Both PM and I agree that our sex life is amazing as it is. We find ourselves crashing together for some manner of sexy times at least once a day (and more often than not, twice a day). We’re exploring kinks and power dynamics together, sharing fantasies with one another and role-playing, experimenting with new and different ways to excite passion for one another. It’s all hot AF.
So if my sex life looks an awful lot like a porno, except for the fact that in our case the vulva-owner’s orgasms are 100% genuine and earth-shattering, why do I find myself thinking about ethical non-monogamy (or ENM) and what it might like in my marriage to PM? If I’m madly in love with my partner and our sex life is already off the hook, what’s the real draw for me? Well, my friends, this is the subject that I hope to explore a bit in this week’s essay.
I’ll start by saying that my feelings about the subject are far from straightforward. They’re not only complex, but at times, contradictory even. I’m still not sure what we will ultimately decide to do. And even then, nothing is ever written in stone, as both PM and I see our journey and relationship as ever growing and evolving.
There are a variety of ways that couples add other people into the mix, but for us, in our musings together, we’ve leaned toward ENM forms that could be a “couple activity.” So, sexual experimentation with other people but doing it together as a couple. For example, swinging or partner swapping that we engage in at the same time, if not in the same space. If that makes sense.
Well, at least this is the type of scenario that PM has been open to discussing. I’m more open to whatever. For instance, I can readily imagine having that side piece I’ve talked about. *smirks*
But more on the differences between my own attitude about the lifestyle and PM’s will have to wait for another time. I’ve got a piece dedicated almost wholly to PM’s perspective that I promise to share with you very soon. And it will make you laugh, and cringe. And maybe you’ll find you agree with him. Who knows?
“I just don’t see the appeal,” PM says. “Sex is sex. So why do I need to have it with someone different? What’s the point?” Ummmm… I’m not going to lie. His response took me by surprise.
I ask him if that’s all he sees sex as, the physical act itself. “There’s a lot more involved in sex, isn’t there?” I point out. He agrees reluctantly. But it’s clear that he still can’t understand where I’m coming from.
But I find I have to ask myself, Do I even know where I’m coming from?
Which brings me back to the question I’m writing about today: What is the real draw of ENM for me?
Before I attempt to answer PM, I consider his question, What’s the point [of having sex with someone else]? Because, in some sense, he’s right. While there are many variations, ultimately sex comes down to the same basic mechanics, no matter who with. But then again, it’s not all about the mechanics. I mean, we have fantasy sex together with other people via our erotic role playing and dirty talk. If sex was just sex, why would imagining being with other people ramp up our arousal?
So I take a deep breath, and try to explain my perspective to PM. Because, in fact, I’ve personally been thinking a lot about this question.
I suppose part of it is that I’m simply curious about the real thing versus the fantasy — what it would be like to experience other people. As a friend pointed out the other night, I have had very little sexual experience outside my relationship with PM. It’s natural that I’m curious.
There’s a smorgasbord of sexual possibilities out there, especially now as folks are feeling more comfortable expressing who they really are, exploring preferences, trying out kinks. After only eating one type of entree for my entire adult life, it shouldn’t be surprising that I’m wondering what else is out there and thinking I might like to sample a little of this or a little of that.
Different bodies, different parts *wink wink*, different responses, different sounds and smells and tastes, different preferences. I want to see where sexual chemistry might take me, and I want to experience all the things.
PM and I have talked about our lack of sexual experience many times over our years together, and he feels much the same way. The Purity culture within which we came of age utterly obsessed over trying to control our sexuality, expecting us to suppress this part of selves until we tied the knot.
Unsurprisingly, this led to many of the folks we grew up with, ourselves included, marrying way too young. Our fundamentalist religious upbringing expected people who were barely adults, who knew nothing or next to nothing about life, to bind ourselves to one another with promises of forever. I mean, geez, the human brain isn’t even fully developed until around age 25.
And it’s all a travesty, because in the end, you may get a few relationships that manage to come out happy and healthy, but mostly you’ve created circumstances that ultimately lead to dissatisfied and resentful partners with dysfunctional sex lives who stay unhappily together, or find themselves in affairs and/or divorced. But that’s a rant for another day.
And while PM and I are among the few lucky ones to come out of this compulsory marriage culture still in love and generally happy with one another, with a passionate sex life now that we’re in our 40s, it hasn’t been easy. Really, it took us escaping that dysfunctional religious environment (and moving away from our hyper-religious families) to even begin to work out some of our shit together, to process the trauma we had experienced at the hands of the church’s Purity culture.
This was especially true for me, and perhaps especially true for women in general within these fundamentalist circles, although I fully acknowledge that my journey has not been nearly as painful and traumatic as that of folks who found they didn’t fit the cis-het mold into which they were forced. (If you’re curious to know a little more about PM and my history together, see one of my first pieces published here, “A bit of context.”)
But, while curiosity for new and different sexual encounters with people other than the man I lost my virginity to absolutely plays a role in all this, there’s more to it than that. I find that, after so many years together, I have desire to experience a connection with someone utterly separate from me.
What do I mean by that? Well, I want to feel desire for and, in turn, be desired by someone for whom I’m not responsible in any way. Someone who’s not responsible for me. Someone who doesn’t know all my shit. A person who has nothing to do with my baggage. A relationship in which our lives are utterly independent of and separate from one another except where we meet in desire and passion, where we are free to simply crash into one another in physical ecstasy, without expectations. Someone that isn’t tied to my past or my future.
