Just pretend you’re meeting a friend.
Nervously, I repeated my new mantra to myself as I made my way to my first date in nearly six years.
Nearly six years, and it’s not like I’d dated much before anyway. Nearly six years, and I had no idea what I was doing. And on top of my general gracelessness, I had yet to tell my date that I’m married.
Yes, married and dating. In San Francisco, openness, polyamory, and other forms of ethical non-monogamy are more popular than ever. U.S. Census data cited in Psychology Today suggests that just over one-fifth of American adults have engaged in consensually non-monogamous relationships, and in the Bay Area, it’s been referred to as the “next sexual revolution.” But then again, these concepts aren’t exactly mainstream. So it’s not surprising that my open marriage is a difficult concept for monogamists to wrap their minds around. Even I have trouble wrapping my mind around it most of the time.
It was in the midst of the mind-numbing boredom of complete marital bliss that we decided to take our relationship for a ride.
I can’t remember exactly when we made the decision to open our marriage. I don’t think there was one definitive conversation, no ceremonious moment when we cut the metaphorical ribbon that separated us from everyone else. Rather, it was sort of a slow progression. We dipped our toes, wet our ankles, and slowly adjusted ourselves to the idea before submerging ourselves in open waters.
Last summer, my partner, O., and I celebrated five and a half years together. (Well, we didn’t actually celebrate, because who celebrates halves at that point?) We’d been more or less inseparable since our meet-cute—meaning that in five and a half years, we’d covered a lot of ground. We’d moved across the world and then across the country; we’d bought and renovated an apartment; we’d fought; we’d made up; we’d traveled; we’d watched everything worth watching on Netflix — and a lot of stuff not worth watching too.
Things seemed good. Actually, they seemed great—like, too great. So fucking stable and problem-free and goddamn healthy. It was in the midst of the mind-numbing boredom of complete marital bliss that we decided to take our relationship for a ride.
Of course, we knew our marriage wasn’t perfect. What we didn’t realize, however, was that opening things up would expose all the tiny fractures that we never knew existed, widening them until we almost broke.
To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t just the mundanity of a shared, conflict-free life that sparked our move from monogamy. We’d always shirked traditional thinking. But although we believed in lives led off the beaten path, we were mostly following a tried-and-true route.
So we decided to translate our unconventional principles into an unconventional lifestyle. After a long time spent staring at the fork in the road, we waded into the weeds along the overgrown trails of a non-monogamous lifestyle. We diverged toward… well, we didn’t exactly know what we were doing or where we’d end up, but we knew that opening our marriage was something we couldn’t not do.
Of course, I had some hesitations. What if I were to fall in love with someone else? What if he fell in love with someone else? What if I decided to publish a piece about it in The Bold Italic and then my dad read it while muttering, “This just isn’t right,” to himself over and over and over again?
“What if we destroy our marriage?” I asked O.
“At least we’ll have fun doing it,” he replied half-jokingly.
And so it was settled. We’d give this thing a go. Though we took a while to warm up to the idea of openness, once we did, we jumped in with both feet and no prior preparation — which isn’t exactly recommended.
Now this is the part where most couples set some rules. But instead of playing it safe, we opted to bump up against our boundaries through experience and emend the rules as we explored. Thus, our initial rule book consisted of a measly three bullet points: use protection, come home by 1:00 a.m., and don’t get murdered. (So far, no one’s broken that last one.)
Besides, for us, marriage isn’t about sexual exclusivity; it’s about partnership, respect, and honesty. For us, marriage is about wanting the same things from life and giving each other enough space in which to grow separately. It’s about an ability to communicate almost exclusively via dog memes.
It seemed like simple math: permission to fuck one person for the rest of your life versus permission to fuck whomever the fuck you’d like to fuck whenever the fuck you’d like to fuck them.
Plus, we’d reached that point in our relationship where other people look interesting—like, really interesting. And even though crushes and flirtations are a natural part of human sexuality that you don’t necessarily need to act upon, I wanted to act upon them. Or rather, I wanted the freedom to act upon them.
Like so many monogamists, I initially assumed that openness was all about sex. It seemed like simple math: permission to fuck one person for the rest of your life versus permission to fuck whomever the fuck you’d like to fuck whenever the fuck you’d like to fuck them. A binary difference. Before diving in, I didn’t consider the impact of my emotions or all the ways in which society conditions our understanding of love and romance.
But I’ve never been great at casual sex, and as it turns out, marriage didn’t change that. I found myself wanting all or nothing: either I never wanted to see the guy again, or I’d long for something reminiscent of a relationship.
