WELCOME! YOU’VE GOT INSECURITIES!

Tonight, my husband will be going on his first date. He is going alone. I will be home with the kids. This isn’t a huge surprise. I knew this was coming up. What I didn’t expect was the feeling of anxiety that would wash over me, seemingly out of the blue, and throw every ounce of self-confidence I have out the window. The internal mantra of you’renotgoodenoughyou’renotgoodenough that ran through my head was something I could not have predicted. Yet, there it was.

I should back up a bit. A few weeks ago, while we were lying in bed, my husband mentioned to me that he had created a profile on a dating website. I knew he had signed up on a swinger site previously, in order to find a couple that we might like and want to get to know. I was completely on board for that. When we first discussed opening our marriage, he had made it clear that he thought he would be okay with it as long as we moved forward as a couple. A threesome with another woman or another couple that we could “play” with sounded fun and exciting to him. He wasn’t keen on the idea of me going off on my own, not at first, and certainly not with another man. Since I was the one that initiated the discussion in the first place, since I was the one who wanted to explore, I agreed. If this was going to work, it was going to have to move at the more hesitant person’s pace. I absolutely accepted that. I was in no hurry to dive right in and start finding partners. If he needed to move more slowly than me, that was fine. I would not take the next step until he was 100% comfortable and ready for it.

Wait for it…wait for it…

The initial discussion started a few months ago. In the time that’s passed, there has been a lot of talking, a lot of honest communication about opening up our marriage. We’ve talked about the things we are excited about trying, the things that worry us, where things could go wrong and where they could go right. I’ve sort of sat back and let him explore websites on his own, finding what interests him, and he reports back things he’s found to me. So far, it has all seemed to be things we would do as a couple. So I was a little shocked (and if I’m being honest, hurt) to learn he had created a solo profile on a dating website. I didn’t worry about it too much though, and that night I created my own profile on the same site.

Within a couple of days, we checked back in with each other about our online experiences. I lamented at the overwhelming amount of messages I had received, with none of them being anything I was interested in. The online dating game is a vastly different experience for women than it is for men. He had a gotten a few messages over the two days he’d been active. In the first 12 hours, I had received over forty. It’s almost as if men (and I’m generalizing, I know) think that a woman who is in an open relationship is only interested in finding someone, meeting them that day, and sleeping with them. That couldn’t be further from the truth. But I digress. 

So, as we were talking about the people that had contacted us individually, he mentioned that there was a woman who was in an open marriage that he had hit it off with. They seemed to have a lot in common and they were having some enjoyable conversations online. I was genuinely happy for him. I know he has had some self-esteem problems in the past, and still does, so the fact that he’d met someone that is interested in him is great. It was nice to see a little pep in his step, how he came home from work with a smile on his face and his head held a little higher. He told me that they were thinking about trying to get together and meet soon, maybe for coffee or something, and I was okay with that. I was supportive and excited for him. A couple of days later, he came home from work and offhandedly commented that he and Rose (not her real name) were up to 131 messages exchanged. The next day, he informed me that they would be going to dinner the following Friday night.

My initial reaction…

“Oh, okay. Cool.” That was what I said. What I thought was, “Um…okay. Cool?” but I didn’t think any more about it. I had kids and work to keep my mind occupied. The Monday before his date, though, I found myself at work, suddenly feeling…I don’t know. My stomach was upset. I thought maybe I had eaten something that didn’t agree with me. I was working on a particularly tedious task, earbuds in with Gin Wigmore and ZZ Ward and Ivy Levan coating my eardrums. I couldn’t get that feeling to go away, though, no matter what I did. I began thinking about the upcoming date, and my stomach got worse. It’s hard to describe, that deep feeling of dread. There’s a tightness in your chest and your stomach feels full of ice and fire and knives all at the same time. It would go away whenever I had to get up and talk to someone, but as soon as I was back at my desk with only my music, my stack of work, and my own brain, it started up again immediately.

This is Bob. He lives in my stomach. Say “Hi,” Bob!

