5 WEIRD SIDE-EFFECTS OF OPENING YOUR MARRIAGE

My previous two posts were a little negative in places, and I don’t want to give out the impression that this has all been difficult and I’m wallowing in misery all the time. Plus, we’ve noticed that the blog is starting to get some attention from people, and that’s exciting to us, so we want to try and drive more traffic here. Solution to both problems: time for a blatant Buzzfeed style click-bait post. Thus…

5 WEIRD SIDE-EFFECTS OF OPENING YOUR MARRIAGE

1)   Drive for self-improvement

Look, let’s be real for a second here, married guys. I know the joke is that, once the wedding rings go on, the couple starts to let themselves slip more and more. That extra couple of (dozen) pounds creep onto your gut. You’re content to come home and give the wife the perfunctory peck on the cheek and chat about the day’s events. You stop growing and pushing yourself as a person. You get comfortable, and that is a bad, bad thing.

So now imagine if some of that comfort gets shaken up. Not that having an open marriage means that now you’re constantly fighting to keep your relationship together, mind you. But, now you have to convince OTHER people to like you who don’t have a legally binding piece of paper entitling them to half your stuff if it doesn’t work out.

Basically, you’ve got to start working on yourself again, and the thing is, you’ll actually WANT to do it. Suddenly you look down at that beer gut and realize it’s time to get back in the gym. And you’ll be doing it because you want to, with a pretty big carrot dangled in front of your nose that works a heck of a lot better than some abstract goal like “losing weight” or “getting in better shape.” Plus, you need to keep yourself interesting as well. Too frequently in my marriage it started to feel like we were in a rut of routine. "How was your day" could be answered with "Eh, same as usual" and you're so comfortable with each other that you can shrug and move past that conversation killer. I have news for you: that won't fly with a new date. You’ve got to relearn how to be dynamic in a conversation and relate to other people that you don't know that well. All that old “game” you used to have back in the day? You need to go find that again, dust off the old rap, and get back to being able to relate to people you meet if you ever want to do more than just chat idly online. And, just so that doesn't seem like a burden, realize that this is a skill that helps in your daily life as well. Unless you work in a dark basement with no human contact, interpersonal communication is probably useful in your job.

For example, at one point in the middle of all of this I started to improve my wardrobe. There’s no uniform at my workplace. People can wear whatever they feel like as long as A) it qualifies as clothing and B) it passes lab safety regulations. As such, most of my career I’ve gone to work in jeans, t-shirts, and possibly an over-shirt. If I wanted to look professional, throw on a polo. Lots of people, especially the grad students, come to work looking like they just rolled out of bed or came straight from the gym, and its no big deal. For most of my coworkers, this is considered one of the real perks of the job, and I enjoyed it as well for a time. However, it started to feel…not right as I got older. I remember that about the same time I started watching Mad Men and seeing how men used to dress for work, and part of me kind of missed when we used to care about dressing like professionals.

Pictured: the goal. Minus the philandering and alcoholism, of course.

And somewhere, in the middle of working on myself to get ready for being an open marriage participant, I decided to start dressing up at work and in daily life. Not full suits, mostly because I don’t have many of them and suit coats don’t really work under a labcoat, but shirt, slacks, and tie pretty much every day. I learned how to do a better tie-knot (the classic half-windsor.) I started wearing a shot of cologne every day. It wasn’t necessary or even all that practical (imagine going to work with people who’ve never seen you in anything besides casual clothes for two years,) but it felt good to work on myself in that way. And, it made me feel more confident when dealing with potential dating partners as well. Would I have ever tried this without that self-improving drive? I'm really not sure. The timing seems awfully coincidental for it not to be related.

Now, I’m not saying you all need to go dressing up for work every day anymore than I’m saying the other people in my lab need to do it. But the point is, I feel better about MYSELF because I’m doing it. Which, of course, can lead to…

2)   General boost in self-confidence.

God I hope none of the Google searches for these pictures is going in a file somewhere.

