Mating in Captivity (27 page)

When Elsa returns from a conference, Gerard is always curious about whom she met. “Was there anyone interesting? Did you tell
him about your fantastic husband? And were you flirting while you were raving about me?”

Wendy has always known that George has a weakness for blonds. So last Thursday she decided to be one for the day. She donned a platinum wig and a trench coat and showed up unannounced at the building site to take him to lunch. He says, “Great. The guys are going to think I’m having an affair.” Wendy doesn’t miss a beat: “Let them be jealous.”

These couples, in their own ways, have chosen to acknowledge the possibility of the third: the recognition that our partner has his or her own sexuality, replete with fantasies and desires that aren’t necessarily about us. When we validate one another’s freedom within the relationship, we’re less inclined to search for it elsewhere. In this sense, inviting the third goes some way toward containing its volatility, not to mention its appeal. It is no longer a shadow but a presence, something to talk about openly, joke about, play with. When we can tell the truth safely, we are less inclined to keep secrets.

Rather than inhibiting a couple’s sexuality, recognizing the third has a tendency to add spice, not least because it reminds us that we do not own our partners. We should not take them for granted. In uncertainty lies the seed of wanting. In addition, when we establish psychological distance, we, too, can peek at our partner with the admiring eyes of a stranger, noticing once again what habit has prevented us from seeing. Finally, renouncing others reaffirms our choice. He is the one I want. We admit our roving desires, yet push them back. We flirt with them, all the while keeping them at a safe distance. Perhaps this is another way of looking at maturity: not as passionless love, but as love that knows of other passions not chosen.

There are a lot of ways to invite the third into a relationship that
don’t include extramarital sex, and a few that do. For most people, the mention of sexually open relationships sets off the red warning lights. Few subjects having to do with committed love evoke such a visceral response. What if she falls in love with him? What if he never comes back? The idea that you can love one person and have sex with another with impunity makes us shudder. We fear that transgressing one limit can lead to the potential breach of all limits. We conjure up images of chaos: promiscuity, orgies, debauchery. Against this decadence, being a couple is the only barricade. It protects us from our impulses. It is our best defense against unbridled animality.

Adam Phillips makes the point
that “monogamy is a kind of moral nexus, a keyhole through which we can spy on our preoccupations.” A number of thorny questions arise in discussion of consensual nonmonogamy. Is emotional commitment always bound to sexual exclusivity? Can we love more than one person at the same time? Is sex ever “just sex?” Are men more naturally prone to roam than women? These questions perhaps top the list, but there are more. Is jealousy an expression of love or a sign of insecurity? Why are we eager to share our friends, but demand exclusivity from our lover? I don’t pretend to have an answer to these questions. I do believe, however, that we can benefit from taming our romantic nostalgia in order to ponder them seriously.

Even our most entrenched beliefs about sexuality are susceptible to revision. We once shunned premarital sex and homosexuality; they are now more or less accepted in most circles. In recent years, a small group of men and women have taken on monogamy as the next big battle in their personal fight for sexual emancipation.

Joan and Hiro describe having two types of sex: sex for love and sex for fun. The latter they reserve for their annual trip to a swingers’ convention in Las Vegas. They tell me that it has done wonders for their sex life as well as for their intimacy. Despite how
they may appear, Joan and Hiro are champions of the marital ideals they seem to be defying. They don’t question the institution of marriage. In fact, they seek to preserve it. They value togetherness, honesty, and sharing. Even fidelity is upheld in their arrangement. Joan and Hiro have effectively neutralized the threat of infidelity by channeling it into their relationship. And, as
the anthropologist Katherine Frank wryly notes
, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Swinging is a form of consensual adultery. It also accords equal freedom to both partners.

Eric and Jaxon are also fans of recreational sex, and in the ten years they’ve been together they’ve always made a distinction between emotional loyalty and sexual exclusivity within their commitment. “Right from the start we talked about sex with other men. We’re open about it. For us, the real commitment is the emotional one. Sex outside the relationship isn’t a deal-breaker. I guess you could call us emotionally monogamous, sexually promiscuous.”

