When You Discover That You Were Her Plan B

I’ve come across this scenario three times in the last few days. For whatever reason, it comes out that the husband is in fact the wife’s Plan B for choice in partner. She may like him, she may love him, they may have a great life with house, kids and careers, but he simply doesn’t occupy her head-space of hotness. Someone else does.

Case one the best friend of the husband was the wife’s prior boyfriend, but he dumped her. So ex-boyfriend Plan A, husband Plan B.

Case two was the first husband. The wife makes an international trip to “close the chapter” on the marriage, but discovers on the trip she’s pregnant to her boyfriend and the first husband rejects her. She returns, finalizes the divorce and marries her boyfriend. So first husband Plan A, second husband Plan B.

Case three she has some sexual abuse history and marries for safety to a nice guy. Seventeen years later she’s come to terms with her abuse and announces that she’s never been hot for her husband as really he’s just not her type and requests an open marriage. So “her type” is Plan A, her husband Plan B.

Now obviously the best solution would have been to never get involved with any of these women in the first place – if she’s obviously emotionally/sexually engaged with someone else, or not emotionally/sexually engaged with you – then don’t marry her unless you want to live a life of misery and desperation. But here at MMSL we do our best to play it through from where the ball lies, so that’s all I’ll say about how they got into the situation. You met a pretty girl, she smiles at you, you get all stupid. Shit happens.

The trouble is once she’s openly stated that she is not into you and/or you aren’t her Plan A, it’s a major turning point in the relationship. She’s basically coming out to you that the charade is over, and you aren’t really her sexual orientation. I mean it makes minimal practical difference if she says “I’m a lesbian” as opposed to “I’m just not sexually interested in you”.

Once she reveals the truth, you have few choices, and all of them suck.

(1) You tolerate the situation and try and make things work as before. The trouble with this is that once you go this route, you’re accepting her sexual interest in others by default and eventually she will act on it, so you’re really making a choice that screams weakness here.

(2) You emotionally firewall yourself from her but stay in the marriage for practical reasons (the kids, the house, the career yada yada yada) and start looking for emotionally connection and sex from others outside the relationship too. Of course this only works if you don’t have oneitis for her, and because you’re a Plan B type of guy… you have oneitis for her bad.

(3)  You start the divorce process, which totally sucks. The silver lining to this approach is that it just might shock her into reality as the rug is pulled out from under her feet and you start heading for the exit. There is the possiblity that dumping her sparks a quick (and genuine) hormonal response increasing her interest in you. There’s a whole lot of reality impacting when a good husband holding the moral high ground unleashes a dumping and goes no contact for a few weeks and her Body Agenda may just have a say in how things play out…

Though quite obviously, you should have your Sex Rank maxed as best you can to increase your chances of success at that gambit, and it is a gambit. It may work, it may not. In any case, all the options are hard roads to go.