Why An Open Marriage Might Work for Some Women
Chronicle of an Open Marriage #8
When I first suggested we open our marriage, I thought of it as a way to get my husband off my back. It seemed to me like he wanted sex constantly. And it seemed to me that I was obligated to give it to him, despite my rational understanding that just wasn’t true (or fair or loving or respectful or kind). Naturally, that sense of obligation was a massive buzzkill, leading to me wanting sex even less. Don’t even ask about orgasm. What’s that?
Compounding our problem was my husband’s personality. He’s constitutionally unable to have an intimate talk. He feels like a deer in the headlights if you so much as look at him. When you ask what he’s feeling, he says he doesn’t know. And he’s not lying.
So of course, for many years I thought our sexual problems were his fault. I was a wonderful person and he was an asshole. He’d want sex. I wouldn’t. He’d withdraw. I’d get mad. He’d stay withdrawn until eventually I’d get so upset and anxious that I’d approach him for sex — hating us both for my performance — because I just couldn’t take his cold shoulder anymore. I needed his affection and love. (Which, coincidentally, is what he’d say he needed from me.) And 100 percent of this dysfunctional cycle was his fault. Right?
My awakening
But here’s the thing. Almost the very second he downloaded an app to find other people to hook up with, I started feeling more sexual desire. We’ve had this open arrangement for about a month an a half now. He’s had dates with other people only three or four times. But in that same period, we’ve had an abundance of rousing, wet, delicious, and fully orgasmic sex. Our marital bed has been revived.
Why?
Am I a “cuckquean?” Am I someone who gets turned on by the idea of her husband having sex with other people? I don’t think so. He asked if I want to watch. I don’t. And although I want him to tell me some details, so I don’t feel like anything deceptive or sneaky is going on, I don’t want very many. I don’t want him to describe his encounters. I don’t want to see pictures.
Am I jealous? Sometimes. Just a little. But when I am, it doesn’t stimulate my libido. When I feel insecure, I express my vulnerability and ask him for reassurance. Then he gives it to me, and that feels unusually sweet and loving. I feel heard and taken care of. He moves in close. These are all excellent things for our marriage, but don’t explain my heightened appetite.
Am I trying to deplete him so he doesn’t have any energy for his other lovers? No. I don’t think so. I don’t really think that’s even possible. Of course I’d like him to prefer sex with me, but that’s not a matter of quantity. Our sex feels uniquely ours; I don’t see a connection between us and his other partners.
So what is it?
What I’ve come to believe, with the help of our counselor, is that I’m responding to a burden lifted. The old-fashioned, conservative, backwards, plain wrong, but widely accepted expectation that I should meet all of my husband’s sexual needs has simply vanished. Poof!
And when I’m no longer suffering under the oppression of my perceived “wifely duty,” then my long-suppressed natural sexual hunger explodes.
The multiplier of trauma
I realize there are a lot of women — or at least some — who are unlike me. For these healthier iterations of my gender, sex is natural and fulfilling and always has been. But for many, many women, sex has been the source of lifelong trauma. I wrote more about that in this piece.
Because of my sexual history, and because I married a man who takes our culture’s masculine “ideal” of taciturnity to an extreme, we were caught in an impenetrable trap. I believed horrible things about sex when we got married which he wasn’t able to refute and I couldn’t dismiss.
- Sex is a tool of oppression
- Sex is used to control me
- Sex is used to debase me
- Sex is used to overpower me
- Sex with my body has nothing to do with loving my soul
How was I supposed to unlearn these maxims when we couldn’t even talk about them? Hubs had his own trauma to deal with — the masculine conditioning that made him feel alienated from other people, unable to express vulnerability, or share feelings, or even know what feelings he had. He certainly wasn’t equipped to deal with mine.
And it’s not like he was the only one who didn’t know what was going on under the hood. I didn’t understand my feelings either. In my American culture, where women are encouraged to be sexy but not sexual, I thought I had a healthy amount of sexual desire. I certainly didn’t consider myself “frigid” or a “prude,” those insults that I’d heard cast on unappealing women in my teen years. The last thing I wanted to be was unappealing. Because if I was an unappealing woman, where was my worth?
Our two gender-specific dysfunctions fit together like a key in a lock, but instead of opening our hearts, they kept them firmly closed.
The magic of a new path
My increased level of desire after opening our marriage has been a complete surprise to me. I didn’t expect it to happen. But it did. And so far, I consider it the best thing about this experiment.
But overall, perhaps the actual best thing is that we’re trying something completely new. Maybe we didn’t need to open the marriage to reap these benefits. Maybe we could have decided to live on a boat, or move to Finland, or join the Peace Corps., or…anything! Maybe the point is that we care enough about each other to re-imagine our lives— to go all in.
Now here’s the kicker. We’re an older couple. And everything that “they” told us about older people was wrong. We’re not adverse to change. We’re ripe for it! We’re not constrained by having to meet the needs or expectations of children, or bosses, or friend groups. We can just please ourselves. Time is running out, and we don’t want to waste it. So it turns out that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks, after all. And she’ll be a lot happier if you do.
What happens next? Read Chronicle of an Open Marriage #9. 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. Yay!
