohabit and co parent (husband only had sex to conceive, once it was done they never had sex again).

This.

I used to be a criminal defence solicitor, one of my clients was a builder who was often “unlucky” in buying stolen goods. He was known as Rancid Ron and his wife only agreed to remain married to him if he had a mistress. The only person I know in my “real life “ who had this sort of relationship had a very open marriage in the 70’s when I believe it was far more common.

'Rancid Ron!' 😂

This. ^