Photo: Fe Ilya

I applaud Geneveve Levin for her candid and reflective essay about her experience with a married man in an open relationship. In this case, my husband.

To continue the conversation she initiated, I thought I would pipe in. I am glad she wrote about her experience–she is right that this can be a sensitive topic, but it is a great one to give more breathing room to.

What I have found being in an open relationship is that folks are curious about it, occasionally inspired, sometimes threatened, and at times, slightly baffled. I am neither proselytizer nor sage, just a woman who prefers to do things in a way that makes sense to me. For me and Ryan, this manifests in the freedom to be enriched by human connection and intimacy in all forms.

For us, desire and connection and sensuality are positive and creative emotions. We believe that it is possible to be in a loving and committed relationship and still experience those feelings with another person. And that those feelings contribute to the person we are to each other and enhance the bond that we have.

Commitment Vs. Monogamy

Ryan is no doubt my guy. I love walking the world with him. Raising a child with him. Constantly learning to communicate with him. Dreamily mapping out our plans and life aspirations together. This, I am committed to.

Photo: nattu

But very little about monogamy makes sense to me. It never has. That intimacy and desire and connection should have a finite and limited application simply contradicts everything I believe about the way I want to move through the world.

I choose not to walk a preordained path. I want to be open to every possible switchback, curve or hidden trail that reveals itself to me. And I want to make my own decisions about how I experience them in my life. I want this for Ryan, too.

Our belief system is about non-possessiveness, but explicit in this understanding is that we are a family, too, beholden to each other to make choices and decisions that enrich and sustain our family life. Having an open relationship is just one way that we experience our convictions that we are each truly our own person, with our own smorgasbord of experiences ahead of us.

So Ryan having the opportunity to spend a connected and intimate evening with Geneveve, sexual or otherwise, sounded like fun. Geneveve is an amazing and beautiful woman. Ryan and I have both always thought so. She is fun and adventurous, lives her life close to her values, has great politics, and is the kind of person that I like to know.

Neither of us knew if she had a partner, or if she would even be interested, or if he would even be interested, but we both got a charge out of the possibility. Positive sex is good for us–it can be joyful and healing, sensual and playful. And when experienced with trust and integrity, it can make us feel alive and open and yes, a little like writing love poems to the sudden brightness of the day.

Working Out the Kinks

For me and Ryan, the choices we have made about our relationship are empowering. It energizes us and keeps us sexually, spiritually, and emotionally engaged with each other. And not just when we are having experiences with others, but in the everyday delights of loving somebody in a non-possessive way.

Photo: quinn.anya

We have worked at this for a lot of years. I brought the idea to our relationship early on, as it had been something I had been thinking about and experimenting with since my early 20s, but Ryan was the first lover I had who was intrigued and eager to see if it could work.

It was messy early on. We were both working out issues and did not have that solid of a relationship in general, and our trust suffered. We were occasionally sloppy and unskillful in some of our encounters, and this and other things eventually led to our break-up. When much to our surprise we fell in love again several years later, we discovered that we both remained committed to the idea of an open and non-possessive relationship. We have learned a lot since our first go-round.

Ryan and I talk a lot. We have rules. We talk some more. We have great sex. And together we determine the ground rules:

Number one: Our relationship rules supreme. If the dalliances are not enhancing the way we are relating to each other, it is a no-go. Full stop.

Number Two: The third person must be aware of the primary relationship before any serious sexual intriguing begins. (And if you think that this is probably a buzz kill during a sexy moment, you are right. Only the adventurous tend to carry-on…).

Number Three: Full disclosure to each other with as much or little detail as the other one wants. I like to hear the details of Ryan’s experiences, him not so much. For me, I find the idea of another woman finding Ryan sexy a total turn-on. And I find the idea of him making love to another woman, hot too. I know, some people think, weird; I think, lucky.

Number Four: We stay in conversation throughout, checking in with each other and being open to insecurities or fears that may arise.

Number Five: Safe sex.

An Intimate Rendezvous

So, it was in this spirit that I encouraged Ryan to contact Geneveve after he mentioned their encounter on the street. Why not? At the very least she was an old friend he could reconnect with, but perhaps something more was in the works.

Photo: ckaroli

I was rooting for him, and was looking forward to hearing about how the night unfolded. Around two in the morning, he called and said that he was going back to her hotel, and I went back to sleep. He came home around dawn, and he snuggled up and we slept for awhile before we arose and he began to replay the events of the night.

Yeah, they got it on. And as is my custom, I began peppering him with questions and requests for details. Which he gave, sometimes with a little demonstration, and yes, it turned me on.

Over the next few days, I got to witness Ryan’s post-lover shine. His grin was a bit wider, his step a little higher, his days slightly brighter. He and Geneveve began writing emails, some of which he shared with me, where they talked through the sweetness of the night and the ways in which it was inspiring to them. They both wrote about it, talked about it with friends. Overall, a great experience.

Will they get together again? Maybe. I am down with that. I am not worried that he is going to fall in love with her, or she with him. In general, I have found that folks who are open to this sort of thing tend to have an emotional intelligencethat helps keep things playful and simple.

Unconditional Love and Trust

I disagree with one thing Levin said when she asks, “When it comes to love and marriage, can we move into a new structure that threatens the core of our current belief system?” I do not agree with the notion that open relationship threatens our core belief system. This is partly because I think that everyone has to first define for themselves what their core belief systems are–for me and for many monogamous people I know, our core belief systems are defined by unconditional love, trust, communication, and loving each other for both our flaws and our shiny parts.

A commitment to these values is the strongest factor in the success of any relationship, and neither monogamy nor non-monogamy threaten them. But choosing to confront issues of possessiveness and jealousy in relationship is always worthwhile. For me, challenging them feel as natural as challenging mainstream ideas around sex, gender and other forms of sexual politics. It is both a personal choice and a political one.

But it is not for everyone, and I have no desire to try and convert folks. This is simply what makes sense for me.

And luckily, Ryan agrees.