Crinoline, you make an excellent point about the potential identity of the letter writer. If it's the wife writing, I'd say to let the guy leave. If he doesn't want to stay with his infant, wow, you are better off without him no matter what. I don't even think financial reasons would bind me to someone who was glad to be gone, under the circumstances.

AzaleaRose, what is your point supposed to be? That you have already predetermined what counts as normal and healthy for pregnancy, based on your deep internet research, and therefore won't listen to anything else? Every one of the sources you've mentioned has stated the same boilerplate information, which is being repeated by two specific doctors they consulted. The doctors in turn are repeating the standard guidelines for pregnancy weight gain, because they are not advising any particular patient here--rather, they're trying to provide guidelines that are advisable in most cases.

Nowhere in any of that information does it say that weight gain above or below the stated standards is abnormal or unhealthy, as you have assumed. The very sites that you quote also specify that women should consult their own personal physicians, since weight gain needs and advice may be different from these standards. They also explain that the reasons for not wanting extra weight gain have to do with risk factors like GD, blood pressure, and C-sections. If those risks are not relevant for any particular patient, then perhaps some extra weight gain is not going to be a concern of the doctor. That's how it was for me, but of course, you deny this for motives still unknown.

Your goal seems to be to prove that this husband is not an ass just because he's no longer sexually attracted to his wife. Great, who's disagreeing with you? He's only an ass when he becomes a lousy husband and father because he can't prioritize his own sexual desires relative to other people's needs, in what we're reasonably assuming is a short time frame. If it were clear that this man was doing everything he could to work with his wife over the long term to solve such problems, this would be a different story.

@198 mydriasis

Thank you for the reasonable doubt.

Let me add that EricaP likes to come at my problems from different angles and with repetition because she has a genuine desire to understand and help. I don't believe she thinks the problem is my poor skills.

Dan, your advice to ATTW is spot on, you are a romantic at heart aren't you Dan? xoxoxo

@EricaP

Thanks!
I'm on board with you, and I definitely agree that men should be very interested in all avenues of exploring closeness of all different types and I think it does help relationships on all levels. I'm with you completely.

I have been on the bad end of such a feedback loop myself where I had a random brief period where intercourse was extremely painful (went to a doctor and never figured out why, it just went away). Being all about the PIV myself it was a really difficult thing to deal with because feeling guilty about having to stop partway and etc made the whole thing worse.

I was possibly projecting a bit of my own experiences. I know someone who is married and has a problem with not having enough sex and I've gone through many conversations suggesting more communication, less pressure, trying to better understand her needs and etc. Because for me personally it's hard to believe that there isn't an answer other then 'well, suck it up I guess'.

@
Mr. J - I didn't read it that way either. I didn't even really mean it as a criticism, I meant more that it's implied a little on her end that there's something you could be doing when you seem to be saying that it's somewhat out of your hands at this point. Maybe I was interpreting wrong.

@214 - do you think that Henry_Paris' practical advice (reposted @115-117) would be of any help to your married friends?

A few thoughts...

1) Not all pregnant women get fat. Pregnancy involves weight gain, but it's not in the form of body fat. So the LW may have gotten his wife pregnant, but he didn't make her fat.

2)

Oops, posted too soon, when my comment was half written. Here it is again:

A few thoughts...

1) Dan's comments are properly PC, but he seems to be confusing pregnancy with weight gain. Pregnancy involves weight gain, but beyond a certain minimum, it's not in the form of body fat. So the LW may have gotten his wife pregnant, but he didn't make her fat unless he's been force-feeding her chocolate eclaires for the past nine months.

2) How fat is his wife anyway? Is she really twice the wife? i.e., has she ballooned up from 130 to 260 pounds, using the pregnancy as an excuse? If this is the case, she can't really blame her husband for looking outside of his marriage for sexual satisfaction (though he should wait a year or two and give her a chance to change things.)

This is not a double standard. If my husband doubled his weight, from his current attractive weight of 210 to 420 (an equivalent weight gain to what the LW is apparently talking about), I'd tell him to lose it or lose me.... and I would not apologize. I would give him a year to lose it, okay, but after that, forget it.

