This week I’m continuing my breakdown of conversations PM and I have been having about ethical non-monogamy, that is, consensually allowing for multiple romantic or sexual relationships simultaneously.
And I’m not talking the erotic fantasy that we use to heighten arousal with one another, where we create narratives that might involve different or multiple sexual partners. That’s all hot as fuck but wholly represents fantasy, without any intentions to bring these imaginings into our real life.
Remember, just because our erotic imagination conjures something, it doesn’t mean we have any desire to see it happen IRL. I’ve talked several times in the past about the nature of sexual fantasy and how embracing my untamable erotic psyche has enhanced my married sex life. Not only has it led to a greater openness and communication between PM and me about sex and desire, but we’ve been able to channel these revelations into more passionate, hot AF sex. It’s been good, people. Extremely good.
But more specifically, we’ve been talking about how we might imagine ENM working for us, if at all. So in our case, ethical non-monogamy would encompass a form wherein PM and I remain in a committed relationship with one another but agree to allow for sexual experimentation with other people.
While PM and I have been playfully using these types of encounters in erotic fantasy-sharing and role-playing during sex for some time, only just recently have we been discussing how we feel about the possibility of ENM for us, in real life.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term ethical non-monogamy, or ENM, and the diverse forms of relationships that fall under this umbrella term, you can check out my Part 1 from two weeks back. In Part 1, I not only give a brief, high-level intro to what ENM often looks like, but also how I understand my religious beliefs in relation to ENM. If you haven’t yet read my last two posts, it might be helpful to start there as I’ll build on what I’ve previously wrote as I dive deeper into PM and my conversations. I also found this simple breakdown from the folks at Bellesa to be helpful: “Ethical Non-Monogamy” (from Bellesa Wiki).
But back to the matter at hand…
So, here we are, sitting side by side, staring into our campfire, and I ask PM why he’s so against experimenting with other people.
He’s never given me reasons or explanations. And I know it’s not because he has a moral or ethical problem with consensual non-monogamy in and of itself. Like me, he thinks sex between consenting adults is their business, and that different arrangements work for different people. This much I know. But that is all theory. I want applied knowledge here. I want to know how he feels about the concept with our relationship in mind.
He sighs. You know, that kind of sigh that you make when your child asks you for the umpteenth time if they can do/have/etc. something for which you’ve already told them no. I truly want to stay open and sensitive for this conversation, but hearing this sigh already has my back up. I’m not a child who’s asking to have ice cream right before dinner.
Then PM begins his let’s-distract-Molly-so I-don’t-have-to-talk-about-myself strategy. It’s because I “tend to get obsessed with things,” he tells me. What the heck is that supposed to mean? He’s baiting me, but I refuse to go for it. I take a deep breath and wait for him to elaborate.
He waits a beat, thinking I’ll get angry and get off topic. But I’m onto him. And I’ve got all night. He then says by way of explanation that I operate in about two year cycles. Huh? I have an inkling about where he’s taking this, but I’m not completely sure. So I respond by asking him for an example to clarify. “What do you see me getting obsessed with?” I ask.
His answer? “Sex and erotica.”
Um, okay. I was right. I saw exactly where he was going with this. He’s suggesting that this is all just a phase or is like some project or hobby that I pick up and will inevitably drop. Notice how he hasn’t really addressed the initial question. It’s easier to take the magnifying glass off of himself if he can turn this into some bigger problem of mine.
I decide to put a pin in it for the night. In my mind, he wants me to engage and argue with him about some other vaguely related issue in order to avoid discussing his feelings. The old bait-and-switch.
But PM is incredibly bright and knows me better than anyone else. He’s also selective with his words and not one to waste breath. I’m not giving up, but I decide to give serious thought to his words before responding.
Could he in any way be right about me in this? I ask myself. Am I just a bored housewife looking for a brief distraction from my routine-driven life, and sex just happens to be what’s on the menu for right now — as in, if it wasn’t this, it would’ve been something else?