It dawned on me that I was feeling anxious about his upcoming date. Not just a little nervous – I was in full-blown anxiety mode. I couldn’t focus, I felt sick, I was a little clammy. I have a Xanax prescription that’s well over 4 years old and sitting in the bottom of my underwear drawer. I haven’t taken one in years, but that day when I got home, I made a beeline for that bottle and washed one down as quickly as I could. I don’t know why, after all of the time we’d spent talking and visualizing and planning, hesitation hit. No, not hesitation. Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? It was jealousy. I was jealous. I was scared and threatened and feeling shitty about all of it. I didn’t want to bring it up to him, though. I was afraid it would scare him off, cause him to call the date off, and I didn’t want to do that. I know he was excited to meet this woman he’s had such a wonderful time talking to, and I didn’t think it would be fair for me to put my feelings before his. Especially because, let’s face it, this was my idea in the first place, right? I can’t drag him along and then suddenly put the brakes on. That’s kind of a dick move. And as that great sage Wil Wheaton says…

My personal life philosophy.

I did do some things right in this situation, however. I remembered from my reading and from a local poly group that put on a “Poly 101” course we attended, that when feelings of jealousy arise, you have to really examine them. Instead of pushing them away and ignoring them, turn around and stare them right in the face. Look at why you’re feeling jealous. Where is it coming from? Where is it rooted? I began to jot down thoughts as they came to me. It wasn’t anything structured or coherent. Hell, even my handwriting was sloppy and frantic. But as thoughts and realizations, or even hints of realizations, came across my mind, I pulled out a piece of paper, wrote it down, and then went back to the task at hand. The writhing snake pit that was my stomach didn’t subside, but my mind slowed down from a neck-breaking pace to safely speeding along.

We could survive a crash at this speed, right?

So that night, when he got home from work, I casually said, “I’ve had quite a bit of anxiety today about Friday. We’ll talk about it tonight.” He just said okay and called the kids down to dinner. It was a normal Monday night. He did the dishes; I gave the baby a bath. The kids went to bed, we watched a little TV, and headed upstairs to bed. While brushing our teeth, I told him about how I was really upset, to the point of needing to take a Xanax. I told him how it had really taken me by surprise. Up until this point, I had been really pleased with how open and willing he was to try and his growing enthusiasm had allayed a lot of the lingering fears and uncertainty I was still feeling over this new endeavor.

I expressed how I felt he was moving forward without me. I was under the impression that this was something that we were going to do together, that we would have a discussion prior to making any changes or taking any steps forward. His creating a dating profile by himself felt like a violation of that agreement. I thought we’d be looking to explore together, and he created a solo profile without talking to me about it beforehand. His conversations with a woman he just met were so fascinating that within a mere couple of days, he was unable to focus at work because of the constant communication. His “maybe” meeting for coffee suddenly became we’re definitely going to dinner. I felt like he was dashing ahead and I was struggling to keep up. How did he go from being so cautious and hesitant to eagerly diving in without telling me? To be honest, my feelings were hurt a little. No, that’s a lie. My feelings were hurt a lot.

I told him how his upcoming date had brought up feelings about myself that I didn’t think I had, insecurities that I never knew existed. I’ve always been a fairly confident person. I’ve usually had a good sense of self, and a good grip on my emotions. Now, at the age of 34, I feel more secure in who I am as a person than I ever have at any point in my life. I recognize my flaws, I know my weaknesses, but I also know my strengths and what makes me a self-assured person. Or so I thought.

See, the problem wasn’t his date. The problem is that my husband thinks I’m amazing. (Hang in here with me, I’ve got a point I’m getting to.) He knows I’m not perfect, and he knows what my flaws are. In spite of these he still thinks I’m the most wonderful, awesome person in the world. Given his limited experience, I jokingly refer to his high opinion of me as being the valedictorian of summer school. His first wife was a needy, belittling, and (sorry, honey) crazy bitch who put him through hell and fucked with his mind ten ways from Sunday. She left a lot of deep wounds in that man, wounds that are still trying to heal, almost 7 years later. His next relationship was basically a rebound. So, yeah…I’m sitting pretty compared to those two. My fear comes from him seeing me for what I am – a woman of average intelligence, average looks, and average interest. There is nothing exceptionally special about me. I have no specific talents, aside from maybe being able to cook a pretty good meal. I’m good at being a mom, even though I question that some days. But I don’t see anything about myself that sets me apart from any other woman. I don’t say that in a “pity me, poor broken thing that I am” kind of way. Not everyone can be exceptional. It’s a fact of life. You have your exceptionally smart people, like Stephen Hawking. Exceptionally beautiful, like [insert your favorite actor/model/celebrity here]. You have your exceptionally funny people like George Carlin. But then you have the multitudes of us who stand in awe of those exceptional people. That’s life. It’s made up of far more average folks than exceptional.

