3 Reasons Why the Married Men I Dated Sought Out Extramarital Sex

Only one of their reasons was one I’d expected

Last year I dated a spate of men in open marriages. I was surprised by how different each of their situations were, and in multiple cases, my expectations for why open marriages happened were turned on their head.

Here are three reasons the married men I dated sought out extramarital sex:

1. Their wife wanted an open marriage

The first married man I met up with revealed to me that his open marriage had not been his idea.

Wes (not his real name) explained that a few months before he and his wife opened their marriage, she had returned from an out-of-state work conference, and confessed to him that she’d almost cheated on him with a colleague.

“We’d been married twenty years,” Wes told me. “We were high-school sweethearts and got hitched right away — she’d never slept with anyone else.”

“She told me she felt like maybe she’d missed out on a whole set of experiences. And she hadn’t given in when this colleague pursued her, but she had wanted to, because the chemistry was so intense.”

“It was terrifying for me to hear her say that,” Wes continued. “It was also terrifying to acknowledge that while we are each other’s best friends, it’s just not the same after twenty years.”

“We’ve kinda become each other’s flannel blanket,” he explained. “You don’t get that same thrill. I couldn’t provide her with the excitement of the unknown that this other guy could.”

So, after several months of discussion, they decided to open things up.

What followed was statistically predictable:

Over the course of four months, Wes managed to secure dates with two women. His wife, meanwhile, could not have worked through all the men clamoring for her attention if she’d tried.

She had pilots, professional football players, recent college grads — you name it — knocking down her door.

It’s worth noting that both Wes and his wife were of above-average attractiveness — him even more so than her.

Wes’s wife often had to line up three dates back-to-back on weekend days just to sift through her options. And that was after aggressively narrowing her pool down through pre-date chats.

This trend is what I have seen without exception in every open heterosexual relationship: single men swarm to the woman; single women back away from the man.

“It’s been an emotional roller coaster,” Wes told me honestly as he reflected on their first year of open marriage.

“But you know what?” he went on, “It’s been exciting for me too, and not even primarily because I’m also dating.”

“I discovered that it’s actually a major turn on for me to not only have so many men pursuing my wife, but to hear her talk about sleeping with them as well. I hadn’t known it before, but it turns out I’m a bit of a cuck. It’s actually really spiced up the sex between the two of us.”

2. They had known from the start of the relationship that they wanted sexual variety

Another married man I dated (we’ll call him Kevin) had been with his wife for over six years, and never in the course of their relationship had they been monogamous.

“We talked about it at the beginning, before we were even really dating,” Kevin told me.

“We both knew this was how we wanted things to be. After previous relationships, I knew I couldn’t be monogamous, and she didn’t want that either.”

They had had threesomes, foursomes, moresomes, as well as separate long-term additional partners.

I also dated another man in a committed open relationship who gave me the same reason.

This other man’s explanation fit a more classic stereotype: “I’ve learned that after two or three years in any monogamous relationship, my sex drive just takes a dive. I don’t think it’s that way for every man, but it really is an issue for me. This way I feel like a teenager again.”

In both these cases, the couples had discussed at the start and determined they didn’t want the restrictions of monogamy, nor did they want the lurking romantic complexities of polyamory. So they had settled on an open relationship structure.

Of course, as I learned with Kevin, what is decided on and what ends up happening are not always one and the same.

3. Self-image

“Everything is about sex except for sex, which is about power.”

This quote, often misattributed to Oscar Wilde (no one knows for sure who really said it), is a bit bleak. I like to think it’s not true — or at least, not the full truth.

However, it winks in the direction of truth.

People do use sex, in the way they may use their career authority, or their money, or their social status, to bolster their sense of self-worth.

After messaging at length with one married man — whom I’ll call Thibaud — about his beautiful, intelligent wife and their happy twelve years together, I asked, “Why then do you seek other women?”

I was especially curious because Thibaud and his wife had only “opened” their marriage in the past two years. (I put “opened” in quotes because they were French, and had a very different culture around fidelity vs. infidelity than we Americans do).

“Is it,” I guessed, “because no one person can provide all the possible heights/flavors of passion, and you seek novelty?”

“Or,” I continued, “is it perhaps because the most florid and exotic fantasies can only germinate in the soil of the unknown, i.e, real intimacy deadens the vibrancy of fantasy, because our subconscious needs blank spaces in order to project itself, and in long term romance there is (at least the illusion of) no real blank space/unknown left?”

“Is it because the spring of desire is its own feverishly magical season,” I went on starting to feel really clever with all my ideas, “and you would not wish to be stuck in an endless summer, no matter how lovely it might be?”

“And/or is it because there was once a connection so compelling and rich with the rush of life that you chose to break the pattern of safety and monogamy for it, and now you are floating in these currents and don’t wish to return?”

I felt proud of my questions, sure that somewhere along the line I had correctly tracked the ribbon of his impulse.

Thibaud thought for a long while before replying, and his response surprised me:

“Why do I seek affairs… I could think of a thousand reasons to list, but if I were honest with myself, I think it’s because I need to keep reassuring myself that I’m capable of seducing women I desire.”

“It’s probably my way of dealing with the famous 40s crisis, he explained.” (He had just turned 41). “All the doubts and fears that come with realizing I’m not 20 anymore.”

“So maybe it’s my way of fooling myself into thinking I’m 20 again? I think it’s maybe more because of my own aging than because of the aging of my marriage.”

I found this answer unexpectedly honest.

It’s worth noting that I also did encounter the more classic reason of “sexual incompatibility,” both in terms of the nature of desire and the frequency of it, among the folks I met.

There was a particular sweetness and sadness in the openly married couple who had this reason at their root: one partner wished they could have shared more with the other, rather than looking beyond their marriage. I related to this, having recently ended my own marriage for similar reasons.

But I admired the creativity, respect, and support they both showed each other.

At the end of the day, I don’t think there’s one “right reason” to pursue an open marriage, but I do think it’s very important for both parties to look deeply into their own motives and be unflaggingly honest with themselves and each other.

There’s room for great vibrancy in opening a relationship, but there’s room for great turbulence and instability as well, not to mention pain — even when both parties are intellectually prepared.

One last thing I want to share — from what I’ve observed, not only is there no one-size-fits-all solution to the issue of monogamy vs. non-monogamy, the uncomfortable truth is that for many folks, there isn’t an option that’s an ideal fit.

Whatever path you pick for your romantic life will have its struggles, its sacrifices, and its disenchantments. Pick a path you feel is worthy of the work you will need to put in.