Action: A Book About Sex (27 page)

To say I was in an “open relationship” also feels like a misnomer, because, although I’m talking about it publicly here in the service of this book, for the most part, my bond with Wes was private—we were in love, and our particular love was occupied by only the two of us. We kept our extracurricular sex casual—it never impacted the inside jokes he and I made about our stupid-looking cat, or the way we confided in each other about the stuff we were scared of as kids, or how we always seemed to want to do the same things at the same time (narrowing our eyes at crosswords at the diner, playing Boggle, performing impromptu Roy Orbison duets—everything) without talking about it first.

In writing this, I also briefly imagined how hilariously inappropriate it would be if I called myself a SWINGER, a word that makes me feel kind of like someone’s aggressively mystical aunt who dresses exclusively in clothing that could be characterized as “flowing,” or like the boastful, hot tub–dwelling LOVERS from
Saturday Night Live
who force stories of their earthy, open lovemaking onto everyone they meet. You’re just not ever gonna catch me waxing poetic in some mineral spring about the fact that I sleep around because I think I’m a more spiritually—and oh-so-sensually—enlightened being than everyone else! My life is totally quotidian ’n’ normal to me, and I don’t need to make a show of this part of it or ask for permission to have it feel valid/okay that I adore being a total Runaround Sue. For me, it’s all very “I woke up like this (in someone else’s bed).”

There are lots of other non-monogamous permutations, from marriage-like unions among a group of people to “monogamish” situations, a term coined by the sex advice columnist Dan Savage that refers to situations in which a couple is mostly monogamous, but give each other leeway for occasional extracurricular fun, either together or separately.

•
Set clear ground rules with your partner.
Being upfront with each other about what you can and can’t do outside of the time you spend together is hands down the most important factor in maintaining an open relationship—like, the whole point
of non-exclusive arrangements is to absolve yourselves of the deception and guilt that come with “cheating.” I think starting a relationship with the understanding that you’d like it to be non-monogamous is probably far easier than trying to open a monogamous relationship, but the template for bringing the subject up is the same either way. Saying, like, “GUESS WHAT? I want to fool around with other people!! Fun, right?” is a great way to hurt somebody’s feelings, put them on the defensive, and/or make them think that you’re not attracted to them anymore. Instead, start by telling your partner why committing (or staying committed) to each other is a priority for you (e.g., “I love being with you in all ways, so I don’t want you to think that what I’m about to tell you means I’m not into you anymore. I’m bringing this up because our relationship is important to me, and I want it to last for a long time”). Then explain how you’re feeling, why you think your connection would be strengthened by non-monogamy, and what ideas you have about how to incorporate those ideas into your romantic life together.

Some important things to not only think about, but actually discuss with your heart-person, are whether it’s okay to see other people more than once, and in what context (Can you go on dates? Are you cool with only one-time, strictly physical encounters?), whether there’s a limit to what you can do with your side-pieces (maybe kissing is totally peachy by you, but sexing other people is more of a moldy, rotten banana that you’ll break up with someone for eating?), and how cool you are with telling each other about your external entanglements.

Be respectful: Trying to force someone to relax their boundaries is gonna end in tears. Locate a happy medium and stick to it. You love this person, so don’t do things you know will hurt them. There’s no simpler or truer aspect of romantic love than that one, for real.

Important side note! Non-monogamy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re having full-on SEX with strangers (or whomever else you’re seeing on the side). Even if you’re not having sex yet, you might want to kiss other people, or go on occasional dates, while
still considering yourself half of a couple. This is doable, so long as you and your partner set ground rules early on. For me, non-monogamy is more about circumventing a general discomfort I have with being told not to do something—the classic reverse psychology of “I didn’t want this thing until you told me I couldn’t have it!”—than it is about getting down with some new person every night of the week.

