My Husband’s Medical Technician Asked Him Out — and He Accepted

A strange turn of events

For a long time, I’ve been struggling with the sexual shame of telling my husband that I was interested in opening up our relationship.

You know, staying together, still being with and loving each other — but also dating and sleeping with other partners should we meet someone we’re interested in.

I was fully committed to my husband, but I did want to open up our lives to new connections and experiences. I wanted sexual and emotional exploration, done safely and responsibly. To me, being with someone else can’t lessen my love for my husband; he, however, didn’t quite see it that way.

We talked about it a lot, and I think it made him feel extremely insecure. That’s why I feel shame and guilt. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think I should feel shame and guilt for speaking my honest desires to my husband, but sexual shame has been ingrained in me since birth. I think my upbringing and society in general have smashed sexual shame into me.

On top of that, opening up to my husband about my polyamorous leanings probably played a part in the emotional affair he had with the woman he’s loved for years. It’s not the sexual aspect of their texts that bothered me or the fact that he loved her — it was the fact that he’d spoken of me to her in vile, abusive, and derogatory language time and time again.

It was brutal.

Since that discovery, it’s been one blow after another. My husband lost two different jobs and I took over the household bills. He couldn’t move out if he wanted to. He also recently had the first seizure of his life — right after I told him I wanted to end our marriage — and has been unable to drive until further testing shows that it’s safe for him to do so.

Well, that testing has happened. He recently had an MRI and an EEG to make sure everything in his brain looked okay. Fortunately, all tests came back normal. This seizure was probably stress-induced. Probably because of our relationship status and my wanting out (cue more guilt).

Oh, also, the EEG technician happened to slip him her number on a pink Post-it Note and asked him out on a date. And he accepted and started texting her while I was driving him home.

I can’t make this shit up.

I Want My Husband to Sleep With Someone Else

I didn’t know he had picked up a hot date from the hospital until after we arrived home.

For his appointment, I’d dropped him off and nestled into a nearby Starbucks to write and wait for his tests to be completed. When I went to pick him up, he told me about how everything went with the testing process. He also shared that he’d had some good conversation with the EEG tech. “She used to be a model and is interested in getting back into acting,” he said.

Cool. Cool. Anyone who wants to talk acting and local film will be of interest to my husband. (Especially one so gorgeous as the woman in the Facebook photo he later showed me.)

I was glad he had an okay time because he’s really been going through a soul-crushing shitstorm lately — what with his wife wanting to leave him and his job losses and his health possibly abandoning him and all.

Even though I don’t think we work as a romantic couple; even though we’ve been in a sexless marriage for almost a year now, I still love him and care for him as a person. I want to see him happy. Then, empath that I am, I won’t feel like shit and will have a better chance of finding happiness myself.

So when we got home, and he showed me the little pink slip of paper with a name and number written in loopy feminine script, I didn’t quite know what to say.

I guess my gut reaction was that I felt happy for him, but I didn’t want him to feel hurt that I wasn’t jealous. I felt all sorts of weirdness and guilt for having that reaction, but I’m apparently not the jealous type.

I think that if you love someone, you love someone — period. Feelings for other special someones don’t detract from feelings for your partner. In the same way we love multiple kids or multiple friends and family members, I think there is enough love within us for more than one romantic relationship.

I also understand some people aren’t wired this way and could never be anything but monogamous. I don’t judge anyone for feeling either way. Not everyone has to be like me. But…lots of people out there are like me.

My husband’s a good-looking guy, so I’m honestly surprised this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often. And one of the big insecurities he had about opening up our relationship was that I had lots of prospects and he had none. That’s typical in the lifestyle with men and women, from what I hear. The numbers just aren’t in the men’s favor.

At home, he informed me that he’s already texted the technician. And she’s already responded back. She’s a single mom with two kids, so she wouldn’t be free until the weekend after next. They talked about dinner and a movie and drinks.

Caught off guard, but supportive, I told him to go for it. I asked him if it made him feel bad that I was okay with it, and he said no.