I’m probably the last person in the world to talk about self-esteem, because I’m one of these people who, despite any evidence to the contrary, is convinced that he’s fooled the world into thinking he’s smart, attractive, and capable and, one of these days, they’re all going to figure it out and the game will be over. So I can’t speak for any personal increase in feelings of self-confidence. But, as my wife put it when I was feeling not great about my first date, one of the things she had liked about this experience was seeing me walk a little taller with some extra pep in my step. It just feels good to be desired, and it’s easy to lose that feeling from a long-term partner over time. Its not their fault, of course. The confidence effect of being desired by someone must work like drugs: the more you have it, the less effect it has on you. But when you can start to see your positive characteristics through a new person's eyes, that feeling can come back just as strong if not stronger.

And it can have a positive effect on your relationships, as well. When you’re feeling better about yourself it starts to be reflected back at you from other people. I’m not a person that gets “checked out” in my daily life, but I started to see one or two women’s eyes lingering that extra second longer than necessary when I was out and about. When I went into a bank or a store, the people responded differently. I started to see a lot of the things I loved about my wife with fresher eyes. I even saw another coworker start dressing up a week or so after I did, so apparently somebody else must have thought it was a good idea.

Of course, I emphasize the term “general” boost of confidence, because reentering the dating pool can be fairly fraught with peril for your self esteem as well. Nothing will pop your little bubble quite like getting flat-out shut down in an online conversation with someone to whom you’re really attracted. But when you hear people telling you that they “liked” your profile on a dating website just because your picture was “cute,” or you start to receive messages from users who are very obviously hitting on you (more my wife’s experience with things than mine, but still) how can you not start to feel a little bit better about yourself?

3)   TV starts to feel stupid

Ok, so this is a weird digression but it is something I noticed recently (and this is about weird side-effects after all.) First of all, our DVR has started to get further and further backed up and those old "appointment TV" programs are becoming less and less important, for reasons that will come up later. But, the actual content of the shows starts to look different once nonmonogamy is a part of your mindset.

The wife and I used to watch Scandal in the first couple of seasons (before it quit being about Kerri Washington’s role as a political fixer and started to be about super-secret CIA agents and political intrigue.) The show does have a strong central thesis it has stuck to throughout: the President’s illicit relationship with Ms. Washington’s character while married to an ice queen First Lady. It’s a constant source of drama, which is of course turned up to 11 in every episode because Shonda Rhymes has never heard of subtlety. Eventually we tapped out and moved on to more believable dramas like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones.

More believable than Shondaland. You heard me.

Since we opened up, however, I saw a commercial for that show and realized that A) I could probably just pick it up again at any point and it wouldn’t feel like I’d missed anything and B) the main plot of this show seems really stupid now. The President has parts of himself that are made better by both of the women in his life. They make him a better political figure. They make him happy. The three of them are a hell of a team when they work together, frankly, and the women don’t even really have a reason to dislike each other besides the whole “he’s married to this woman but sleeping with that woman” thing. So imagine if one day they just went into a poly relationship. Problem solved, series over. Well, besides the whole CIA trying to take over the country thing. 

And when I had this thought, I suddenly realized how often this would blow up the plot of other shows I’ve watched. Love triangle on your sitcom? Convert it into a triad and problem solved. Barry Allen has a girlfriend but knows that he’s also attracted to a woman he’s supposed to be married to in the future? He’s the Flash! He can be on a date with both of them at once if wanted to, and as long as everybody knows about it, who cares? Abraham wants to be with Sasha but is already sleeping with Rosita? It’s the zombie apocalypse! Polyamory should be seriously considered, if for reproductive purposes only!

Seriously, look into it. I could find an example in almost every show on TV. Enough digressing, though. Back to serious relationship stuff.

