Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage (22 page)

Yet, amazingly and terrifyingly, this way of thinking is prevalent among wives. Keep your husband happy if you want to have a good marriage. Give up what you want and need. It’s all about compromise, the experts say—only it

isn’t, because behavior doesn’t qualify as compromising when the woman is actually doing nothing but sacrificing, while her husband interprets what’s going on as their being engaged in some sort of joint giving and accommodating process. Not good. Incredibly bad, actually.

But, come on, who wouldn’t want a Krasnow wife? Someone who’s always at home, on call, ready to rub your feet or swab the deck or whatever your little heart desires. Sign me up. Only problem is that it’s no way to foster partnership and intimacy and all of the things that make a relationship real. Thinking about it in these terms reminds me of the famous 1971 essay written by Judy Syfers (now Judy Brady again after her divorce) for
Ms.
magazine, called “Why I Want a Wife.” It’s a biting satire that speaks of the utter selflessness that wives are “required” to adopt as they care for husband, children, and home without faltering or thinking for a moment about themselves. They should be working, cooking, cleaning, mothering, doctoring, administrating, organizing, scheduling, ironing, and doing it all without a complaint. “I want a wife who will not bother me with rambling complaints about a wife’s duties. But I want a wife who will listen to me. . . . ”
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While both Krasnow and Syfers write about unequal setups, one writes about it earnestly and the other ironically. Despite the fact that most women profess to want a marriage in which they refuse to be confined to a role, and in which they instead stand up for what they want and need, this

is too often not happening in practice, because women naturally want to bend and compromise and nurture and take care of everything. We are still getting the message to embody the selfless, angelic trinity of the wife, the mother, and the eternal virgin.

Ironically, giving ourselves up to marriage often means giving away the best part of us—the part that a partner who truly loves and honors the whole of you should really enjoy. The reason men don’t just get a prostitute and a maid is because they want a partnership, just like their wives do. But within Krasnowlike definitions of wife and mother, an equal partnership isn’t possible. It’s demeaning to both partners and doesn’t give the relationship a fighting chance. Owning someone does not work—whether that’s about housework or sex. The best marriages are the ones between two complete people, and that takes thinking and understanding and acceptance. And it requires wives’ not simply saying, “Yes, dear,” and instead voicing their desires and requirements and opinions and feelings—even when there’s a cost.

When I got married, I did not agree to shed my selfhood at the altar. I did not agree to grin and bear it. I did not agree to be some sort of lobotomized automaton. Being true to yourself does not make you selfish. Fulfilling your needs does not make you selfish. However, being a martyr and suggesting that your life is better than others’ lives because you “suffer” is terribly selfish.
Look at me,
women who

sacrifice everything are saying.
I’m a better wife than you.
I’m not buying it, because it’s a lousy bill of goods that society has been trying to sell women for way too long. We live in a “me, me, me” world that expects wives to give it all so their husbands can have it all. And we’re supposed to suck it up and do it with a smile.

In an essay originally published in
Lear’s
magazine in 1993, lifestyle and psychology writer Amy Cunningham demonstrates this very phenomenon, using a woman’s smile as a metaphor. In the essay, entitled “Why Women Smile,” Cunningham argues that we are required to smile— literally—in order to put others at ease and put our own needs on the back burner. “Smiles are not the small and innocuous things they appear to be: Too many of us smile in lieu of showing what’s really on our minds.”
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Just keep smiling, and everything will be all right. It’s a frightening enabling technique and a horrifying means of keeping women (read: wives) subjugated.

Cunningham continues, “Evidently, a woman’s happy, willing deference is something the world wants visibly demonstrated. Woe to the waitress, personal assistant or receptionist, the flight attendant, or any other woman in the line of public service whose smile is not offered up to the boss or client as proof that there are no storm clouds—no kids to support, no sleep that’s being missed—rolling into the sunny workplace landscape.”
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And, I might add, woe to the wife or girlfriend who fails to just keep smiling and

instead articulates her needs and desires. A man who does so is standing up for himself; but a woman does so, and she is inherently selfish. This idea seeps insidiously into the way we manage our marriages.

