Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage (12 page)

Brian had pursued other women from the very beginning, including me. He once pulled me onto his lap in the back seat of their minivan while she was driving and Christopher was in the front seat. I played it off at the time, in an effort to protect Elizabeth’s feelings. But finally, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I confronted her with the fact that her husband’s

passes at me were making me uncomfortable. Our discussion marked the beginning of the end of our friendship.

“It has nothing to do with you. It’s him,” she told me. “He does this wherever we go. I hate it. I’d leave him if it weren’t for the kids.” So she enabled him. And when our friendship took a quick nosedive after that conversation, I realized that cutting me out of the picture was the only way Elizabeth knew how to cope. I was crushed. She had been a good friend and a lovely person stuck in a rotten situation, and she and I both got the short end of the stick.

I imagine that part of what Elizabeth couldn’t deal with was her realization—along with the confirmation that I knew it and saw it—that I exemplified what Brian wanted. For me, dealing with being that woman—the one men want—is no easy task. It stems from the fact that I’m open about my sexuality. It means that I’ve had to put up with being labeled a slut for being sexually sure of myself and refusing to apologize for having a healthy interest in sex. And I’m not talking about junior high and high school—I’ve been treated this way by my well-educated, cultured, well- traveled adult neighbors in an upscale neighborhood.

Christopher and I never played out the virgin/whore dichotomy, perhaps because I was happy to be both the virgin and the whore, just like I had been before our marriage. There’s nothing wrong with being and wanting to be both, as long as that urge comes from an authentic place and is not forced on you. I’m happy baking cookies—sometimes.

And I’m happy being dominant in bed—sometimes. Dealing with the mixed messages and the shoulds and should-nots surrounding relationships and sex is not about whether any given thing is right or wrong. It’s about whether it works for the couple. I’m not talking about things that are quantifiably deviant, like bestiality or pedophilia or anything nonconsensual; I’m talking about two adults conducting their marriage honestly, in ways that are appropriate for them. If Elizabeth wanted to be only the “virgin” (truly wanted it, that is, rather than feeling compelled because of societal pressures about being a “good girl”), then why should she have been judged and demeaned, especially by a husband who knew exactly what he was getting into?

When I was friends with Elizabeth and Brian, I was already very confused about where my own marriage was heading. Surrounded by so many couples who seemed static, if not miserable, I’d look at myself with Christopher and think,
Hey, we’re doing okay.
He did plenty around the house. He cooked and was an equal parent to Emily. I still felt like the primary housekeeper and childcare provider, but I had comparatively little to complain about. Even so, I was feeling terribly alone and undersexed. I wanted him to want to cuddle with me and watch romantic comedies and chat and dissect a single conversation for hours, and I wanted him to ravish me. I wanted it all.

Around that time, my suspicions that perhaps I’d married the wrong man, which I’d started having after I broke up with

Grace, began to creep back into my consciousness. Maybe if I had found my Prince Charming, I wouldn’t be having this problem. But the most outstanding issue that plagued me, day in and day out, was my growing conviction that something was wrong with me. Here I was, with this guy who had all these great qualities, so why the hell couldn’t I just be happy? I had what lots of women could only dream of. I knew by then that there was no such thing as having it all, so why couldn’t I just be satisfied with having an awful lot? Maybe I was just some sort of aberration, or was simply impossible to please. Could it be that nothing would ever be enough for me? Was dissatisfaction simply my natural state of being?

When I shared my woes with my friends, they offered all kinds of additional reasons: Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place. Maybe I just wasn’t the monogamous type. Maybe I was a lesbian. But whenever I considered what leaving my husband would actually mean, what finding and marrying another man might be like, or how spending my life with a woman would feel, I became more conflicted and unhappy. It wasn’t that I wanted someone instead of my husband; I wanted something in addition to what we had, something that Christopher couldn’t offer me. I was craving sexual freedom, an outlet for my sensual needs. And it was increasingly apparent, especially since he and I had had some heart-to-hearts about what each of us wanted, that I craved more than what Christopher or any other
one
person could provide for me—I wanted variety.

