Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage (13 page)

In popular culture, we can look to the research and writing of Stephany Alexander, an infidelity and relation- ship expert, and founder of the website WomanSavers. com, which helps women avoid cheaters and “players” by allowing them to rate and research men. Alexander’s site has obviously touched a nerve, presumably because so many people are affected by our nonmonogamous

culture. The
New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
CNN, MSNBC, and a rash of other media outlets have covered WomanSavers.com and solicit Alexander’s take on the current state of infidelity. In a piece entitled “Cheating and Infidelity Statistics: Are Men Cheating More Than Women?” Alexander writes, “Recent studies reveal that 45–55% of married women and 50–60% of married men engage in extramarital sex at some time or another during their relationship.” She explains how “accurate infidelity stats are so difficult to come by because people lie or are embarrassed.”
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Of course. The following is a small sam- pling of her unscientific but incredibly telling results.

Do you still believe in the institution of marriage? Yes, strongly. 2,319 votes (66%)

Yes, but only if you plan on having children. 191 votes (5%)

No, I’ve seen/had enough bad experience to not want to get married. 629 votes (18%)

No, I’d rather just live together. 347 votes (9%)

* * *

Have you ever cheated on your man? Yes. 6433 votes (52%)

No. 5,759 votes (47%)

* * *

Would you ever cheat?

Yes, if I could get away with it. 1,437 votes (31%) Yes, but I’d feel guilty. 679 votes (15%)

No, I have too much respect for my partner. 1,361 votes (30%)

No, cheating is immoral. 1,031 votes (22%)

* * *

Would you forgive your partner if he had a sexual affair? Yes. 1,088 votes (31%)

No. 2,389 votes (68%)

* * * Has your guy ever cheated on you? No. 15,653 votes (10%)

Yes, I caught him red-handed. 77,528 votes (54%)

I’ve suspected, but never caught him. 50,279 votes (35%)
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The bottom line is this: We don’t know how many people cheat, because studies and statistics and respondents lie. But there is no doubt about the fact that people cheat or want to cheat or think about cheating
all the time.
And men are no longer doing the lion’s share of the betraying. The fact that women are catching up to them has a lot to do with the Internet. A surprising number of websites and “dating” services allow married people to seek other married or single people to have affairs with. The Ashley Madison Agency’s site proclaims that it’s designed for “women seeking romantic affairs—and the men who want to fulfill them.” The banner across the top of the homepage reads, “When Monogamy Becomes Monotony.” On MarriedSecrets.com, the homepage states, “Studies indicate up to 30% of those people using online dating services are married. Why not join a site specifically designed for you? With MarriedSecrets.

com, there’s: no excuses, no explanations . . . just great people waiting to meet you.” Then there’s LonelyCheatingWives. com, MarriedDateLink.com, and DiscreetAdventures.com, where people can “meet other attached women and men seeking discreet romantic affairs.”

All sorts of organizations, conventions, blogs, and newsletters are available for people in open marriages, or swingers, or people who are polyamorous—Polyamory. org, PolyamorySociety.org, Polyweekly.com, and
Loving More
magazine, to name just a few. An entire culture exists out there; it’s just that a lot of people don’t know—or don’t want to know—about it. Many people assume that these communities are full of predators and freaks. Not so. In fact, a number of celebrities—whom American society holds in the same high regard as other cultures do their royalty—allegedly are or have been in open relationships or “arrangements”: Mo’Nique and her husband, Sid; George Michael and his partner, Kenny Goss; Ossie Davis and his wife, Ruby Dee; Diana and George Melly; and Simone de Beauvoir and her husband, Jean-Paul Sartre, are just a few of the growing number of people in the public eye who had or have open marriages. Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton and her husband, John Byrne, are among the most recent couples to gain media attention for their open relationship. Tilda openly has another lover, Sondro Kopp, outside of their marriage. Notable feminists are also on the list: “Patricia Ireland, a second-waver who was president of the National

Organization for Women from 1991–2001, happily had both a husband and a longtime girlfriend,” reveals Jennifer Baumgardner in
Look Both Ways
.
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It shouldn’t come as any surprise that such an empowered woman would see the value in having relationships that fulfilled her in markedly different ways than her experiences with men did.

Alfred Kinsey himself was in an open marriage. He included the following findings in his study:

10 percent of the population is gay;

Sexuality is a spectrum, with the majority of people falling somewhere in between straight and gay, rather than firmly on one side or the other;

Married women, on average, have sex 2.8 times a week;

Approximately 50 percent of all married men are adulterous;

26 percent of females are adulterous by their forties;

12 percent of females and 22 percent of males reported an erotic response to a sadomasochistic story; and

55 percent of females and 50 percent of males reported having responded erotically to being bitten.
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Little has changed in the sixty years since Kinsey’s findings, although I suppose society has some greater awareness (and perhaps even acceptance and interest) surrounding alternative lifestyles. There is still a vast difference between the societal perceptions and the realities of love, sex, relationships, and marriage. The big question is why, given all we know, is there still such a discrepancy between what we want and what we actually manifest? It seems to stem from the fantasy and romance of the Perfect Man myth, which is still very much alive for girls and women alike. For those for whom monogamy really does work, I say kudos. But I no longer believe it’s the norm. History, science, and popular culture point to countless examples that make me wonder who the real minority is.

for three years after I confessed my

relationship with Grace to Christopher, I kept my mouth shut. I never mentioned the affair or my well-formed and ever-expanding fantasies about having another such experience, sans the fallout. I couldn’t figure out how to have the sex and the relationship without the lying and the guilt and the hurt. I was so fearful of ruining my marriage that I didn’t know what else to do except sit tight. I loved him and our life together. I didn’t want to lose him, especially over sex, when we had so much else that was good. We were good partners and parents. Good balances for one another.

