I’m Going on a Love Diet
Chronicle of an Open Marriage #33
I have an adversarial relationship with LOVE. For most of my life, I didn’t believe in it — at least not in the version you read about in books and see in movies. To me, love was something you do, not something you fall into. To me, loving my long-term husband was a job I took seriously.
And I still feel that way, on many levels — like love is a task for me to perform; a step, or several, on the ladder to enlightenment.
I think love was the motive behind me suggesting we open our marriage a year ago. My husband was unhappy. I was unhappy. Our sex life was fraught with insult and injury. I wanted to let some light in to what had become an impossible struggle. And my instinct was accurate. The light poured in.
Hubs took to the new arrangement like a duck to water, jumping in enthusiastically from the start. That’s partly because he had never had another lover. He wanted to know. He needed to know what it felt like to fuck other people. And guess what? It felt pretty damn good.
For me, it took a little longer. I watched from the sidelines for about six months before a charming man approached me online and we started a scorching hot texting relationship. I remember feeling threatened by how quickly he moved into my personal space — calling me pet names, telling me that he loved me, texting me good morning in the morning and good night at night.
He was brand new in my life when I attended a stripper party on my own, a super scary and exciting event for me for which I’d spent many hours preparing a performance. I drove an hour and a half to my friend Aislyn’s house for the party and then spent the night. My husband, characteristically, expressed little interest. It was this new man who encouraged me beforehand and who checked in on me after. “How did it go?” he texted in the morning. “I bet you were fantastic!”
Instead of pleasing me, his attention upset me. Who does he think he is to me? I raged to Aislyn in her kitchen the following morning. I don’t even know this man!
But as it turned out, that “rage” was just a flimsy defense, a kind of border wall I’d erected around a deep well of emotions that was hastily and shoddily built. It wasn’t long before I was returning this sexy man’s endearments. I remember the day I first texted “I love you” and the long silence that followed. How anxious I felt about it. How vulnerable. How afraid.
He told me later that my text had alarmed him. “I don’t want to hurt this woman,” he’d thought.
And still later, of course, he did hurt me. His wife decided she didn’t want to try polyamory after all. He abruptly canceled a planned tryst and our new, blooming love. But I guess it won’t surprise you to hear that my distress resolved quickly. It didn’t hurt that much. We’d never actually met. We’d never consummated our relationship. And even though I felt I knew him pretty well from our texts and emails and photos and FaceTime calls and physical revelations (what do you think of this?!), I didn’t really know him. Did I? It was debatable.
So…had that been LOVE? If it had, it was a much different variety than I feel for my husband. I’d say it was like loving an amusement park ride — thrilling and exhilarating and definitely worth the price of admission — vs. loving the ocean, which is magnificent and deep and salty and cold and fully capable of destroying me, but also of buoying me up to exultant heights.
So now fast forward to this new outside lover I’m involved with: Captain. Although “outside” might give the wrong impression since he has definitely gotten inside of our long-term marriage. We three engage as a “throuple,” all fucking each other, sometimes as pairs and sometimes as a threesome. And often as a pair first and then a threesome (he’s inexhaustible).
Captain is a man I have actually met. And I have consummated our relationship — dozens of times. I’ve looked deep into his eyes, stroked and petted his body, nibbled on his lower lip, kissed him deeply and passionately, breathed into his wet mouth, suckled him at my breast, stripped for him, dressed up for him, danced with him, gone away with him, fucked him on the beach, fucked him in the backseat of our car, told him sad and heartfelt stories about my personal history, reached orgasm with him, and on and on…
And now? After all that? After fucking and fondling and hugging and kissing and holding and stroking again and again, I can’t help but feeling that I LOVE this man. And that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because:
- It negatively impacts my marriage, which makes me unhappy and anxious. And,
- He doesn’t really want my love!
1. Why does loving this man negatively impact my marriage?
For all the reasons that you might expect. I think Hubs is jealous of the feelings I have for Captain, and also jealous of the feelings Cap has for me, although I can’t really be certain of that, because Hubs is uncommunicative by nature, which is not a great fit for polyamory, but still, we must make do…
Also, when my mind is full of Captain — texting him, setting up assignations, dressing up for assignations, waiting excitedly for assignations, and then consummating assignations in super pleasurable ways — I have less room in there for Hubs.
This isn’t standard poly dogma, but it still feels that way to me.
Then there’s the fact that Hubs has an insecure personality type. That’s also not a great fit for poly, but what’s a freedom-loving wife to do?
At one point he suggested that I shouldn’t have anal sex with Cap, I should reserve that for him, but that fell by the wayside with his apparent approval at a no-holds-barred threesome sex fest and overnight. At another point, he suggested that I shouldn’t let Cap give me oral, but what could I say when he asked for a taste? Then there was the idea that I shouldn’t orgasm with Captain. But Honey, orgasms don’t come easy for me. If there’s an orgasm on the menu, I’m going to order that.
Another problem is how well Captain fulfills my needs. That’s probably because he’s pretty much the exact opposite of Hubs, the man I’ve been exclusively interacting with for close to 40 years.
Where Hubs is sharp and cynical, Captain is smooth and sweet. Where Hubs is withholding, Captain happily gives it up. Where Hubs is repressed and extremely shy, barely able to articulate his sexual wants and needs, Captain is practically a sex therapist.
It feels a little like I have been living in the desert for 40 years, and I’ve adapted to the desert. I love the desert. The desert is beautiful. But now, all of a sudden, it’s raining! Captain is the rain.
And suddenly, I realize how thirsty I am.