3) Re: Dan's "sex choice test," the premise is cute, but, he is assuming that everyone finds him attractive. I've heard several heterosexual men say something like, "I'm straight, but I'd have sex with that guy..." when they look at an incredibly sexy guy.... like Hugh Jackman.... but I've never heard one say it after looking at Savage's pic. He looks okay, not putting him down, but for the test to be legit, it would have to be a guy who could legitimately be expected to "turn a straight guy gay."

Someone asked how overweight am I, I'm 5'4 and 160pounds 34H-28-48. I dont hae a lot of body fat outside of the obvious T&A and I work out a lot because I absolutely love my shape. I'm not saying something is wrong with being overweight on its face, there is something wrong with excessive bodyfat and that is what is bothering the husband, the bodyfat. Someone already mentioned the glaring obvious, the bulk of pregnancy weight gain is NOT bodyfat, its the actual baby;s weight, the uterus, the increased blood volume and placenta combined. Thers is SOME bodyfat gained but not 20-50 pounds of it on average. Have you ever seen a pregnant woman who looked like a small or normal sized person with a beach ball under her shirt? She doesn't expand to twice her size after giving birth to the beach ball sized fetus in her womb. There ar ea lot of variables to dictate how long it will take for the weight to come off, but when you're tlaking about someone's physcal appearance undergoing a drastic and "damaging" change to the point that their SPOUSE is ready to leave them, they are better off with someone else ANYWAY. We dn't know how long she's had excessive bodyfat or even how much excessive bodyfat she has all we know is that it's enough to completely and totally turn him off to a woman he at some point promised to spend the rest of his life with.

On the issue of age or illness, people leave spouses who are addicted to drugs, addiction is an illness and drug addicts tend to drastically change in appearance as well. But as someone else mentinoed, you age at the same time and as we age what we are attracted to or find attractive tend to change to include where we are ourselves. If you're 80 and still full of muscles with smoothskin you;d want someone who was able to look like that too. Saggy skin wouldn;t be some fact of life you;d have to jsut accept and learn to love because it didn't come crashing down on you. If you dont want your looks to matter, marry someone who thinks you;re fat and ugly, as long as your personality doesn;t change (and please dont get any mental disabilities on this person) your relationship will last forever.

@220, thanks for the kind words. I just think high libido people [HLP] should try to figure out what their low libido partner [LLP] likes, physically, stuff that isn't necessarily sexual. If you're GGG, give your LLP some of the physical stuff that they like. Keep them happy, not just with financial stability and the joy of parenting, but something physical that the LLP enjoys. Surely 90% of LLPs get some kind of pleasure from their bodies, somehow.

If the HLP is consistently participating in the LLP's physical pleasure, that could generate good will which could, in turn, lead the LLP to accept unappealing sex with better grace. Doesn't that seem like a good place to start? If it doesn't work, because the LLP won't allow the HLP to give the LLP any pleasure, or because the LLP doesn't then feel any responsibility to reciprocate, or whatever, that information would help in analyzing the couple's options. (None of this is about Mr. J, just to be clear.)

@219

Again, I don't understand this need to paint everyone's pregnancy experience in broad strokes. Yes, I've known women who didn't gain a lot of body fat while pregnant. My poor skinny mother gained two pounds total during her pregnancy with me (I was a 7 lbs baby), which means that she lost several pounds - by the time she was done breast-feeding, she was rather bony. This experience, was not, however, standard to all women, nor would I expect it to be. Everyone is different.

@215 mydriasis
Yes, you got it right. I'm a depressed person(bipolar) with the tendency to lose hope about fixing life's troubles("out of my hands"). EricaP is tenacious about not giving up("something you could be doing") while there's still life in me. That's a precious gift from her.

Maybe I've missed something or am coming from a different direction, and frankly am not answering NMR's question, but I have to add my 2 cents.....

First doesn't sound like an Open Relationship, but that of a cuckold fantasy or Polyamory. No where is it mentioned that hubby is getting any and he is getting off hearing her stories.

