Open Marriage

Does NOT work! Yep, there’s a real shocker for you, eh?

I seem to have known a lot of couples who’ve tried this. I suspect, because I’m a broad minded, approachable sort, friends and acquaintances feel it’s cool to tell me their story.

And it is. Y’all know that I love a good tale.

Plus, sit at enough airport and/or high end hotel bars, look friendly and tolerant, like a listener (doesn’t take much) and the suit on the next stool will spill his/her guts.
Business travelers get lonely. They like to talk, to confess their secrets and fears. Often enough it takes no prompting at all to get them to tell me things they’d never tell their best chums back home.

From an LA Times column:

In a series of experiments, the researchers (Harvard) found that the act of disclosing information about oneself activates the same sensation of pleasure in the brain that we get from eating food, getting money or having sex. It's all a matter of degrees of course, (talking about yourself isn't quite as pleasurable as sex for most of us), but the science makes it clear that our brain considers self-disclosure to be a rewarding experience.

Couple One -- Kris and Ralf:
He came home from the office one day and told Kris that he was lonely. They talked, she suggested clubs he might think about joining (he was into long distance bicycling and tai chi).
No, he responded, he wanted a girlfriend.

My very first thought -- Ralf tells you he’s lonely and wants a girlfriend, doesn’t this suggest that perhaps the two of you should investigate what he means when he says ‘lonely’ and what about your relationship might lead to this feeling. Maybe find out what might be missing?

Perhaps too afraid of a possible divorce and the idea of being alone, she chose a different path. In her mind she took control of the situation.

Instead of saying ' let's talk; go into couples counseling‘ or 'sure, start dating. I’m cool with that’ she suggested they become ‘swingers.’ They embarked on some years of sex clubs, spouse swapping and risky, if not flat out dangerous high jinks.

Ultimately this made neither happy -- Ralf didn’t get his girlfriend and was still lonely. Kris was beyond tense. She came away from all their adventures feeling used up and degraded.

 I don’t know how the story ended -- my flight began boarding. I had to go. Rats.

Couple Two -- Harris and Leah:
After a decade of marriage it came out that she’d been having affairs on the sly for, well, most of those ten years.

Harris was devastated.

Their solution? He was now free to have dalliances too. Everything would be out in the open. No more covert hookups.

No secrets but there were tremendous hurt feelings on his side.

I couldn’t help but wonder -- if he did have the occasional fling, was it fun? Did it feel more like angry paybacks than a fun bit of hanky panky?

Couple Three -- Lloyd and Cathy:
He’d been having an affair for some time and assumed she was unaware. Maybe so, who knows?

One evening, over dinner, she announced that an old college friend (now living at the other end of the country) would be in town on business. Her friend ‘Sam’ and she had been having torrid email correspondence and planned to consummate their, up to then, text only passions.

Paybacks or independent phenomenon?

Lloyd’s response -- ‘OK, you can have time alone together but let’s do a three way too so I’m not left out. We can then have a shared experience.’

Yeah, that worked out well. //snark//

She went on to have other affairs, always in the open. He was as careful as he could be to have his future flings undercover, so to speak.

Why? Apparently Cathy was the violently jealous sort. Go figure.

 Couple Four -- Marie and Richard:
They both agreed, prior to signing on the dotted line, that they would have an open marriage. This was the mid ‘70s -- open marriage was en vogue. They agreed to be respectful of each other’s privacy but to be sure to tell the other about partners, occurrences and such.

She was the first. Then he found an occasional friend. What was sauce for the goose, was most def not cool for the gander though. She was stratospherically jealous.

There was no joy in that home after that and they eventually divorced.

Then there was couple six, George and Tim.
George told all his friends and coworkers that he and Tim had an open marriage. Sadly, Tim was wholly unaware of this.

This, likely, won’t end well either.

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
-- Robert Heinlein

Can  a marriage of this sort work? I imagine that it must be possible for some couple somewhere. Just because I’ve never met them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Duh.

Having said that, please keep in mind that Stranger in a Strange Land was a work of fiction. Don’t try this at home, folks.

IF you must, read Divine Caroline’s Ten Things You Need to Know Before Starting and Open Marriage.

You’re welcome.