Woman says her husband pushed for an open marriage — and one year later, the update makes clear the fallout never felt like a victory to her
A Reddit user says the marriage really started breaking the day her husband told her monogamy was no longer enough for him. In the original story, the 30-year-old woman wrote that she and her husband, 34, had been together seven years and married for four when he asked to open the marriage. She said he gave her what sounded like the standard pitch: he still loved her, this was only about unmet needs, and it was supposed to “spice up” their life rather than replace what they had. But she wrote that he also gave her an ultimatum — agree to the open marriage or get divorced.
At first, she said she went along with it because she could not bear the thought of losing him. She described feeling devastated while he jumped right in, staying out late and seeming thrilled with the arrangement while she felt lonely and gutted. For the first few months, she did not date anyone herself. Then her sister and best friend encouraged her to try, helped her set up dating profiles, and she discovered she had a lot more interest from men than she expected. She eventually began seeing two men, one more serious and one more casual, and wrote that those relationships made her feel attractive and wanted again in a way she had not felt inside the marriage.
That was also the point where the arrangement started looking a lot less appealing to her husband. In her telling, he had expected the open marriage to work mainly in his favor. Instead, she said he started complaining that many women wanted emotional connection before sex, grumbled about spending money, and grew irritated that she was out with other men while he was home alone. She wrote that he became more possessive of her time again, wanted more dates, more sex, and more “us time,” and seemed increasingly unhappy once he was not the only one benefiting. By then, though, she said something had already changed in her: she no longer believed she loved him the way she once did, and felt closer to one of her outside partners than to her own husband.
The first major update did not come with revenge or triumph. It came with exhaustion. She said they ultimately agreed to divorce, that she moved out to stay with her sister, and that instead of feeling victorious, she mostly felt lost and numb. She also wrote that most of their families did not know the truth about the open marriage, and that her mother blamed her for the split anyway. In comments captured in the BORU thread, she said she still mourned the marriage even though the people closest to her believed leaving was absolutely the right move.
One year later, the newer update showed that the emotional aftermath had not cleaned itself up into a neat “he got what he deserved” ending. She wrote that after the divorce, she had tried building something more serious with one of the men she met during the open-marriage period, but that relationship eventually ended too. In the longer arc preserved in the BORU post, she made clear that the open marriage had not simply handed her freedom and confidence without cost. It also left her sorting through shame, grief, and confusion over how long she stayed in a structure she never truly wanted.
What seems to have made the story stick with readers is that the so-called backfire was real, but not satisfying in the way internet stories sometimes want it to be. Yes, the husband who pushed for an open marriage ended up struggling more than the wife he pressured into it. But the woman’s own words kept undercutting the idea that this was some clean win. She said she did not feel like she had beaten him at his own game. She felt like she had lost a huge part of her life and was still trying to figure out who she was without it.
The Reddit BORU thread is here.
What do you think — did the marriage really end the second he made the ultimatum, or was the deeper damage in how long she felt she had to live inside his terms before she could finally leave?
