Need advice on whether wife’s new Dom is shady.

Need advice on whether wife’s new Dom is shady.

Choose Wisely • Feb 21, 2023

Background: So I’ve been married almost ten years. About six months ago my wife gets really into this app called Clubhouse, voice chat rooms for all different topics. There is a guy she runs into in a bunch of the same rooms she is in, they get close over a few months. Start moving to DM’s, FaceTime calls. She tells me she is making some really close friends on there. I tell her that’s fine, I trust you, I shouldn’t be the only person you can go to for emotional support. Around New Years she tells me she is pursuing a relationship with this guy and will no longer be intimate with me. No discussion beforehand of whether I’d be into ENM, just telling me what she is doing and expecting me to be ok with it.

So I find out later that they have a D/s thing going on. She calls him Sir. He has her working on all these projects for him, like developing an AI art store together, helping edit a 4 book cyberpunk series he is writing, creating a tabletop RPG system based on said books, she is taking part in a financial literacy workshop he hosts, and he is teaching her coding. Monopolizing her time, for no pay until I told her to ask for a salary since she is doing so much for him, at which time he said he would give her money when she asked, but not a regular paycheck. Lately she has been wearing a necklace he gave her. When I asked her if she would take it off when we out to eat at a restaurant together, she said no, that it’s part of the D/s thing they have, collar adjacent I guess? I don’t know what rules they have worked out or if they have any sort of contract. I know the business they are building is all handshake agreement. This guy also has Cancer, prostate that spread, he has had part of his intestines removed and has a prognosis of less than 5 years left. He lives in LA, their plan is for him to move to NY this summer and then she would move in with him. I hate it, but if she has fallen in love with someone else that is her decision. My issue is that we have a 6 year old daughter that we are going to have to figure out custody of.

So my questions:

Is is normal Dom behavior to set up a D/s dynamic before you have even met the sub in person?
Is it bad Dom behavior to break up a marriage?
Is it bad Dom behavior to have your sub wear a necklace/collar when they still are married and live with their spouse?
Is it bad Dom behavior to monopolize your subs time working for you and not give them a paycheck?
Is it irresponsible to enter into a D/s relationship when you are terminal?
My wife seems to have ceded all decision making capacity to him. I know next to nothing about this guy. Is this a safe environment for a child?

I feel like there are too many red flags here. My daughter is my first priority. At this point, I feel like I have to push for a divorce and full custody to make sure she never has any unsupervised time around this guy. I am kink positive and support my wife doing what makes her happy, but I don’t feel like she can be trusted to make safe decisions when it comes to this guy. I could really use some perspective from folks in the community. Thank you taking the time to read this.

Knightsundere​(sub male) • Feb 21, 2023

Your candidness about this is really impressive, first off. Secondly, with only the context given here, this sounds like an absolutely awful, cruel move by your wife to just up and cheat on you? I'm curious if your kink-positivity extended to this sort of... eh, cuckolding? I don't mean that poorly, that's just what it seems is going on to me? If I'm mistaken I'm super sorry, just don't know what to make of all that.

Divorce is the immediate and obvious reaction to that, in my opinion. Unless this is all something you're into, which it doesn't sound like it is, you're being trampled over. Sounds terrible man, I hope you're doing alright. I don't know enough about you/your wife to say much about custody, except that your wife doesn't sound like the type of person a maturing child would get along with at all.

tallslenderguy​(other male) • Feb 21, 2023

Up front, i do not think we have enough information to give conclusive answers or make judgement calls.

That said, a few thoughts i have from the finite info they derive from:

If you consider the guy your wife is in relationship possibly "shady," it seems to me your wife has acted similarly in many ways? E.g., from what you say, it seems to me she violated the trust you gave her in several ways? Maybe try replacing the word "Dom" in your questions, with the word "wife."

It seems to me your wife left your relationship awhile back. What do you have left with her and why are you still together? my first thought would be finances, my second would be you share a child between you. You are both adults, and i think you are on the right and responsible track to be considering your six year old child. An important question i think is to determine whether your wife is a caring and responsible parent.

