Letters to the Editor
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A question for Dan Savage, not Cary Tennis
If the answer you get from the advice columnist sends you to therapy, you are probably asking the wrong advice columnist.
You are willing to Good, Giving, and Game, or you aren't. You either meet your partner's needs, or you give your partner permission to get needs met outside the marriage, or you split up. There is not and solution in therapy. You have to decide which of these three answers is the most palatable to you, and then stick with your decision.
Because you are not going to change your partner. If you partner needs these things to achieve satisfaction, then your partner needs these things to achieve satisfaction. No way to change that. Your partner will get these needs met, with you or without you. So you must make sure the decision is made on your terms, not in spite of you.
And if you do decide to be GGG with this, make sure your needs are met as well. Don't let your partner's needs overwhelm your needs. Make your partner agree to give you equal time, and require this, to the point of withholding if you don't get your fair share.
But you cannot pretend this will go away somehow. You can only decide how you are going to live with it.
I have only done a poor job of responding how I believe Dan Savage would have responded, based on many years of reading his columns.