Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage (18 page)

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Chapter 7

you can’t

run out of love

Soon she decided that she wanted to date only women outside her marriage. And it wasn’t long before she met a young woman who became her friend, and then her lover. They fell in love and she wondered what that meant, or if it had to mean anything. Was she polyamorous? Was she a lesbian? Was she staying in her marriage for the wrong reasons—for comfort and convenience? In time, though, she realized that having an exclusive girlfriend was part of her larger journey.

having a series of out-of-town lovers

was fun for a while, but it wasn’t without its problems. Despite every measure I took to practice safe sex, I still

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worried about contracting something. And although I did my best to be sure I wasn’t seeing anyone crazy or attached, my judgment of character failed me a time or two. And it wasn’t as if a bevy of ideal suitors were lined up at my door. There were plenty of lulls, because I was quite selective about whom I dated. Christopher has never chosen to date anyone at all. His only dalliance was making out with a girl he met in a bar in L.A., which was out of character for him, as he’s not one for public displays of affection.

In the beginning, I found myself needing to check in with him frequently, to ask whether he was still feeling okay about everything. He assured me, unequivocally, that he was, and that he rather enjoyed the side benefits of my trysts: I was happier and living more honestly, as well as off his back about many of the issues that had been troublesome for me before we opened our relationship. Many people who have never experienced an open relationship find it impossible to imagine that this type of arrangement can actually make the primary partners love each other more, but the truth is that it absolutely can, and for us, it absolutely does.

As time went on, I realized that I was much more interested in seeking out women than men. My sexual experiences with women were different from, and often better than, those I’d had with men. This certainly raised questions for me around my sexual identity, and plenty of people have asked me whether I opened my marriage simply because I wanted to be with women. It would be a

lie if I said no, but I’m not convinced that I want to be with women because I’m a lesbian. Instead, I think it’s because my sexuality, like that of many, many women, is more fluid than current definitions of “gay” and “straight” (or even “bisexual”) allow.

Lisa M. Diamond is an associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah. In her research, she explores distinctions between romantic love and sexual desire, as well as the nature of lesbian sexual identity as dynamic, rather than static. Her work, although focused primarily on women who identify as lesbian, suggests that women’s sexual orientation is neither as unchanging nor as early-appearing a trait as some suggest. “Female same- sex orientations often exhibit late and abrupt development, and inconsistencies among women’s prior and current behavior, ideation, and attractions have been extensively documented.”
1

In her book
Sexual Fluidity,
Diamond argues that current labels for sexual desire fall short, and including bisexuality as a qualifier to describe those who are somewhere in between doesn’t solve the problem. She addresses questions about whether women even have a sexual orientation at all; whether a woman’s sexuality is a choice; whether a woman who identifies as straight can fall in love with a woman, and if the reverse—if a woman who identifies as a lesbian can fall in love with a man—is possible as well; and whether women are sexually fluid throughout their lives. She suggests that

for women, gender is not the issue—context is. As one’s life and situation change, so too can one’s sexuality and sexual identity evolve. Love relationships themselves, Diamond asserts, determine the gender women find themselves attracted to—at that point in time.
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So many things in life are about nuance and shifting and progression. Why, then, when it comes to sexuality and relationships, would they suddenly
not
be about gradation, but instead about goose-stepping into line with the rest of the flock? The cover story of
Newsweek’
s May 2007 issue, “The Mystery of Gender,” was released because the media is finally paying attention to the fact that even gender is not necessarily a constant. We are finally coming to terms with the fact that “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” just might not cover it all. Biology clearly creates a symphony with innumerable combinations; it’s not a solo act singing one thin tune.

I prefer to think of undefinable sexuality as being open to the idea that you might be able to have feelings for someone of the same gender, even if you’ve lived your whole life as a straight person. And that’s what it’s been like for me. I’ve always been amenable to listening to my sexuality. That’s the point of all of this, really. It’s not that open marriage is this one specific thing, with established rules and philosophies and ideas. Rather, it’s a space that allows me and anyone else who inhabits it to be open—to people of both sexes; to having more than one committed partner at a time; to living

in threes or fours or whatever works for the people involved; to being happy; and to changing all along the way.

My desire to be with women in the first place was a surprise to me. I was twenty-five when I had my first lesbian experience. Her name was Sophie Anne, and she was my best friend at the time. I suppose I’d had crushes on women before—a college professor and maybe a friend here or there. In college, particularly, the concept of a “political lesbian” resonated with me. Jennifer Baumgardner speaks to her own experiences in
Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics:
“Women had sexual relationships with people they wanted to learn from and with whom they felt a spark. They did it because it felt right, and why should they miss out? They did it to make the best relationship they could, and to learn what a good relationship was.”
3
Lots of women who get involved in relationships like these respond especially to their lack of preset roles. It can be freeing to be with another woman because gender roles, which can be incredibly oppressive for women, simply disappear. Suddenly everything has to be—or gets to be—negotiated from ground zero.

And despite the fact that some lesbian relationships appear to have masculine and feminine roles (that is, butch/ femme distinctions), those roles can still be freely defined in ways that are meaningful to that particular couple. One may have short hair and one may have long hair. One may drive a truck and the other a sedan. But who takes out the trash and who cooks dinner is not automatically assigned,

the way it is within heterosexual couples. Everything has to be negotiated. “Butch-femme is not about aping traditional notions of masculinity and femininity any more than it is about mimicking heterosexuality,” explains Jeannine DeLombard in her essay “Femmenism.”
4
It’s a whole new ball game, and I like playing it.

