Because we are incredibly social species and sex is bonding mechanism, as well as a procreative one. At least that's my take on it.

While I would never presume to tell you what what you should do or even think about your own marriage, I'd like to share my perspective on the vows aspect. When James and I got married, like nearly everyone, we didn't talk about or create the parameters for our relationship. We simply bought into the pre-fab (that was designed thousands of years ago in part as a mechanism to control women's sexuality so that paternity could be known - in other words patriarchy). Many years later having realized that we both wanted something that was a bit different than what we had originally agreed to (fallen into), we consensually agreed to begin seeing other people. We wrote new vows, essentially.

https://psiloveyou.xyz/if-i-wrote-my-marriage-vows-today-681aba7e7e49

James and I had many long conversations about this before we ever got together with anyone, and read a book called Opening Up by Tristan Taormino, which you might want to check out even if you don't think you are ever going to be involved with anyone else. It just has a lot of great things to discuss and think about which I believe would help you be clearer about what you want, as well as provide for meaty conversations with your husband. That kind of talking really frankly was a huge intimacy booster for us.

Although we decided to only see other people together, and originally agreed that this was about sex only, you can't always predict what will happen with the emotional side. I ended up meeting Nat, my other partner and realizing that I had really strong feelings for him right away. It was a completely magnetic attraction, even though he is so different from me and not really my type in a lot of ways. At first this element of me loving someone else felt threatening to James, because he was still pretty bought into the notion that you can only love one person at a time, and so he feared he might lose me.

But, he worked on his insecurity and did some healing and came to realize that me loving someone else doesn't threaten our relationship in any way. Love is much bigger and more expansive than we are generally taught that it is. Shifting gears to polyamory, which is a very different relationship style than monogamy in more ways than just the number of people you sleep with, took some time, but now we are both really happy and fulfilled by it.

And, none of that means you "should' do any of that that. I'm just putting it out there as a perspective that is a bit different than the one we all grew up with.

Thanks for being such a great part of this community❣️