By: Anonymous
My idea of relationships has always been that while lovely, are not something I really cared to be a part of. I love freedom, exploration, travelling and learning about people by sleeping with them. Through my teens and early twenties I spent a lot of time seeking validation through sex. I had the idea that marriage would be a trap for me, and that while I may find love and someone to be with, it would likely always be temporary—and I wanted it that way.
I wanted temporary lovers to learn my body, to excite me, to pleasure me, and to tell me their story. Sex makes people vulnerable. It makes people interesting to speak with, and I always seemed to ask my sexual companions deeper questions about life. I have made a number of men tear up by allowing them to open up during post-sex pillow talk. I have never been one for small talk, and I have often used sex as a tool to learn intimate details about people.
My marriage is a year old, but our conversations about non-monogamy are nearly as long as the time my husband and I have been together. We are both straight passing, which allows us the comfort to not have prejudice against us, however we have both fantasised about sleeping with other genders. We have both had far less experiences in non-straight scenarios. We decided we want to explore that both together, and separately. While I have had a lot of sexual experiences, my husband hasn’t, and I have always been keen to encourage exploration.
We teetered on the edge of opening our relationship- ultimately coming to the conclusion that he was uncomfortable with mitigating his jealousy and confronting his monogamous heteronormative programming—that is, up until the past 18 months.
Our first foray into the idea of opening up stemmed from my husband’s coming out to me. He told me he was bisexual and very interested in the idea of having sex with other men. He admitted that he had been speaking with men for the entirety of our relationship at that point (a year in) which took time to process, and took many conversations about what trust looked like to us. While we worked through the betrayal of him speaking to and sending and receiving other people’s nudes my idea of sexual exploration came up a number of times. He was hesitant because he recognized that he may not be as comfortable (yet) with the idea of me being intimate with others as I was with the idea of him fooling around safely.
Over the past year he and I have spoken about what opening up looked like to us. Because he wasn’t as comfortable with me having my own hookups initially, I didn’t. My ability to manage my own jealousy was more refined due to the casual nature of most of my previous encounters and relationships. I wanted to ensure his needs were met, and that I wasn’t bringing unnecessary stress and anxiety into the situation. He had a couple of encounters with folks, getting more secure in his sexuality. Finally after a number of months apart, due to his work, we decided to embark on the journey of seeing a sexologist in our city. We were ready to learn how to ethically, sustainability, and comfortably proceed with our non-monogamy.
I looked into couples counsellors around our city and no bio resonated with me because our relationship is strong we have no issues communicating these days and we feel secure in that way. I decided to research and see if there were any sexologists in our city. I wanted to look for someone who had experiences in mitigating different relationship dynamics. In my search I found someone who looked promising. His biography, which was a very compelling video captivated my attention. He seemed open, warm and was extremely affirming. On his website there were key phrases that aligned with our views. I spoke to my husband and we agreed that he seemed right for us.
Our sexologist broke us open right away. He asked about childhood, he asked us about our first experience with partnered sex and much more. He firstly made us write down a set of “rules” for our openness, which turned out to be a wonderful practice between my husband and I. We have seen him individually and together in order to have a more honest and concrete dialogue. This practice of seeing a sexologist has completely changed the way my husband interacts with our open relationship. While we spoke of opening up for a long time, he always felt like he was holding back, or holding something in. I always felt like I had to be cautious in what I was seeking to ensure his comfort. After my husband’s second one-on-one, he became more confident, and willing to be more emotional. We keep what we would like to ourselves, but whatever they spoke about helped immensely. Since seeing our sexologist it seems he has become more secure in both our relationship, and the fact that I enjoy seeking sex and friendships with others.
Now, together we have threesomes and foursomes, and separately we do what we like. We use many different apps where folks are more open minded than what we may be able to find in our day to day. Feeld is an app that we have had a great amount of luck with. We have a couple that we sleep with, as well as a woman that we sleep with (together and individually). It’s an app that allows you to link your partner(s), which is fantastic for folks like us that are just ethically open, polyam folks, and people looking to join into a couple or a polyam dynamic. This app allowed us to search together for couples, for group sex and more. We have come out with a few folks we see more regularly. (Come out?) Individually I use the app HER because my interest in hookups or friends with benefits leans much further to women, enby, and trans folks than it does to men. My husband often uses Grindr and has met up with a few men that are looking for the same thing he is.
For us non-monogamy has enriched our own sex life. My desire has increased because we have variety in our life. (This isn’t to say that our sex life was dull or lacklustre before, because it definitely was not). In reading literature on open relationships and seeing our sexologist, we have become so secure in what we want. For now we are open. In the future that may not be the case. We may ebb and flow through a series of different stages, but for now, our openness has awakened something within us that is insatiable, loving, fun and adventurous. I wouldn’t do it any other way.