I zealously reject the idea that I’m being “selfish” because I want to be happy, and refuse to plaster a fake permasmile on my face solely to please others. I do understand that, in order to feel better about themselves and their own decisions, some people think they need to characterize others’ behavior and choices as selfish. Still, when they’re pointing fingers and saying, “You’re being selfish,” or, “How dare you live your life that way?” I can’t help but feel like the truth comes closer to:
Wait—does that mean I could live that way, too? Does that mean I don’t have to live the way I’m living?
But these types of questions are too scary and complicated for most people to deal with. It’s much easier for them to scapegoat people like me and go on living as they’ve been living, using the mantra that has gotten them this far:
This is the right way to do things because this is the way things have always been done. She is bad. She is wrong. I am right.
So what’s more important—to be happy or right?

Sadly, most people choose the latter because they simply cannot stand the social pressure of doing something that is not perceived as “right.” A further complication, of course, is that “right” isn’t black or white. And what’s right by one person’s standards doesn’t necessarily ensure even their own happiness. Personally, I would rather be happy

and doing what’s true for me than striving for someone else’s perception of what’s right. I’m okay with not knowing how all of this is supposed to work. I’m willing to admit that I don’t know, and to check in with my partners and myself about how everyone is feeling as we go. For me, being honest and being allowed to be honest have gotten me to a level of awareness that is as enlightening as I have ever known an experience to be. In turn, my relationship now has an authenticity that it lacked before; this omission was so unchecked that, left unattended much longer, my marriage would likely have disintegrated.

There aren’t many things more exhausting than hiding and lying and sneaking around, which is why open marriage is more about being thoughtful than it is about being selfish. Open marriage is the opposite of settling for something; it’s about seeking what could be. And, because people are going to ask, yes, it’s also about sex. But, as I’ve said before, I don’t believe that makes it any less important than any of the many other issues every couple has to address.

it’s hard to gauge what kinds of

couples most people presuppose are in open marriages, but media representations tend toward visions of people living at the very edges of society, whether with a sort of hippie sensibility or a tattoos-and-piercings type of style. There’s also a sense that women in open marriages either look like glittery porn stars or opt for housecoats and caftans over

True Religion jeans and ringer T-shirts. Not that there are many depictions in the first place: one couple on
Oprah
in September 2007; four couples on VH1’s
Women Seeking Women: A Bi-Curious Journey
in the fall of 2007 (although this series didn’t call the marriages “open,” I have to imagine that’s what audiences will think about them, since this is ultimately a reality show about the pursuit of orgies); and a smattering of people in a number of episodes of HBO’s
Real Sex.

But what about women like me? Where are we? The majority of us may be hiding, perhaps out of fear of being judged or misunderstood. I’m the type of woman who could pass as your next-door neighbor, or the mom you sit next to at PTA meetings. And despite, or maybe because of, how seemingly just like everyone else I am, I am the face of twenty-first-century sex and marriage—with all its nuances and ins and outs. Erase all your mental images of ’70s porn stars and late-night cable specials. Bisexuality, open marriage, polyamory, and other living and loving arrangements are often referred to as “alternative,” but, given their prevalence, I suggest we start considering how mainstream they actually already are—maybe as prevalent as a Starbucks on a street corner. It’s just that Starbucks would never dream of trying to pose as anything other than a coffee shop.