I began to think it was unfair—ludicrous, really—to expect my husband to fulfill me on every level. Outside of the bedroom, I don’t have those standards for him. We have different friends for different things. I have friends with whom I go to social events and bars. I have friends to whom I turn when things get rough, even if I haven’t spoken to them in months. I have friends I exercise with. Friends I shop with. Friends with whom I trade off childcare responsibilities. It’s not like elementary school. I don’t have one best friend; I have many dear friends. I’m lucky and grateful for that. And I have found amazing happiness in knowing whom to lean on when, and not mistaking my favorite drinking buddy with my soul-baring confidant. But the rules are different in the bedroom. When your partner isn’t enough, there’s no socially acceptable solution. You’re expected to just deal with it. You’re not supposed to (read: allowed to) go out and find someone else to take care of the things that aren’t available, or that are lacking, or that you’re missing. Of course, people do—many people, in fact—but they do so secretly and guiltily.

I spent a lot of time trying to process why I felt the way I did. I didn’t have a strained or problematic relationship with my father. I wasn’t sexually abused. I didn’t think I had a particularly addictive personality. The more I talked to people about my dilemma, the less secure I felt that lots of other people out there were just like me. It was just the opposite, in fact. Why was I different? Too many male genes

and bad movies? Too much porn? Or what if I was perfectly normal, but part of a group of women (or
people,
for that matter) who were just too afraid to admit to who they were and what they wanted? I didn’t get too far into this train of thought before I realized that this group I’d identified includes nearly everyone—everyone who has ever thought,
I love my partner. I love our relationship. And I want to sleep with other people.

As my attitude about my sex life got increasingly worse, my dissatisfaction spilled over into the rest of my life and affected everything I did. At the time, though, I wasn’t self- aware enough to realize the full extent of what was going on. It should have been obvious: If you’re having trouble at work, your family’s affected. If you’re having trouble with your spouse, your work’s impacted. If you’re having trouble with your kids, your relationships with your spouse and your work suffer. Everything in life is connected, and sex is no small part of that equation. But for me, it was one part that I believed I did—and should—have complete control over.

Part of my difficulty was that all the things I was mulling over were based on my own experiences, and I didn’t have many friends I could share my thoughts with. Sadly, I felt scared about discussing them with Christopher. I didn’t want him to think I was nuts, and I didn’t want to lose him, especially if what I was going through was just a matter of realigning my brain and getting with the program. But too much evidence was telling me that getting with the program

wasn’t what I needed. So I decided to pursue that evidence and do more fact gathering.

My quest started with books about relationships and marriage, sexuality and monogamy. People look at mar- riage as the “right” choice, or, alternately, as a moral or good choice, because it’s assumed that human beings will be monogamous upon committing to this arrangement. Of course, more than ample proof exists that marriage doesn’t do much to enforce monogamy. “There is no ques- tion about monogamy’s being natural. It isn’t,” writes Da- vid P. Barash in his book
The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People
.
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Science tells us that monogamy is not part of our biological makeup, yet we pursue it vehemently, even as people everywhere fail mis- erably at it. So why the wide-sweeping assumption? The answer is the same as it is for so many of life’s big ques- tions: That’s just the way it is. There’s a reason why Bruce Hornsby has sold so many albums.

The reality is that we have it all wrong. According to Barash, “before the cultural homogenization that came with Western colonialism, more than three-quarters of all human societies were polygynous.”
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The social order is what dragged us into this mess. Science writer Ker Than notes, “Of the roughly 5,000 species of mammals, only 3 to 5 percent are known to form lifelong pair bonds. This select group includes beavers, otters, wolves, some bats and foxes, and a few hoofed animals.”
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And even those mammals in

monogamous pairs tend to practice social, rather than sexual, monogamy, as do the known monogamous creatures in other species.

