My Husband Wanted to Date Other People — Now He Regrets It

My husband said he wanted an open marriage — or a divorce.

Because I loved him, I agreed.

I didn’t want to lose him. I thought maybe, just maybe, if I showed him I trusted him, he’d remember what we had. Six months later, I started dating his best friend, Ben.

My husband resented it but stayed silent. He was the one who opened the door, after all.

At first, I could tell it bruised his ego — watching Ben pick me up for dinner, watching me get dressed up again for the first time in years. But he said nothing. Instead, he started coming home later, smelling of someone else’s perfume, pretending not to notice when I stopped waiting up for him.

Then, last week, Ben shocked us both when he confessed something that changed everything.

The Confession

It was a quiet Sunday morning.

Ben and I were sitting in my kitchen, sharing coffee before my husband woke up. There was a strange tension in the air — something unspoken, heavy.

Ben kept glancing at the door like he was about to flee. Then he said it.

“I can’t do this anymore. There’s something you don’t know.”

My stomach twisted. “What do you mean?”

He looked down, rubbing the back of his neck. “When you started seeing me, I thought it was just… fun. But I fell for you. Hard. And I think your husband knew.”

I froze.

He continued, “He asked me to go along with it.”

“What?”

“He said it’d make him feel less guilty for what he was doing. He wanted to see how far you’d go. It was a test, Rachel. He used both of us.”

The words hit like a physical blow.

I sat there, numb, staring at the man I thought I was beginning to trust.

Ben’s voice broke. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. But somewhere along the way, I realized… I actually love you.”

The Betrayal Behind the ‘Open Marriage’

I felt sick. Every memory replayed in my mind — my husband’s strange calmness, his smug silence, the way he’d watch us from across the room as if keeping score.

It wasn’t about “freedom.” It was about control.

He hadn’t wanted an open marriage. He wanted power — the upper hand.

And when he realized I could find love without him, it destroyed him.

That evening, I confronted him.

He was sitting on the couch, pretending to read, when I said, “You wanted the truth? Fine. Ben told me everything.”

He didn’t even look up. “Everything?”

“Yes. That you asked him to go along with it. That this was all a game to you.”

He set the book down slowly and sighed. “Rachel, I just wanted to see if you’d fight for me.”

I laughed. Actually laughed. “Fight for you? You humiliated me. You weaponized my love.”

He stood up, face red, voice rising. “You were supposed to say no! You were supposed to love me enough to refuse!”

That was when I realized — he’d wanted to prove that he was the one being betrayed.

He wanted to feel like the victim.

The Shift

But something inside me snapped that night.

I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t begging. I just looked at him — really looked — and saw a man drowning in his own insecurity.

“I did fight for you,” I said quietly. “I gave you everything — trust, loyalty, forgiveness. And you turned it into a competition.”

He froze. I continued, “The thing about open doors, Mark, is that sometimes people walk out — and don’t come back.”

I packed a bag that night and stayed at Ben’s place. Not because of revenge, not because I wanted to prove a point — but because I finally understood what love wasn’t.

Six Months Later

I didn’t hear from Mark for weeks. When he finally reached out, it wasn’t to apologize. It was to ask if there was still a chance — “to start over, without games.”

I told him the truth: “You don’t get to rebuild something you broke just to see if it’d shatter.”

He sent one last message:

“I thought being with other people would make me feel free. But all it did was show me what I lost.”

Ben and I stayed together for a while. We were both healing — from guilt, from manipulation, from being pawns in someone else’s test.

But as time passed, we realized we were better as friends.

There was no bitterness, no drama. Just quiet respect.

Sometimes, heartbreak teaches you how to love better next time — not someone else, but yourself.

A Year Later

It’s been a year since I left that house.

I got my own apartment — small, sunlit, filled with plants and peace.

I started painting again, something I’d given up when I was too busy trying to keep my marriage alive.

Every morning, I make coffee in silence and feel something I hadn’t in years: calm.

Mark remarried recently. I heard through friends that it didn’t last. Apparently, his “new beginning” ended the same way his last one did — with him chasing freedom only to end up lonely.

And me?

I stopped needing revenge the moment I realized that walking away was the most powerful thing I could’ve done.

Because sometimes, karma doesn’t come as thunder. It comes as silence — the kind that follows when you finally stop fighting for someone who never deserved your love in the first place.

Moral of the Story

Love isn’t about testing someone’s limits or seeing how far they’ll go to prove their devotion.

It’s about choosing each other — every single day, even when it’s not easy.

If someone ever forces you to pick between your self-worth and their ego, choose yourself.

Because the right person will never make you prove that you’re enough.