We’re just ordinary people!!

My husband, however, is exceptional. He is incredibly smart. He constantly amazes me with his wealth of knowledge, how he is able to retain seemingly everything he hears or reads. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. He just puts me to shame when Jeopardy is on. It should be noted, however, that he has never once said or done anything to make me feel inferior. He doesn’t talk down to me or treat me like an idiot. The feeling of not being good enough or on par with him is entirely of my own doing. Sometimes I feel like he deserves someone that is his intellectual equal, rather than having to constantly catch his less-intelligent wife up on so many topics. He has had some incredible experiences in life. He’s done interesting and wonderful things. He’s made friends and memories that are always a lot of fun to hear him talk about. He is an incredibly fascinating man. He has a great sense of humor, and he is so funny. I literally laugh every single day when I’m with him. But he’s sweet and humble and thoughtful and helpful and just a beautiful human being. He is a genuinely good guy.

(Author’s representation)

Being with someone that you feel is far too good for you is a challenge. I’ve done well so far, but his impending date has brought out those insecurities. What it boils down to is I’m afraid. I’m afraid he will meet a woman who is every bit as fascinating and intelligent and quick-witted and interesting as he is. I’m afraid that her awesomeness will shine a direct spotlight on my flaws, magnify them by a thousand, show him all the ugly, warts-and-all side of me that he may have overlooked/forgiven up until this point. I’m afraid that he’ll say to himself, “Hey, if this amazing person thinks I’m great, then maybe I deserve better. Why am I settling for a McDonald’s hamburger when I’ve got a decadent T-bone throwing itself at me?” I’m afraid that I just won’t be enough anymore.

Pictured: My insides

Of course, he reassured me that he loves me. That he wants to be with me. That I am his best friend and the best wife he could ever ask for. He means well, he really does. And I think he sincerely believes that when he’s laying in bed with me, the possible future relationship with Rose still an abstract idea floating around in the ether. Still, I can’t help but wonder if the eyes he looked at me with are going to be the same ones he looks at me with when he comes back home.

I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see.

                                                                

Panic, Nonmonogamy, and Mr. Magoo: An Origin Story

“I’m terribly worried that today is the beginning of the end of my marriage. There, I’ve written it. It’s out of my head and on a page, now, so it’s some form of truth.”

            I wrote that in my journal on August 29^th, 2015. I’d spent the day at work pacing around my lab, alternately convincing myself that things were going to be alright and that I was going to be divorced again by the end of the year. Where would I go? Could I handle being a bachelor again? What would become of our children? Could I make this work for their sakes? Am I overreacting? Have I misinterpreted the signals I’d found? Had she already started, and that was why she had been spending so much time at work recently? Was this the ridiculous kind of panic-attack fueled nonsense that I would laugh at myself for later, or was this the “your subconscious figured something out that your brain doesn’t want to deal with right now” kind of realization? Whatever the truth, I knew I would have answers that night.

            Because that night, we were going to talk about Polyamory.

***

            My wife and I were both divorcees when we met, and we both thought we were only looking for a cool, fun person to know and maybe sleep with. She’ll tell you her story in her own time, but for my part I really wasn’t taking advantage of my newfound bachelorhood as much as I had originally intended. My wild oat sewing had so far consisted of three embarrassing failures to ask women out and one semi-serious relationship that ended when we both realized it was a lot more of a rebound and a lot less about love than we’d initially told ourselves. So, suffice it to say, playboy I was not.

            My future wife and I met through a free dating website. I found her profile after I got sick of their “algorithm” pointing me at women who either A) Never responded to messages I sent them (probably because they weren’t real people,) B) Didn’t match any of my interests and/or C) Wanted to message only but had no interest in actually getting together in person. So rather than get digitally jerked around any longer, I searched for prospects on my own. This is a good tip for the bachelor-men out there, by the way. Dating websites lose you as a revenue stream if you pair up with somebody and no longer need their service, so ask yourself how committed they really are to finding you “the one.”

            I’m digressing, and this will be long enough as it is. I searched manually for people with similar interests, and I found Her. She liked video games. She was into football. She seemed like a cool chick. She also had two kids and smoked, but what the hell? I had told myself I was just looking for fun, right? This was a woman who seemed, if nothing else, fun. So I messaged her. I asked about her World of Warcraft character. I busted her balls for being a Raiders fan. I absolutely did not say anything stupid like “you’re hot. Wanna fuck?” which I’m told sadly placed me in rarified air compared to the rest of the guys who messaged her (another pro-tip, fellas.) And despite all probability to the contrary, she messaged me back and we eventually planned a date.