But those three years took their toll on me, and while I was living in that dream house in the suburbs and negotiating all of its perilous social constructs (think high school on crack), my ideas were beginning to crystallize. Finally, I got to a point where I was no longer afraid of losing my marriage, because the idea of its continuing in its current state wasn’t viable. It felt like a revelation because I finally thought I understood the root of my unhappiness in a relationship in which I “should have” found great happiness.

I decided to write Christopher a long letter and mail it to him. I mailed it right before a long trip I was taking, so I was sure he’d get it while I was away. I wrote about how sad I was that our sex life had all but disappeared. I wrote about the fact that I enjoyed sex too much to go on without it. I wrote that things had to change, that he had to wake up and start seeing me as his sexual partner, seeing me in general, and honoring my needs.

“You’re right,” he said to me over the phone after reading my letter. “I’m missing everything. I’m missing our daughter, and I’m missing you. I’m just sleepwalking through it all.” And things began to change. He started paying attention to his body, exercising, and eating better. He started paying attention to my body, touching me differently, responding to me in the way I wanted and needed him to.

But even with Christopher’s newfound alertness, his libido and mine were still divided. He seemed to be able to go without sex entirely, to simply have no need or desire for

it. We eventually asked a doctor about our situation, and, after ruling out any medical problems, she said that some people just have no drive, and it’s not something that can or necessarily needs to be cured. I, on the other hand, craved sex. And although I had no trouble “gilding the lily” all on my own, I missed sex with a partner or partners.

I had done my due diligence. I had done the research. I had given it the old college try. I had to face the facts. I believed I had four choices: settle for the marriage I had, in the face of all the evidence that such a dynamic is highly unlikely to work; have affairs and deal with all of the stress and risks involved; get divorced and lose out on a perfectly wonderful marriage; or embark on something new altogether. Although the last option was frightening and risky, it was the one I kept coming back to. I figured I had nothing to lose. So, armed with that knowledge, I decided to brave the consequences. I took a deep breath and set off to talk to Christopher about the idea of opening our marriage.

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Chapter 5

this is a test

When they talked about it, she realized that she wanted to show him how they could still be together and love each other and be married—even if they slept with other people. Figuring a threesome would be a good place to start, she invited her best friend to sleep with them. The three of them were together for a while, until it turned out that the friend wanted to sleep only with the husband. And so she asked whether she could sleep with other people, too, and her husband said yes—but a few ground rules needed to be laid out. And so their open marriage began.

“you’re crazy,” Christopher said.

“Why?” I asked.

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“I don’t want to sleep with other people, and I don’t want you to sleep with other people.”

We were lying side by side in our bed, and I immediately felt my body stiffen. Instinctively, I pulled away from him. “You don’t want me to sleep with other people, or you don’t want me to
want
to sleep with other people?”

He paused. “Both.”

“But you can’t stop me from wanting what I want. What if I want to sleep with women?”

I thought that bringing up the prospect of my sleeping with another woman, or even bringing a woman into our bed, would be the easiest way to broach the subject. I missed sleeping with women, and I thought that if Christopher were included, we might be able to test the waters of this whole open-relationship thing, to figure out if it was going to work for both of us.

“You mean like Grace?” he asked, without missing a beat. “Yes,
like
Grace. But also,
not
like Grace.” Of course, that

situation had ended badly, and maybe he had brought it

up to be hurtful, but I stopped myself from taking the bait. Instead, I asked, “Weren’t things better around here during the six months she and I were sleeping together?

Again, he paused. “Yes,” he admitted.

It was a clear opening. I decided that this had to be the moment, and so I told him the things I had been scared to say for three years because I was afraid they would be too hurtful—and because I was afraid that he might leave.

But it was becoming impossible for me to live this way, and I couldn’t not talk about it anymore. I wanted him to understand and I wanted, desperately, to be happy. I decided that if telling him the truth meant he would leave, that was a risk I was finally going to have to take. Clinging to a relationship that left me feeling unhappy—because I was afraid I would be unhappy when it was gone—suddenly struck me as beyond ridiculous.

I delicately explained to Christopher that I’d felt happy and satisfied when I was seeing Grace, because I finally wasn’t looking to him to fulfill something that he either couldn’t or didn’t want to give me. I told him that it had felt like a relief because it alleviated the pressure on him and on me. Because of my relationship with Grace, I was able to be with him without feeling guilty about my needs or resentful about not having them met.

He told me that the sex with Grace hadn’t bothered him as much as my lying about it. I knew this already. It wasn’t the first time we’d discussed it. This foray into open marriage was no short jaunt, after all; it was a long haul getting from point A to point B, from closed to open. And it inevitably involved rehashing a lot of conversations again and again. But bit by bit, we were reaching a point where it seemed like we both might be interested in giving it a whirl, at least to see how it would feel. The idea of living openly—and of naming and embracing that choice, rather than keeping it tucked under the stairs like the ugly stepchild—increasingly

seemed a necessity for our relationship. We agreed, with time, that the
idea
of open marriage did make sense. I was already there, but I knew it would work only if Christopher actually bought into it, too. I wasn’t interested in trying to maintain something he wasn’t onboard with. I realized that we might very well still end up separating, because talking and agreeing about it didn’t mean that an open marriage was going to be functional in practice. Still, I was as prepared as anyone can be to try something that had just as good a chance of saving a marriage as it did of destroying it.

After our plethora of conversations, the time had finally come to stop talking and start doing. “So, what do you think?” I asked one night. “How would you feel about actually opening our marriage?” Christopher gave me a knowing look. He wasn’t surprised that I’d brought it up again.

“Even though we’re doing better now,” I told him. And we were. Sex had become more regular, but it wasn’t enough, and I knew it wasn’t ever going to be.