Then the question comes that she is having a great time with this OM, who can't get it up and having multiple O's. I can't get over that this must be the ultimate cuckold scenario, where the H is being outdone by a young stud, who can't get it up....

So yes I am not answering the question NMR had, but more curious as to what H can't/won't do in the bedroom that this OM can..... Or is it simply NMR doesn't realize what she wants (either a cuckold for a husband or a polyamorous lifestyle).

Maybe I've missed something or am coming from a different direction, and frankly am not answering NMR's question, but I have to add my 2 cents.....

First doesn't sound like an Open Relationship, but that of a cuckold fantasy or Polyamory. No where is it mentioned that hubby is getting any and he is getting off hearing her stories.

Then the question comes that she is having a great time with this OM, who can't get it up and having multiple O's. I can't get over that this must be the ultimate cuckold scenario, where the H is being outdone by a young stud, who can't get it up....

So yes I am not answering the question NMR had, but more curious as to what H can't/won't do in the bedroom that this OM can..... Or is it simply NMR doesn't realize what she wants (either a cuckold for a husband or a polyamorous lifestyle).

Thanks, Mr.J (at #175).

Sweet Mr. J,

I'm sure I'm not the only one who reads the devoted heart that lies within your treasure chest. You have a strong heart, stronger than you can imagine. I believe in you. I'm cheering for you and always hoping. Keep your chin up, love.

209, Suzy-- Something interesting appeared. If we assume the letter is written by the husband, our thought is that it's better for him to stay. If we assume the letter is written by the wife, our thought is that it's better for him to leave. Granted there's lots of grey area, ifs, and assumptions contained in those thoughts, but that's what it boils down to.

What's up with the new nickname for Dan in his byline? Has The Stranger been hacked? Sounds like there might be an interesting story coming on this, regardless of whether this is accurate.

@226 - "Open relationship" doesn't mean both people have equal amounts of extramarital sex. It just means that you no longer promise to only have sex with each other. Many guys like hearing about their wives screwing other men. My husband, for instance, is not interested in typical cuckold stories (that the other men are 'better' than him); he just likes thinking of me as a slut who can't get enough. It's certainly easier for a wife to find outside men than for a husband to find outside women. That could explain why in the time since they "recently" opened their marriage, there has been a lover for her, and none mentioned for him.

@230: No, Dan put it there as a reference to a recent interview of his. See http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive… and http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo…

Basically, there's a running joke where Dan says he's a lot younger than he is. He told an intern who interviewed him he was 34, some stupid newspaper called the "Seattle Times" printed it, Dan wrote about it, and then some editor with no sense of humor corrected the story saying "Dan lied to our intern twice!"

Ms Erica - That makes sense, more or less. However, as the letter reads, even if inadvertently, that it appears the goal was for some sort of equity or near-equity, where in your much greater experience would you expect there to be a problem if both partners are looking and one has much greater success than the other? Would you expect a renegotiation, or would the unlucky partner just lump it?

One can almost read your post as a statement that open relationships are "better" for wives because they get more - which is at least superiour to the Iris Murdoch version of an open relationship; the one in The Message to the Planet is almost sufficiently vile to spoil the whole book for me.

@233 - open relationships are dangerous for a husband who isn't turned on by the idea of his wife having sex with other guys. Generally speaking, she will have much more opportunity than he does.

Women can always "get sex" - the question is whether the sex is worth getting. Guys seem to think that "sex is like pizza; even when it's bad it's pretty good." Women tend not to think that way.

@#43, vasectomies are painless. My only qualms were worrying about the local anesthetic messing with my head, but I drove home just fine. Then I went over to my (51 yo post-menopause, yes it was complicated) girlfriend's house and came in her mouth twice the same evening. No pain, no difficulties, and yeah, that letter writer needs to get a clue about life. It's one thing to chant "no fatties" when you are single and playing safe, but when you marry, you are in for the ride, especially when the offspring turn up.

@228 Kim
It is your heart you describe, dear. Thank you for your kindness and grace.

