My first wife and I explored non-monogamy. Back in 2006 people thought it was bizarre.
After growing up in a culture that stigmatized sexuality, my first marriage was non-monogamous.
I met Kelly in 2004, and it was quickly apparent to both of us that we were going to get married. Around Christmas, Kelly said, “Don’t propose until after I graduate in May!” If she hadn’t, I’d probably have proposed by New Year’s Eve, and she would have said yes, because we knew we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. We also knew already in those first few months together that we didn’t want to be monogamous.
For one, we still had so much of our lives to live. I was 25, and she turned 22, 12 days after we met. And while she’d had a bit of sexual experience, I had none whatsoever. I’d never even been kissed. She was my first for basically everything, and while I had no doubt that I wanted to marry her, I couldn’t help realize that marrying her was supposed to mean that she would be my last as well. I was supposed to promise that I would go to my grave without ever knowing what sex was like with anyone else but her. And that made me uncomfortable.
Not miserable, nothing that wasn’t dwarfed by how happy I was to be with her, just a little uncomfortable.
We both grew up in a culture that stigmatized sexuality
One of the things that brought us together was our shared trauma from being raised in a culture that didn’t just condemn sexuality but essentially denied that sexual pleasure existed.
With each other, we’d finally found someone to whom we could safely admit that, actually, we kind of liked having orgasms and all the various activities that tended to produce them. It was such a relief to be able to say that. To be able to talk about the fact that sometimes we got horny, that we masturbated and fantasized and lusted and envied, that what we fantasized about was not the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and that our orgasms didn’t seem to have anything whatsoever to do with Christ’s love. With each other, we could talk about our actual fantasies, whether they were sanctioned by the Council of Trent or whatever.
Another of the primary ways we connected was through our fascination with pop culture, so inevitably, we got around to sharing which celebrities we fantasized about. And we quickly realized something: if either of us ever got the chance to act on our fantasies, if Kelly had an actual opportunity to have sex with Jude Law, or I had an actual opportunity to have sex with Justine Henin-Hardenne, then not only would the other spouse be OK with it, they would be genuinely happy. We loved each other. If our partner was able to fulfill one of their dreams, why would we do anything except cheer them on?
And then, of course, not all of our crushes were celebrities, and we weren’t going to lie about that, either. Obviously, we had crushes on people we knew in real life, people who might return our interest in intimate physical interaction, unlike Justine Henin-Hardenne. So why should we try to prevent that from happening? Everybody says it would be bad, but everybody also said it would be bad to have premarital sex, and premarital sex was fucking amazing. So, why not just let each other have sex with other people? Even people who weren’t in The Talented Mr. Ripley?
When I asked myself that question, I couldn’t find any downside. It just seemed like another aspect of the question to which nobody ever seemed to have a satisfying answer: Why is there this special category for behavior involving genitals?
Sex with someone else wasn’t a dealbreaker for us
Having sex be the dividing line between OK and not OK seemed so random. Why should it be unbearable if Kelly got drunk and hooked up with someone attractive at a party? Whereas, if she was spending all of her time with that other person, prioritizing them over me, keeping them secret from me, but never having sex with them, that’s not cheating? If she creates a profile on OkCupid and puts “Looking for my next husband” in her bio, that’s supposed to bother me less than if she went on a work trip and hooked up with a coworker one night? Doing that wouldn’t mean she wanted to leave me. I knew that for a fact, because I could imagine myself having sex with all kinds of other people, and in none of those fantasies did I want my relationship with Kelly to end.
So, since we didn’t see a point in being monogamous, we decided not to be. In the Bay Area in 2023, that’s not hugely shocking, but in Cincinnati in 2006, people thought it was bizarre. We didn’t tell many people about it, but we didn’t hide it, either, and even our friends were skeptical. Which was baffling to us, but then, we were used to being lonely geniuses, misunderstood by those who were beneath us.
