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These Are 3 Bad Reasons to Open Your Marriage

 

I asked my husband for an open marriage at a restaurant on a winter night in January 2020.

It wasn’t a joyous conversation.

It wasn’t a collaborative discussion about how to spice up our sex life, or a decision we were making together.

It was an ultimatum.

I told my husband it was either this or divorce. I couldn’t live in a passionless marriage anymore, and maybe this was the lifeline we needed to wake us up. I argued it could improve our marriage, but deep down that wasn’t my motivation.

I needed to feel desired again, so much so that it almost felt like my life depended on it.

The result of this conversation was instantly thrilling. I started dating and sleeping with other men for the first time in over a decade. I thought I had become a true champion for non-monogamy. This arrangement felt like the answer to my problems.

But then the pandemic hit and I fell in love with one man in particular. Things got messy and hurtful. My open marriage closed and then turned into an emotional affair that took a long time to end.

And as you can imagine, this open marriage experiment did not improve my marriage. It made us more open about sex than we ever had been, which has helped us address issues we previously avoided. But it added far more hurt than it did excitement to our partnership.

We are still reeling from that initial decision over dinner, and we’re still sorting through all the bulls$#t to see if there is anything left of our marriage to salvage.

Since that time, I’ve read a lot about marriage, infidelity, and non-traditional relationship structures. I’ve listened to podcasts about sex and long-term relationships.

Two years later, I am not opposed to open marriage, polyamory, or any other arrangement that couples have decided will nourish their relationship. There are so many different ways to love and be loved.

But I do feel that there are some less than ideal reasons to open a marriage, ones that may lead to more hurt than gain.

These are the wrong reasons to open up a marriage.

Because one of you is begging for it

It’s inevitable that partners may have different perspectives on the state of their relationship.

Uneven sex drives are very real, as well as uneven abilities to talk about sex. But even if two partners have slightly different perspectives on non-monogamy, it won’t really work if only one partner supports the plan.

My open marriage was the result of an ultimatum, and ultimatums are usually bad ideas in the world of relationships (one only needs to watch the Netflix show called The Ultimatum to see the worst version of this practice).

Though my husband “agreed” to our non-monogamous arrangement, he was never fully on board with the plan. He slept with one other woman during this time, and he enjoyed it. But that didn’t stop him from feeling intense jealousy about my evening escapades.

This uneven enthusiasm for the open relationship was not sustainable for us, and I can’t imagine it’s a long-term solution for other couples like this. Non-monogamy is tricky, and it’s nearly impossible if both partners aren’t excited about it.

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Because you haven’t had time to go to therapy

Like many couples with struggling marriages, ours had been in shambles for years. But it had been a slow process, one without explosive fights or major disagreements. It died a little each time we avoided eye contact or sat further away from each other on the couch.

When your relationship dies in bits and pieces, it’s hard to know when it’s time to seek marriage therapy.

And for us, our busy work schedules and demanding kids always got in the way. In the years leading up to our open marriage, we had been to three different therapy sessions with two different therapists.

Fitting the midday appointments into our schedules was difficult enough, but it was even worse when we didn’t click with the therapists or find it very useful. So we gave up.

It wasn’t until I had slept with five other men, our marriage had reached the brink of total collapse, and a global pandemic had constrained us all to our home that we realized we probably needed to talk to a professional.

We have been seeing our therapist through Zoom now since May 2020. We have never met in person, but she knows almost everything about us.

Therapy can’t fix everything, but it helps. I think it would be a good idea for anyone considering a non-monogamous relationship to pursue therapy first, and to continue it during that transition.

It’s just too big not to.

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Because you can’t remember the last time you had sex

This may be up for debate, as I imagine quite a few couples consider a non-monogamous lifestyle because of an unsatisfying sex life. My decision to pursue an open marriage was absolutely a result of troubles in my marital bedroom.

But here’s the thing — most sexual issues aren’t just about sex. My husband and I also had a lack of emotional intimacy that had made any physical connection almost impossible.

Open marriages can be exhilarating for people in long-term relationships. They can release the pressure of relying on one person to meet your physical needs.

I imagine they can improve a married couple’s sex life if there is enough intimacy already to transfer that new energy back to the primary relationship.

But if all sexual energy and emotional intimacy are lacking in a marriage, then an open marriage is just about outsourcing your sex life. And in my case, it became an excuse to outsource emotional intimacy too.

I would be very hesitant to ever try an open marriage again if my partner and I didn’t at least have a foundation of sexual and emotional intimacy.

…

The past few years of my life have widened my perspective on the many different ways to structure adult relationships and sex lives.

When I proposed an open marriage to my husband and began dating other men, I thought I had found a perfect answer to my marriage problems. But in reality, we hadn’t done the work necessary to prepare us for an open marriage. For us, it wasn’t the solution.

I suggest to anyone considering this lifestyle to do more work than I did before diving in. You can find a lot of great resources here on this platform, as there are many writers who explore these themes. For example,
Sarah Stroh
is extremely honest about open relationships and sex in her writing. I hope that some of my stories also give perspective on this experience.

If you have tried an open relationship before, what advice would you give? What would you add to my list above?

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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The post These Are 3 Bad Reasons to Open Your Marriage appeared first on The Good Men Project.

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