@236 Mr. J

No, it is your's, love. Sometimes things are too hard to see when we are up close, and one needs to step back to allow the masterpiece to be viewed. Up close it looks like endless black scribbles, painted with a harsh merciless strokes, but from a bit of distance they are only a piece of the whole. Your heart is wide and beautiful, strong and fragile, hopeful and despairing all things that make you wonderfully human. It is a work in progress, the final strokes have yet to be made, but an unfinished masterpiece is still a masterpiece and it is beautiful, a treasure.

Ta for the returned kindness.

@236/237 - what she said.

Good morning, everyone!

I totally disagree with Dan's advice to ATTW. For the sake of everyone involved, he should get out now.
An infant without one parent is far better off than a five year old whose parent leaves.
And, this guy is going to leave. His child has just been born and already he is looking for solutions that allow him to be unfaithful. Or, considering the option of leaving his child. There is some serious growing up to be done here and his wife and child shouldn't continue to pay an emotional price waiting to see if it happens.

Mr J reminds me of Major Dobbin. Please note that this is NOT a comparison of Mrs J to Amelia.

Ms Erica, I've been reading some Zero-Sum feminists.

I'll grant that actively enjoying one's partner's exploits (as in your case and, it appears, the couple's of the letter) is certainly almost a relationship plus, but I've known couples that chose to allow each other privacy in this area, and it seemed to work well enough for them except when they had a severe disparity in outside activity. Before I Retired from Romance, I was always so monogamous that it always seemed unfair to ask the same in return. As a result, I never objected to anything anyone wanted to do without me, and it didn't seem my place either to ask to be told about it or to ask not to be told - only for it to turn out that my one really long relationship would be with a carbon copy of myself in that regard. I've been much less worth knowing since he died. But thankfully I've never "gotten over it" - vile phrase!

I suppose it may be rather different with couples of mixed sexes. And I admit I like the picture. Husband admits to wife that the charms of monogamy have palled for him; wife agrees he can roam if she can as well; husband cheerfully agrees not minding what she does on her nights out, and before long he can't get anyone to bite while she starts dropping their couple's activities because she has so many new beaux, and when he asks her to reconsider she just replies that it was his idea in the first place, therefore no dice. A fine cautionary tale.

@240: While I'm happy that monogamy works for you, what you describe is not a fine cautionary tale, as if non-monogamy were some sort of harmful activity that deserves to be punished, but an example of poor communication and disrespect.

It's also a great example of sex-negative attitudes of female sexuality: see the last paragraph of http://www.snopes.com/risque/aphrodisiac… for another example of this kind of legend.

In particular, a significant other dropping couples activities to date other people is a problem, and not because of the non-monogamy. For me at least, I don't care what my partner does with other people, but I do care about what my partner does with me. In open relationships like you describe, it's important that couples discuss how to make sure that they'll still get their needs met, get reassurance from each other, and spend time with each other.

@235: Yours may have been painless, but vasectomies in general are not. For me, the administration of the anesthetic was incredibly painful, and the week of healing afterwards was painful as well. There was no way I was having sex for a few days afterwards. My surgeon was skilled and experienced, and everything healed just fine, but you shouldn't expect it to be painless.

@240 vennominon
I take no offense on either account. With spectacles and mirror I am able to recognize a spooney when I see one, yet still discern the difference between dream and waking.

For ATTW: I wish you would tell your wife these two choices. THEN, I wish she'd drop your precious child in YOUR lap and LEAVE!
Maybe, just maybe, she would like to HAVE TIME for the desire to get in shape. With the child now in your hands,viola... she can do just that.
I also hope she stays away long enough to get SMOKIN HOT! Upon her return she brings home a boy toy to fuck in your bed. Yeah...she ain't wanting much from you now since YOU"VE gained weight. LOL
See...now she's living the life you wanted. How's it feel?

