Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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If you do decide to go for "the affair", be safe.
When you meet that lovely man first, meet in a public place, let a trusted friend know where you are, etc.

As Dr Betty says, you got married quite young, and you're still young. Wanting better sex is understandable---we all want that. Personally though, I think that going behind a partner's back to get what we want is a poor solution. Besides the risk from hooking up with somebody we don't know, we're violating the promises we made to our partner, and we know it. That's going to make most of us feel bad about ourselves. Better to come clean with our partner about how unhappy we are. As Dr Betty suggests, it may be possible to make major improvements in the sexual side of your marriage. Your husband may have no idea that you want and need this, and he may even feel the same way himself. Perhaps he's got his own online friend by now and you're both contemplating the same thing.

Monogamy can work, if both partners are committed to making a success of it. The thing about affairs is that they're very hurtful to our partners when they're discovered. Why do this to someone you say you love? Affairs can be a case of wanting it all our own way, without having to make any difficult choices. In other words, wanting to hold on to the comfort of a familiar home and partner, while undermining that partnership in secret. If there was, and perhaps still is, something good that brought you and your husband together, why not work on that and try to maximize it? Or be honest and try renegotiating the ground rules for outside partners so you and your husband can both benefit from the arrangement. (If you have the privilege of taking a lover, isn't it only fair if he does, too?) If none of this works, then you can move on and find someone else.

I don't know your husband outside the fact that you both sound sexually incompatible. You're both very young and I can only assume your husband is a nice guy. Marriage is a contract that legally and emotionally binds you to your partner. It's basically the business aspect of falling in love and as beautiful and meaningful as we make it, it's also there to ensure that regardless of what happens you will have a partner who is honest about their feelings and one who won't desert you when there's turbulence in the relationship. Remember for better or for worse? So as a wife it is your responsibility to address your husband about these issues and present ways on which the both of you can work on this together. Make sure you're honest with yourself: Does the sex suck because he doesnt do/like [insert sexy thing here] or is it because you lost interest?  
If you were not married and perhaps attempted to resolve the sex issues with no success, I'd suggest breaking it off. But, again, you are married. That means you need to put extra effort into making your relationship work. Fucking a new person will not make your sex life better, and it may feel good only because it's not a person you've been fucking and caring about for 3 years. Most importantly, you'd be breaking the heart of someone who is supposed to be #1 in your world. And it's a guy you met online... if you're going to cheat it should be on someone you're ready to throw your whole marriage away on. 
Be true to yourself and what you want. Consider the potential pros and cons of telling your husband. Prepare yourself for either outcome. Then, tell him. If you love him and respect your marriage and bond with him, you should do this and leave the other guy alone until you've both decided on a plan of action and followed through with it. 

from both Patrick and Christina. I'll add nothing to that... 

If we were to cite all the suffering, unhappiness and sacrifice that is made to sustain marriage based on the tradition of monogamy, a civalized society would ban it. Why do we believe this arrangment is the best or even desirable? This idea of owning another person sexually just leads to serial marrages or couples sacrificing sexual pleasures or ending up lying and cheating and ultmately getting a divorce which hurts everyone envolved. Monogamous marriages also sets up terrible feelings of jealousy and insecurity that drives some people to extreme acts of violence. . . all in the name of "love".

I long for the day we can create our own systems for living together with agreements on how we want to share sex, money and property. In other words get religion and government out of the business of sex. Believe me it is a business! It keeps us divided against one another including the one we are supposed to love and paying money to get divorced just to do it all over again.  Please note that most of our religous and politcal leaders do not practice sexual monogmy nor do most of the 1% folks. It's just us poor working stiffs who want acceptance from whom? We need to create another system that incorporates more sexual freedom and flexibilty and leaves room for growth and change. I'm working on it.

I've always thought being able to engineer our own personal life contracts as we can with most other contracts would be great. And as any children weren't a willing party to the contract it would be overlaid with minimum manditory conditions and requirements for them to ensure their welfare.  

Betty, if I'd been born into the Victorian world I'd have been an advocate of free love. Marriage couldn't have been a more unjust institution---depriving women of their legal freedoms, their own property, and much more. Ending a marriage for virtually any reason was all but impossible.

In our time, that has finally changed. Marriage is a choice now---a
voluntary agreement to share life with one freely selected person. It's not about ownership any more. It's also not the only or the best way for everyone to live. It's one possible way. Some of us today hate monogamy because of its history, and because it's still expected of us---but that alone doesn't mean monogamy is without value as an option.There's some real truth, however, in what you say about monogamy being for the masses. Those at the top of society pretty much make their own rules. But I'd argue against emulating their kind of self-centeredness, whether in marriage or in anything else.