The number one tenet of my own non-monoggo relationship with Wes was:
Don’t tell me anything unless I ask—but be honest if I do
. Like, let’s say I spent a day on my luxury yacht, the
Amy Rows-Your-Boat-Ashore
, with my two biggest celebrity crushes, Martha Stewart and Tupac, and after a few glasses of rosé, things got frisky and we had a three-way makeout (this is just a hypothetical and not a true story, so DROP THOSE PENS,
Us Weekly
!). The next day, if I were hanging out with Wes, and he asked, “So, did you get with anyone last night?” not even maritime law would exempt me from telling him the truth about this stuff, so I would say yes. Either he would be satisfied with that answer and move on, or, if he felt jealous and would rather know the reality of what happened than let his mind start spinning out paranoid fantasies, he might want to know more. If he asked for additional information, I’d answer him factually, but only to the extent to which I felt comfortable: I usually drew the line at describing nuanced details of physical encounters or identifying characteristics of the person (or celebrity businesswoman-rapper duo) I was fooling around with, for the sake of both our brains. While some people are cool with spilling everything about whose hands were on which deck, Wes and I knew we weren’t okay with hearing all the salty details, and we respected each other’s limitations.

That last thing didn’t come up much, though: Wes and I didn’t frequently ask each other, “Well, WHO WAS IT you were all up on, huh?” It was largely irrelevant, because our number two rule was:
Don’t get with anyone I know or am likely to meet at some point
. We didn’t want to run the risk of bumping into each other’s sides of fries for reasons that had as much to do with manners
as they did with wanting to avoid stoking jealousy—for the most part, I wasn’t trying to make polite small talk with someone my person had recently gotten with. This wasn’t because I wished that person ill; it was more that it was awkward for everyone, especially for the fries-piece to my romantic cheeseburger of a self, because they’d likely have been wondering if I
knew
, and
oh my god this is so uncomfortable ugghhhh
.

Our final rule:
Involve yourself with other people only when we’re not physically available to each other
. If I felt like Wes was prioritizing spending time with someone else instead of me, I would be devastated and probably key his car, and he told me he would have felt the same if the sheets were swapped (and if I had a driver’s license, which I don’t). Luckily, when we were together, we felt a thermonuclear infatuation toward each other that made that potential difficulty and automotive disfigurement a non-issue.

•
Accept jealousy as an intractable factable of life.
From time to time, when an acquaintance of mine or Wes’s saw me macking on someone other than my boyfriend or overheard me waxing feverish about some new person, they’d look confused. When I explained my romantical arrangement, they almost always gasped, “I can’t believe you don’t get jealous!” But it’s like, YO, OF COURSE I DO, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I am one of the most jealous broads on the planet, if I let myself be!

In some of the “monogamous” relationships of my way-younger past, I got paranoid every time one of my boyfriends went out without me. Since I was a cheater, I suspected that everyone else was, too. Even though I knew on an intellectual level that I was being waaaaay too sensitive, I still did things like sulk if a partner and I were watching TV, a deodorant commercial came on, and I thought the girl in it was prettier than me, which, of course, was a totally valid and logical reason to give my mystified beloveds the silent treatment for the rest of whatever
South Park
episode we were probably watching at the time. I also remember, on one occasion, ripping up a drawing that a mutual female friend had done for a guy I dated and blaming it on “a dog” like an uncreative
homework-hating second grader, despite the fact that it was in his car and neither of us had pets. I think, in my tall tale, the fictional canine was owned by an equally fictional neighbor who came over to talk while I was sitting in the passenger seat with the door open. You would think that a seasoned two-timer like me would have come up with a better lie! Of course, no one believed me, and it was real embarrassing. As you might guess, the people I dated were also not too into my paranoid policing of their every movement.

Thankfully, I outgrew this jealous-fugue period after my first few relationships, when I realized the extent to which it made everyone, including me, miserable. Every now and then, though, I still feel a diluted version of the self-doubt that incited it. As you probably know firsthand, a large part of being a person, especially a female one, is trying to squelch the feeling that you’re not attractive enough, or smart enough, or otherwise worthy enough of love. Even on my best days, these doubts skulk through my head and refuse to stop poking and prodding at the things I dislike most about myself, and so I project them onto other people—usually the ones I’m in relationships with, because when I’m in love with a person, I consider them the next-closest thing to myself in some ways, and therefore the most obvious recipients of these self-based hatreds. When I’m feeling shitty about my writing, or I suspect I cut my hair too short (ugh, it’s more than just a suspicion, I know I totally did), those insecurities feed my fear that NO ONE COULD EVER LOVE ME and OF COURSE MY PERSON SECRETLY WANTS A MUCH MORE INTELLIGENT AND/OR LONGER-HAIRED GIRLFRIEND.