Dear ATTW, I wish you WOULD TELL your wife these thoughts. Then, I wish she would promptly drop your precious child in your lap and LEAVE!
Yeah, she decided that it would be WONDERFUL to have the time to fulfill HER OWN DESIRES. Free at last, Free at last!
THEN....I hope she returns briefly, SMOKIN HOT and fucking in your bed with her new boy toy. Yeah, your idea REALLY got her thinking! She THANKS you and LEAVES for GOOD (oh and Yes, she will pay you child support).
How does THAT make YOU feel ATTW?
In general I'm a OVER these poor excuses for a man and the women that bend over to clean up THEIR MESS. WHEN OH WHEN can I see a REAL sex scandal by a FEMALE politician.,etc..? As for Arnold> Maria needed to LET HIM deal with his children PERIOD! He did the damage, he needed to be A MAN and clean it up. Sneaky little filthy bastard couldn't even handle THAT!
It is almost 2012, the easiest solution toward a DECLINE in divorce? Give custody of children to your husband ladies. SERIOUSLY! In THAT realm, men would think a little differently. Hard to pursue that new pussy with a kid in a car seat buckled in the backseat - or playing Xbox in the living room, while having to transport them to their game or music lesson. If women ONLY finally would grow some balls!

@241 - If you go back three spaces, I'd been saying that I prefer Ms Erica's version of an open relationship to the one advance by, for instance, Jack Sheerwater, but I did wonder how she would advise handling a situation in which a couple agreed to both of them having outside trysts but one of them getting considerably more action than the other. This might not really have gotten all that much of a reply, other than that a husband who wants an open relationship had better be prepared to get into hearing all about his wife's exploits. I was embroidering on that with a thought specifically to the Sheerwater menage, which struck me as more in line with the way many men view an open relationship. The idea was that basically, a husband suggesting an open relationship with the idea in view that he'll end up with a harem and thinking that at worst his wife might have one or twon outside adventures and not like it much and stop deserves just this sort of fate. I was not suggesting or hoping that anyone who proposed an open relationship with the sincere intention of its being beneficial to both halves of the couple as individuals and to the couple as a whole should end up being ill-treated.

But I am entirely prepared to defer to you as a much greater authority on relations between mixed sexes.

Mr J - It could have been worse; you might have reminded me of Rawdon Crawley. I hope you and/or your wife don't know any Marquesses.

@246: "the easiest solution toward a DECLINE in divorce? Give custody of children to your husband ladies. SERIOUSLY! In THAT realm, men would think a little differently."

I get it. Child custody as a method of punishment. Yeah, that has the kid's best interest at heart. Not to mention YOUR relationship with the kid, of which you would be forfeiting a good portion in order to score hits on the ex-spouse.

I sincerely hope that your moniker doesn't mean you actually have kids.

@249, actually, I think women shouldn't fight for child custody. It always makes them look like they're fighting for money.

Best is to work out the child care amicably, with the help of a neutral party.

Nouveau Mrs. Robinson

Think Performance Anxiety! He maybe built like a Stallion the whole Scenario is arranged around the expectation implicitly that he can sexually perform like one. What if his sexual confidence is fragile and implodes under the imbuilt expectations. He maybe emotionally sensitive and totally incapable of objectifying you as a piece of meat to use. He seems to be revelling in the good old emotional romance of dating you. What if he can't seperate out wanting to love you from being required to fuck. Will he really benefit from the implied pathologisation of going to a Doctor alone with his aparent problem. Will you both benefit from joint pshyco-sexual councelling to build his confidence with you from square one over the long haul. Will you be still in it for him if that took 5 years to get him to the level of sexual performance already available from your Husband?

Nouveau Mrs. Robinson

Think Performance Anxiety! He maybe built like a Stallion the whole Scenario is arranged around the expectation implicitly that he can sexually perform like one. What if his sexual confidence is fragile and implodes under the imbuilt expectations. He maybe emotionally sensitive and totally incapable of objectifying you as a piece of meat to use. He seems to be revelling in the good old emotional romance of dating you. What if he can't seperate out wanting to love you from being required to fuck. Will he really benefit from the implied pathologisation of going to a Doctor alone with his aparent problem. Will you both benefit from joint pshyco-sexual councelling to build his confidence with you from square one over the long haul. Will you be still in it for him if that took 5 years to get him to the level of sexual performance already available from your Husband?