Married Couple In Turmoil After Giving Each Other A ‘Hall Pass’ During Their ‘Free’ Year Before Having Kids
“Now, I have no idea what to do. This is a total mess.”
Ground Picture / Shutterstock.com While “hall passes” are incredibly controversial online, especially for marriages and long-term relationships — they’re typically discussed in imaginary situations with celebrity crushes.
However, one married couple decided to take it to an entirely different level. They gave each other “a pass” to be intimate with another person in their “free year” before having kids.
A married couple gave each other ‘hall passes’ in their ‘free year’ before having kids, but it quickly strained their relationship.
Having been married for 11 years since college, a husband shared on Reddit that he and his wife “dated for a year and had a quick week engagement” before their wedding. “Our marriage has been pretty spectacular. It's not perfect, nobody is. We have our arguments, we get heated sometimes, but we’re good.”
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“Just before our 10th anniversary, we had a discussion about having kids. We've both agreed that 1 kid was enough… and decided to have one more child-free year,” he wrote. “In this year, we would hit a lot of those bucket list items. We didn't have bachelorette/bachelor parties, so we joked that this year was our 'last year of freedom' before we had kids.”
Amidst reconnecting with old friends, skydiving, and spending quality time together, they also decided to give each other hall passes. He wrote, "My wife asked what I missed about being single… I said ‘one night stands.’”
Their intimate life was exciting, but they both agreed they missed the spontaneity and excitement of sleeping with a stranger — so they set some ground rules.
After establishing ‘ground rules’ for their hall passes the husband wasted no time using his.
“We ultimately decided to do this. We had one year to use it, as we had agreed on our 11th anniversary [my wife] would be going off birth control,” he explained. “There were some ground rules: Not someone from our lives. Be safe and smart. Tell the other person when you’re using it.”
After a few months, the husband said he met a woman who was “opening her own marriage,” so he used his hall pass. “We met; it was a fun and exciting night,” he wrote. “I was able to tell [my wife] ahead of time; she was excited for me, and when I got back, she ‘reclaimed’ me.”
Under the impression that his wife would soon use her own pass, he was surprised when several months went by without any kind of notification from his partner. Despite being on all the apps, she admitted that nobody was “appealing” until she met an intern at her job who was leaving the office.
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“I had gotten to the point where I was feeling guilty about using mine, thinking maybe she reconsidered and wasn’t going to use hers. So, when she told me she was ready… she wanted to know if [he] was still inside our rules.”
Despite technically being “a part of their life,” the couple agreed that she should use her “hall pass” on her co-worker, considering he was leaving the company in a few weeks. So, she did, and things seemed perfectly fine until the couple’s “free- year” ended, and they started trying to have kids.
Things took a turn when his wife found out she was pregnant — ‘It might not be mine.’
While open marriages and relationships can be incredibly healthy for many couples, having clear communication and understanding of your partner is key. While this Reddit couple did set boundaries and rules for their “free year,” they weren’t necessarily clear enough to provide stability.
His wife stopped taking her birth control on their 11th anniversary, as they’d agreed upon, but some unsettling news shocked them just a few weeks later.
“About two weeks later, my wife was pregnant, which we thought was oddly quick. We booked an appointment…she is actually about 7 weeks,” he says. “This lines up perfectly with her ‘hall pass’ use. I have no idea what to do. She’s pregnant, and there’s a chance it’s not mine.”
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The husband was furious. His wife did not use protection for her pass, and it turned out she was intimate with the same man several times. “You have to get over your anger,” one commenter insisted “You did the same thing, but don’t have to worry about getting pregnant yourself.”
The couple did not communicate effectively when they decided to give each other the passes.
According to Psychology Today, the only healthy way to open up a marriage to other partners is through very clear communication about why they want or need other partners in the first place. In this case, missing the thrill of singlehood was obviously not the wife's primary motive because she actively broke the rules by sleeping with the intern more than once.
As the outlet noted, your own relationship needs to be perfectly healthy before you can engage in outside dalliances without negatively impacting the relationship.
This husband's anger is ultimately unjustified because their agreement was not properly discussed. “Invest time having fun with each other,” one commenter said, “because if you’re not interested or excited by your partner, entering into parenthood isn’t going to spark anything new.”
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories.