Personally, I'm all for open relationships. Monogamy doesn't come naturally to me, and I don't want to be a cheater. That leaves me either feeling stifled (either in small ways or larger ones), or in need of a good open relationship. I've had a few of those, and they worked pretty well. The reasons they ended never had anything to do with either of us sleeping with another person.

The key to these things, as it is with most relationship issues, is trust and honesty. As long as you have those two things, it's amazing what you can manage to do. Of course, it helps if neither of you is under the impression that either sex or love implies ownership of another person.

Oh hell yes! Now this is a topic that interests me greatly. I don't think monogamy for LIFE (for some, from early 20s to one's death!) is healthy or suitable for most people, as much as society, the media, friends, and family drills it into us that it is. I, too, wish there were more examples of healthy, open relationships. I know I could use a good model.

I've never been in an open relationship, but I've been in casual relationships where monogamy was not assumed so there was no presumption of "ownership." I do wonder if I could be in a true open relationship one day if I get serious with someone else, or if I will continue on with casual relationships.

I do wonder though, why get married and get the law involved in your relationship even though you have sort of a central partner with whom you raise children and who acts as sort of a base, a family member? Though I'd understand if it were for reasons like health insurance and immigration.

I can't wait to read this book!

I am open to open relationships, and my partner and I do experiment a bit with openness. I don't think humans are necessarily built for monogamy- and I don't think all that many people are truely monogamous in their lives. What are the percentages of people that cheat on their spouses? They are somewhere at 50% who admit to it, I think. The idea of a lifelong commitment to one person is flawed, and I see polamory as an extention of that.

My husband and I are talking about having an open relationship. Neither of us believe that absolute monogamy is possible for a relationship as long as we want to have, at least for us. I don't think I could do a threesome, but we spend a bit of time apart (he visits out-of-state family a lot, I often spend weekends away with my friends) and we've talked about hooking up with others while we're apart. I think it would work out, but we're both kinda nervous about how to go about it or what to expect. Thanks for posting your story, I really like hearing how other people manage open marriages.

I believe that if both partners are happy in their relationship, and neither party is harmed, then it is a healthy relationship. When someone believes they are going into a monogamous relationship and their partner is having secret affairs, that is harmful; an open marriage is not. If a relationship works, and both partners are happy, then it is a good relationship, and outsiders have no ground to tell you otherwise (though they surely will).

I read this blog every morning with my coffee and everyday I have thoughts and responses to the blogs . . . today I had a strong reaction. I have been married to an amazing woman for a little over a year (we were married in Canada). We are truly happy and truly in love. I recently met another woman who is quite brilliant, we have amazing conversations and the chemistry is overwhelming. I have not had a crush like this since college. I feel sick all the time because society tells me a happy marriage is a monogamous marriage and any time I hear of an open marriage it always ends badly. Can my wife and I still be happy if I sleep with another woman? I don't know, all I know today I cannot get this woman out of my mind and I am distracted from my marriage. Would an open marriage give me what I need? I have no idea . . .

I commend you on your courage to live and write about your open marriage. Thank you.

my concern is not rooted in morals, love, or anything like that, it's a straight forward health concern. having more partners can increase the risk of stds like HPV (that can be contracted even if condoms are used). if i'm with an exclusive partner, i wouldn't want to worry about contracting something - with things like HPV a person may not even realize they are a carrier. but if i already know that partner and i are clean, why would i want to risk exposing myself to a health risk?

SaldySays, those are understandable concerns. I would say that the core partners get tested regularly (at least once a year) for STIs, including HIV, and always use condoms and other barrier methods when engaging in any kind of sex with outside partners. It is a risk, sure, but sex always is in regards to disease and unintendended pregnancy. But if both partners enter into an open relationship with the commitment to protecting themselves and their partner(s) as best possible, they can decide if that risk is worth taking.

Open relationships work if both people are of the same mind about it. My significant other would have no problem if I wanted to see other people as long as I still want to be with him, but I am very monogamous by nature and wouldn't do it. I have told him that he can also see other people, just please break up with me first. I can't stomach the idea of him with anyone else, and I guess that makes me a bad person - but since he's very monogamous as well it works out. I believe that nobody can *make* anyone else stay faithful anyway, so why try? Just please have the courtesy to end things with me first, and don't lie to me or bring home diseases. That's it.

SaldySays- can we not use "clean" to describe your STD status? That makes everyone with an STD (and there are a lot of people, even people in monogamous relationship) "dirty" and that ain't kosher. Its great that you think your partner will never cheat on you, and maybe (s)he won't, but good luck being sure of that, ever.

"They are somewhere at 50% who admit to it, I think. The idea of a lifelong commitment to one person is flawed, and I see polamory as an extention of that."

I'm actually about to submit a paper to the American Journal of Public Health on this question. In a variety of both nationally representative studies and large-scale studies:

10-20% of married women say they have committed infidelity. 14% in my sample (N = 128,000)

20-30% of married men say they have committed infidelity. 26% in my sample.(N = 128,000)

(Average age in those samples is about 40)

Those are for heterosexual adults. Lesbian women are the same as hetero (14%). Bisexual men, bisexual women, and gay men are much higher though (40%-60%)

Perceptions are higher though: People think 42 of married men and 30% of married women have cheated, and people who guess higher are more likely to have cheated as well.

I don't have a problem with open marriage, but I know that lifestyle would not suit me. Relationships are something personal, and I really don't care whether or not someone chooses to live a polygamous lifestyle. It's empowering to claim your own sexuality and to be true to yourself.

Maybe it's just because I never really learned to share my toys as a child.

It really doesn't bother me that some people choose to have open relationships. But if my boyfriend were to sleep with someone else, even after talking with me about it, I would be jealous. Maybe it is social programming, but at this point in my life I do want a monogamous relationship. I just don't have an overwhelming desire to be with another person.

i apologize for using that diction, JenLovesPonies, i didnt mean to be disrespectful. but, i never claimed that i thought my partner would not cheat on me. i guess that would be built into the same trust that some one in an open relationship would have about their partner practicing safe sex with others.

I checked out your article on Tango, and I thought it was very interesting. While I'm not interested in an open relationship at this point in my life (or in the relationship I am in), I too believe honesty, communication, and tailoring relationships to the partners' needs are what make them work. I wish more people had the courage to think outside the box and recognize that the heterosexual life plan makes so few of us truly "happy." While I can see how other factors in an open marriage, such as an increased risk of STI's, could play into the situation -- or even unforseeable situations, such as sleeping with someone who comes back into your life later on -- it's a matter of being practical (getting tested, protecting yourself) and recognizing that all situations have consequences (good and bad) to deal with. I'm appalled at some of the comments left on your article -- but the internet has an amazing ability to bring out the ugly side of society. I wish you best of luck with your book -- and thanks for opening up the conversation with all of us!

my boyfriend and i are friendly with a couple who have an open marriage. while they've never asked us to participate (why? we're cute!), it has brought up the topic for conversation. we agreed it's not really for us right now. we both felt we enjoyed our time to have casual relationships, and are happy to be sexually committed to each other at this point in our lives. also, it opens up more conversations about what we want sexually from each other, if/when those needs should change, and the possibility of a evolving and maturing sexual relationship with the person i choose to commit to emotionally. but i have trouble disconnecting sexual feelings from emotions.

that being said, i'm happy when people persue lifestyle choices that make them happy, no matter how unconventional. why should your friends and neighbors care what you're doing in the safe confines of your own happy relationships?

Generally speaking, I think open relationships are fine. I've known several well adjusted poly folk, and I know it can work. That said, it's not for me. I need monogamy, and my husband mostly agrees with me. I considered it, and even tried it out for awhile in high school, but I just don't work that way.

Personally, not really my thing. It was fun in college and such, but not something I would want now.

I think the main concern is stability of the relationship. The more partners you have, the more likelihood that you might form an attachment to someone other than your primary partner and move on. For me, that's not a possible source of instability I want to mess around with, or to be at risk for that with my partner moving on.

For me personally, I prefer an exclusively monogamous relationship. I think as long as my partner and I keep our relationship interesting and exciting, it will be everything we want and need. I feel like if I'm truly meant to be with someone for life, I won't ever want to be with anyone else. As far as open relationships go, I have no problem with them and the people who have them. I know that every relationship is unique and different and people need to do what's best for them and their relationships.

THANK YOU. It's about time this was discussed in an adult manner.

What concerns me are the number of people who jump to the conclusion that a relationship MUST end *because* one member stepped outside that relationship sexually--whether once or repeatedly. The fact of having done so yields information about the state of the relationship. It is not a conclusion about the relationship.

It seems the happily-ever-after complex sets people up for more hurt than is necessary.

UCLAbodyimage- I stand corrected. I had 50% in my head, I am not sure where from, and now Google is showing me similiar stats to you.

SaldySays- My point was that you are taking risks, too. I don't think there is ever a way to truely know we are sexually safe from STDs.

For me, being in a monogamous relationship is not about ownership. I'm a serial monogamist. I've tried being in casual relationships where I've been sexually active with several people for a short period of time. I find that within monogamy, for me, I feel more fulfilled sexually. This is not to say that monogamy is the only root to a happy sex life, just that for me, personally, I get greater joy out of sex when I believe that my partner and I are exclusive.

"UCLAbodyimage- I stand corrected. I had 50% in my head, I am not sure where from, and now Google is showing me similiar stats to you."

50% would be a little scary!

The numbers like 50% come from magazine studies where they have people write in or mail an insert from the magazine. The problem is that the people who have a story to tell are more likely to mail it in, so they get over-represented.

What confuses me about open relationships (and I blame the lack of educated conversations I've had on the topic) is if it stays monogamous for everything but the sexual part of the relationship. I think aspect of the open relationship idea that confuses most people that I've spoken to is "If I was in an open relationship does that mean that we would both have sex with other people, but would still come home to each other at night?"

Most monogamous people will forgive their significant other if he/she cheats on him/her, but they won't forgive about having a entire other relationship (after sexual, and into emotional/mental/etc). So does that make most people in open relationships, but they don't know how to define it yet?

I understand this was a very confusing question, and I guess I'm asking more of the specifics (which should be discussed with the partner you are sharing the open relationship with, because there are no rules & regulations to follow...I get it...) but I would have no option but to guess and test each theory I think would work. I think my open mind wanders too far and I picture my husband with 45 wives and 150 children, and wondering if I could be comfortable with that.

Maybe we're weird, but part of what my wife and I enjoy about our marriage IS the ownership side of things, though we prefer to call it "belonging". She belongs to me, and I belong to her.

That's what trips our trigger, but for someone else, it may have exactly the opposite affect.

I think that's part of why this is such an emotional issue for some people. Some of us enjoy monogamy and are kind of freaked out by open relationships. For others, it's the exact opposite.

The human heart is a complicated organ.

Open relationships aren't for me personally, but I know several polyamorous people. Two of my friends have an open marriage to each other, and their marriage is one of the most stable marriages I've ever seen. On the other hand I know of one other woman who screwed up because she didn't define her relationship with one young man as "open" before pursuing other men; thus, she did what could only be defined as cheating on him, because she wasn't honest about having sex with other men, and on top of that, HE wasn't polyamorous.

So, really, I've got no problem with open relationships, so long as no one gets hurt and both/all parties conduct themselves in the right manner. Open relationships just aren't for me personally, that's all.

I think my open mind wanders too far and I picture my husband with 45 wives and 150 children, and wondering if I could be comfortable with that.

It's great that we're discussing this, though I feel maybe it's a bit of "preaching to the choir." If open relationships were NOT relegated to the fringe or seen as radical, maybe more of us in society would not be scared or jealous of entering into an open relationship or if our partner expresses a desire to do so. Sexuality is a continuum, I believe, and the fluidity of love and sex in relationships should continually be discussed throughout one's romantic partnership(s).

I am not opposed to an open relationship, though I would never puruse one myself. Too many messy emotions, and too much risk for STDs.

That said, this is an interesting concept, and I must ask, why marriage? Marriage is a very specific word to use, it has both religious and legal connotations. While I would understand the author's desire to get married for legal and financial benefits, why does she still use this specific vocabulary? I ask this because it is common when challenging a social structure to change one's vocabulary. For example, many straight couples I know who have been married use the vocabulary of partnership and partner to describe their spouses so as to avoid assigning gender roles, as well as to challenge the idea that marriage must be between a man and a woman. If they had not needed health insurance or legal protections in the event of separation, they probably would not have been married. So, why marriage? I do not take issue with the idea that people aren't necessarily meant to be with one person the rest of their life, but I am curious as to why the author still sticks with this word.

Also, how is it that a monogomous relationship is not as honest, and rife with ownership and jealousy? I suppose it depends on what one thinks their partner needs to be honest about, and I don't think that an open relationship is necessarily free of ownership issues. It's very hard to escape those.

I don't get it... You get married to become exclusive (closed), and then you think you might want "open" marriage -- open "closed-ness." Why not just not get married at all? Why embrace a platitude (marriage) that is by definition exclusive, and expand it so that it eventually has no meaning?

What are the benefits to marriage, if there is no sexual exclusivity? Aren't all those benefits (if any) attainable outside of marriage -- and outside of any unique quality that makes marriage distinct? Why is marriage necessary if you want sexual "openness?"

Having read your Tango article, it seems like things aren't quite as equitable as you would hope. The chronology of events looks like this to me:

You married into a vowed monogamous relationship. You broke that vow. Your husband forgave you, though he was devastated by your admission. You found another, better way to fuck someone else - you brought him into it. He gave in to the idea (being a guy I can see the attraction to the scenario), and now he's complicit. Since then, he's not sought out another liaison, but you've fucked dozens of men and women. But that's okay, because you tell him about it, whether it hurts him or not. And he can't refuse, because he's 'not that guy' and he's been part of it with you.

It sounds like you've manipulated this relationship into precisely the territory you want. You know it hurts your husband, but through skill and dumb luck you've locked up his argument. And now he lives in his head, and not his heart. Poor guy.

This is a feminist site, and I really enjoy the discourse, so perhaps I can make my view on this a bit more clear. Reverse the genders in her story. It's now her husband who had a lengthy affair, who was caught and spends his days and nights away sleeping with others. No communication or agreement (I saw nothing about her husband being okay ahead of time with any of her lovers), just him banging away at the nation's population. She's at home, waiting, and being okay in her head, but not in her heart.

Devastating.

I want to say, I greatly respect people's privacy and decisions they make with their own families. If someone wants to live an open marriage, I say go for it.

I know, however, it isn't for me. I'm a man and some would seemingly believe tons of men would jump onto such a concept. Not I. Perhaps it is my upbringing, Italian-American. Perhaps it is my religious choices. Perhaps it has something to do with my own views of morality. Maybe all of the above.

I think it is more likely to do with--when I think about the woman I love, I think about her sharing times, good and bad with me. I don't mean to sound soft, but it really isn't just about sex. Though, in part it is. I couldn't imagine seeing her with another man under any circumstances--and I only hope she feels the same way about me and other women. I don't think it is about "ownership" as someone says above. Rather, it is the intense emotional connection I have with someone that I couldn't possibly share.

Maybe my situation is a bit different, however. My girl friend is my largest crush and I was hers. For 7 years we saw each other go in an out of relationships without really knowing the true story. I've seen what I talk about above and already felt the pain and anguish associated with it. It sucks and I couldn't do it again.

It isn't for everyone. But, it is for some people. To those people, I say good luck and godspeed. Honestly, on the outside, how would I ever know who you were.

JenLovesPonies: in turn, can we not make statements that infer one's parter is likely to cheat and if you believe otherwise, it's only wishful thinking? It frames the marriage as being untrustworthy and the commenter a fool, which is nasty and uncalled for. Particularly as it's not statistically supported, it seems like a personal attack. Sort of a 'I don't like what you're saying so I'm going to make you feel bad my saying your partner will probably cheat on you' sort of response.

I just read the article.

It is a text-book on manipulation. Period.

Open marriage should be talked about before marriage starts. Otherwise, it is changing the deck in the middle of the hand and, when someone has already invested years into something, maybe they will consent.

But, is it "enthusiastic consent?"

Sad.

I have had a question for awhile about the poly thing... how do you deal with jealousy - not of the people who are with your #1 guy or gal, but of your #1 guy or gal themselves. In particular in the situation where they seem to be finding lots of other partners when you are not finding any at all, or going through a lull... I guess this is starting to sound a little Dear Abby/Dan Savage'ish - but I wonder how much relationships fray not because of the attention spent on others, but the lack of attention one partner is feeling in comparison (self comparison) to the other...

anyways, just a thought...

read the tango article--very nice. i've read "the ethical slut", the sort of bible of polyamory, but i could actually relate to this article more. i admired this woman, and this couple's, journey.. the ups and downs, the doubt, the joys and frustrations/jealousy. her story was told honestly and humbly. i am only 22 years old and not currently in a committed relationship, nor have i been in a polyamorous relationship. but, i have many years and, hopefully, many relationships ahead of me, and i am staying open to future possibilities. it's nice to at least have a model or reference point out there for these kinds of choices. for some, yes, a polyamorous life is a happier one, one in which they can be more honest with themselves and others... and what is wrong with that? as a culture, we need to get over our association between monogamy and morality.

We’ve been socially programmed to demand fidelity and are told at every turn that jealousy and ownership prove love. I don’t buy it.

A great quote. I've often felt feminism's successes in regards to relationships and equality have gone in something of the wrong direction. Rather than having a husband who owns a wife, we now have a husband and wife who own each other (or girlfriend/boyfriend, etc.), when what we should be striving for are relationships where nobody is owned.

I'm wary of open relationships/marriages. As a concept, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with them. However, my husband and I have discussed it and have chosen to be monogamous for the foreseeable future. Which is not to say any level of openness is forever off the table, but we're not comfortable with it at this time.

Out of the many open relationships I've personally observed, the vast majority end in heartbreak and divorce. Usually it's a problem of communication, one partner does not approve of the person, manner, or time spent on their spouse's secondary relationship. Rather than openly talk it out and resolve it, things turn into a morass of resentment, passive aggression, and rebellion. Then the primary relationship dissolves.

I've also seen people leave their spouses for a secondary partner. Which is not to say it wouldn't have happened anyway, but I think that the abandoned spouse feels worse for their own complicity.

I think the worst concept for me might be when a secondary relationship ends badly and the partner brings that grief and depression back into the primary relationship. I wouldn't be able to stand it if my spouse put our relationship on the back burner for months because he was pre-occupied with pining over someone else.

I'm glad to know there are people out there with happy, functioning, open relationships. I just don't know many people with the level of security and communication to make it work.

I can see why people would ask "why marriage, if it's open?", but I think it reveals a lot of preconceptions.

Open relationships are not about "you can't be with one person for your entire life." They're about "you don't want to be limited to one partner for your entire life." There's more to marriage than sex. There's love, and emotional support, there's financial support, there's the day-to-day struggle of building and sharing a life together. Those things all remain in an open relationship. When you marry a person, whether you intend to have an open or closed marriage, you are saying that you want that lifelong struggle and bond with them.

Now, none of that precludes the possibility of other sexual partners, or even of other romantic partners. Love is not a finite resource, after all. We all love many people in many ways. It's been said that the more love you give, the more you have to give. It's a self-renewing resource, as long as the building blocks are there and you still receive what you need in return from those you love (when those things fail is when love dies).

Some people have open relationships where it is clear that the additional partners are for sex and sex alone. Some allow love, so long as it does not supplant the primary partner. And some actually engage in something which could be considered closer to polygamy/polyandry, where the relationships between the various partners are more of a shared-spouse scenerio.

Which type of open relationship you have is really up to the participants. Any of them can work, so long as there is trust, honesty, love, and full agreement.

open is an extremely loose term. For instance, one can have an open marriage in one way and not another i.e sleeping with other couples while together, sleeping with other people in privacy, cuckholding and various other kinky things.

Everyone has a preference. Obviously some people are not willing to watch their parents get it on with someone else, while others are perfectly okay with it.

To comment on what Adrianna was saying about the new crush, i would say that before you ask your wife to consider you with another person, that you ask yourself if your ready to see her with another person.

Speaking from personaly experience my fiance and I have taken it from every angle over the last few years. We have come to this point in our lives where we'll occassionally add someone to the mix, but at the end of the day we'd always rather just be alone.

Also, we don't do that secondary relationship thing, it's just us and everyone else if just for funs and undertands that.

I agree that everything needs to be in the open BEFORE anything happens with other folk. When my S.O. told me that he was fine with me going outside the relationship I was floored, and I told him that although he may be fine I was definitely NOT okay with him going behind my back with other women (or men). We're clear on things now, and if he wants to be with another person then I only ask for courtesy, no more no less. That courtesy is to tell me so I can move on, and free him to do the same. That is not controlling things, that is standing up for what I expect in a relationship. I refuse to hold him back if he wants other people, and I won't be second fiddle to anyone. Them's my rules. I guess it's why my relationship works after so long - we're honest about expectations.

to further what Minervasp73 says, there's nothing wrong with being managomous. So many people are jumping on the swinging and open marriage dealy because it's more acceptably talked about now. It's not a big deal if people find out where-as in my mothers day it would have been uber talked about and looked down apon. You could almost say that it's become trendy to be in open relationships. At least I look at it like that sometimes. It sucks when people trash talk marriage and monogomy as I have seen a lot of "singles" do. If it's not for you, then it's not for you. Don't trash someone elses choice right?

Isn't it possible to talk about how your relationship works for you without denigrating others? I'm in a traditional monogamous marriage, and it works well for us. I didn't go into this marriage because I was looking for a Prince Charming, and I'm not repressing any natural non-monogamous urges. I don't demand sexual fidelity from my husband as a way to prove his love, and I don't think the jealousy I would feel if he cheated on me proves my love. I know he loves me, and vice-versa. Our fidelity is a gift we give to one another. It's sappy, but it's true.

If both members of a open marriage are healthy and happy, then more power to them. I just think that many of them are fooling themselves. Human beings are wired to be jealous, and it will happen at some point in most open marriages. And that's where the happiness part disappears. *Every* type of relationship has its own pitfalls. It's why life is complicated.

Maybe instead of redefining what marriage means, we ought to work on naming, supporting and cherishing other types of equally valid relationships. This should include separating the legal benefits of marriage from the moral commitments people make.

Marriage already has an implied cultural meaning. The label has been claimed and defined. According to the vows most couples take at weddings, it means emotional and physical fidelity to one person so long as you both shall live. For alot of people, both gay and straight, that commonly agreed upon definition is central to one of the most important relationships in their lives.

So, rather than change that definition, which would cause quite a bit of pain to those who value it highly, why not work to validate other kinds of relationships? A polyamorous relationship is a perfectly valid choice for a group of adults to make. So is a relationship where the commitment is not forever. Name them, celebrate them, fight for recognition and benefits for them! I truly believe that gay couples should be able to choose marriage if they so desire and straight couples should be able to choose civil unions if they so desire. Leaving the term "marriage" alone and defining a new term is a truly live and let live solution.

I honestly don’t judge other’s relationships at all, couples make choices about what they want and need and no one else’s opinion should matter.

That said, I’ve seen about 15 open relationships among my friends and every single one of them has fallen apart in the long run. If someone can make it work more power to them. But just based on my personal experience I’ve yet to see an open relationship last for more than 4 or 5 years. Swinging I’ve seen work in the long run but to me that’s a slightly different type of open relationship.

The reasons why I don’t have much faith in open relationships is perfectly represented by this Tango article. She is hurting her husband by doing something that he clearly grudgingly accepts at a necessary evil to keep their relationship going. She openly acknowledges that her actions hurt him, yet she chooses her needs and pleasures above his feelings. I’m with the other comments that see this as manipulation pure and simple. I bet that the fact that they talk about her other sexual partners doesn’t make it hurt him any less.

I would be very curious to read an article about their relationship 4 years from now.

ShanaLyns, marriage has meant many things through the years. For a time it meant ownership of the wife as chattal. To the polygamous Mormons it means that the wife is faithful to a single spouse and the husband is faithful to multiple spouses. Why do we have to cling to the definition that is currently traditional, just because it is so?

A marriage means whatever you want it to mean. If two partners with no interest in sex, who have all the emotional and other ties of a normal relationship, marry each other, is that not a marriage? Or should they call it something else just because they don't get it on?

I'll say it again. Marriage is about more than sex. Much more. If you have all the important glues that bind a relationship together, and you join together in a ceremony to finalize that relationship, why not call it marriage? Because it doesn't fit what some traditional people think of marriage? So what? There was a time when the idea of choosing your own spouse for love (rather than having them chosen for economical/social reasons) was a radical concept, and it horrified some people. But those couples who married for love were still able to call it marriage, and now it's the accepted practice.

I'm not saying open marriages will supplant closed ones in the future. I'm saying that marriage takes many forms, a different one for each individual couple, and to say that only one group has the true claim on the term "marriage" is silly in the extreme.

If your sex life solely defines what your marriage is, you might want to take a good hard look at the relationship. And if you agree that it doesn't (as it wouldn't for most healthy marriages), then why insist that other people's sex lives define theirs?

I always assumed I would jump at the chance of an open marrage or relationship. But now looking at it and thinking about it I think it should stay in the realm of fantasy, for me personaly at least.

If others want to experence open relationships than good for you, but I think the relationship Jenny has is a terrible one. And as someone else pointed out, if the genders were reversed there would be a compleatly different selection of comments up here, all negative. It seems your husband is living many peoples own personal hell.

I hope you find a spouce that accepts your lifestyle better. It seems you fell in love with someone with whom you are fundamentally incompatible with.

Haha, I could barely find one person I want to be in a relationship with, let alone two of three. :)

"We’ve been socially programmed to demand fidelity and are told at every turn that jealousy and ownership prove love. I don’t buy it."

I don't think we are programmed to believe that "jealousy and ownership" prove love--as far as I know and was taught, those two qualities lead to abuse, which is definitely NOT love at all. Also, I think I can demand fidelity and expect to get it in return without seeing it as a way to "prove" love--it's more of a desire to be with one person than a "see? I *really* love you!" kinda thing.

Oh, and let me just put out there (to add to the other anectdotal evidence) that I know of one open marriage couple who've been together for fifteen years now. They and their three kids are doing fine. And, as I said, none of my open relationships ended because of the sex. They ended for other reasons (for example, my husband was an abusive asshole).

Kimmy, I don't think anyone has attacked the idea of open marriages per say. The comments just seem to say if open marriages are for them or not, and if marrage is the appropiate term.

I guess for me the thing that would not be okay about an open relationship is the idea that there is actually a second "relationship" going on. Personally I'd love to be able to have sex with other people, I love my boyfriend, but he's not as interested in sex as I am, so it would be nice to be able to get some when he didn't feel like it. However then I'd have to leave our home and go hook up with someone else, I would have to take time away from my relationship with him, and I'm not so sure that's cool. Even less cool is the idea of being with someone and being romantic with someone else. For one part of a couple to have an ongoing relationship with another person with actual feelings involved, that would be hard for me personally to accept.

Just sex I can see working. But if you want to have multiple romantic relationships... why get married at all?

Andrew, I never said that anyone was attacking open marriage. But there was an attack on the idea that "marriage" was an appropriate term (although attack indicates a level of animosity not present either in the post or in my response to it). I merely defended the idea that marriage doesn't have a strict definition, and shouldn't.

Shinobi, that question has been asked and answered. Marriage is more than sex, it is a lifelong bond between two people. Just because you allow other interactions (and remember that love is not a finite resource), that does not necessarily decrease the value of the lifelong bond.

People with open relationships get married for the same reason other people get married. They love that person and want to make the committment to be with them through their lives.

Kimmie,

I strongly disagree that marriage means what you want it to mean. It means what you vow during your wedding ceremony and what the laws of the state you accept a marriage license from say it means. You make explicit promises during that ceremony to your partner in the presence of others. Most people vow fidelity. I'm sure some do not.

You also willingly and freely sign a marriage license when you wed. That license is a legal contract and in 23 states, that contract includes the legal expectation of fidelity. So, even if the couple doesn't explicitly vow fidelity during the ceremony, their contract with state often includes it because adultery is a crime (technically) in about half of the states in the US. Now, it's ridiculous that it's a crime. But, it is and if you disagree with that, you shouldn't sign a marriage license.

By willingly signing your name on a marriage license in one of those states, you personally accept that definition of marriage.

That definition is not for everyone. Monogamy is not for everyone. Life long commitments are not for everyone. If that's not what you're doing, don't sign a marriage license.

But, it seems like alot of people want the benefits of the label marriage without accepting the uncomfortable parts. You wouldn't sign a mortgage, a lease, or a contract whose terms you didn't agree to and then expect the other parties involved to understand that you're different and that you didn't really mean what you signed. So don't do it. Saying one thing and doing another is hypocritical and deceptive.

So, all I'm saying is do Something Else.

"Something Else" could be glorious. I would rejoice at the honesty of a couple who acknowledged up front that maybe fidelity wasn't for them but wanted to celebrate their amazing emotional connection. I'd be there, Crate & Barrel gift in hand, camera clicking away. I'd vote for their right to health insurance, hospital visitation, family leave, inheritance, etc. I'd recognize that what they had was special and joyous. I would think more of them for their honesty.

I think society is ready to accept Something Else or several different Something Elses. Offering more choices on how to define your relationship benefits everyone. We already have a few choices like Dating and Married that have different kinds of meanings. Some meanings are much more flexible than others. Let's expand that and remove the legal and financial privilages marriage brings so that everyone has room to define their own relationships instead of trying to force into a shoe that doesn't fit.

I wonder what the responses to the article would have been like if you replace sex with "talk with" another person throughout? It would be soundly ridiculed, because of course people aren't supposed to just talk to their spouse and no one else ever again after they get married. So if we understand that people need relationships outside of marriage, why does the door slam so hard at the point of physical intimacy?

Very good post, Shanalyns.

I'd add that it DOES make sense that adultery's a crime. Marriage is a legally binding contract, is it not? It's illegal to break the terms of a contract. If you don't wan

ShanaLyns, adultury is only a crime if there is a victim. In an open marriage, there can be no victims. According to the laws in my state, adultery can only be charged by the wronged spouse. If no spouse is wronged, no crime occurs.

The "uncomfortable parts" of marriage, as you term them, don't relate to sex, necessarily (although there can be incompatibilities there). They relate to learning to live with and love a person 24 a day, 7 days a week, for the rest of your natural life, sharing the ups and downs of life, trying to maintain compatible goals, trying to reach those goals, possibly raising children, growing old together, etc.

I maintain, and will always maintain, that there is no standard marriage. Every couple has to make of marriage what they can in order to make it work. You can't force people into cookie-cutter ideas of what it's supposed to be. Your marriage (should you have one either now or in the future) won't be the same as someone else's. That doesn't make it any less of a marriage. There are those, after all, who would say a feminist marriage wasn't a real marriage, because the woman is supposed to submit to the man. Traditional vows say "obey," even if most folks leave that out nowadays.

You view fidelity as being the thing that makes the difference between marriage and "other." However, that don't make it so. Marriages throughout the centuries have included infidelity of both the clandestine and official varieties (concubines, anyone?). As I said before, the meaning of marriage has changed many times and will continue to change. To insist that everyone cling to a particular definition just because it happens to be what we have now is silly. I don't need "separate but equal." Marriage is good enough for me.

My boyfriend and I have discussed having an open relationship...and getting married. I don't see why an open couple shouldn't be married, I think most of the benefits of marriage are legal ones or ones that have to do with the outside world, not the bedroom.

When we got together we discussed having an open relationship, because I'm a bi-sexual woman and there are some things he wasn't willing to do sexually. There were things he wanted to do sexually that I wasn't open to either. We agreed early on that if I wanted to pursue sex with someone of my same gender, but stay with-in our relationship that would be ok.
As our relationship has continued I haven't tested this open policy. I have become more comfortable with the idea of him having other sexual partners, even though he has not directly asked to be with other women. Sexually our relationship came to a standstill a year ago when I was pregnant with my daughter. We still love each other and are attracted to each other, but at least for him I know there is an aspect that he has already been with me, so it's less exciting then sex with a new person. I feel the same way in some respects, I would love to be "in love" again, yet still be able to come back to my comfortable relationship.
Who knows if we will ever have an open partnership or marriage, but it's an interesting idea. I also think it's a great concept for the modern world, where sex is no longer for pro-creation. My only fear about it is hurting another person by starting a relationship that will not end in a commitment.

Whenever I read an article like this, it seems to be a little on the defensive - which is understandable, considering there are tons of patriarchs with sticks up their asses who genuinely reel at the idea of anything less than a permanent union between a man and his wife-property. But there are real people out there who have genuine misgivings about the whole idea, and I am one of them.

Open relationships have been a real point of stress for me over the past few years. My ex was really into the concept, and put a lot of pressure on me to "open" our relationship. I tried to tell him I wasn't into it - I am, let's face it, a shy nerd who gets wrapped up my work and wants a good conversation and a beer more than anything else - but he would tell me I was just being jealous and uptight. I had a hard time believing that he just wanted to be free to "love" as much as he felt in his heart, because, honestly, was guilting me into something I wasn't comfortable with really a sign of his overflowing benevolence? He pushed the boundaries of cheating with me, and when he was caught he would remind me that it wouldn't be cheating if we were "open".

His poly friends were extremely rules-oriented, and tended to ignore hurtful things done to me if I hadn't followed "the rules." Those rules were geared toward punishing anyone who was sexually uncertain, or who had normal expectations of politeness and consideration. (Apparently, one of the rules was that if your SO cheated with someone, it was okay for the person they cheated with to assume that you were cool with it, even if they knew you personally and knew damn well you weren't cool with it.) One of the worse abuses I saw in my time with him was the illusion of control: "If you didnt want me to make out with her, you should have said something!" Never mind that my objections were always assumed to be negotiable. You can't say this was all the result of my boyfriend being a random jerk; his friends all supported him in his jerkiness, no less because he was into an open relationship and I wasn't. Needless to say, that chapter of my life is closed, and I don't speak to those people any more.

So now I'm in a weird situation where I have a good number of friends in open marriages. I really agree that lifelong enforced monogamy is an artificial social construct that encourages oppression. (Um, hello, I was saying that before most of these kids hit puberty!) I'm not averse to the idea of open relationships in principle, but my experience with the actual people has been very sour. I haven't exactly made that a secret, and I've had some friends tell me that it's none of my business (really? when it involves my own relationship?) and that open relationships are really more natural, loving, and free than anything else. Apparently, this blanket assertion is supposed to somehow override my actual experience.

Now, in one of these open marriages, the husband acts, on every level, like a classic controlling, pushy, overprivileged misogynist, and I think my friend deserves better than him. I don't really know any details of the openness of their marriage, I just know he's a complete douche to me and to his wife, and it depresses her and pisses me the fuck off. I'm afraid that anything I say about this dickhead would come across as some sort of traditionalist attack on their marriage, so I don't say anything, and I hate myself for it. I'm caught up, not only in the classic dilemma of "Should I really barge in on their private life?" but also, "Will they shun me as an evil prude if I criticize their open relationship?" Considering how my ex's poly friends treated me, I'm not sure I want to open that particular can of worms.

So I constantly struggle with this dilemma: Is it possible to be a progressive feminist, to believe in complete reproductive, relationship, and marriage freedom, and still not be comfortable with the idea of open relationships? Because I am, and I'm not, and it's driving me crazy.

Sounds like the people you've known have just been complete assholes. Unfortunately, you find them everywhere, even in proponants of open relationships (or feminism - heh). Some guys think an open relationship is just an excuse to do whatever they want, overlooking the "relationship" part of the equation. Open relationships aren't about forcing other people into things they hate, being cruel or ignoring your partner's feelings, or refusing to fully and adequately explain and discuss (really discuss, not just talk at the other person) everything involved (sometimes many times over). Anyone who does those things is, in fact, a jerkweed.

You know how there are Wiccans and pagans, and then there are those kids who are trying to piss off their parents and get all their information from bad movies and don't know the difference between legitimate religious beliefs and stupid-movie Satanism? This is kind of the same thing, only far more hurtful and awful.

Thank you for talking about this. I'm a year and a half into my first serious long-term relationship. I thought the desire to sleep with other people would just naturally fall away when I fell in love. It didn't, and it's obviously creating problems.

I want an open relationship, he doesn't. He doesn't understand how you could love one person and want sex with another, and I don't understand how someone can feel comfortable keeping the person that they love from being autonomous and doing something that will make them happy. I understand that one might not be happy if their sig. other wants physical relationships with other people (even I admit I'd get jealous if he felt the way I did), however, in the end I don't believe I should be able to control someone else's sexuality and I'd really want him to just do what made him happy. I want to be a positive addition to his life - not a roadblock.

The situation is incredibly difficult, and I actually have more sympathy for myself than him, because in this case, I'm sacrificing what I want in order to save the relationship and he's sacrificing nothing. He's also got the advantage in that he's arguing for the dominant paradigm, something that's so deeply ingrained in our culture that people consider it "natural," whereas the position that I'm advocating isn't exactly the norm. It makes it hard to discuss with anybody since even the most open-minded friends usually don't have much sympathy for someone who wants to "cheat" on their boyfriend.

I especially loved this: "But when I look around, the only thing unconventional about it is that we tell the truth about sleeping with other people." Everybody knows that the majority of couples aren't really monogamous, even if they say they are. You have to wonder how much happier everyone would be if the idea of an open marriage/relationship was a more respected model. It might not be for everyone, but why does it seem like it's not even a viable option?

I look forward to reading your book!

RealityFighter, you can definitely still be a progressive feminist without being comfortable with the idea of open relationships, particularlly after what you've experienced. To me, your relationship/marriage is what you and your partner make it and by no means do either you have to accept traditional definitions for it, if that is what you both agree on. Some people are more monogamous in nature than others, there's nothing wrong with it and if anyone else tells you it's wrong, I think you have every right to tell them to "Fuck Off." Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought feminism was about freedom, understanding and equality--that women ought to have a say in their own lives.

I agree with Kimmy that those guys you dated were complete jerks and inconsiderate of your needs if it conflicted with their own. If an open relationship/marriage is going to work, both people have to be entirely honnest with each other and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

SoyMilkConspiracy, I have the exact same problem as you! I've been in a relationship for six months now. That may not seem like a long time, but I'm the type of girl who won't go out with a guy for more than one date if I don't see it working for the long haul - most of my friends are shocked that I'm the first of us to be in a long-term relationship. Anyway, my personal ideal model of a relationship would be one where you're committed to one person for the long-term - for raising children, for being there for each other, for stability, etc. - but from this secure home base, you can have lovers on the side. I mean, doesn't our society claim that love is the only thing you don't have less of when you give it away? I fail to see why that shouldn't apply to romantic love as well.

So yeah, bottom line, I want an open relationship and he doesn't, and I too have basically no one to talk to about it. I think the primary reason my boyfriend doesn't get it is he's completely in infatuated with me right now - you know, he's in the "honeymoon" phase. I don't know how to make him realize that once what is basically a chemical addiction to me (lol, yay psychology!) wears off, he won't find me so eternally fascinating and might even get a tad bit bored - and inevitably develop feelings for other people. We're both incredibly honest with each other, so I don't see why it couldn't work. I admit it would take some getting used to if we were both "unleashed," so to speak, but I think it would be worth it. What's ironic is that my desire for an open relationship with him stems from the fact that I could see myself with him for the long haul - if I thought it wouldn't last, I wouldn't care because I'd only be bound to monogamy a short time. Sigh...

I say this at the risk of sounding redundant, but here I go anyway. Open relationships/marriages are fine, if that's what both people in the relationship want, and they take the precautions necessary to prevent contracting STDs. However, upon reading the article, I couldn't help but feel sorry for her husband. It would be one thing if he also wanted the open marriage, but I got the impression from the article that he wasn't really into it that much, and that he's just accepting the fact that his wife is having sex outside of the marriage, which is a little screwed up. I honestly don't expect their marriage to last any more than five more years, tops.

I found reading the article to be exhausting. Where would you find the time to meet these other people, have these relationships and still nurture your relationship / family life? Seriously, show me the hours in the day.

I'll also second the posts that note the abject manipulation in the relationship. I do not think this relationship, as written by Jenny, should be seen as a ringing endorsement of open marriages. I get the concept, even if it isn't for me. I get the idea that monogamy might even be the stranger style of relationship but is socially acceptable and therefor the norm. What I don't get is the idea that the relationship wasn't defined from the beginning (or even close to the beginning- 7 years before you decide to open it up?) and Jenny admits outright that the rules aren't defined, that feelings aren't examined or easy to anticipate. It sounds like a very sad place to be, for her husband- and she wrote the piece.

Also, I don't see how you can keep your children from knowing forever. The sheer number of relationships she's alluded to- the time that must take (marathon hotel sessions?) is going to expose the openness of the relationship. I don't understand why its a priority to keep it from her kids anyway- if you're not ashamed of what you're doing, why would you keep it from your family????

Kimmie,

Unfortunately, you're partially incorrect about when adultery is a crime. In some states, yes, a victim is required. But, many states, such as California, quoted below, explicitly note in their legal codes that adultery "[is] regarded as an offense against public morals, not merely as a breach of the obligation of marriage." The state can legally be seen as the victim. In military cases, the Armed Forces can prosecute (and unlike most states, does) to maintain order and discipline amongst troops. In my state, Massachusetts, adultery does not require a victim and is a felony carrying 2 years imprisonment. It has been held to be constitutional and applicable to consensual sexual acts occurring in private between adults as recently as the 1980's. It is also one of seven grounds for divorce with presumption of fault.

So, whether you like it or not, marriage does have a definition in many places that precludes the personal redefinition of expectations of fidelity. You're right, people do have to sort out what marriage means to them day to day. But, they also have to understand what they're signing on to legally.

I don't like these laws. I would prefer the government have nothing to say about my sexual activities with adults. My discussions about expectations of fidelity should be between my husband and myself. But, I understood when I signed my marriage license that that was not what I was agreeing to with the state. That’s one of the reasons I would vastly have preferred a civil union with no morality about sex plus a religious ceremony.

Most people don’t think about the social contract aspect of marriage. And, marriage on the ground often strays from marriage in its ideal. But, when you marry, you’re validating that ideal whether you’ve given thought to that or not. Society is granting you benefits in exchange for commitments and those commitments include monogamy in half the states in the US.

Look, it’s oppressive and intrusive. We can question why we sign on to it. We can (and should) try to change the law so that the benefits of marriage are not tied to government control of sexuality. But, it’s legally what marriage means in a lot of the US.

PS-- Your comments are insightful and have provoked me to really think about this this afternoon. Even though we don't agree, thanks for the mental stimulation.

Soymilk this:
Everybody knows that the majority of couples aren't really monogamous, even if they say they are.
seems cynical and isn't even statistically correct; it's closer to 22% of married men and 14% of married women. That's not the majority, not by a long shot.

Also, I don't understand the idea that relationships SHOULD work just because of compromise- if one partner wanted children and another didn't, well, there's no real compromise for that. If one wanted to live in the UK and the other in the US, would it be fair if the compromise was to live in the US and UK partner bitched and moaned constantly that they weren't getting what they "needed" and it wasn't "fair"? Somethings are non negotiable, and wearing a person down into conforming to your happiness at the expense of their own is crap. If you want an open relationship, be honest and move on if it's not working. And raginfem, my partner and I have been together for 8-1/2 years, and that honeymoon thing? That"addiction?" Is still as strong as ever.

I can't wait to read this book! I often wonder if there are many (or any) other people in relationships like my husband and I enjoy. We both had rocky "starter marriages", so we had a very long engagement (6yrs.) during which time we talked honestly about what we expected and needed from a partner and a marriage. We've now been married for 9yrs. in an open marriage with two kids and a mortgage. Very few of our friends know about our arrangement except for the one or two who have known us for the last decade. Every "extra" is discussed before, every precaution is taken to protect each other and our family, but without suspicion or anger. We love each other and are completely devoted to each other, but that doesn't mean that we don't notice attraction to someone else occasionally.

and stvie, you would have been a better person to write that article, in my opinion. You seem to have summed up in a few sentences what makes open relationships plausible and healthy.

The relationship that Jenny described in her Tango article certainly sounds awful and one-sided from the outside, but I don't think it's fair to condemn her relationship based on that article alone. There are just too many factors unknown for an outsider to criticize her marriage, and considering the way that open relationships are viewed in our society I think it’s especially important to not be too quick to judge.

That said, based solely on the article, I sure hope I'm NEVER in a relationship like the one she described.

Hey lilianna28, REALLY not appreciating the judgment. My comment summed up about 1% of the situation (I was trying to keep it as brief as possible), and I'm trying to figure out how you even thought that projecting your small-mindedness onto me would be appropriate, let alone appreciated. You don't know myself and my partner, and what you said was really hurtful to me, especially since I ALREADY feel terribly guilty for having these feelings - but I have them nonetheless. In other words, I never asked for anyone's opinion, especially not yours, and ESPECIALLY not someone's that really doesn't know the whole story. I was just trying to contribute to the discussion and perhaps get some advice in dealing with this situation - I wasn't looking to be told I'm an asshole.

Thanks for making me feel like shit and telling us all what's "non-negotiable" in a relationship (since we're all in one with you!)
Take your finger-wagging somewhere else.

Oh, and the research I've done puts the stats at around 73% of men and 75% of women that are "unfaithful" to their partners. It's moot, anyway. Just because something is the majority doesn't mean it's right - just look at Christianity!

raginfem: want to start a support group?

Kimmy: Ironically, some of the friends I'm talking about were also those kinds of pagans. :P

Thanks to everyone for being so awesome; this is something I'm obviously a little neurotic about and it's nice to meet people who are understanding about the whole thing. Feministing rocks.

From what I'm reading, everyone seems to be encountering the same problem; one partner wants sex far more than the other. I was on the "low sex" end of the relationship, and I'd just like to say to all those high sexers out there that it's very highly probable your low-sex SO isn't trying to control your sexuality. For my part, I was under the impression that my boyfriend was really into me and would love me as I was, and I was really hurt and disappointed when it turned out I wasn't enough for his sex drive. Admittedly, the guy wasn't shy about making me feel that way, or trying to twist me into something I sexually flat-out was not, but I think that even if he had been really sweet about it, I would've still felt crushingly inadequate.

In that situation, you're stuck in a hard place between having sex you don't want, opening your relationship against your will, or giving up the person you love. It becomes a matter of your sexual self versus theirs, and that's pure hell, no matter who you're with.

(Admittedly, there may be other ways out of this dilemma that I never discovered because my guy wasn't very interested in striking a healthy balance, and if anyone knows of any could you PLEASE shoot them my way?)

Thanks, ShanaLyns, I appreciate that. And I appreciate your comments, too, even if I don't agree with them.

Relationships are rough. Finding a balance is rough. Not just with sex, but with everything. Sex just seem to be so very loaded a topic, and everybody brings different preferences and preconceptions to the table, just to confuse things even further.

That's why people find different solutions to the issues. Some people adjust their sex drive to their partners. Others keep looking until they find that match. Others have open relationships. Others cheat. Others suffer in silence.

My point, I guess, is that it's a rough situation. My view is that, as long as nobody's hurting anybody else (which is why what happened to realityfighter was so wrong), I can't judge how someone else chooses to meet the challenges. And that's my view whether it's a practice I agree with or not. Nobody getting hurt? Rock on with your bad selves.

stvie - excellent post. I really wish you had written the article from your perspective (perhaps you could?). Jenny makes a rather horrid argument for open marriage.

TheSoyMilkConspiracy - if you post details of your personal life on a public forum, you'll need thicker skin than that. You and lilianna28 are expressing opinions; it's unrealistic to think that everyone will always agree with you.

Mafesto: I don't want nor expect everyone to agree with me - I want people to be respectful of my rather painful situation and not lay a bunch of blatant judgment down. I don't think that's too much to ask. I don't go to posts that glorify monogamy and imply that those people are wrong, selfish, or bad, and I certainly wouldn't critique people's personal relationships. If you remember, it was the author of the post who asked for people's opinions, not me. I recognize that it's a complex situation and that's it kind of subjective - there's not really a wrong or right. It's too bad that this is lost on some people.

I have thick skin, thankyouverymuch. I'm also not afraid to call people on their shit, nor do I have a problem with letting someone know that something they said was hurtful.

Soymilk, your words:
"The situation is incredibly difficult, and I actually have more sympathy for myself than him, because in this case, I'm sacrificing what I want in order to save the relationship and he's sacrificing nothing."

Relax. No one is calling you an asshole- yet. You cannot post on an intelligent, discussion-oriented blog and expect that everyone will always agree with your position and make you feel like a special princess. That is closed minded, in my opinion.

My statement was simply this:relationships- open, closed, gay, straight, polygamist- do not work if you're not on the same page. Period. You say you're sacrificing. You're right, Bravo. If you don't want to sacrifice anymore, you can't be in the relationship if your partner isn't willing to change his views. You can't always get what you want.

Look, anyone can go off and have as many relationships with as many consenting adults as they'd like and I will wish them well in their endeavors. But, your words:
I want an open relationship, he doesn't.

Well, that sums it up, doesn't it?

The research you've "done' isn't moot if there are figures to back it up. Mine come from survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. But then again, I will admit to reading on many sites that the reality of adultery is hard to statistically prove. In my family and circle of friends, the percentage is about 2%. I know that's not statistically sound but those are the people I know.

And adultery, as I'm defining it here and in relation to an "open marriage" debate isn't about cheating on a boyfriend, it's about marriage, which may sway the stats.

I'm going to echo the other folks who've said that this relationship sounds very sad. In theory, I don't see anything wrong with open relationships, but only if both partners enter in to it willingly, without being pressured in to it.

For me, sex is not just about pleasing myself. Masturbation is about just pleasing myself. Sex is about connecting with each other, loving each other, pleasing each other, and knowing each other in a way that no one else can.

this is an interesting topic. personally, i don't think this lifestyle is for me, but i always admire those who live what they believe.

i'm wondering if/where the line is drawn. just a few questions: is an open marriage just about sex with other people? what happens if someone in the marriage becomes emotionally attached to an outside partner? if the married couple has children, do the kids know of the open marriage, and what do they think of it?

i could go on, but those are my main questions. i'm looking forward to reading the book!

Realityfighter, my fiance and I have the same problem with me having a much lower sex drive (I do love sex, but I'm just not up for it after working a 10 hour day. Where as he's up for it pretty much any time.) But being a reasonable person, if he feels like he really needs sex and I'm not up for it, he just masturbates. Or we'll just fool around a little... sometimes in the process I'll decide I want to have sex after all, sometimes I don't but he still prefers that to nothing at all.

As for open relationships... they're definately not for me. I would be jealous of the person I'm with having sex and/or romantic relationships with people other than me. What other people do in their relationships is none of my business, but I would advise anyone embarking on an open relationship to be careful... involving other people brings in a lot of potential complications that take really good communication and understanding to resolve.

"When someone believes they are going into a monogamous relationship and their partner is having secret affairs, that is harmful; an open marriage is not."

That totally makes sense. The math even scales up for polyamorous relationships (when someone believes she or he is going into a 3-way non-open relationship and 1 of her or his 2 partners is having secret affairs...).

"'I think my open mind wanders too far and I picture my husband with 45 wives and 150 children, and wondering if I could be comfortable with that.'

"Christina, I believe what you are describing here is polygamy and not polyamory."

I thought the difference between polyamory and polygyny is that if your husband would have 45 wives in a polygynous marriage then you'd have only 1 spouse but if he would have 45 wives in a polyamorous marriage then you'd have 1 husband and 44 wives (each of whom wuld have you as 1 of *her* 45 spouses).

"Why embrace a platitude (marriage) that is by definition exclusive, and expand it so that it eventually has no meaning?"

? Now if the definition of marriage was expanded to include toasters and adverbs, *then* it would have no meaning. ;)

"Open marriage should be talked about before marriage starts. Otherwise, it is changing the deck in the middle of the hand and, when someone has already invested years into something, maybe they will consent.

"But, is it 'enthusiastic consent?'"

Very good points.

"The situation is incredibly difficult, and I actually have more sympathy for myself than him, because in this case, I'm sacrificing what I want in order to save the relationship and he's sacrificing nothing."

What you posted seemed to me more like a case of incompatible sexualities than anything else. I can even relate to that a tiny bit - once I had a big crush on a guy who turned out to be gay. He wanted a gay man, and I'm not one. Likewise, your boyfriend seems to want a woman happy to be monogamous and you aren't one. That doesn't make either of you wrong!

"Also, I don't understand the idea that relationships SHOULD work just because of compromise- if one partner wanted children and another didn't, well, there's no real compromise for that. If one wanted to live in the UK and the other in the US, would it be fair if the compromise was to live in the US and UK partner bitched and moaned constantly that they weren't getting what they 'needed' and it wasn't 'fair'?"

More very good points. For that matter, what if the compromise was to live on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic with both partners complaining a lot?

I ask myself all the time about monogamy. Is it just a meme? Even if I knew would it matter? Which feelings are inherently mine (if that's possible) and which are learned? Even if feelings/tendencies could be identified as "inherently mine" where does that really stop? Can memes be passed biologically too, repetitive feelings or practices dating so far back as to have become impressed in bone? I am (LOL) tragically young and feel so old sometimes! centuries old! It seems like one of the central struggles in this whole thread is pretty deep - AKA the need to address the potential difference between drives that simply propagate a species and drives toward some kind of trancendence of pure biology... NOT saying religion here necessarily - but really humans seem to have a weird ability/or at least desired ability to step outside of biology and create meaning out of life that does not center on propagation activities (food/copulation). Or maybe we just have the most delusional, insanely complex mating rituals of ALL TIME and are the only species that needs to prove that we sense narration. But if all the intricacies of human culture(s) are more than a mating ritual and we really are unique in our self-referential abilities, what purpose should this be put to? And where are we really on the continuum of animal and "transcendent being" with our dynamic defining of copulation..sex...sacred sex (the sex/love link some people demand). Fascinating. I really don't know. I'm just a young punk who's trying to find my blind spots. This thread is awesome and more like this are needed in general

Hey, lady with an open marriage, way to not be patronizing - at all!

Forgetting all the old harping about "the inner patriarchy" and all that ish, I am as monogamous as they come, I think. I don't care about open relationships, although I personally would never have one (well, never say never, I can hear the writer of this post saying!), but why get married to have sex with other people? My views on sex aren't even that traditional, but for ME, if I were in a relationship for the long run - whether I was legally married or we'd had a non-legal ceremony or whatevvy - I wouldn't want the Mister going elsewhere for sex, which to me is a huge, huge bonding and pleasure experience. I love you, honey. How's Miranda's coot holding up? I don't think so lady.

Maybe that last part was a little harsh. Can I replace it with Oprah's really really mature "vajayjay"? :p

"Can memes be passed biologically too, repetitive feelings or practices dating so far back as to have become impressed in bone?"

Not unless someone's thoughts can travel from that person's brain to her eggs or his sperm and change the genes she or he could pass on...

I notice that a lot of people are assuming that an open relationship means multiple romantic relationships. It does for some people, but that isn't necessary. I'm in an open relationship in which friendly sex outside the relationship is okay, but serious romantic attachments outside the relationship aren't. Just pointing out that that's another option.

BTW, what's the ISBN for the book? And who's the publisher? I couldn't find it on Powell's or Amazon.

If other men need as much love and attention as my guy, I'd be so exhausted I'd have to quit my job and be nothing but open. Not to characterize him as overly needy or anything - he simply needs my affection. For me, this can be challenging: sometimes I realize that I haven't told him I love him in awhile, or haven't shown him the attention he deserves. He deserves it because he's always doing the sweetest things for me - making dinner, washing my clothes, writing me little poems and leaving them around the house. He's the only man I've ever been involved with who said, "I want to learn about feminism" and then concluded that he, too, is a feminist.

Anyway, this isn't to say that this sweetness couldn't happen in an open marriage. It just seems, to me, hard to believe that if I were fortunate enough to find other guys as wonderful as he is, that I could give them both/all what they need and deserve.

If the open-ness were defined not by having more than one relationship, but one relationship and more than one sexual partner, I'm not sure if that would be satisfying for me either. While sex with a new person is exciting, I've found that it gets so much better as you get to know one another. I take bigger risks and open myself more with someone I know well and trust. Plus I'm not a "go to the bar and meet hotties" kind of person. I find initial dating exhausting and tedious.

I am, of course, only talking about myself, here. I don't pretend to know what's right for others, nor do I feel it's my place to push my own limits on others.

the moral issue here i think has very little to do with the details of the social contract and much more to do with the level of awareness of the people entering into the social contract. do you really understand or are you doing your best to understand/grapple with the complex social/biological/meta-physical forces operating within and upon you. in my experience if my partner at least agrees on that last bit as a premise, then the details of the social contract seem to unfold more organically. being honest with yourself is the work of eternity and adding someone else to this mix complicates/enlivens the process even more. i think most of us are in REMEDIAL territory (myself included) when it comes to getting back to being human and what that means for how we relate.

as to Mina - what about the observer's role in the "reality" of a particle? my quantum physics are extremely superficial but some of my basic graspings of it have really intrigued me re: relationship between thought and matter

"as to Mina - what about the observer's role in the 'reality' of a particle? my quantum physics are extremely superficial but some of my basic graspings of it have really intrigued me re: relationship between thought and matter"

I was thinking more of how acquired traits don't get passed on the way mutations do.

For example, I have genes for black hair and maybe a recessive gene for lighter hair. If I dye my hair blue, that would change my hair color as I bleach the black out and add some pigment. It won't change the hair color genes I can pass on.

Likewise, if I am told an idea and then believe in it myself, that will change a few of my brain cell connections as I record that memory. It wouldn't change the brain cell genes I can pass on.

If you're interested, look up Lamarck and Lysenko.

I know I could never have an open marriage. I knew very young that I could never even have a nonmonogomous relationship. The very thought of Mr. KMP wanting an open relationship devastates me. I don't appreciate some of the comments that insinuate that it is impossible to have a monogomous relationship of sixty some years, nor do I appreciate the sentiment that somehow people who are in monogomous relationship are so only because of social programming or jealousy. I don't feel ownership for Mr. KMP, nor do I feel owned by him. I respect those who find contentment in an open relationship, but just as you ask for an open mind about the concept of an open marriage, I would ask that you have an open mind concerning the possibility that some people are built for monogomy and are capable of finding happiness and fulfillment in one person.

Thank you, Ms. KMP! I get really frustrated when people, while not conforming to traditional roles, relationships, or ideas, seem to put down those who engage the traditional stuff as "backwards" or "fooling themselves" or what have you. It seems to be happening a lot here lately.

If an open marriage or other non-traditional lifestyle choices works for you, great. I'm happy for you and hope your choices lead to a fulfilling life. But please don't assume that I (or anyone else, for that matter) am somehow deficient because I am happy with the more traditional lifestyle I have chosen.

I'm currently "nonpracticing poly." (I'm too tired to meet any more people, but I don't know what I would do if someone with whom I was involved in the past and whom I still like suddenly reappeared.)

I know a few people in poly relationships, two couples who are in marriages with varying degrees of outside involvement. One of the groups is a trio who own a house together, and have been together for almost ten years now. Two of the poly couples I know have kids; in both cases, the kids don't know, but they're both too young to really be getting details on that kind of thing. (For what it's worth, Bitch, PhD talks about the poly-with-kids thing quite a bit.)

Personally, I'm not really wired for monogamy, and when I do do it, I have to work hard at it. The thing people seem to be forgetting when they're asking the question about "Why get married if you don't want to be monogamous?" is because at least in the US (other jurisdictions that have things like common-law marriage may or may not have this problem), there are something like a thousand legal rights that pertain to having a legal spouse that you don't get if the government hasn't put its imprimatur on your relationship. These cover everything from tax incentives and joint property to inheritance to rights over hospital visitations and suchlike. (No, in the US, you cannot get the same rights with just a power of attorney.)

Some of us basically think we might get married strictly for the immigration benefits. I may wind up being that hypothetical person living on the boat in the middle of the Atlantic, since I'm Canadian and my SO is English. I hear the Grand Banks are nice this time of year, but they suck come November...

I'm sorry she made you so angry manda, she made me question my own ethics, so I'm pretty angry too.

Jenny is right that my discomfort with the idea comes from fear; I'm afraid there are women out there who were in my position and finally gave in, and are now struggling with a relationship that makes them feel like shit. I'm afraid, pretty reasonably, that if I ever got into an open relationship, I would lose control of my sex life. Does that make me a critic of her marriage and proponent of matrimony-as-slavery? No way, I'm on her side. I'm a feminist, for God's sake!

But I'm worried because she keeps setting up her sexuality as the natural conclusion of feminism. That only alienates people like me and manda and KMP and all you others upthread, who completely support her in her open marriage regardless of what we think is right for us, and feel that's plenty feminist enough. I've long labored under the impression that the real conclusion of feminism is a world in which everyone can expect to be respected as a person, regardless of their sex or sexuality.

There's another reason I know polyamory isn't the natural conclusion of feminism: "A relationship isn't about owning another person," was one of the things my ex used to say.

I apologize for posting so many things. Everybody here has been great, and I just can't get the whole crapfest out of my head today.

I realize this thread is getting past its prime so it might not be the best time to bring in something new but the most interesting thing to me would be to examine the reasons for the emphasis on monogamy and de-emphasis of different types of polyamory. Otherwise, I don't think we're looking at the whole picture.

There's also the issue of what an open relationship actually is. For some people it means entire relationships beyond that with their primary partner; for other people it means unattached sex outside of the relationship. I suppose I could call my relationship open, since my husband and I allow each other to develop close relationships with other people, which I've seen called "emotional affairs". But it all depends on what you define as a monogamous or open relationship.

waxghost, I think that being able to establish emotionally close nonsexual relationships with other people without offending your spouse should be the standard in every kind of marriage. That's how my parents operate and they'd go insane if they couldn't do that. It's also part of what makes them such cool people.

I'm a feminist, and I was in an open relationship with my ex-husband for 8 years, and then after divorce, I again chose an open relationship with another bisexual woman, and then a straight man. I've found that lot of people who haven't been in open relationships make wild assumptions about what it's like, and most all of those assumptions are wrong. One of those assumptions is that most open relationships end in divorce. While it's true that most open marriages end in divorce, so do most closed marriages- the divorce rate is exactly the same, so you can't use divorce as a way to judge the success or failure of being open. As a good example, the reason my ex and I divorced had nothing whatsoever to do with our open marriage, and had everything to do with personality conflicts. The thing we fought most about was money, not sex. In fact, right up until the day we decided to split up, we had an excellent sex life. That part of our marriage was never a problem....it was probably the great sex that kept us together that long. Another assumption about open marriages is that the people involved are swingers, or are promiscuous. Again, that is not always the case. While some couples in open marriages do go to sex parties or swing, others do not. A lot of open couples I know have just one extra lover each- to whom they are fluid-bonded (meaning, they don't need to use condoms because they are monogamous to each other.) You just can't argue risk of STI's as being a danger when there IS no risk. A third example of poor assumption, and the most annoying to me, is that one partner must have "tricked" or "pushed" or "forced" the other partner into opening the relationship. All the couples I have known in open relationships chose to go that lifestyle TOGETHER. I daresay that any couple who are not in total agreement on entering the lifestyle will not last very long at all. Communication is the key, and this lifestyle is not going to work at all for a couple who cannot agree nor communicate. And this should not be blamed on the lifestyle itself, but rather on the people who were trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.