Most people involved in open marriages are honest, open-minded, and intellectual. I am sure there are close- minded people out there, those who think that their way of

life is the only way. But for the most part, people who choose open marriage do, in fact, think through the consequences of their actions, and tend to have partners who can wrap their minds around the complexities of love and marriage and the idea of sexuality as a continuum. As opposed to people who are cheating—and therefore, by definition, participating in a dishonest version of an open relationship—those of us who are acknowledging what we’re doing are probably more likely to be partnered successfully for years to come. In an August 2007 piece about open marriage for ABC News online, writer Russell Goldman offers insights from author Dossie Easton, who explains that “polyamorous marriages were no more or less successful than monogamous marriages, but at least the polyamorous were never surprised to learn their spouse was cheating.”
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Open marriage does, of course, have to feel like a viable option for both partners, and if it seems wrong or impossible to handle, then the couple will need to figure out their options: Either dig in and try to make it work, despite the other person’s dissatisfaction, or decide to separate. Whether either of these is a happier or better option varies from couple to couple, but in my experience, for an open marriage to succeed, both partners have to open their hearts and minds to what their life is actually going to look like to them, as well as to how it will likely appear to those around them.

“It depends almost entirely on the people involved and their willingness to tell the truth and do the work,”
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says

Deborah Anapol, psychologist and author of
Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits,
in the same ABC News piece that featured Easton. And that’s just it: Christopher and I decided that our love and our marriage were valuable enough for us to want to tell the truth and do what it takes. And so that is what we do—every day—although the meaning of “doing what it takes” can change. But we are ready for and open to change because, well, that’s who we are—open. And because being open is so important to us, so is being open about that openness.

I’m tired of being portrayed as something I’m not, of being suspected of getting involved in a kind of relationship that is not representative of the one I’m actually in. It’s always frustrating when people make assumptions about you when they know nothing of your experience—but that goes for anything from sexuality to race to education to social class. More troubling to me is that people have such preconceptions because nothing in our culture allows for a broader understanding that plenty of people are thriving in open marriages. Not a single familiar image, in the popular media or elsewhere, portrays a functioning and healthy open marriage. Really, open marriage looks like you and it looks like me. So what I’d like to see, at the very least, is open marriage acknowledged as a better option than cheating. Maybe if practitioners of open marriage were able to stand up and speak to the more common experience of our relationships, we would find the comfort in company

that we are all seeking. And with that company would come understanding from those in society who, until then, had been unable to understand and accept this way of life— either for themselves or for others.

In my open marriage, I’ve focused mostly on allowing myself to flirt a little more than I would have before. I don’t know how much flirting is allowed within traditional marriages, but lines tend to be drawn around things like dancing or casual touching with other people, or whether you should mention your marital status right up front. I don’t worry about crossing any of those lines now, and that has been probably the most fun, liberating, and surprisingly satisfying thing about being in an open marriage. I feel more alive. It’s allowed me to fulfill fantasies that I either couldn’t or wouldn’t want to act out with my husband, but that I have always wanted to take one step further (though not necessarily all the way to the bedroom). Sometimes—more often than not, actually—these encounters end at flirting and the “what if?” stage. The number of people I’ve actually gone to that next level with is very small.

Open marriage works for me, and it works well. But I’ll be the first to admit it’s definitely
not
for everyone. Some people don’t want anything other than monogamy. Some people have trust issues. If you can’t stop yourself from checking your partner’s email or going through his receipts, open marriage is likely going to put you in the loony bin. Some people prefer simplicity over all else, and open

marriage is not always cut and dried. It involves thinking and negotiating and being aware. For us, it’s worth it. But you have to want it. Or, perhaps, you have to need it. It has to be the way you feel compelled to live.

Open marriage is not for the insecure. It is not for people who are concerned about what the Joneses think, or whose self-worth is inextricably tied to their partners’ faithfulness and attention. It is not for people who like things predictable and consistent, because open marriage has neither of those qualities. It is not for the dishonest, the close-minded, the naive, the ignorant, or the incommunicative. It is not for people who are ruled by ego. It is not for the unimaginative or the unadventurous. It’s not for everyone, because nothing is for everyone. How many times have you found a good fit in anything labeled one size fits all?