My wife asked me to open our marriage eight months ago and I said yes, and I have been quietly falling apart ever since.

I need to be fair to her because she has not done anything wrong. She was honest. She brought it up in a calm conversation, she gave me months to think, she read books, she suggested a therapist. She has never once lied to me about where she is or who she's with. By every rule we agreed on, she has been perfect.

And I said yes because I love her and because the alternative she was clearly describing was that she would otherwise spend her forties feeling like something had been amputated. I understood it. I still understand it.

What I didn't account for is that I would be fine in theory and not fine in my body. The night she first stayed out, I cleaned the entire kitchen at two in the morning. Not angry. Just scrubbing grout with my jaw so tight I had a headache for two days.

She came home and was gentle with me and I told her it was fine, and it was fine, and I have told her it was fine every time since.

Eight months. I have not used the arrangement myself, not once, and she's asked me three times whether I want to and I've said I'm not ready. The truth is I don't want to. The truth is I said yes to keep my marriage and I told myself it was openness.

And now here's the part I can't say out loud to anyone who knows us: I think I'm going to stay in this until it ends me, because the version of me that says "I can't do this anymore" is the version that blows up our family, and I'd rather be the one who absorbed it.

Is it still consent if you agreed to avoid losing someone? I genuinely don't know the answer and I can't ask the one person I talk to about everything.