Wherever monogamy comes from, there's evidence that it goes far back into human prehistory. It was apparently practiced long before there were churches or governments---when human beings lived in small egalitarian clans where decisions were taken in common and most property was shared. As human institutions evolved, there came a time when monogamy was no longer a value shared by consensus, but something demanded by churches and governments. That was when the oppression started.

I agree that alternative arrangements for sharing life will evolve in time, though I think monogamy will always be one available option. But even the most flexible system will have to have some rules and boundaries. The most open community imaginable will still only work if a high degree of trust and mutual respect is present. We need to honor our promises and respect others, in other words, whether in a monogamous marriage or in a society that practices free love. The principle is the same. Is it hard to keep our word sometimes? Sure. I've had offers of sex outside my marriage. I've turned them down because I promised I would, and I'm not willing to hurt the person I made those promises to as long as we're still together. If we can no longer live within the rules we've chosen, we can renegotiate those rules or move on. But while we're living in an arrangement based on mutual trust, we need to be trustworthy.

Sapphic women who want a family is a big area that would benefit from mutual personal contracts. At the moment if a Sapphic couple want to use the fresh sperm of a friend who is god parent and extended family like Dave Crosby did (see under "family") they can, but legally the sperm donor is father to the mother, as if they were a couple and the Sapphic partner has no recognised rights or establishment. Only if they use the anonymous frozen sperm of a stranger can they maintain their own family integrity. With personal contracts they could have their own life choices legally recognised. 

Patrick pre-history is a big unknown and we can only make assumptions about the particular archaeological evidence we find which is then based on our own preconceptions. If you live in a tribe you usually carry the tribe name not a family name and if you all live in a long house monogamy may not even be in the language. But all that tribe stuff based on undeveloped countries is still very recent. I would think for pre-history if you can think of a behaviour, through the vastness of pre-history with all it's local diversity someone is bound to have lived it, from bodysex groups to cannibalism in the same tribe. 

But I would say all the examples of history are interesting but of fairly limited use because right now anywhere in the world that has printing and universal literacy is in a place humanity has never been before with an ecosystem of shared ideas that are recorded and accumulated. So when we think of a new notion or piece of enlightenment that changes our behaviour we don't need to search history for validation we just do it, and have the confidence to become the 1st people to ever do it. 

Betty, although I kind of agree with you on what marriage is, I don't think marriage overall does any of those things. The people who rely so heavily on marriage to create these idealistic, pie-in-the-sky, happy endings for them are the ones that introduce pain and suffering into their relationships - and all because their idealistic, pie-in-the-sky, happy endings didn't happen and they don't know what else to do about it. Marriage, at its very element, is a contract. And there was a time that it was (and still is with great success) recognized plainly as such. The setback was that during that time people (and now) had/have very little choice in the matter. 
At its very core, marriage is a contractual bond between two people who believe that such a bond will be beneficial to them in functional, self-fulfilling ways. It also means that you have someone that you trust so much that you ensure them with the responsibility of taking care of you through sickness and in health and so on and so forth. Since we all have the freedom not to enter such a contract, this young lady and many others like her should have sat down and contemplated whether or not she really wanted to be a support system for her husband's issues - sexual or otherwise. If she wasn't ready for the commitment, she really shouldn't have gotten married so soon. And i say this with the the assumption that she thinks her sex life sucks, with no mention if she discussed her feelings with her husband and how he may feel about their sexual relationship. As a wife, she needs to do some extra work. And, if at that point there's no resolve, then figure out what's the next step (which there are many). I'm not going to encourage her to have sex with another person without know exactly why the sex is bad. If it's ultimately an issue of her losing interest, then she still needs to be honest with her husband. If she wants to see other people, say so. If he can agree to that, awesome. If he cannot, well don't be upset about it because, (duh) he's your husband. You can't be married and think you're single. 
I don't care so much about this monogamy business. That's a choice. Marriage is a contract. Even if you get married with more than one person, that doesn't mean infidelity can't happen. And people can redesign their marriage to include infidelity. But that's after they put the idea on the table and all parties agreed to it. Love is still involved, but love is not absolute. A satisfying marriage should ensure that everyone puts effort into maintaining that love, which is possible. 
You're right, it's business. But it's a business that is successful for those who do make marriage work for them. Although I do agree that we shouldn't have religion so readily involved. As I said, most people bring all of that emotional baggage to the table when they create something more out of what they have. Less people should get married, especially so young. 

cheating is always bad!  divorce before becoming a liar!