Arlene, sixteen years older than Jenna, explains, “I know sex matters, it’s just not so important to me anymore. And the older I get, the less I care.” Jenna feels she’s in her prime, and isn’t ready for early retirement. They’ve agreed that when Jenna goes on location for a shoot, she’s allowed to have her fun provided she doesn’t forget where her priorities lie. When I ask Arlene if she isn’t threatened by this arrangement, she replies, “Of course I am. But at this point I think that asking Jenna to give up sex entirely would amount to a bigger threat than a few groupies. I can’t imagine saying to her, ‘Your body belongs to me whether I want it or not.’” Conscious that the juices of eros no longer flow between them, Arlene remakes the idea of fidelity. Monogamy stipulates keeping the forbidden on the outside, but rarely includes provisions for the couple. Eventually, if desire withers, monogamy too easily slides downward into celibacy. When this happens, fidelity becomes a weakness rather than a virtue.

In the twenty-five years that Marguerite and Ian have been together, they’ve had periods of total exclusivity and episodes of hurtful infidelity. “When I found out about Marguerite’s affair I was devastated,” Ian explains. “It took me months to realize I was also jealous. Not of her lover, but of her. Here I’d been resisting other women for years. When she came clean, we took stock. We decided to stay together but open the gates.” Marguerite adds, “We’re trying to come up with something that works for us. It isn’t meant to be a recipe for others.” When I ask her if her open marriage isn’t painful, she answers, “Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s not. But monogamy—which we never negotiated, by the way—was painful, too.”

Skeptics scoff at these arrangements, and question the level of commitment in these relationships. “I’ve never seen an open marriage last.” “Try it for a while, then get back to me.” “It’s selfish.” “Self-indulgent.” “When you play with fire someone always gets burned.”

Yet it’s been my experience that couples who negotiate sexual boundaries, like the ones mentioned above, are no less committed than those who keep the gates closed. In fact, it is their desire to make the relationship stronger that leads them to explore other models of long-term love. Rather than expelling the third from the province of matrimony, they grant it a tourist visa.

For these couples, fidelity is defined not by sexual exclusivity but by the strength of their commitment. The boundaries aren’t physical but emotional. The primacy of the couple remains paramount. The couples stress emotional monogamy as a sine qua non, and from there they make all sorts of sexual allowances. But far from being a hedonistic free-for-all, these relationships have explicit contracts which are renegotiated periodically, as the need arises. Marguerite and Ian emphasize that their arrangement is both clear and flexible. “We have our rules—no ongoing affairs, no lovers in the city where we live, no affairs with mutual friends—and as long
as we stick to them things seem to be OK. If we need to renegotiate later, we’ll do that.”

It’s interesting to note that although these couples bring a new meaning to the concept of fidelity, they are nonetheless susceptible to betrayal. Trust is crucial in any relationship, and this is no different for those who invite the third into their intimate space. Infidelity lies in breaches of the agreement, in violations of trust. Even though the rules themselves may look very different, they are breakable, and breaking them has equally painful consequences. In this sense, sexually open couples are no different from their monogamous counterparts.

Faced with the complications of affairs, divorce, and remarriage, some of my patients attempt a different course. Nonmonogamous people value the freedom of sexual expression, and they try to reconcile the perennials of love with the surprises of desire, hoping to resist the lassitude that creeps in with time. To repeat Marguerite’s words, this is not a recipe for everyone.

The presence of the third is a fact of life; how we deal with it is up to us. We can approach it with fear, avoidance, and moral outrage; or we can bring to it a robust curiosity and a sense of intrigue. In his steamy affair, Doug courts it secretly. Bill’s devastation is born of a desperate attempt to deny it. Selena and Max invite it in fantasy, but draw the line there. Joan and Hiro escort the third straight into their bedroom.