This is complicated, i'm sorry you are going through all of this. To me, it seems you are protective of your wife and maybe placing responsibility on the 'dom' she is with that may belong on her?

Choose Wisely • Feb 21, 2023

Neither of us were “happy”, but I didn’t think it was bad enough for her to step out of the marriage. Being cucked is not my kink. When we started dating I told her because she is bi that if she needed to have an occasional female partner I’d be ok with that, it’s a different dynamic than I can provide, but definitely no other men. We hadn’t talked about it since then. The sad thing is, if we had talked about it, I could maybe have been convinced to be ok with her having male partners as long as we were still intimate and I could look for partners of my own. This isn’t ENM though, it’s cheating. I definitely wouldn’t agree to no longer be her primary. She has severe ADHD and, self esteem issues, a traumatic home history growing up, and lots of physical issues. She may need the kind of relationship where she is told what to do all the time in order to be a productive adult. I don’t begrudge her that. We will divorce, she will get to live with this guy for the time he has left, and they an pursue their relationship together, and we will coparent our child. However, she does have a history of impulsive decision making, and I need to know if the things I have brought up are red flags for Dom behavior or if this is par for the course. Some of you have said you need more information. What do you need to know?

Choose Wisely • Feb 21, 2023

Regarding finances. She teaches Hebrew school one day a week. I am the primary earner. We are just staying afloat, though I am in line for promotions at my civil service job over the next several years and am looking to make some extra money this year as a notary. So paying 17% gross salary in child support and possibly alimony would be an extreme hardship. Everything she has told me about how they plan to support themselves is suspect, it’s all potential income, nothing definite. Her guy does not have a job lined up yet for when he moves here, and who knows what kind of medical bills they will incur with his illness. I guess my main question is: Does their combined behavior create in unsafe environment for my child, and is it irregular enough, both in this community and in the legal sense that I would have a good chance at full custody?

tallslenderguy​(other male) • Feb 21, 2023

Have you met the "dom" and spoken at any length with him? If not, your only perspective of him is through your wife.

Your wife lied to and cheated on you, was he complicit? That, to me, is not a D/s question as a 'red flag,' it applies to all relationship. The bigger issue as i see it is the lying. A major reason for lying is fear; fear of rejection, fear of losing something, so we hide behind a lie, often a facade. Speculatively, it seems you genuinely care/cared about your wife, your inclination even after her betrayal, is to defend her and find reasons for her behavior that make her less responsible.

my sense is, on some level you get all of this and are questioning if it's safe for both your wife and daughter to be in relationship with this "dom." i do not think we have enough info to say. People lie, they make mistakes, that doesn't necessarily make them untrustworthy in all aspects of their life, or present a pattern, though i'd say it makes them suspect. More than us though, how well do you know this person?

You seem caring and rational to me, if your concern is the safety and welfare of your child, maybe you can try to get some form of independent counseling where the three of you can be in the same room with a trained, objective counselor who can help determine if this is a safe environment for your daughter. i do not know if it's possible to determine that on a forum like this, way to much second and third hand, subjective info/input.

Knightsundere​(sub male) • Feb 21, 2023

To answer your questions in the original post, no, none of this sounds like healthy dom behavior. The list of work (ai art store, books, etc.) you mention are also pretty dire sounding to me - those aren't reliable at all, just as you've assessed. I think with an extra crumb or two of information about the guy, you could easily find him on the internet just with the specificity of those pursuits of his. It sounds like your wife is making a financially and morally unsustainable decision with massive implications for your child's home life, but unless she's significantly mentally unsound, I highly doubt you get full custody. Despite the monetary pains, I think some distance is what would be needed. Your own mental health is a big consideration - would be a... depressing situation to be in while trying to raise a daughter, and a depressed parent is going to affect the kid, one way or another. It's also worth thinking about that there is an expiry date on your wife's plan, if the diagnosis for the other guy is correct, which is going to result in some form of upheaval that you'll want to be ready for.

