I want to explore with other people

[central]

It's unfortunate the the OP has never returned. Who knows? Perhaps his wife would be open to some changes now, that the OP could explore with her. I've seen very traditional couples become avid swingers, for example - even a couple where one was a minister in their church.

[notbroken]

Unless you do a series of one night stands, it is hard to pull that off even as 'single'. Most women won't put up with you having multiple girl friends. Again, unless you are rich or a model, you will struggle with that lifestyle. Even girlfriends expect monogamy. You are about to ruin at least 2 people's lives (yours is one of them). Bottom line, don't expect many women to be good with you having other girlfriends - even if you aren't married to them.

[AMarriedMan]

I don't know what to do? We will never share the same beliefs on this. Is it another marriage doomed to ultimately fail?

 

From your description, the answer seems a resounding yes. If you can't live in a traditional monogamous marriage, you need to kill your feelings for your wife, divorce and live the kind of non-monogamous life you must live.

 

I hope you don't have kids.

[AMarriedMan]

Random musings.

 

This is why I think having just the right degree of autistic tendencies could actually be a huge blessing. Not too much to interfere with one's ability to make a living or to behave oneself in a socially acceptable manner. But enough to make one disinterested in intimate relationships. I think it may have been Freud who said that the most fortunate people are those who are able to be happy without close relationships with others. Human relationships are rife with complications. We require powerful hormonal cocktails to tolerate let alone desire such entanglements in our lives. Almost invariably, other people have agendas conflicting with ours, sometimes heavily disappointing us. In business, nobody in their right mind would enter into anything like marriage with the odds of success vs. catastrophic failure being what they are. It should be no surprise at all that in all developed countries, regardless of culture, fertility and marriage rates plummet and people strive to increase their personal space.

 

In our post-religious and secular times, we are impoverished in the sense that the range of sources of meaning available for us is narrower than it used to be. Religion used to play a much larger part in our collective lives than today. The entire concept of meaning has been nearly banished from public discourse. What we have left is following our base desires in pursuit of pleasure. Time will tell if our current cluster**** of a philosophy will result in our civilization gradually fizzling out and being replaced by something else.

 

There is no lasting happiness, fulfillment or meaning in following our wants and desires. There is only emptiness.

Edited May 22, 2019 by AMarriedMan

[pepperbird]

This is why I think having just the right degree of autistic tendencies could actually be a huge blessing. Not too much to interfere with one's ability to make a living or to behave oneself in a socially acceptable manner. But enough to make one disinterested in intimate relationships.

 

 

 

 

You do know autistics have feelings, fall in love, get married, have kids, do all the things nuerotypicals do? They're not cold and incapable of empathy. Many are interested in intimate relationships.

 

How do I know this? I'm autistic. I've been married for more than 21 years, have three nearly adult kids and certainly am not bereft of being able to enjoy an intimate relationship.

[AMarriedMan]

You do know autistics have feelings, fall in love, get married, have kids, do all the things nuerotypicals do? They're not cold and incapable of empathy. Many are interested in intimate relationships.

 

How do I know this? I'm autistic. I've been married for more than 21 years, have three nearly adult kids and certainly am not bereft of being able to enjoy an intimate relationship.

 

I know people on the autism spectrum as well and I've read about it to an extent. No, autists are not necessarily without interest in intimate relationships. But they tend to suffer from difficulty in having awareness of and control over their own emotions. They typically also have problems with empathy or awareness of the emotions of others.

 

But you're right in that I probably shouldn't have referred to autism because the issue in autism is not so much in the underlying instincts and drives but the cognitive apparatus that allows the individual to deal with them or sensory perceptions normally. For many, the realm of sensations and emotions is chaotic with some stimuli having inappropriate weight in consciousness while others a neuronormal person would pick up on immediately possibly going unnoticed. From this, follows the powerful distaste for change and the need to impose order in these realms typical of autism to varying degrees. I personally know several people diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and I also have enough experience to know that they can be very different from one another as people. But there are commonalities, which is why such a diagnosis has a basis in the first place.

 

I'm willing to bet that among those diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the proportion of those having little to no interest in intimate relationships is significantly larger than among neurotypicals.