For a while, I resisted this revelation. Though it didn’t break our rules, a relationship while in a relationship felt a little too Bohemian for me, and wanting more than sex was at odds with everything I wanted to want. Instead of looking for what felt natural to me, I pushed on, seeking what seemed normal enough to acceptably coexist with my marriage: purely physical connections.
Though it didn’t take long for me to meet someone I liked. And when I did, the typical excitement of potential was tamped by the knowledge that that potential could never be realized. “What’s the point?” I endlessly ruminated aloud to my partner, to my friends, to anyone with ears and a high tolerance for really weird shit. “Where does this go?” Because even if I let myself feel something, it would inevitably lead to a dead end. After all, we were destined to end up… not together.
Yet even if there’s no fairy-tale ending, that doesn’t mean that a fleeting connection isn’t worth enjoying. There’s a certain beauty in ephemerality, a certain loveliness to living entirely in the present. Not everything good lasts, and not everything that lasts is good.
I’ve flown into more than one jealous rage, developed feelings for other people, and questioned my entire marriage. But those issues come up in monogamous relationships too.
And besides, some things just change shape. A few months later, when that Someone-I-Liked met his current girlfriend, our relationship metamorphosed into one of my best friendships, built on a history of intense intimacy, total transparency, and a thorough knowledge of each other’s STD-testing history.
One of my favorite aspects of ethical non-monogamy is that I have the opportunity to take every individual as they are, regardless of my relationship status. My open marriage provides enough room for relationships to grow naturally in whatever direction they’re bound to grow. I can guiltlessly engage in flirtatious friendships, meet a man alone, make friends with benefits, take a lover (so 1950s of me), etc. — and to infinity.
For instance, one lonely Thursday in August 2018, I ventured out to the Royal Cuckoo Market (not to be confused with the Royal Cuckoo bar, a mistake that once made me 23 minutes late to a first date). Amid a spontaneous conversation with three poets, I happened to mention my newly open marriage.
“I’m also in an open relationship,” called a man from the end of the bar.
“Really?! I have so many questions for you.”
That night, I chatted with my new polyamorist friend until 2:00 a.m., covering such intimate topics as marriage, sex, and dating. Over a year later, we still meet up regularly, and he read over this piece before I submitted it to the editors.
In my former life as a monogamous married woman, much of this — staying out late with a man I just met, intimate conversations, an ongoing one-on-one friendship — crossed some unspoken line of acceptable behavior. While it’s not explicitly illicit, it nonetheless skirts the borders of fidelity. Now, as a non-monogamist, there’s a certain potential to my every interaction. Nothing is off-limits, and anything can happen with anyone (so long as it respects their boundaries, of course).
Non-monogamy doesn’t mean that a person is fucking everyone or open to anyone’s sexual advances. It doesn’t mean that someone is engaging in casual sex. Non-monogamists can be looking for all the same things their monogamist counterparts are looking for: connection, intimacy, friendship, and—yes—even love. Or maybe they just want someone to babysit their husband so they can watch Black Mirror alone, then fall asleep spread-eagle.
If anything, non-monogamy is a mindset, the idea that partnership doesn’t equal possession and that intimate connections don’t negate one another.
And listen, it isn’t easy to make the seismic philosophical shift required to stop thinking of your partner as “yours” and instead consider them as a separate human being entitled to their own actions and decisions. It isn’t simple to uncouple yourselves as a couple and instead reframe yourselves as a unit composed of two distinct individuals. In a world of love lyrics worshiping concepts of ownership and jealousy, I sometimes feel weird about not feeling weird. Why don’t I feel jealous? Is my relationship normal? Am I normal? Or does the fact that my relationship doesn’t exist within the boundaries of culturally normative love mean that it’s inherently fucked up? But then I remind myself that there is no normal. There is no right or wrong way to have a relationship. There is no one way.
In the last year, we’ve faced all the challenges we expected and plenty of problems we never foresaw. I’ve flown into more than one jealous rage, developed feelings for other people, and questioned my entire marriage. But those issues come up in monogamous relationships too. The difference is that with non-monogamy, you’re forced to develop the mental fortitude to weather those difficulties and the emotional elasticity to bounce back quickly. Oh, and you (I) have a built-in buddy to listen to all your (my) overwrought anxieties about crushes who don’t text you (me) back.
I’m oh so well aware that non-monogamy isn’t for everyone. I know that there are risks and challenges and many, many bumps in the road. And truthfully, I don’t know what will happen with my own non-monogamous marriage. I don’t know if we’ll keep this up, close our relationship, stay together, break up, or somehow manage something in the middle. All I know is that right now, this feels right for us, and that right now, we’re happy.