On the other hand, in my experience with online scammers (and seeing others get scammed), the "don't have much time to live/cancer" is a very, very common ploy. Six months is a very fast turnaround time to completely change your entire life's trajectory - it may be worth investigating that your wife isn't being swindled somehow. Like I said, it likely wouldn't be terribly hard to find him...

llyric​(sub female) • Feb 21, 2023

I admire your candid explanation of your circumstances, I am so sorry you are experiencing this. I’ll preface my response by loudly exclaiming that I have no real physical experience, but I have some thoughts as a mother.

Unfortunately most of your questions do not have direct answers. Doms are just as flawed as the humans who identify with that title. If you feel like something is a red flag, it probably is. Regardless of your wife’s situation and the choices she has made, the only priority here is your daughter’s safety and well-being. If, as her father, you feel like these things are threatened, it is your duty to aggressively pursue a solution. Divorce and obtaining full custody with supervised visits is certainly a safe option. I could see coparenting succeeding with some counseling. If this guy is going to be around your daughter, I’d advocate for a face to face meeting with the guy first, and probably more than once.

Again, I am so sorry that you’re going through this, you seem like a genuinely kind and thoughtful human being.

Choose Wisely • Feb 21, 2023

He is certainly complicit. This developed over months between the two of them. He could have stopped it at any time. He could have said resolve the relationship with your husband first and I’ll be waiting after. Any number of options.

We have had two calls with the three of us. One at the beginning of all this where I stated my preference at the time which was for my wife and I to live together and coparent, and for him to have a place in the same building or nearby and she could go be with him on her own time. They were still months away from having to decide all that, but my sense was that they wanted to live together full time to pursue their relationship, which I can understand.

The second call was a reaction to an argument my wife and I had where she was up at 4 in the morning on a clubhouse group, I pushed her on being up so late and ruining her sleep schedule (there is a pattern of this, she stays up too late and feels like shit and stays in bed the whole next day), she tells me to stop talking about this, and I respond you don’t get to tell me what to do, especially now. She harrumphs and goes to the couch. The next day she pulls me on a 3 way call with her guy where he tries to chew me out for “forcing myself on a woman”, and creating a hostile environment in the apartment. Which is patently absurd. I think he just wanted to look good white knighting her. I would have to work through a lot of (I feel justified) anger before I would even entertain another call or a meetup with him. He has no moral authority to be telling me anything.

Regarding mental health, I am in therapy. I consider myself a resilient guy. I am able to compartmentalize. I work very hard at making sure things are civil and there is no fighting around my daughter.

I have done a little bit of digging. He is divorced, has an adult kid and an ex wife that live in upstate NY. He is supposed to visit them at the end of March and my wife will take a trip up to meet him IRL.

I don’t believe that it is a scam because I have seen the instacart orders he has paid for for her. She has no money to give him anyway.

Thank you for the validation that this is hurtful, not normal behavior on their parts. Know any good divorce lawyers in NYC?

Solace​(dom male) • Feb 21, 2023

Choose Wisely,

Like others I wish to express my regret that this harm has come to you. I do not enjoy the negative stigma our community may somewhat rightfully earn from this incident in your life.

You ask about red flags...Unfortunately a poor metaphor for our community would be to compare us to a lawless country. The only rules we truly uphold (which we don't have the power to enforce) are rules about safe play, and consent. Thus as long as your wife is consenting...everything is acceptable.

That does not mean some or many of us (myself included) are outraged your wife has put you in this situation. A significant portion of our community is completely against the act or consideration of cheating on ones partner, vanilla or not. I think I can speak for others as well when I say we also may not approve of your wife's life decisions when it comes to working for free for a man without income while considering moving her life and child into said unstable situation which has a five year time limit. Ultimately, our community is also about trust which from my narrow perspective your wife has violated and trampled on. Your acts of good faith have been betrayed while the well being of you and your daughter has been endangered by these actions.

My advice is start looking up how to win a custody battle. In the U.S. it is statistically much more likely for the courts to favor the woman but there are specific actions which can help you win. From what I've heard, you will be able to offer your child a more stable future and serve as a better role model.