In addition to being intelligent, PM’s incredibly intuitive, and he’s right about a lot of things, especially when it comes to people. But I think he’s missing the mark on this one. Maybe it’s too close to home, to more personal issues for him to see this one clearly. But as I said, I decide to seriously think about what he’s implying.
And so I ask myself if he could be on to something. He’s implying there’s a danger inherent here. If we were ever to open our marriage in some way, am I in danger of becoming “obsessed,” as he says, with some other person? Or maybe even with the experience itself? I allow myself to sit with these questions and put myself under the microscope.
But I’ll admit, I’m annoyed that he would see me this way. I feel as though he’s painting me as a silly girl with silly obsessions. That if he gives it long enough, I’ll just move on to something else, and I’m so unfocused that I’ll likely forget about the whole thing. I find it distressing that he would think this way about me.
But whatever. I understand that I have a tendency to jump headfirst into new hobbies. I like trying new things, and I’ll put a lot of time and energy into them at first. And that new experience or project might be what my thoughts and energy revolve around for a time, but I don’t necessarily stick with them long term. I have enough self-awareness to recognize this about myself. And I’m okay with that.
I find new experiences and new challenges invigorating, and I know that I often get caught up in visions of grandeur about what I see myself accomplishing or where a project could take me. It’s my inner child delighting in novelty and in play — in taking on something that is just for me, for fun, for my own personal growth, not because I have to. The possibilities of the unknown are exciting to me, even if I often set my visions for them aside. I feel I gain something from each of these endeavors, even if most of them don’t become a permanent part of my life. What can I say? I get excited about learning more about myself and what I’m capable of. *shrugs* But I don’t think that this particular thing is the quite the same. This isn’t just some hobby.
I feel like I’m on a journey. All of the erotic reading and conversations and writing about sex and the experimenting with kink and play — they’re more about learning about myself than anything else. I’m on a path of self-discovery. And it’s not entirely new either. I think this part of me that revels in passion and all things erotic was always there, but I wasn’t even comfortable admitting its existence to myself, never mind showing it to anyone else, even PM.
I’m an anxious, self-conscious person, and I inherited a boat-load of issues concerning sex and pleasure from my conservative religious upbringing. It takes a lot of work to reverse all that negative programming, and it’s been a long process for me to get where I am now.
And PM has expressed as much to me. We’ve been together since we were teenagers and have known one another even longer, and he, too, has seen how much I’ve grown, how much I’ve worked — am working — to both accept myself and to suspend judgment. To be open to consider things that are unconventional, things that I would have viewed negatively in the past. PM has told me that he’s amazed at my personal growth and that he finds the freer, less inhibited me incredibly sexy. *shyly smiles*
So, yeah, it rubs me the wrong way that he would put my journey of sexual self-discovery in the same category as, I don’t know, yoga or wheel throwing.
(I still maintain that I would have made better progress in pottery if I had a Patrick Swayze pressed against my back… *smirks*)
But I tell you what’s even more concerning to me about PM’s accusation of sorts. It’s what it implies about our relationship and how I feel about him. Yes, we’ve been getting it on daily, often times more than once a day, for a year and a half now. And I know that this is a very dramatic change from a decade or more of us being physically intimate on average only twice a week.
But does PM think he’s just a passing whim to me? That having a passionate marriage with him is just some new hobby that I’m bound to leave forgotten in a closet at some point? Does he think that what we have with one another is so shallow that once I got my hands on a new toy, if you will, I’d forget about him?
But, of course, I don’t really know what PM truly thinks or feels, because he doesn’t like to tell me. It’s one of the few things about PM that I find very irksome and is a semi-regular source of frustration in our relationship. Rather than explain how the idea of sexually experimenting with other people makes him feel, he prefers to control the narrative by keeping the focus on me — distract and redirect. I don’t think he’s anticipating that I would give real thought to what he’s said to me.
“Why are you seeing this phase in my life like some fad?” I ask him later the next day, when the kids have gone off fishing with my in-laws. “Point taken,” he replies. We leave it at that for now. I consider it a small victory and determine to bring up the topic again that evening.
