Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Portrait of an Open Marriage. Take Two.
"Portrait of an Open Marriage" is the piece I wrote for Tango Magazine over two years ago that inspired the writing of my book, "Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage." (It was also reprinted on huffingtonpost.com and by Cosmopolitan (Germany)). People have been commenting on the piece at tangomag.com ever since. Some of it very kind. Some of it anything but kind. I have no problem with people's comments, even the negative ones. But since so much has changed for me since I wrote that piece, a lot of the comments are irrelevant. So, I wrote a new piece for Tango called "Portrait of an Open Marriage. Take Two." I hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think.
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Thanks for publishing that piece, and I look forward to seeing the book. It feels good to know that there are others out there taking a path similar to ours.
ReplyDeleteI am male, about 41, and spent 15 years in an unhappy monogamous marriage. Four years ago, while the first marriage was ending, I met and fell in love with a fantastic woman; we were married this past fall, after about three years of a very intense, highly focussed but easy relationship. It is my wife's first marriage.
When I first met her, I strongly suspected that my future wife was bisexual, although the subject never came up directly. Her particular vibe is one of the things that really interested me about her. I've long had an attraction to bisexual women and lesbians, both emotionally and physically.
About three months after the wedding, my wife started discreetly dating a woman. Although I pretty much knew what was going on, and I was fine with it, they were afraid to bring up the subject with me, because they were afraid I would freak out. This led to some perosnal tension for all three of us.
We recently broke through the constraints of social programming, and we are getting along very well as three people. The situation is still evolving, but the term 'polyamorous' certainly applies. My wife and I love each completely, my wife and her girlfriend love each other completely, and my relationship with our 'other' is growing beautifully. The impact on all of our lives has been abolutely positive. We are more secure, more loved and happier than we were a few months ago. Monogamy is way overrated.
I can see fairly clearly why this situation wouldn't work for everyone, nor at every point in life even for people who can do it. But so far there is nothing scary about it at all, just lots of good feelings and a really interesting twist to our lives.
Jenny,
ReplyDeleteI research the web as I am trying to gather information from many sources on relationships. I opened one of the sites and read your article on open marriage and have been fascinated ever since. Two comments:
1) You are a very beautiful woman and if I lived close I would ask you out because you are very complete as a woman and our conversation would be wonderful. 2) I'm also in an open marriage and live in N.CA. I am going to get your book as soon as possible. We cannot out ourselves due to the type of profession we are in and it's unfortunate. Humans ought to be able to choose for themselves what type of marriage or partnership they want without government, religious, or societal concern or interference. I wish you the best and continue to demonstrate that there are other ways to live instead of affairs, cheating, anger, divorce and harm to children. "May the "whomever we think is god" continue to bless you as you live.
Dan