I can still see that first moment. One thing she’d made clear in her profile was that, if I ever saw her in a dress, it would be at a wedding or a funeral. So, when I came out of an alley next to the restaurant and saw her in a black dress and heels from across the street, I was gob smacked. And then she smiled at me, and I was lost. We talked all through dinner. We walked around the market area and talked more. Then I took her to her car, awkwardly muttered “I’m gonna do this, now,” and kissed her (smooth.) I can’t describe the feeling without cliché words like “sparks, floating, or giddiness,” so I’ll just say that I had it bad from that moment, and leave it at that.

            I approached our relationship how I had handled all the others, like a serial monogamist. We didn’t sleep together until a few dates later, at which pint I spooked her for the first of many times by staying the night when she had intended for me to leave (after I fell asleep, she was too polite to ask me to get up and go.) This would become a bit of a theme for us: me moving too fast and her begrudgingly tolerating it. I used the love word first. I called her my girlfriend first. I brought up the idea of marriage first (at least, I think so.) I thought this reluctance on her part was because she had kind of given up on the idea of a serious, long-term relationship before we got together. Single mothers of two kids come with the sort of baggage that sends your average online-dater running. It never occurred to me that she was honestly not looking for this kind of relationship, and never had been.

We joke today that I was sort of like Mr. Magoo, blindly wandering along and blissfully unaware of how close I was to blowing the whole thing up. 

            Luckily for me, she didn’t dump me. I married my best friend a couple of years later. I got a job after finishing graduate school and we moved halfway across the country to start a new life with our family, and a year later we had a baby together. Our life hasn’t always been perfect, because nobody’s is, but it was still a pretty damn good facsimile of the good-old American Dream made manifest. So why, a couple of years later, was I halfway convinced that it was all coming to an end?

            These things always start slowly, and often through something stupid. We started to speak less and less about things beyond day-to-day life. I had more in-depth conversations with friends I had known for only a few years than with Her. We had less intimacy. This is easy to understand after having a baby, but as time went on and it didn’t come back this began to be more of a concern. There were weeks it felt more like we were a pair of roommates than a married couple.

            Then, one day, I was on Amazon looking for school supplies for the kids. I noticed the telltale indicator that something had been left in the digital shopping cart, and I clicked it without realizing I was logged onto her account instead of mine. Saved under her searches was Veaux and Rickert’s “More Than Two.” A book about polyamory? Surprisingly, I somehow decided in the moment that it was maybe a topic of academic interest to her, and left it alone without further investigation (Magoo strikes again!). This, of course, left the nagging seed of doubt behind, and eventually I cracked. More snooping on my part (not a proud moment) found that she had actually purchased Tristan Taormino’s “Opening Up.” And then, well, I didn’t know what to do with this information. I still avoided asking her about it because I felt guilty for violating her privacy, and I tried to tell myself that I didn’t know the whole story, and there was probably a simple, stupid explanation for all of this. But I couldn’t help but remember it, and I couldn’t help but think about that gap that had opened steadily between us as a couple, and the Green-Eyed Monster of jealousy started to play those doubts in my head like a poorly-tuned, dissonant violin. Something was wrong and I knew it. There were a number of nights when she would stay up late into the very early hours of the morning, writing and leaving me to go to bed on my own, something that I remembered happening during the last days of my first marriage. So finally, I asked her if we were alright when she came home from work one evening. “Yes, we’re alright. I just need to work some things out,” was a paraphrase of her response. We hugged, and I went up to bed alone, again. In that moment, I think we both understood why the 12^th Doctor says he doesn’t trust hugs.

Because it lets you hide your face.

            The next morning I saw that she had sent me a Facebook message. This is often how we communicate about heavy matters when we want to get our point across clearly and precisely, without verbalization getting in the way. She said things felt off between us because she’d been doing a lot of soul searching and writing to figure out some things about herself, not about our relationship. I shouldn’t worry, she said, because she still loved me and wanted to be my wife and mother to our children. We would need to have a talk sometime soon that might not be very comfortable, but she still wanted those things more than anything else. And, just like that, all my suspicions were confirmed. Without saying or even hinting at it, I somehow just knew she wanted to be polyamorous in one form or another. Suddenly Magoo could see that he was standing on a steel girder 40 stories up, and there was no going back to wandering along blindly.

I googled Mono-Poly relationships (leading to some amusing auto-complete results that inspired the name for this blog) and it was, in a word, horrifying. I found a thread on Reddit about the pain of Mono partners sitting at home, trying to be supportive while their significant other went out with metamours (the amount of new vocabulary I was picking up was pretty staggering,) leaving them at home alone. There were a lot of examples of pretty selfish assholes who were basically backing their partner into a corner, blackmailing them with nonmonogamy to the tune of "This is something I want to do, so you can either get on board or lose me," and I imagined She and I having the same conversation soon. I pictured myself in the place of those, lets just go ahead and call them victims, since that's what they are, and it felt like hell. The fact that I was doing the equivalent of googling "headache" and getting back the WebMD page for "brain tumor" didn't cross my mind. I thought about other people touching and being intimate with my wife and my guts twisted up into knots filled with every ugly, black, jealous emotion I had ever felt. I wanted to rip my hair out. I wanted to scream. If you've ever had a panic attack you know how it feels, and if you haven't then you probably think I sound nuts. Which is appropriate, because I literally drove myself crazy, long story short. It says something that it never even occurred to me that the same freedom from opening up could be extended to me as well. Again, I tried to deal with it, but when I spent my second day in a row not accomplishing anything at work because my mind was busy pacing circles around this topic, I knew I had to do something. “You know that talk you mentioned we were going to have? Yeah, I think we need to have that soon. Like, tonight.” She must have seen the only-just restrained emotion in my eyes, because she put her hand on mine. “Ok,” she said, “It’s not anything bad, you know?” I smiled and nodded, wishing I could believe that to be true.

            When she came home from work that night I was a couple glasses of wine ahead of her. She sat down on the patio with me, her own worry showing up in her expression, and I laid out my side of the story starting with finding her books. That, of course, led to a deep breath, her fetching her own wine glass and lighting up one of the cigarettes we’d both been pretending we didn’t know she had, and her starting her own side of the story.

We’re waiting to post them both at the same time, so if you want to hear her side of things click over to herpost. I’ll wait, and honestly I’m worried that mine paints her in a pretty unfair light. If you can’t be bothered (which, if that’s the case, why are you here?) the short version is that her soul searching was as much about finally acknowledging to herself that she was a bisexual woman and, even though our marriage was great and she couldn’t ask for a better partner, a part of her wanted to be able to explore that side of herself. Before we had gotten serious and exclusive she had maintained several casual relationships with men she had no real emotional attachment to, and that had been the part of her life when she’d felt the most sexually satisfied. Her ex-husband had once told her that he didn’t think she could be married to just one person, and she had to admit that he may not have been entirely wrong. She loved me. She loved being married to me. She loved our family and our sex life (though we both admitted it had gone pretty fallow of late,) but she didn’t want to deny herself or put limits on this part of herself either. And, with our relative starting points finally laid out and communicated to each other honestly, so began what I think of as “The Three Bottle Night.”

We talked for hours, both learning things about each other we had never even considered. It was a relief to both of us to have the secrets and suspicions laid out for examination, if only so we didn’t have to keep lugging them around on our backs alone anymore. She’d been running herself mentally ragged for the last month, trying to come up with the right way to talk to me about this. And I was very much the benefactor from the great pains she underwent to make this as easy and painless a process as possible. If there were awards for being a considerate and understanding partner under these circumstances, she would win it in a landslide. The main points she got across to me were:

-“I want to be free to experience more of what the world has to offer without the restriction of traditional monogamous relationships, and I want you to have that as well.”

-“There is nothing wrong with you or our marriage.”

-“I don’t have any immediate plans or anybody I’m wanting to hook up with. I wouldn’t do that before I had spoken to you and we had time to work through this together.”

-“You are a fine husband and it feels like I’m married to my best friend.”

-“Yes, our sex is great.”

-“Regardless of what happens, our family will always come first. It is the most important thing to me.”

Etc. etc. etc. Pretty great, right? I really can’t say enough times that she did this as well as it could possibly have been done, and would have broken it to me a lot more gradually if I hadn’t found the book and forced the issue. I think she was prepared at this point for me to flatly refuse, or at best offer to think about it without ever giving it any serious consideration. So she was surprised (and, I guess I was, too) when I seriously offered to give it real thought and, especially if we were able to stick together for group stuff in the beginning, I may actually be interested in exploring as well. The wine probably had a lot to do with it at the time, and her assurance that everything would go at my speed and nothing would happen until I was ready certainly helped, but I slowly started to lose that feeling that the sky was falling. She even encouraged me to go out and sew some of those “wild oats” the way I hadn’t really done when I was single, and said she was excited to see what kind of partner she would get back if I had a chance to be with some new people (a thought so foreign to me that it may as well have been spoken in Latin, but it was encouraging nonetheless.) So, maybe this wasn’t the beginning of the end. Maybe this could be the beginning of something amazing. I kissed her, this time without awkwardly declaring my intentions first, and we made love right there on the back porch beneath the stars and the three empty bottles of wine resting on the table above us.

I wish that was the end of the worry for me, but thirty-plus years of monogamy indoctrination doesn’t go away after one night, amazing though it may have been. I’ll save some of the struggles for future posts, but suffice it to say I spent the next couple of weeks swinging back and forth between thinking I’d made a huge mistake and fantasizing about the possibilities the future might hold. The swing of this particular pendulum has slowed recently, but I’m under no illusion that it may start flying back and forth at some point in the future.  "Everybody fucks up in the beginning" is a mantra in the nonmonogamy community. The insecurity and the jealousy are still close to hand, and I know they will never go away completely. And, frankly, that’s ok too. For now, I’m onboard with…whatever we are going to become. If I were to guess, I’d go with Taormino’s definition of “partnered nonmonogamy” as most likely for our final relationship state, though we’ve both assured ourselves that if we try this and either one decides its not to our liking, we’re free to put it on hold and reevaluate to find what really works for us. For right now we’re good, we’re together, and we’re looking to the future that starts this week, with our first nonmonogamous “dates.” Wish us luck, and stick around to hear how things turn out!

Oh Magoo, you've done it again!

THE ROAD SO FAR…

(Bonus points if you get the title reference)

So how did I find myself, a married mom of 3, writing a blog post on the eve of my husband’s first date with another woman? Well, I’m not quite sure myself, but let’s explore, shall we?

Yep, looks like we’re ready to go!

I’ve always been a sexual person.  I lost my virginity at a relatively young age, and throughout my teenage years and early 20’s, I found myself with a succession of numerous partners. It was never anything I felt ashamed of. I never felt dirty or like a “slut,” as women are taught to think of themselves when they enjoy lots of sex. I was always of the mind that if all were consenting and no one was getting hurt, then it was okay. Sex was great! It was amazing, it felt wonderful, and I enjoyed having many different partners, but I was always monogamous. I only had one relationship, whether it was exclusively sexual or involved feelings, at a time. But there were many. Oh, so many.

This may be a slight exaggeration…

When I was 20, I met a man that I consider my first “real” relationship. For two fun, exciting, adventurous years, we lived and loved together. He and his circle of friends were similarly-minded when it came to love, sex, and relationships. On occasion, we would have parties where some of us girls would make out and it was no big deal. Sex acts would be performed in front of others, some people in the group had dated others, and they all still remained very close friends. They were so casual about their bodies and their sexuality. There was no drama, no jealousy. It was wonderfully freeing. It opened my mind to a world bigger than the one I had known, and I was hooked. I had done things that I had never thought I would or could do. And I found a family of friends that continues with me to this day. Alas, all good things must come to an end.

Exactly.

 When that relationship ended, I began another that led to marriage, children and after 4 years of shit, divorce. He was controlling and jealous. He made me feel bad for doing anything without him. I used to play softball on Friday nights with some friends, and afterward we would grab a beer or two before heading home. I was always given a guilt trip and made to feel like a bad wife and mother for doing that. He cheated on me. To this day, I don’t know if he was ever actually physically with anyone, but there was a lot of infidelity online and through email messages. One was with woman he had previously worked with…while I was pregnant with our second child…and working full time while he was unemployed and sitting on his ass all day.

*Not his real name

When that marriage ended, I resigned myself to being single.

Maybe “resigned” isn’t the right word; too many negative connotations. I was completely content to be a single mom and just date around. It was how I pictured the rest of my life, and I was at peace with that. In fact, it was a lot of fun! I really enjoyed having multiple “no-strings attached” relationships. The men I was seeing were fun and interesting, but there was never any emotional component to it. I had sex and companionship on my terms, when I needed it, without any pressure of what the future held. It was incredibly liberating! I was free to explore my own sexuality. I even began perusing the online profiles of lesbian and bisexual women. I was open to anything. I was going to take control of my life, my relationships, my sexuality, and no one was going to tell me what was right or wrong. To hell with society and it’s Puritanical standards of love!!

I AM A FIERCE, INDEPENDENT, FEMINIST WOMAN!!

Enter stage right: my husband. He was the opposite of me in so many ways.

He was a runner.

 I was a firm believer that one should run only if one is being chased.

He wasn’t a smoker.

I could have put chimneys to shame.

He didn’t have children.

I did. And sometimes they really sucked.

He was pursuing his PhD at a big university.

I was a high school dropout with a GED working on a 2-year associate’s degree at a community college.

 On paper, it should have never worked. But I figured, “What the hell? It’s a night out, so let’s do it.”

Well said, Mr. President.

Five and a half years later, here we are - happily married, with another child, living life and loving each other deeply. He is my best friend, my equal partner in all things. We have a wonderful marriage, we rarely fight, and we communicate very well. He does his part taking care of the kids and cooking and doing housework. Our sex life is fun and exciting and fulfilling. I can honestly say that this is the most satisfying, rewarding, and healthy relationship I have ever had in my life. At the risk of sounding conceited, I think I have the kind of marriage that people so desperately long for. So why open the marriage if things are so great?

Don’t worry, this was my reaction too.

For one thing, although I have had sexual experiences with women, I always thought it was just silly, sometimes drunken, fun. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that my attraction to women isn’t just a fluke. I finally had to admit and accept that, yes, I am bisexual. It was this realization that led me to considering other forms of relationships. In my daily life, at work and outside of work, I had met men and women that I connected with, was attracted to, but always had that thought of, “If only I wasn’t married.” I began to question it. Who says marriage excludes physical intimacy with other people? I don’t recall my marriage vows saying anything about being attracted to and having sex with only my husband for the rest of my life. It doesn’t seem feasible. Why should I have to choose between a physical desire and my marriage? Is this normal? Does everybody feel this way or am I just severely psychologically fucked up and don’t realize it? I began to do some research. To the Google!!

ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY GOOGLE!

From there, I was led to a book called Opening Up:  A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino. As I read it, I was struck by how much I related to it. I was moved, sometimes to tears, by how much it sounded like what was in my head. Finally, there was a way to explain my incredibly conflicted thoughts and feelings! It talked about how monogamy is a relatively modern concept constructed largely by religion and adopted by society. It described how some people may be psychologically “wired” to be polyamorous and find it difficult and unsatisfying to be forced into monogamous relationships. It was incredibly forceful in its insistence that ABOVE ALL ELSE, COMMUNICATION IS CRITICAL. I was excited and scared, wondering how in the hell I was going to broach this subject with my husband. I struggled with my approach. No time ever seemed like the right time. He is relatively inexperienced, at least compared to me, in the relationship department. I am only the third woman he’s been with. He was raised in a fairly traditional Midwestern home. Both of his parents are still married. I had absolutely no idea how he would take it. I imagined he would either be staunchly opposed and our marriage would be forever marred, or he would be totally on board, but with the condition that only threesomes with another woman.

Honestly, this was the response I was expecting.

And that was if things went well.

Finally, he kind of forced me into it. He had gotten online to use my Amazon account to order something and had seen Opening Up in my recent purchases. After a couple of days of self-torture, he told me that we needed to talk. After the kids went to bed, we went out on our patio and over many hours and many bottles of wine, we talked. We talked about my bisexuality, my desire to have sexual relationships with others (both men and women), my feelings for him and our marriage. He opened up about some of the sexual interests he had that I wasn’t aware of, his concerns about opening our marriage. It was very difficult and frightening discussion, but it was also wonderful. We were communicating in a way we hadn’t done since our early dating days. We ended the night a little drunk and having great sex that started under the moonlight and continued on into the house. We felt closer to each other than we had in a long, long time.

Like this, only we are way, WAY better looking

than these pathetic models. Pshh.

And here we are. Tomorrow, my husband will go on his first date with a woman who is also in an open marriage. I will be home with the kids. Maybe we’ll have pizza and play Uno. And when he gets home, I’ll give him a kiss and ask him how it went. We’ll talk, maybe watch an episode of Jeopardy, and then go to bed together, like the old married couple we are.