I tell him when we talk again in front of the fire, that if he’s afraid of something or has feelings about the idea of sexual experimentation, of seeing how new partners might fit into our sex life, he should just say so. And he shouldn’t try to deflect by raising my tendency to temporarily pick up hobbies that I obsess over. I don’t think it’s fair, in any case, to draw an analogy between my sex life and my hobbies. “Fair enough,” he replies.
“And, by the way,” I add, “wanting to experiment or try new things doesn’t necessarily mean there’s inherently something wrong with our relationship or that I think that there’s something missing.” Opening a marriage because you’re unhappy with your partner can a recipe for disaster, in my opinion. This has never been about some flaw in our marriage, or even our sex life.
And then he says it. What I thought all along but wanted to hear him say out loud. Because why can’t he say what he feels to the person he loves? Admit his strong emotions about something?
“I’m afraid of losing you.”
Oh. There it is.
Why couldn’t you just say that in the first place?! Why is it so damn hard to tell me how you feel? But I don’t say any of this. I sit and listen.
I know I have a problem with arguing first and asking questions later. I know I don’t listen well. I tend to hear what I want to hear or what I’m expecting to hear, instead of giving the other person the time and space they need to fully express themselves. But I’m not going to screw this up. I want him to know he can trust me with his thoughts and feelings surrounding a very personal and sensitive topic.
PM continues, “I just think that things can become complicated, and I don’t think it’s worth the risk.” I tell him that I hear what he’s saying. Because I do. And I understand exactly what he’s worried about.
Now it’s my turn to sigh. “I’m not interested in having a relationship like I have with you with anyone else. I’m happy with what we have. I’m happy with you,” I tell him. I hope he’s listening. That he really hears me. I want to reassure him that all of this has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me, with my own journey and self-discovery.
I stare into the fire and ask what he meant by bringing up my tendency to get caught up in whatever I’m currently into (hobbies and projects mainly). I won’t allow myself to get drawn down a rabbit’s hole, but I want him to have the opportunity to clarify.
And PM does so by using the word “attached.” Okay. A skosh better than “obsessed.” He’s afraid I’ll become attached. Well, at least when he puts it that way I don’t sound like a psycho stalker. *scowls*
“I think you’d both become attached,” he goes on. I can’t help the small gasp that escapes my lips. “You’re amazing. I’ve never met anyone else like you, and I’ve met a lot of people,” he tells me, holding my gaze. “Someone else is going to realize that and is going to want to keep you.”
How can he be so sweet and flattering and incredibly maddening all at the same time? The man does it well.
Because, geez. Does this man not have any idea how much I adore him?? *shakes head and frowns*
I ask him, “But don’t you know I’m attached to you? I want you. I don’t want to replace you.” He’s afraid he’ll get pushed off to the side. But I don’t want what we have together to change. I tell him this, but I also know it’s so hard to change a narrative you already have written in your head. And he clearly seems to think he’s the party with the most to lose.
I’m not naive enough to think it would or could only be about sex. He’s right. These things are complicated. If it was just about sex, then sex with a stranger should fit the bill. But that thought doesn’t appeal to me. At all. I would need to feel some sort of connection with a person to even consider exploring anything with them.
And it’s not like I’m not having amazing sex at home with PM either. This curiosity that I have about the roads not travelled is not coming from a feeling of some deficiency I perceive in our love life. Or in our relationship, for that matter.
It’s not about him. It’s about me.
So I find myself back to a question I had already asked of myself. Am I just being selfish in wanting more? Like a kid in a candy store who’s told she can pick out anything she wants but I’m unhappy because they don’t carry some particular kind of candy that I had my heart set on? Am I that self-centered and self-involved?
But I don’t think that’s it, though I’m still figuring things out. And PM and I are trying to really listen to one another with curiosity and kindness. And these open conversations continue to stoke the fire we have for one another. *fans herself*
This is where I’ll leave you this week. And I shall take up these conversations about ENM yet again in the coming weeks — we’ve got lots to talk about. Thanks for traversing roads less travelled along with me.
Until next time, stay kinky 😉
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