“Do you think I’m good enough to say the word ‘sweetheart’?” I asked my husband over coffee one Thursday morning a few weeks ago. I’m sitting on the couch in my underwear, watching him casually play with his phone. He’s probably checking his OKCupid app to see if any cute girls have messaged him back.
“No, absolutely not. I’m so embarrassed,” he said, scowling at me like I was a madman.
“But…what else should I call him?” I started trying to come up with a name. “A guy friend. Someone you date and share common interests with. A side piece.” I frowned. “Boyfriend and Buddy are both off the mark, but in different ways. What’s the male version of a mistress? I hate them all.” I think, drinking and stretching my toes to a point. “I like lovers, that’s very French.
My husband pretends to gag behind his coffee cup, but I ignore him. He’s not a very romantic person. He’s more of a sarcastic, eyebrow-raised type. That’s why he’s my best friend and I’m glad I married him. We’re a perfect match in that I’m not that sentimental either and we’re more likely to play pranks than look into each other’s eyes.
But ever since I decided to pursue a relationship outside of my marriage, I’ve also been craving a bit of drama – something foreign, passionate and intense. Sure, I could get used to the idea of having a boyfriend. Bearded lover. Handsome man with tattooed forearms and soft brown eyes. That is, if I can say those words with some skill.
I absentmindedly arched my back and clasped my bare feet as I said those words, checking how it felt. Rub your index and middle fingers where the cigarette would have once been. As I stare dreamily out the window, mental images from a few nights ago flash through my mind. I put my hand in my hair. Teeth grow in the skin of the neck. A husky voice whispers “baby” in my ear.
My husband looked up from his phone and saw me staring stupidly into space. He gave me a creepy smile. I give him the finger. It looks like today will be a good day.
My married life officially started over two years ago, but it was only recently that I decided to take action towards marriage.
This topic first came up about a year after our heads almost collided and I was searching for a particularly cute girl. This happened often. I identify as fluid and have long been attracted to women. I even got drunk and kissed a few people in high school and college. But alas, I spent most of my formative years trying to convince scowling art boys to idolize me, with much misgivings and predictably bad results.
And that hasn’t changed: I’ve never had an adult romantic relationship with a woman, even though I’ve wanted it for a long time.
He knows that being with me means at least talking about girls I find attractive, so that he can act out in his fantasies what I couldn’t do in person. I did. But even though I fell deeply in love with him and wanted to spend our lives together, there was still a part of me that felt strangely sad about the idea of never dating a woman in real life.
I was faced with the choice of quitting it and accepting that monogamy is the price of committed love, or… . . To be honest, I felt insecure that being with him meant I would never experience this deep thing I was craving.
I chose the second one.
I was nervous. I told him in short that I was worried he wasn’t good enough for me. I told him I didn’t know if a solution was possible or if we would end up breaking up, but I believed we could figure it out together.
However, this “guy”, my current husband and then boyfriend, comes from a traditional, religious, working class background and often comes home with dirty hands. It turned out that I was very interested in exploring this new way of living. myself. Instead of getting jealous or possessive, as many of my past boyfriends have been, he laughed a little and said, “That’s weird. Let’s talk about it.”
It was. over 1 year. We talked about what we thought was exciting (dating, friendships) and what we thought was weird, gray, and scary (sleeovers, emotional attachments, commitments). There were no references to contextualize a healthy open relationship, no language to discuss boundaries. We remembered our friends. Rumor has it that one of them is polyamorous with one main partner and multiple lovers, while another couple regularly invites guests into their bed. We wondered how they know how to do that.
As beginners without a community, we had to look for one. what we heard was Savage Lovecast Podcast In this article, Dan Savage gives relationship advice to many “monogamish” couples. We conducted an online survey about how couples manage multiple partners, including “levels of entanglement,” boundaries, labels, and terminology. * We came out to our closest friends in open relationships and respectfully asked them if they would let us know. Tell us all about their love life. We thought that if it worked for others, it could work for us too.
we were nervous. We knew there were a lot of potential unknowns. For example, what if we say we’re comfortable having a sleepover, but then we start to panic at the thought of it? Our only option is to recognize that boundaries change and feel free to listen to each other’s opinions. It seemed like the best thing to do was to lean in and be as honest as possible one day at a time. And of course, set some hard limits.
Everything should be discussed in advance. Our relationship comes first. All questions must be answered. We must practice safe intimacy. Never fall in love. This is how it started.
After several years, our engagement, a brief fling, a ridiculously fun wedding, a steady relationship, a one-night stand, one lover, maybe a boyfriend, and about 10,000 honest conversations, here we are. I’m here. He is dating (this term is widely used) a brilliant graduate student who is 10 years younger than me. . . The bearded, eyed guy knows exactly where to pinch and sends me songs he records at his home when I need something to get me in the mood.
