I am coming to you this week from vacation with a heavy heart. It’s not how I wanted to start this week’s True Romance, but I don’t have much of a choice.
I go where the romance leads me. This week, on a Wednesday of all days, it was announced that Dakota Johnson and Role Model are no longer together.
TMZ confirmed the stomach-churning, tear-jerking news. Not only have the couple broken up, they haven’t been together for some time. Again, this isn’t how I wanted to kick this week off.
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Take a moment. Do one of those extended eye close half squeeze things that helps clear the tears if needed. Let’s try to make something of this week’s column. Something that can take us through the rest of the week.
I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to land safely by the end of this one. That’s the goal each week, but sometimes there isn’t enough out there to accomplish that. I’ll never force it, that’s not how we want to conduct business of the heart.
We have unfortunate news of an open marriage that crashed and burned and a woman who helped her best friend find love with her sister’s ex-husband. It’s a story that gives us hope. Light amongst the darkness.
Let’s get to it. Go follow True Romance on Twitter and Facebook. Send your emails here: sean.joseph@outkick.com (anonymously if you prefer).
A couple in their early thirties had love slip right through their fingers after six years of marriage. They had a once strong relationship with amazing chemistry. It wasn’t enough. Could it have been?
That seems to be the answer that the husband who agreed to an open marriage is looking for. Somehow, agreeing to an open marriage leads to regret. It all started innocently enough.
“A few months ago, she started talking a lot about her new colleague, like how good looking he is, how funny he is, etc.,” the husband wrote on Reddit.
His wife got drunk during a team building trip and texted her husband that she wanted to hook up with this new colleague of hers.
“I was surprised, but I appreciated her honesty. Instead of cheating, she asked for my permission. I said yes,” he continued.
“After they slept together, we talked about it and agreed to open our marriage with one rule: each of us could have one person on the side.”
That, on paper, appears to be a beneficial arrangement for both of them. He still hadn’t acted on finding his one person on the side when his wife was constantly seeing her colleague.
A recipe for disaster? Not necessarily, they had an agreement in place. So one of them starts having second thoughts and isn’t even acting on the open marriage arrangement.
This is something that can be stopped as quickly as it got started, right? They have what was referred to as a strong relationship with amazing chemistry.
“After the first talk (where I told her that we are cancelling open marriage) my wife got aggressive, tried to connect me with her friend, when I rejected her friend she left to stay at her parents’ for the weekend,” he wrote.
“When she came back home, nothing was changed, I tried to talk, but she treated me like garbage. Something in me finally broke that moment and I told her to pack her things and get out as I want a divorce. She broke down but I still told her to leave and she left. Haven’t seen her since then.”
He ignored her attempts to communicate with him. He instead contacted a lawyer and got the ball rolling on the divorce.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done as she is the only woman I’ve ever truly loved and I still love her. I know a lot of people will call me weak or stupid for still feeling this way, but I don’t care anymore,” he admitted.
“Loving someone deeply isn’t a crime, even when they hurt you. I love her and can’t change that, that’s bad I know, but this isn’t changing.”
You know people say they love their spouses all the time. But did this guy or was this all the excuse he needed to end his marriage. He could have said no when she drunk texted him from the work trip.
Not only did he not, he agreed to an open marriage then proceeded not to hold up his end of the bargain even when his loving wife offered to connect him with a friend of hers.
This has all the markings of a well-set trap by the husband. The worst part of it might be his attempt at trying to get sympathy from it. Not on my watch, buddy.
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An attempt by a wife to find herself and walk away from her marriage turns into a classic tale of one woman’s trash being another woman’s treasure.
The part of the story that restores a small piece of my faith in humanity is the person who connected the dots and made it all happen.
It was the sister of the wife who walked out of her marriage to “find herself.” She saw the two people through the fog and acted for the sake of romance.
“He was a devoted, hardworking guy who treated her like a queen and stayed completely respectful even through the divorce,” she said of her sister’s ex-husband.
A year after her sister and the devoted, hardworking guy who was her brother-in-law were divorced, her best friend was discussing with her how hard it was for her to find a good guy.
“My best friend was talking about how exhausted she was from dating toxic men and just wanted a reliable, good man. I set them up,” she said. “Fast forward to today: they’re happily married with a baby on the way.”
The sister could have done nothing. She could have decided the stories about her best friend’s dating struggles were too entertaining to set her up with the good guy her sister had tossed into the trash.
She chose a different path. One where her sister found out, blocked her and called her a traitor for “giving away her husband.”
She didn’t sit back and take that. She let her sister have it, “I told her plain and simple: ‘you threw away a good man. You don’t get to leave someone in the trash and get mad when another woman sees their worth.'”
I don’t know about you, but I like these sisters. The one walks out on her marriage, then gets mad at the other for hooking her ex up with her best friend.
That takes some nerve, but so does setting your best friend up with your sister’s ex-husband in the name of romance.
I’m wrapping this week’s edition up with dumb reasons couples get divorced. You could argue that getting mad after refusing to hold up your end of an open marriage agreement belongs, but it doesn’t make the cut.
More important issues, like preferring the windows open and a golf addiction make the cut. Good luck out there and don’t for a second think that you can’t have your marriage end over something extremely idiotic.
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That’s it for this edition of True Romance. I’ll be back from vacation next week. A vacation, I might add, started with romance in the form of an out-of-town wedding.
Thanks for reading. Keep the song of the week suggestions coming. You can reach me, anonymously if you prefer, at sean.joseph@outkick.com. And go follow along on Twitter and Facebook.