But here’s what’s been happening recently: Hubs has been withdrawing from me emotionally. I’m not sure why, because he doesn’t tell me. He probably doesn’t even know himself. What I do know is that him withdrawing makes me upset and anxious.
There was one night when I got very drunk on champagne and we had a sexual extravaganza with our threesome. I remember telling Captain in my drunkenness that he had to dump his girlfriend and him answering, “Do I?” I remember asking him, as he was entering me from behind, to tell me he loves me. Then feeling self conscious because Hubs was there right beside him, so changing the request to “Tell me how much you want me...”
The next day, the hangover felt emotionally overwhelming, and I took a tranquilizer to cope. The day after that, I still felt tenderhearted and took another one. On the third day, I wanted to take a third, but I held myself back. I knew that would be venturing into dangerous territory — a place I’ve been before; a place I no longer want to go.
In the midst of my emotional turmoil, I saw a vision of my husband as a manzanita bush with sharp and pointed leafless branches, rising up out of the desert sand and starting to crack. His bark was deep purple. And my green vine of ivy, wrapping around his thin trunk, was in danger of being uprooted and dying, too.
What was I feeling? I was worried about Hubs’ emotional withdrawal, and about my growing feelings for Captain, too. The vision of the cracking bush made me aware of how much I depend on Hubs to ground me and to keep me rooted and sane, how much I want and need to wrap my life around him. Yet I also kept hearing the “L word” whenever I thought of Captain, and a few days later, I sent him this text.
I think I’m stressed about (A/B/C — details of my life that I don’t want to provide here), and even about the three of us. I can’t seem to relax into a groove. I don’t know what’s going on with Hub’s feelings. He feels distant to me, which makes me unhappy. He’s not horny for me, which is unusual. It’s hard for me to figure out. I think he’s jealous of how I feel about you and how you feel about me, but I don’t really know, because he’s uncommunicative.
And honestly, my feelings for you scare me too, because it feels like I love you, and even though that’s supposed to be fine in polyamory it feels dangerous.
I guess I’m confused, and probably Hubs is too.
I consider myself easygoing but this situation brings out the drama in me. Sorry to be trouble. I wish I was trouble free, and free to just lie in your arms and soak up your affection with no fear of repercussions or harm done…
Intellectually, I know what we are doing is fine but emotionally, I feel a little bruised.
And vulnerable and like something is at risk…
I’m going to take a hot bath and two aspirin and plan on feeling better tomorrow…
That was the first time I had said those three scary words directly to our Captain.
He responded with some sweet words of his own and in the midst of them the question, “Do you think we need to cool things off a little bit? I will respect any decision that you make or we make.”
2. Why doesn’t Captain want my love?
Maybe it’s because I’m becoming an overemotional drama queen?
I should say here that I have already had multiple meltdowns in this six-month-old relationship. I had a meltdown when he first told me he had a girlfriend who lives hundreds of miles away whom he plans to move in with once he gets a job near her town. I had another meltdown when he went to visit her over the Christmas holidays and then went back to visit again right away over New Year’s. And I almost had a meltdown when we discussed an article I’d written about us, and whether I wanted more from him than he was able to give. He’d started by saying yes — I wanted more than he could give — but then changed his answer to no, maybe he could give me what I wanted, and maybe he even loved me a little, too...
In retrospect, I have to wonder if he changed his answer because he didn’t want me melting down all over the bed.
I remember a comment Elle Beau ❇︎ made on that story about the “relationship escalator” and how maybe I could get off of that, and not press for more more more, as we’ve been taught to do, but instead just relax and enjoy what I’ve got right now. I’ve been trying to do that! But I haven’t been super successful so far…
And I also want to say here that it’s truly beyond my understanding how anyone could NOT want my deep and bodacious and capacious and extravagant love! Because my love is super valuable. I have no doubt about that. Everyone who gets it is glad they did.
But even if my love is divine, that’s not what Captain is looking for. It’s not what he signed up for. He’s just trying to have a little fun, to enjoy life while he’s waiting for his long term plan to kick in. And me? I’m having a hard time accepting that I’m the side piece, not the girlfriend. I keep trying to promote myself to the primary spot.
So here we are. And after some talk of the three of us moving in together, and of our throuple lasting for the rest of our lives, and of how incredible and sexy and wise and beautiful I am, and how much pleasure we all bring to each other, I need to face the reality that this threesome isn’t really what Captain wants long term. And maybe I don’t want it either?
Because living together as a throuple would have significant costs. We’d have to come out to our children and extended family, eventually, and deal with any thoughts or feelings or actions that the new composition of “us” might inspire in them.
Then again, there would be significant benefits, too…
But the fact remains that no self-respecting woman can let a declaration of love go unanswered. So I practically had to agree with Captain’s suggestion. Yes, I told him, we should cool things off a bit to re-balance the throuple. I announced I was going on a “Captain diet” and set the duration at two weeks.
And then, almost immediately, my obsessive thoughts about Captain, Captain, Captain started to dissipate. Hubs warmed up to me and gave me some sweet, tender loving. I relaxed and stopped feeling ever-anxious. And now Captain and Hubs are reasserting their bond. I’m reasserting my independence from that pesky Cupid, LOVE. And the manzanita bush in the desert has put down a fresh, sturdy root.
Hopefully, two weeks will be long enough to get my head on straight about this.
I’ll keep you posted.
What happened next? Read Chronicle of an Open Marriage #34. Find all of my stories about opening our marriage on the list below, or about sex in general on this one. Get an email whenever I publish. And have a comfy cozy day.