This is the kind of exchange I wanted us to have back in the day — back when we were good together. When we opened up to each other about our new and evolving sexual desires. Before we fell apart.

Now that it’s happened after all the nastiness of his affair, I’m not sure if I’m happy to explore non-monogamy with him, or if I’m happy that maybe some woman out there might distract him from wanting me.

And yes, I feel fucked up for having those thoughts. But if we’re being honest — and I think we ought to be — I have to admit that this is how I feel. I’d feel guilty for leaving him, but I would feel relieved if he left me.

I hope he sleeps with her and they both have an amazing time. Whatever that means for us.

Finding My Own Friend

As I always do, I continued over-analyzing and turning this event over and over in my mind during the next few days.

I feel an emotional tug-of-war about him getting a date, because one of my husband’s excuses for saying the vilest shit about me to his emotional affair partner was that he thought he was losing me after I told him I was interested in exploring non-monogamy.

Even though I specifically told him I’d never want to leave him as we both attempt trying an open relationship and seeing if we like it, he thought he was losing me? So he got mad and used his affair partner to “vent” about me?

To him, venting meant confiding in her and saying several specific and cutting things about his feelings for me over the course of several months, such as:

• he hates me,
• he needs health insurance because living with me causes his health problems,
• I’m going to kill him if he stays with me,
• he needs out of this marriage, and
• I’m a selfish cunt with mental issues.

It still doesn’t make sense to me that he wants to stay and work on our relationship — and now he seems quite gung-ho about seeing other people because, hey, he finally got a prospect.

In the days that followed, I started doing a bit of research again. I’ve been feeling shame about wanting to explore my polyamorous inklings ever since it sort of blew up my marriage, but the desire is still there. And if he’s happy about getting a date, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to at least start reading about non-monogamy and listening to podcasts again.

Also, exploring social media.

I started poking around some local polyamory Facebook groups. These are groups that my husband and I had joined over a year prior and never took much interest in, as most of the posts were attempts at unicorn hunting (i.e., a hetero, cis couple looking to find an enthusiastic woman to join them both).

But this time, I saw a group of friends post a video from a local downtown karaoke bar. I’m obsessed with karaoke, in case you didn’t know, and I’m all for making friends with people who want to get together regularly for drinking and singing.

I commented on the post — a video of a gal who’d gathered the courage to sing in public for the first time. I congratulated her. Then a guy in their friend group told me to message him if I’m ever interested in joining in their karaoke shenanigans.

Um, yes please.

He and I chatted on FB Messenger for a bit about his social circle. One of his partners has been on a podcast that I love to listen to, and I checked out her interview and learned more about him through that. I also went out with him later that week for a few beers to “pick his brain” regarding polyamory.

He’s a smart, kind, considerate guy. He’s married. He also has a girlfriend and a few friends with benefits. He’s like a non-monogamy mentor. He and his wife have been happily open for years now.

It was the most unexpected thing. My husband was on board with me going out and chatting with him. And I’m still kind of reeling from the week’s unexpected events.

Wondering What’s Next

I can’t help but wonder how a medical technician giving out her phone number to a patient might be perceived if the genders were swapped.

What would we think of a male med tech hitting it off with a female patient, then hitting on the female patient and giving her his number? What if he told her how attractive she was and gave her his phone number while she was in a vulnerable, stressful state during the test he was running and worrying about her health?

I’m not sure what I think about that — I have too many other things I’m confused about in this situation. But it’s just something that crossed my mind. Something that stood out.

The first thing I asked my husband was if this woman knew he was married. Honesty and communication are super important to me, and he hasn’t always been the best at those.

He said that he’d indeed told her he was married. I’m not sure how in-depth they went into it, or whether this is a friendly or romantic outing in her eyes — but I know she’s told him how attractive he is. She’s also a single mom of two making time to see him, so I think it’s unlikely that she is strictly trying to make friends and get back into the film scene again.

But who knows? He’ll find out. And I look forward to finding out too.

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