As I said before, my attraction to other people is not a product of any problem with PM and my relationship. He’s an attentive lover, willing to explore and be creative, attune to my need for passion and sexual playfulness outside the bedroom, and isn't afraid to talk candidly about sex. As a result, we have an amazing, passionate sex life. So it’s not that. I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ll get anything better on the other side of the fence. I'm not looking for better. At this point in my life, I just want different. Sex and passion without strings attached.
Having been in a long-term monogamous relationship for over two decades now, I find I’m craving passion with someone for whom sex with me isn’t a given. Because when we choose our person and get married, that’s usually part of the package: You have a reasonable expectation that you’re going to get to have sex with this person. No matter whether they put on a few pounds over the years, or whether I now live in yoga pants and oversized tops. Regardless of how often I bother to shave my legs or groom my nether regions, or how many times a day they leave dirty dishes lying around the house for me to deposit in the dishwasher.
You are each other’s person, through the good, the bad, and the ugly, and there’s a wonderful sense of security and stability built into monogamy. I don’t have to put in a bunch of effort to go to bars or swipe on apps, to try and come across as intelligent and funny but also fuckable, all in the hopes of meeting a non-psycho to take home (when I’ll probably not even get an orgasm out of it at the end of it all).
Yeah. There are definite perks to having a someone.
But, on the other hand, over time sex with your someone begins to feel less like a choice and more like an obligation. And the things that make monogamy so wonderfully comfortable and safe are also the very things that suck the passion out of our relationship. It’s this contradiction of human needs — the desire to feel safe and grounded that is at odds with our need for adventure and risk — that psychotherapist and author Esther Perel identifies as a battle between the “domestic” and the “erotic.” (For more on Perel and her take on the struggle for passion within marriage, see my past essay, “Can I be happily married and still want a side piece?" .)
In my restlessness, I’m finding that I crave an experience with someone for whom sex isn’t part of a series of expectations on me. Where it isn’t a given, a duty. I want to be desired for the person I am now, in this moment, and not simply sought after because conventional monogamy doesn’t allow my partner any other choices.
I want to be able to just be with someone, to share a passionate madness in the moment. Someone I can exist in the present with, without a past weighing us down and without a future together that needs worrying about. No past, no future. Just the present moment. And a person with whom I can play. Whatever play means for me right then, right there. It’s about mystery but also discovery. A reconnecting to parts of me that have been buried and forgotten under the weight of marriage and family over the years.
So no, it’s just not about sex, not entirely. And framed in this way — a need to just be alongside someone else, to experience passion with someone that exists apart from expectations — PM begins to see where I’m coming from.
And he, too, sees the appeal. He tells me that one of the reasons he enjoys going away to professional conferences so much is because no one needs him for anything. And he has no doubt that there is a lot of hooking up going on amongst his peers. After all, the opportunity to lose oneself in passionate madness with someone that you only see a few times a year and to whom you have no obligations has appeal for just this reason. One has the chance to give into the desire for the illicit, for risk and adventure and the unknown without any of the responsibilities and tethers of home.
But PM continues to push, to question my motives, my goals. “Are you sure this isn’t all about self esteem for you?” he asks. And I’ve thought about this question, too.
The answer again is no, not entirely. Do I want to feel wanted, to feel desired by someone who has a choice? Absolutely. I want to be reminded that I am a beautiful, desirable woman. That I still have something to offer sexual partners.
And this need has become especially meaningful for me as a woman approaching middle-age. While I’ve willingly and happily put all of myself into my mothering and caregiving roles for the last decade, I want to be seen as something more than my roles. I want to reclaim myself for me, and this includes my time, my energy, my intellect, and yes, my body. And I want others to see me and feel a pull. I want to be wanted. Like that exhilaration of getting my ass checked out by the pool or seeing a male friend’s eyes flick for a full second to my cleavage, I want to feel I could be desired, that I might be the star in someone’s fantasy.
But it’s also about exploration. Self-discovery. The opportunity to reinvent myself in a relationship, in the bedroom. Maybe, just maybe, my inner domina could spread her wings if she experimented with someone comfortable giving up a little control. And yes, I’m thinking of PM here who can’t even give up control of a kiss for more than a few seconds, never mind let me tie him up so I can have my wicked way with him. *rolls eyes* (For more on our failed attempt having PM play the part of the submissive to my Dom, see “Tie me up, tie me down — PM’s turn to sub.")
And so I find my restlessness for something new is complex and multi-faceted.
What PM and I have is like forged steel. Life has beaten and hammered us as a couple, put us through the flames again and again. It’s made our connection incredibly strong and durable. What has resulted from this decades long transformation won’t easily be broken.
And yet the process has been painful. The hammer and fire have left us with traumas. There are wounds that, although they are long-healed, have left scars that remind of us of past pains. Some hurt has come from external sources, which we have weathered together. Others we have beaten into one another. And still others are self-inflicted, as each of us try to figure out how to be at once individuals and a unit.
Endless hammering and firing — that’s been us. Over the years our relationship has been beaten up and put through the flames. And while I don’t want to imply that the process is complete, I think what we have is strong, capable of seeing us through many more decades together.
But this process of becoming something not easily broken takes its toll. Our relationship bears the scars and marks of what is at times a metaphorically ugly, violent process. And I can’t help but imagine what it would be like to simply come together and experience someone in passionate madness without any sense of obligation or responsibility, without any baggage, outside the framework of past relationship pain and trauma, misunderstandings and rejection.
To have the opportunity to be seen and wanted for me, the new me that I am in this moment, without reference to my past self and my past failures…and occasional lazy grooming habits. Where someone wants to devour me and doesn’t care that I forgot to take something out of the freezer for dinner. *sighs* It’s all so friggin’ complicated.
Until next time, stay kinky 😉
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