Our frameworks seem to be constantly changing. We’ve learned not to take our first reactions too seriously. A week after exclaiming that it would never be possible in a million years to invite my girlfriend into my bed (that very idea!), I realized with great surprise that I didn’t care. Ta.
It feels like a conflict between an instinct to protect one’s territory and a growing feeling that the concept of ownership, the claim that what’s mine can’t be hers, is arbitrary and a bit unhelpful. I did. I grinned at my self-righteous self for trying to protect the bed as a sacred symbol of marital love while trying to rethink the meaning of marriage in the first place.
It made me feel strongly that my marriage exists only in my husband’s and my own heads and hearts, not physically anywhere, not even in our shared space or our bodies. It was the first of many moments.
That Friday we spent the night apart for the first time. He was at the hotel with the girl and I was at home with the guy. The next morning, her husband returned home and the two met. I found myself staring with wide eyes at two handsome, kind men drinking coffee and talking about bikes. I nervously giggled and they looked at me. I blinked back. “Who wants eggs?” I yelled, probably startling them both, and tried to do something with my hands.
What a wonderful time to be alive.
Of course, the reality of acting on a well-conceived plan is not without its concerns. Her husband’s girlfriend is very young and enviably beautiful, so when it started we both joked and complained about it. “Oh, she’s 21? That’s great,” I commented flatly, trying not to roll my eyes.
Now that they’ve gotten to know each other a little better, it turns out she’s fun and quirky, just the way he likes it, and he enjoys it too. I stop sucking her teeth when he talks about her, and I laugh appreciatively when she sends him videos culled from the darkest corners of Reddit.
And there’s also the fact that I’ve become quite attached to my boyfriend, which was initially thought of as an uncrossable boundary and continues to be a difficult path to navigate. Her husband wishes things hadn’t happened so quickly, and he’s not wrong.
But he won’t ask me to end it. Even if you can, it’s probably because it’s the path of least resistance. Instead, he chose to hang tight, be honest about his insecurities, and seek my attention when he felt he needed it.
We’re not looking back at what we should have done differently. We are looking forward and figuring out how to live with this new person in my life.
why? I don’t really understand. He loves me deeply, I know it. He wants me to be happy. He has an amazingly sweet trust in my man and is very respectful of our marriage. He also embraces the opportunity to challenge himself and overcome his fears. He is courageous and that is why I am convinced that I made the right choice to marry him.
I am convinced day by day that doubt, jealousy, and resentment will not kill me or my relationships. And the little we feel about them is worth the incredible joy I get from pushing my relationship outside of its comfort zone. What I know now is that emotions change all the time – that’s a fact. And when I share about them, they almost always pass.
So, instead of doing what I thought strong women were supposed to do and swallowing my insecurities, I talk to my husband about my insecurities in honest terms. What if you stop wanting me, what if we start hating each other, what if you fall in love with me but are too scared to tell me, and what if. . . Her husband listens to her, nods, understands me a little, kisses me, tells me he loves me, and the fear begins to disappear.
And there’s a lot of heady adrenaline because of this sticky heart sharing.
We revel in a dizzying haze of new experiences and wonderful intimacy. We are getting closer every day. Seeing her husband nervous to write an email to a girl is both funny and a strange new intimacy. When we first got together, he was acting cool, so naturally I didn’t like this side of him, this playful side mixed with arrogance and uncertainty, ever. I had never seen it before. I can see him through another person’s eyes and enjoy the triumph of flirtation and the nerdy excitement of not knowing if someone likes you or not.
We lay together late into the night and he touched the two birthmarks on my left arm, perfect fingerprints that he didn’t leave behind. I smell his hair, it smells like the cigarettes she smokes. We kiss each other a little deeper. We are united in this experience. Unfazed by their bond, they feel more happy than afraid.
As for the girls, I’m not nearly done on that front. Return to OKCupid.
My husband and I consider ourselves “ethically polyamorous” (meaning we are in relationships with more than one person and make sure all parties are aware and consent) However, it must be said that our experience is in no way representative of the wide variety of polyamorous arrangements out there. .
We may not be able to call our grandparents and tell them about our extramarital dates, but our cisgender, heterosexual(ish) status lends cultural readings to our stories. It makes it easy and therefore acceptable. This is not true for all poly people. Their stories matter too.
PopSugar is the place to read and talk about the topics women want, including dating, relationships, nostalgia, and more.
This article was originally published at: pop sugar. Reprinted with permission from the author.