Marriage has become a matter of love; love is a matter of choice; and choice implies renouncing others. But that doesn’t mean the others are dead. Nor does it mean that we need to deaden our senses so as to protect ourselves from their allure.

Acknowledging the third has to do with validating the erotic separateness of our partner. It follows that our partner’s sexuality does not belong to us. It isn’t just for and about us, and we should
not assume that it rightfully falls within our jurisdiction. It doesn’t. Perhaps that is true in action, but certainly not in thought. The more we choke each other’s freedom, the harder it is for desire to breathe within a committed relationship.

Pursue the logic, and you have the itinerary for an emotionally enlarging journey. It goes something like this: I know you look at others, but I can’t fully know what you see. I know others are looking at you, but I don’t really know who it is they’re seeing. Suddenly you’re no longer familiar. You’re no longer a known entity that I need not bother being curious about. In fact, you’re quite a mystery. And I’m a little unnerved. Who are you? I want you.

Accommodating the third opens up an erotic expanse where eros needn’t worry about wilting. In that expanse, we can be deeply moved by our partner’s otherness, and soon thereafter deeply aroused.

I’d like to suggest that we view monogamy not as a given but as a choice. As such, it becomes a negotiated decision. More to the point, if we’re planning to spend fifty years with one soul—and we want a happy jubilee—it may be wiser to review our contract at various junctures. Just how accommodating each couple may be to the third varies. But at least a nod is more apt to sustain desire with our one and only over the long haul—and perhaps even to create a new “art of loving” for the twenty-first century couple.

Love never dies a natural death
. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source.

–
Anaïs Nin

It takes courage
to push yourself to places that you have never been before . . . to test your limits . . . to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

–
Anaïs Nin

I
T ALWAYS AMAZES ME HOW
much people are willing to experiment sexually outside their relationships, yet how tame and puritanical they are at home with their partners. Many of my patients have, by their own account, domestic lives devoid of excitement and eroticism, yet they are consumed and aroused by a richly imaginative sexual life beyond domesticity—affairs, pornography, cybersex, feverish daydreams. For them, sexual love becomes compromised in the making of a family, even a family of two. They numb themselves erotically. Then, having denied themselves freedom, and freedom of imagination, in their relationships, they go outside to reimagine
themselves liberated from the constraints of commitment. Security inside, adventure and passion outside. So when the media frantically (yet regularly) announce that couples are not having sex, I can’t help thinking that they may be having plenty of sex, but not with each other.

Passion may fuel the initial stages of a relationship, or it may not. Either way, the volatility of passionate eroticism is expected to evolve into a more staid, stable, and manageable alternative: mature love. Even the biochemistry of passion is known to be short-lived.
The evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher
says that the hormonal cocktail of romance (dopamine, norepineprine, and PEA) is known to last no more than a few years at best. Oxytocin, the cuddling hormone, outlasts them all. The fruits of this ripening love—companionship, deep respect, mutuality, and care—are considered by many to be a fair trade for erotic heat. If attraction and desire were the central actors in your courtship, now they retreat backstage to make way for the main act: building a life together.

Eroticism is conspicuously absent from our idea of marriage. Of course, committed couples are expected to have sex, and even to enjoy it these days. Sex solely for the sake of reproduction is, theoretically, passé. But sex and eroticism are not the same, and the lascivious, intimate, ardent, needful, frivolous, erotic sex of lovers becomes rare after the housewarming party. In spite of the sexually saturated media that promise unfettered excitement provided we follow the ten ideas suggested in this week’s issue, there is still some anti-hedonism surrounding domesticated sex. Could it be that we’re inundated with articles about how to make sex hot with our partners because we don’t actually believe it can be hot with our partners? More to the point, could we believe deep down that it’s not supposed to be? Could we believe that regardless of how sexually free we might have been before tying the knot, marriage is no place for the naughtiness of lust?