Any discussion of the sexual behavior of others is, in my opinion, very often paved with bad intentions. How quickly such talk devolves into gossip, judgment, speculation: who did what with whom?! This is also what makes such things positively irresistible as topics of conversation, of course — especially if the details are oriented towards the scandalous or “alternative.” Well, the good news is that for those who are game for this type of kiki, we’ve entered a bit of a golden age.
In an time when it often seems that privacy has been rendered obsolete, self-disclosure of highly personal matters is the norm, and just about everything is freighted with potential to bear the flag for a new (and overdue) construct of gender politics, it sometimes feels like we have been set up to talk about people’s sex lives just about all the time – and perhaps not surprisingly, of specific interest in this category seems to be the still-racy (in most circles) subject of polyamory or non-monogamy. In the event that you missed the New York Magazine cover story about it January, know that in just the last thirty some-odd days, the venerable New York Times published a op-ed that dealt with the issue plus a feature on a 20-person “polycule”; these joined an earlier review of More: Memoir of an Open Marriage and a separate profile of its author, Molly Roden Winter. NB: let this serve as my formal apology to everyone I harangued about reading this book. There was just a lot to process and I desired – ahem – multiple partners with whom I could discuss it.
Individual results may vary.
Look – I’m old enough to know that just because media outlets say “everyone” is doing something doesn’t necessarily make it so but not so old that I don’t recall one of the very first principles we are taught as children: even if “everyone” really is doing something doesn’t mean we need to do it too. But I am curious if there is something to this particular something. Because following my conversations with people who had read the book and those who knew of it, quite a few revealed that they knew couples who were exploring or fully in the midst of open relationships. And just last summer, I attended a dinner party where the people in attendance began talking about acquaintances who are known – okay, maybe more like rumored – within their community to swap partners. Though this was subsequently discussed with a heavy dose of wide-eyed amusement, it seemed clear that this intel was not regarded as any kind of secret amongst their larger social network. Was this how people used to regard homosexuality (“He’s a confirmed bachelor”), living “in sin” or even pregnancy beyond the structure of wedlock (“can you believe she’s having a baby on her own?”), I wondered? Are all things that used to be light taboos destined to one day scandalize almost no one, become no big deal? And if so, Is It Okay to Be Non-Monogamous now? Just the evolution of relationships, an marital arrangement like any other? Have your cake, eat it…then eat someone else’s cake, if that’s what you want.
It's certainly possible this is actually not any innovation of the 21st Century but that it’s been going on forever, and before we just called it by another name – or didn’t feel the need to call it anything at all. Maybe the difference is just the proliferation of platforms like this one, which has allowed people to label, diagnose, self-identify and emote their ways toward audiences that were not accessible before, or because propriety dictated it was much better to keep such things to yourself. Or could it be that in addition to the obvious titillation, we gravitate toward such a subject by virtue of how naturally it lends itself to debate, and without much research? On where, unlike many arguments you might stumble into these days, our feelings are the point.
As you might imagine, I don’t personally ascribe the rise of open relationships to extending marriage rights to same-sex couples, or giving women more freedom (enjoy it while you can, ladies!) or everyone’s favorite scapegoats: trans people and drag queens. But it does seem to me fitting that a culture so clearly immersed in a crisis of attention, where we routinely foster intimacy with strangers, adulation seems to be the only thing that can be relied upon to feel good and we cannot – and need not – focus on anything for too long would eventually find its way to the perfect embodiment of all these compensations: the affair.
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have divined from either the absence of pictures of a anyone who might remotely appear to be a romantic partner or abundance of pictures of my obese cat (and cats in general), you may have correctly guessed that I am single. And despite years of trying – I’m not afraid of the word – desperately to fashion long-term commitments out of a bunch of misguided relationship notions and faulty relationship parts, I abandoned the pursuit of coupledom around the time I turned 40 and did not look back. I don’t share this as a prescription for happiness – my situation is not for everyone – but rather to say that not only do I feel unqualified to extol virtues of (or hacks for) remaining fully committed to one partner in body or spirit for a lifetime, I will be the first to admit: I don’t know how you people do it. I will allow that when a partner is really pushing your buttons, wanting to sleep with someone else – doing it, even – seems like one of the few pressure valves that might at least keep you from considering hitting them over the head with a frying pan, Tom and Jerry-style, emotional consequences be damned.
I can also accept that some people who pursue non-monogamy have large and diverse erotic appetites, or realize that they and their partners have a mutual interest in exploring this dimension of their togetherness. Who am I to say? Not only do I lack the training or sample access to determine if this is a sincere or wise approach, does it matter what I think? All I do know is that I would probably not respond kindly to any similarly uncredentialed and uninvited person who submitted their diagnoses of say, why I have chosen to live without what they (and most people) so actively seek. As long as laws are not broken and boundaries are respected, I do believe the policy should be – if you will forgive the obvious pun – different strokes for different folks.