Here’s the lovely thing about non-monogamy: Having realized that my issues have far more to do with my own brain than with what my partner chooses to do with his D, it was actually the hugest relief to me that, on the surface, the reality of my relationship with Wes (he and I slept with other people) was the exact worst-case scenario I would have imagined in my previous history of loving people. The difference is that back then, these dalliances would have been hidden and clandestine, and if I had
found out about them on my own, they would have broken my heart (and then I would break everything my partner ever found comfort or enjoyment in) (maybe); whereas in my non-monoggo pairing, I was secure in the knowledge that none of that affected how massively in love we were with each other. Instead of feeling cataclysmic, sex was—whoa, it was
great
, and if I ever felt jealous, we just talked about it. I no longer let it melt my brain into a rage-magma that overwhelmed all my rationality, empathy, and happiness. Basically, not being pressured to stay sexually faithful to the person I’m committed to drove home the point that boning ≠ love, even though they obviously involve each other quite deeply in most relationships (including mine with Wes). This, in turn, helped me mentally redistribute my self-worth so that I don’t freak out quite as much about increasing the amount of my hair/advanced degrees in comparative literature.

•
If you’re having sex with more than one person, BE SAFE.
I mean, be safe no matter what kind of sex you’re having with anybody, but if you have multiple partners, USE CONDOMS AND/OR OTHER BARRIER METHODS OF PROTECTION AND COMMON SENSE 357 percent of the time, with everybody, including your foremost paramour. I cannot stress this enough. Putting your partner’s sexual health at risk is not only inconsiderate, it can be harmful to them in the long run. So please make a custom of being extra-safe.

•
Be fair to the people you’re seeing outside the relationship.
I feel like all the best romantic wisdom comes from down-home country and blues singers, so here is a mournful old-timey ballad that I just wrote about telling a potential hookup that you’re seriously involved with someone else (imagine that I am casually holding a banjo but not really knowing what to do with it and also I tried to put spurs on my Keds):

Tell them as soon as you can without presuming

That something’s gonna happen with your mouths or other parts

But definitely before getting physical or going on like twelve dates

And breaking their doggone heartsssssss

Wow. That definitely sounded like the kind of time-tested profundity that can come only from living off the land and your own salty tears and probably there’s a pickup truck involved. I reckon (okay, I promise this stops here) that you should do what my awesome song tells you, partner (sorry, this really is the last time for real) (more like sexual partner!!! ha-ha) (please don’t go).

Obviously, this doesn’t matter as much for one-time flings. If you go skin-to-skin with a girl you meet on vacation or at a party out of town, you don’t need to recite your autobiography before getting down to biz. But if you’re more socially connected to a person, or intend to see them more than once, the time to let them know is as soon as possible. Some people you might want to mess around with are not going to be receptive to the idea that they’re one of the many ships in your various ports, especially when one of those is a yacht (I’m talking about your main squeeze, not the old
Amy Rows
, here). Don’t try to wheedle anybody into changing their mind. Not everyone is going to have the same attitude toward casual hookups as you do, and that’s their prerogative.

Some people might think you’re lying about being non-monogamous to try to get them to help you cheat. (The unfortunate reason for this is that there are horrible deceitful dicks in this world who do exactly that.) It helps to disclose the realities of your relationship clearly as soon as it feels like something’s gonna happen between you. The longer you keep it a secret, the more it’ll seem like you’re being deceptive, because why would you not mention it if you’re not doing anything wrong? You don’t have to give them the WHOLE ENTIRE HISTORY of your relationship and the philosophical reasoning behind your non-monogamy, as I have here! Just say that you’re in an open relationship—even if you don’t like the term, this is the easiest and most direct way to get your point across. Then, if you want, answer any questions they may have about it—although some people are gonna be like,
“GREAT, crystal clear on this one, let’s make it happen,” in my experience, they are in the minority.