“Who’s the boy?” Jemma sometimes asked me, early on in our relationship. “Do I have to be, since I’m taller and stronger than you?” The answer we discovered was, and is, of course not. We both do the things we want to and are capable of, not simply the things that gender stereotypes dictate to us. She carries the suitcases and I cook dinner. She picks out our outfits and I fix the clogged sink. And making those choices feels like we are actually making choices. It’s not a matter of somehow doing something wrong or failing to fill preordained roles. It isn’t connected to inadequacy at all; it’s connected to workability. But it is something we have to consciously figure out for ourselves, not something that’s laid out for us. DeLombard explains, “Butch-femme is nothing if not intricate, subtle, and highly complex, despite the fact that it is often oversimplified as a monolithic set of prescribed, restrictive behaviors by straight people and lesbians alike.”
5
It’s not as easy as who’s the boy and who’s the girl, but it is amazingly rewarding.

We do what works, and that is what I have learned in and love about the relationships I have had with women. Partnerships work best when people are true to themselves,

and that is the only thing to be true to when the couple is made up of two people of the same sex. Is this always true? Of course not. But it certainly is what I have witnessed and experienced.

And what I have learned from my open marriage is that restrictions regarding perceived male and female identities don’t
have
to play a part in heterosexual relationships, either. Though some people see open relationships as a corruption or loss of “traditional” values, mine has allowed me to question, loosen, and realign the invalid gender guidelines that bind so many straight women to dysfunctional relationships.

I have always felt aligned with the lesbian community’s politics and worldview. In college, that might have been because most of the feminists I knew were also lesbians. I identified as a feminist at that point in my life, given my own liberal views on sex as I started college. And the fact that I didn’t pursue sexual relationships with women back then strikes me as curious. It just didn’t occur to me, but I understand now that it couldn’t have, because every societal indicator was pointing me toward being with men. Why else wouldn’t I have explored the idea sooner? I was plenty experimental in the sexual realm, and pornography that featured women together turned me on. Still, it didn’t fall into my lap until I met Sophie Anne.

For me, being with a woman was a true awakening, in that it gave me new insight into how a relationship could be. “Women who looked both ways learned from women how

to get what we wanted from a relationship—information that we could, if inclined, use to have more satisfying and equal relationships with men,” writes Baumgardner.
6
And sexually, it was an entirely new ball of wax. There is something so particular about being with another woman—how soft her skin is, how curvy her body is, how circular the sex is. And there’s no race to the “finish line” with women. No matter how sensitive or capable a man might be, when he comes, the party is pretty much over. Not so with another woman.

Having sex with a woman didn’t make me want to rush to identify as one thing or another. But I was clearly attracted to women, and I was fine with the fact that that meant I was bisexual. Still, I don’t care much for that word, and I know I’m not alone, as Diamond’s research shows. The term “bisexual” doesn’t feel right to a lot of women, perhaps because being bisexual has become almost passé, or perhaps, as Baumgardner explains, because “as a label, ‘bisexual’ sounds pathological, academic, and a little embarrassed—like the identities ‘stay-at-home mom’ and ‘runner-up.’”
7
This is precisely how I feel when I hear myself say the word—like it’s not quite right, or
I’m
not quite right, or I’m two things when I should be one. Bisexuality has gotten a bad rap over the years because it carries a stigma that those of us who are attracted to both sexes somehow want more than our share, or more than what’s normal.

Today, being gay is more acceptable—at least in most parts of the country—than it’s ever been, but for some, bisexuality

still connotes people who don’t have their shit figured out. But I beg to differ. “The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects,” wrote Kinsey in 1948, articulating his theory of sexual fluidity.
8
If that continuum were a scale from one to ten, with one representing heterosexuality and ten representing homosexuality, I’d probably put myself at seven. And most people, whether they can admit it or not, do not fall on the one or the ten. The majority of us fall somewhere in between because we’re all bisexual to some degree. I’m not suggesting that everyone therefore wants to or should change their sexual behavior; it simply means that our rigidity surrounding labels and our desire to ascertain some sort of fixed sexual identity for ourselves and others is a great big waste of time and energy, especially if Diamond is correct—and I believe she is—that women’s sexuality is always subject to change.

Even though I have started identifying as bisexual, for lack of a better word, it would be nice if that weren’t necessary, but the world we live in is very label oriented, and people desperately want everyone neatly categorized, perhaps because it makes them feel safer. Regardless, whether I named it or not, my attraction to women played a role in my inability to feel satisfied in my marriage as it was. I continue to wonder sometimes whether I am a lesbian. But if I were, would that negate this discussion of openness and polyamory? Would my quandary simply disappear if I were attracted to only one gender or the other? I don’t know. All

I know is that at first, being with one man—my husband— made me think I still wanted to be with other men. But, after trying that out, being with other men only made me long for other women. I got to a point where I thought perhaps the “more” I was looking for was just being with women, and I knew of only one way to find out.

meeting women, in a very practical

sense, proved to be much harder than meeting men. I simply didn’t know how or where to pick up a woman. Hanging out, as I did, in places that weren’t necessarily gay or straight meant trying to figure out which women might be interested. And since I am generally attracted to femme women, fewer indicators—as stereotypical as those indicators might be— existed to help me determine potential partners.

When I did seek out lesbian venues, I faced the possibility that my bisexuality would be problematic for the women I ended up talking to. Not to mention that I was also married. Throw that into the mix, and I was going to have to find some pretty open-minded women. Ultimately, I was looking for attractive, smart, witty women who would also understand and be okay with my situation. Not an easy task. But don’t assume that the central issue was the fact that women aren’t interested in sex outside of the promise of a commitment. That isn’t the case at all.