It’s not just the hard sciences that steer us away from the idea that monogamy is central to our existence; social science indicates it as well. My conversation with my father that night had launched me into a further investigation of what I already both knew and suspected about the origins of marriage. And though what I discovered only further proved that knowledge and those suspicions, I was happy for the reminder of just how far from the truth our commonly held conceptions about marriage really are, as it bolstered the arguments that had been ruminating in my head: Marriage was strictly about money until the last one hundred years, when romantic love was introduced into the equation. For most of history, “marriage was an economic and political transaction,”
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explains researcher, author, and professor Stephanie Coontz in her book
Marriage, a History.
It wasn’t about love or sex or finding The One. It was about creating family alliances and building a labor force to run the farm. “Only in the seventeenth century did a series of political, economic, and cultural changes in Europe begin to erode the older functions of marriage, encouraging individuals to choose their mates on the basis of personal affection.”
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Sexually monogamous marriages are relatively new, historically speaking, and anthropologists regard why they ever stuck as
the
social standard as a mystery, despite our

blind adherence to its dictates. So it’s not surprising that we’re failing at the rate we are.

In
Against Love,
Kipnis gives credit to our pre–romantic marriage ancestors: “At least they didn’t devote themselves to trying to sustain a fleeting experience past its shelf life or transform it into the basis of a long-term relationship.”
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This idea resonated with me completely. The problem wasn’t with me; it was with the institution. The one-size- fits-no-one concept of marriage comes not from some longstanding tradition, but instead from . . . literature. “A number of historians consider our version of romantic love a learned behavior that became fashionable only in the late eighteenth century, along with the new fashion of novel reading,”
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writes Kipnis.

People are in love with love. Any number of Hollywood blockbusters or
New York Times
bestsellers prove that undeniably. But does the concept actually represent how people truly do experience love? Sure, plenty of us manage to fall in love. But just how sustainable is that fairytale high? Most of us can point to examples that offer us a glimmer of hope: that elderly couple in the produce section, holding hands as they pick out fresh tomatoes; or your own grandparents, who have been married for fifty years and grin at each other gleefully at their golden-anniversary dinner. The veneer is lovely, as is the standard it sets. But the truth is that we know nothing of the pain they’ve endured and the sacrifices they’ve made to get to this place. And yet

those moments and people, those “examples” and cultural references, are precisely what fan the flames of our obsession to “become one” with another person. “You complete me,” Jerry says to his love interest, Dorothy, in the movie
Jerry Maguire
. Those just might be three of the most dangerous words ever spoken on film.

What if monogamous, romantic marriage is nothing more than a fad gone too far? I liked big ’80s hair as much as the next girl, but I didn’t want it anymore once it passed its prime. I was fully ready to let it go. What if, collectively, as a culture, we decided that big hair is where it’s at, now and for always? You’d wake up in another thirty years and still be perming and teasing and hairspraying. You might eventually start to feel like something that requires so much maintenance cannot be natural, that it might not be the best thing for you. But all around you, people would be looking at you in dismay—even shock—if you attempted a sleek bob, or if you were to wear your hair in braids or a French twist. You’d be a pariah because anything other than big hair simply wouldn’t do, no matter how irritating, problematic, and downright bad for your hair its upkeep might have become for countless women. All around you, women might be failing at sustaining this hairstyle, and yet the whole time, people would be telling you that all you should be aspiring to have is perfect big hair.

Although it’s impossible to get your hands on any concrete, scientifically sound numbers for several reasons,

including the fact that so many people lie about infidelity even in anonymous surveys, it’s commonly reported that 40 to 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. Peggy Vaughan, author of
The Monogamy Myth: A Personal Handbook for Dealing with Affairs
and founder of the website DearPeggy. com, explains, “The reality is that monogamy is not the norm, not by today’s standards, anyway.
Conservative
estimates are that 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an extramarital affair.”
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Vaughan also says that the statistics become “even more significant when we consider the total number of marriages involved, since it’s unlikely that all the men and women having affairs happen to be married to each other. If even half of the women having affairs (or 20 percent) are married to men not included in the 60 percent having affairs, then at least one partner will have an affair in approximately 80 percent of all marriages.”
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Exact numbers we might not have. But we do have the story those numbers tell, inconsistencies and all. The real “norm,” then, as Vaughan herself explains, is infidelity.