4)   It gives you a chance to broaden your horizons

You’re only two people, with two people’s life experiences. You have two people’s hobbies. You have two people’s memories, places you’ve travelled, and experiences. You can spend every day of your lives learning something new about each other, but it’s still the same 4 eyes looking at the world every day in your relationship. No matter how interesting and open a couple you are, the paradigm will still only be so big. So imagine throwing in another person or 6 to the mix, and imagine how much richer your life could become. Every couple has that thing she likes to do that he doesn’t, and vice-versa. Now imagine you could add in a partner who did like to do those things with you. While you and a new lover are at home watching football together, your wife and her new partner could go shopping together. Or, you know, vice versa (phew, dodged that sexism just in time.) Or, better yet, imagine you meet someone who introduces you to something new that you and your partner had never considered trying, and you both find out you love it! How awesome would that be?

Without Polyamory, Jim would never have discovered his passion for extreme ironing.

5)   More and better sex with your partner.

Ok, that might be a bit much, but you get the idea.

I mean, really, sex is part of why we do this, right? Finding new people to be with is an undeniable perk of open marriage. But I’ll bet you didn’t consider that it could end up having a positive effect on your bedroom life at home as well. I first heard of this idea on Cooper S. Beckett’s My Life on the Swingset audio books. When he and his wife were in the early stages of swinging, before they’d actually had sex with anybody yet, they suddenly couldn’t keep their hands off of each other. The reproductive proclivities of rabbits were used as a comparison, if I remember correctly. I wondered if that would be a general sort of phenomenon that the wife and I would experience as well, and damned if it didn’t end up kicking in about a week or so before my first date. I mentioned in my first post that we’d hit kind of a dry spell after the birth of our youngest which had started to get better once we talked about opening up. Well, once it was about to become a reality, that dry spell turned into an ocean in a hurry. Bed time for the kids changed from "well let's see what we're going to watch tonight" to "Ok, how long do we need to wait until we're sure they're asleep." We’re talking marathon sessions, nine days in a row, to the point that we both just collapsed at the end and couldn’t move.

I didn’t know if it was a result of being excited for this new adventure, feeling attractive because of the reasons discussed above, the phase of the moon, or some combination, but I wasn’t going to question it. As the wife put it “It’s like we were a new couple again.” And, in a way, I suppose we were. It’s tough not to see your partner differently after you’ve had the hard conversations and made the decision to open things up. If nothing else, I don’t know that any conversation between the two of you could ever be harder than one saying “I’d like to be able to sleep with other people.” Your relationship has changed pretty radically at the point the other partner agrees, so why wouldn’t you expect a certain degree of New Relationship Energy (NRE in the nonmonogamy terminology) to result from this redefinition of who you are as a couple? Add to that the fact that, suddenly, you have new people that are interested in and attracted to you, and is it any wonder you suddenly find this new surge of sexual energy? Seems logical to me, at least. I would welcome any of our readers who have gone through this process to comment, as I’m honestly curious to see how common this really is or if it’s just two instances of anecdotal evidence.

And to throw another curve your way, consider this last point. Every partner you’re with teaches you something new in bed, potentially. So imagine if you could go out, learn that new stuff, and then bring it home to your partner to share it with them. Sounds pretty good, right? We haven’t really had a chance to experience this yet per say, but part of the sudden revitalization of our sex life was an openness to experimenting with kink, and it just so happened that Rose, the woman I was seeing on that first date, has been in BDSM for several years at this point and is very knowledgeable. I think you can see where this is going. Now, I wouldn’t recommend trying this particular application with just any new relationship, particularly one that hasn't gone past the first date. I would imagine that most folks would just as soon not know the details of what you get up to with a metamour (partner of your partner with whom you aren’t romantically involved. Jargon is fun!) Rose is pretty unique (and awesome) in how sex positive she is for everyone in her life, and it helps that she and her husband have been in an open relationship for some time as well and have already been through a lot of the road bumps and hurdles along the way, so they've got jealousy under control more or less. But really, I bring it up because my wife and I are still new at this and it's already had a positive effect. Imagine what could be possible in the future for us, and for you as well. If you and all your partners are all open and good communicators, the possibilities are, frankly, endless.  

...endless...