I want to urge those of you making these assumptions to be more open-minded, and to remember that YOUR lack of belief in the success of open marriages doesn't make them impossible for EVERYONE.

blonde in tokyo, I haven't seen anyone here suggest that open marriages don't work. Mostly I see people saying they've been in one, or would like to be in one, or that they can't imagine it working for them, but if it works for you, go for it.

And if you're talking about me, I really suggest you look upthread and read my exact misgivings.

What an interesting thread, and I love that for a topic so emotionally heated, the comments have remained (for the most part!) pretty respectful. I just have one comment and one question...
Throughout a lot of the comments, I have been reading statistics quoting affairs and cheating. Jenny also makes a comment in her linked article: "But mostly there have been more anonymous trysts. That seems to be where I am right now. Men—or women—I meet when I’m out of town, spend a night or two with and then never see or talk to again. Lots of people are basically in open marriages: They have illicit affairs. My husband and I simply decided we were ready to be honest, with ourselves and with each other, about what we want and need." This makes me curious about the ethics of sleeping with someone who may possibly BE cheating on their husband or wife. Just because someone is in an open marriage, does that make it right to sleep with someone who is not open and honest about their affairs? 'Cause I find it hard to believe that all these anonymous trysts she is having is entirely with single or open-marriage partners, and I do have issue with someone being a participant in helping someone else cheat on their partners. But maybe I'm really reading too much into this.
On a lighter note, this thread really made me think of a line from the season finale of my greatest guilty TV viewing pleasure, Big Love, which is all about polygamy..
One of the wives was telling another wife that their husband had recently dated a waitress, thinking she might be a fourth wife, and the wife replied, "Our husband's dating life is none of our business!" I just thought that was a great line!

I see a lot of people saying, "I know people in open relationships and all of their relationships failed". Statistically speaking, don't most relationships- het, homo, open, closed, etc, etc- fail? If fail means "don't stay together forever" then we have 50% of marriages, something like 40-50% of engagements, and how many people has each of you dated in your lives? Mono relationships fail all the time, and that doesn't mean that monogamous relationships can never work.

I always viewed the best end result of feminism to be the mixing of the traditional gender rules, such that the male was no longer compelled to a "fuck anyone and everyone" ethos and women no longer had to be the gate keeper. But meeting in the middle means that both women and men don't just adopt the traditional male role.

There is a lot to be said about the myth of the perfect relationship -- the soul mate who will sweep you off your feet and be "that" person for you for the rest of your life. My wife and I believe it. It's sustained us through 20 years of monogamy, and created a lot of happiness and security for both of us.

You lose a lot in giving up on the dream of the perfect mate. It ensures that you will never find him/her. I did.

Thank you to everyone who posted. I am thrilled that such an amazing discussion ensued. The book is being published by Seal Press and will be out Spring 2008 and addresses so many of the things that have been brought up. But I thought I would take a moment to respond to a few things here.

At the risk of sounding defensive, I want to assure you that my husband is a happy man. Our arrangement works great for us and the fact that he doesn’t exercise his freedom, doesn’t mean that be begrudges me mine. At the time of the article things were very new and I know he was nervous. So was I. But now we both see that love is not a finite resource. You have as much as you can give. And because he loves me, he also loves seeing me happy, something that polyamorists call compersion.

I do everything I can to practice safer sex. And even during the time I had multiple lovers, there was never an ever revolving door. But things have also changed significantly since the Tango article. I only have one other lover now, a girl who I have been with for 11 months, making things all the safer.

Open marriage can mean a lot of things. It can mean swinging. It can mean polyamory. But mostly it means being fluid about our relationship and our individual sexualities. I’m married for the majority of the same reasons that most monogamists are – love, a lifelong commitment, to raise a family, and, yes, legal rights and benefits. But I don’t see sexual ownership as a necessary component for marriage.

Open marriages do fail. So do closed ones.

As to the rates of infidelity, show me a study and I’ll show you a new statistic. We all know the rate is high, higher than it “should� be if monogamy is such a “natural� state and monogamous marriages are such a “norm.� We will never know the real number because we’ll never get everyone to confess.

That being said, I absolutely respect anyone’s choice to be monogamous. And I apologize if it seemed as if I didn’t. But monogamy is a choice. Just as polyamory is. And Feminism is indeed about choice.

I am interviewing people in open relationships for the book. If anyone is interested in talking to me about their relationship, please email me at myopenbook@yahoo.com. All information will be used anonymously.

First of all, I want to say that I am 100% about people living their lives in ways that fit for them outside of the heteronormative. I have been in one open realationship for four years, which eventually did not meet my needs because it was open. I have a very hard time figuring out what I feel for one person, and when I am intimate with a second someone, it invariably leads to mixed feelings on my part, no matter how sure I was before. I think, perhaps, as a woman, I have been so trained in the ways of sex=emotions, emotions + sex = love, love = monogamy, etc. that I have a very difficult time with casual sex. In particular because I enjoy it more when there are emotions involved. And I have never been able to let go enough to figure out how to love more than one person at a time.
In my last relationship of 6 years, my ex had wanted an open relationship. After we broke up, he met some people trying it out and he decided against wanting that because of his views as a feminist. He stated that what he saw played out sexist dynamics in couples (i.e. it was often much more o.k. for both husband and wife to engage with other women, but not men, etc.). He stated that until he could figure out how to do it equally, he wasn't really interested anymore.
During my relationship with him I fought tooth and nail to hang on to the fairy tale of the heteronormative, using arguments like, "that is how anyone would feel about that!" which now embarrasses me quite a bit. I started talking to some girl friends of mine after he and I split about marriage and relationships and was for the first time, able to seriously look at how gender socialization played a role in what I thought I wanted. I applaud anyone trying to figure out these very difficult issues. Though I still believe monogamy is more my speed, I think it is important to have discussions about the host of expectations that come with labels such as girlfriend/wife/partner/etc. I think anyone can be much happier when they try to sort through their socialization and get to the root of what they really want deep down. I know I did.

I know this comment is probably way beyond the lifetime of this post but myopenbook's commment infuriated me to no end:

'That being said, I absolutely respect anyone’s choice to be monogamous. And I apologize if it seemed as if I didn’t. But monogamy is a choice.'

Replace monogamous/monogamy with homosexual/homosexuality!

Lady, you lost all credibility with that remark.

I in no way believe that homosexuality is a choice. That is a completely different matter then monogamy. Science proves that homosexuality is nature - not nuture. Not so with monogamy. Just look at the research. From The Myth Of Monogamy by David Barish & Judith Lipton.

"Anthropologist Margaret Mead once suggested that monogamy is the hardest of all human marital arrangement. It is also one of the rarest. Even long-married, faithful couples are new at monogamy, whether they realize it or not. In attempting to maintain a social and sexual bond consisting exclusively of one man and one woman, aspiring monogamists are going against some of the deep-seated evolutionary inclinations with which biology has endowed most creatures, Homo sapiens included. As we shall see, there is powerful evidence that human beings are not “naturally� monogamous, as well as proof that many animals, once thought to be monogamous, are not. To be sure, human beings can be monogamous (and that is another question altogether whether we should be), but make no mistake: It is unusual-and difficult."

Hmm, you may be right. I didn't know the book so haven't read it, only the editorial reviews of it.

However, I've always been very skeptical whenever animal behaviour has been used to justify or condemn human behaviour as natural or not. I don't doubt that social monogamy is rare in animals and sexual monogamy even rarer. But I think that's a poor argument for advocating the same behaviour in humans: It's fairly easy to pick some species that behaves in a way you'd like to show is natural (or not) for humans.
-In some insect species the female kills the male after sex (natural behaviour)
-Some penguin species have the same mate throughout a year but another mate the following year (natural behaviour)
-homosexuality has been observed in somewhere between 400-600 species (natural behaviour)
-most species have sex only for reproductive purposes (natural behaviour)
-*male* dolphins masturbate - and hump everything around them (natural behaviour)
-most mammalian females rear their young without aid from males (natural behaviour)

So if I go off behaving as a young male dolphin and produce an offspring with a mammalian female I can safely and with a clean conscience let her do the upbringing while I move on to the next mate. All natural behaviour. Hmm, sounds familiar.

OK, enough sarcasm; because now I think I might have misunderstood your use of the word 'choice'. You don't choose to like, say, BDSM, you may try it and discover that you love it or you may feel absolutely disgusted just by the thought of it (or any other feeling in between). In that sense you choose (or not) BDSM. Using the same reasoning you don't choose to like being poly, you do it because you've tried it and prefer it to sexual monogamy (but as far as I understand you're still socially monogamous)?

I am married to one man, yes. And I did "choose" polyamory because I tried it and preferred it. When it comes to love and relationships and sexuality, the only thing I truly believe is that we're not all the same, despite living in a society that presupposes that we are. We're not all designed for heterosexual, monogamous, lifetime relationships. Human behavior proves that. Most people believe that there is only one "right" way to live. I'd just like to see that change one day.

there is no way that i could be in a open marriage. This is not right. If people want to do this they should not be married.
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