However, the narratives on offer in More and 2022’s Open: A Memoir of Love, Liberation and Non-monogamy by Rachel Krantz (yes, I read them both) still gave me a good deal of pause. While the experiences were obviously very, very different, I found surprising companionship with periods in my own life – not within the confines of long-term relationship, of course, but related to some of the emblems, hazards and side effects that both women describe in theirs. Chief amongst them was how they used these outside things to process what I believe to be one of adulthood’s more bracing reckonings: no matter what our other blessings may be, none of us gets to achieve permanent immunity to the emotional hardship of boredom, loneliness, stagnation, disappointment and regret. This may be somewhat easier to metabolize if you are alone, because I can tell you that many people naturally assume this is your lot anyway. But the corker, of course, is that so many of us were raised to believe that these are precisely the states that the lifelong bond with another person will fix.
There is no question that these are hard things to feel, but I have no doubt that they can be even harder to talk about – especially with the person who was supposed to be our deliverance. So once the sleight of hand has been revealed, it makes perfect sense that many of us would reach for something to distract, elate or numb, and God knows that whether it’s tinged with romance, lust, kink or even love, sex performs these duties extraordinarily well – for a time, at least. But most of the time, of course, everything new becomes old again, and instead of addressing one problem, we’ve taken out loans on a series of new ones. It seems at every turn, we are doomed to face more harsh, real world truths, and this particular one is that every indulgence we pursue has some price tag affixed, even if we don’t see it right away.
I once counseled someone who was seriously contemplating an affair to consider finding a way to convert all the energy of the crush then on the table into the relationship waiting at home. Easy for me to say, you might think, but this was a person I cared about deeply, so I was invested in the outcome, as well as mindful of the potential for collateral damage. When I hear of people who wish to reestablish the magic of an official, before God and witnesses love story’s infancy and/or adolescence — because who wouldn’t? — I always wonder how feasible it seems to this: to trick yourself with the possibly less alluring but likely more sustainable option of attempting to kindle a spark within the relationship instead of outside it, by looking at this person you know so well with the focus and excitement we spend on ones we have just met. This seems like the paper straw of intimate partnerships: not as sleek or efficient as plastic, but not as dangerous either – mercifully impotent against even the most fragile ecosystem, unable to outlast its usefulness by eons, or prevent the proliferation of new living things.
As a romantically unattached person, I would never say that marriage is more important than other relationships, but I often find some of the arguments resolutely against it – its inherently partriarchal foundation, its capitalist origins – tiresome. I hear reported many good things about it too, and see nothing stopping any persons from defining their respective individual marriages and their rules for themselves. What seems true no matter how traditional or non-traditional the union, however, could be said to almost any undertaking: consistency is a more reliable adhesive than novelty, and though it needn’t only serve the project of fidelity, it should always apply to how we communicate with the people we are bound to: with honesty, with acceptance, with respect.
May the alternatives be ever in your favor.
I'm all about people exploring what feels healthy and invigorating in their relationships, but in my experience, I haven't been given the same space/grace from those in open or poly relationships as someone in the dating world. As a single person in SF, there was a time (about 10-12 years ago) when the dating apps were at least 50% full of people in open or poly relationships and looking for someone to join them. Again, my experience, but being cis-hetero I'd had my settings open to men, but women would reach out to me, disregarding my preference. Then there were men approaching me saying "I have a girlfriend, but we're open..." I never knew quite how to respond to this. I wanted to say, "okay...I'm not" or perhaps "So....you want me to be your sidepiece?" I felt that as someone looking for a committed, monogamous relationship I was either a) close-minded for not considering an invitation to be poly, b) only deserving of being someone's 2nd, instead of their 1st, c) totally selfish for not wanting to open myself up to being responsible for bigger emotions from more people. When I would politely decline, the person would make some judgement of me — like, why wouldn't I want THEM and their SO too? In chatting with my girlfriends, I found this to be true among most of us... Lots of men claiming to be "poly", who were essentially miserable trying to make it work. And why? We theorized that in San Francisco at the time a lot of tech bros were making a LOT of money. So some geeky guy who's never been cool suddenly has money and is living an aspirational lifestyle, and while they want the girlfriend they've never had (because, geeky) they also really wanted to fuck around. I just never understood why you wouldn't just date around and sleep with people casually instead of trying to lock someone down as your "primary" girlfriend only to then sleep with people casually. It just made no sense to me, and again, the results I saw from people in poly relationships was a lot of heartache and confusion. People don't seem to realize that you need to communicate EVEN MORE than with just one person. It's demanding and requires maturity that I'm not sure people realize. I know I'm likely incapable of that. Also, when I'm in love I only want that person...no one else.