The Blowfish Blog

[Greta Christina] The Joy of Theoretical Non-Monogamy

Well, “theoretical” is probably not the right word.

Here’s the thing. I write a lot about non-monogamy. And I write it from the point of view of someone in a successful non-monogamous relationship. But there are times when I feel a bit hypocritical, or at least not 100% honest, about the writing I do about non-monogamy.

Because — how shall I put this? — our non-monogamy is largely theoretical.

Well, again, “theoretical” may not be the right word. Maybe “potential” would be more accurate.

Here’s what I mean. My wife and I are non-monogamous. We’re both free to have sex outside the relationship, with the other’s permission and blessing. We have limitations, of course, agreements we’ve made about sex outside the relationship: what kinds of sex are okay, under what conditions, when to tell each other, how much to tell each other, etc. But the option to have sex outside the marriage is there, and has been since we first got together.

But neither of us does very much about it. And haven’t, for a long time.

For me, the issue has pretty much been time and energy. Between my day job and my writing, which I am now pursuing to the point of obsessive- compulsion, I’m already working six days a week, sometimes seven. I barely have time and energy for friends, for reading, for dancing, for all the things other than work and marriage that give my life meaning. I don’t even spend as much time with my wife as I’d like. And despite the fact that I’m spending almost every spare waking moment on it, I still don’t have enough time to do all the writing that I want to. Where the hell am I going to find time to squeeze a fuckbuddy into all of that?

And I definitely don’t have the time and energy — not to mention the patience — to actually seek out a potential fuckbuddy. If I happened to meet someone in the course of my life who seemed attractive and available and interested, I’d consider it. But to go on a dozen personal-ad first dates? To kiss a dozen frogs in hopes of meeting a princess or prince? I’ve been there, I’ve done that. And to be fair, I actually had a lot of fun with it in my twenties and thirties, when I had world enough and time. But now . . . well, I’m not saying, “Never.” But I am saying, “Not this week.” And I’ve been saying, “Not this week,” for I don’t know how long. You know how couples who want kids say that it’s never a good week to have a kid? It’s never a good week to look for a fuckbuddy.

And yet, if my wife came to me tomorrow and said, “I don’t want to be non-monogamous anymore,” I’d have a serious problem with it.

Which is the point I want to make. I realize it’s taken me an absurdly long time to get to the point: but this is definitely it, coming up right now.

I have found that non-monogamy is a tremendously valuable asset to our relationship . . . even when neither of us does much of anything about it. The main advantage of non-monogamy isn’t necessarily all the wild monkey sex you get to have with all the hot babes. For me, the main advantage of non-monogamy is that it makes the issue of Other People pretty much a non-issue.

When I was in monogamous relationships (or theoretically monogamous ones), Other People were always an issue. Is my partner having sex with someone else? Are they flirting with someone else? Do they think that other person is more attractive than me? Should I be worried about what they’re doing? Am I worrying over nothing? Am I deluding myself into believing there’s nothing to worry about when really there is?

And it wasn’t just my partners’ attractions and involvements that were an issue, either. My own were, too. Much more so, in fact. When you’ve promised that you won’t have sex with other people, then every single time that you have the serious hots for someone else turns into a Big Fucking Deal: an unbearable yearning that turns you into a character from a Gothic novel or a bad soap opera. It did for me, anyway. And from what I’ve observed in other monogamous relationships, it does for a whole lot of other people, too.

But when you’re not monogamous, the Gothic soap opera vanishes like a bad dream in daylight. The basic unavoidable fact that you and your partner are living animals with normal libidos doesn’t turn into a crisis. The fact that your partner is flirting with someone else at a party, the fact that you yourself are flirting with someone else at a party, all those little flickers of attraction and curiosity that human animals are subject to: not a crisis. Non-monogamy takes the lid off of the pressure cooker. It turns the brooding melodrama into a sophisticated romantic comedy. It makes it No Big Deal.

Non-monogamy relieves relationship pressure in another way, too. If there’s a particular kind of sex you like (or want to try) and your partner isn’t into it, you aren’t forced to choose between deprivation and infidelity. You have a third option: Go Do That Thing With Someone Else. And when Doing That Thing With Someone Else is an option, you sometimes find that That Thing no longer has that bewitching glow of irresistibly tempting eroticism. There have definitely been times when I’ve had some fantasy that my partner wasn’t crazy about; have considered pursuing it outside the relationship; and decided that it really wasn’t worth the bother.

Which brings me to the best thing about non-monogamy. For me, anyway. When you’re not monogamous, you realize that not every single person you’re attracted to is someone you’d seriously like to fuck if given the opportunity.

This is probably the single most important lesson that non-monogamy taught me. When you’re monogamous, every single person you’re even moderately attracted to seems like Shangri-La, a lost city of infinite erotic promise, with genitals made of divine light and chocolate ice cream that would transform your life if only you could have a taste. (It did for me, anyway.) The allure of the forbidden, and all that.

But when you’re non-monogamous, you remember that you don’t actually want to go to bed with every attractive person who crosses your path. Some attractive people become much less attractive on closer acquaintance. Some attractive people are crazy; some attractive people are dull; some attractive people have appalling political opinions. And some attractive people you just don’t connect with. Especially if you have a busy, reasonably fulfilling life, the reality of non-monogamy may well turn out to be that most people who you’re passingly attracted to are not, in fact, people you actually want to fuck. They may be perfectly lovely, but they’re just not worth the effort.

I’m not saying non-monogamy is right for everybody. If even the thought of your partner having sex with someone else gives you anxious fits, the reality probably isn’t going to be so swell. And it’d be irresponsible to get into a non-monogamous relationship on the understanding that neither of you is actually going to do anything about it. I can’t even get my mind around the contorted logic that that would involve.

But I think a lot of people avoid non-monogamy because they think it means “constantly running around with other people.” And I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t necessarily mean that. If you’re a normal urban couple with the usual insanely- overbooked urban life, then it very likely isn’t going to mean that. (You can even make that one of your agreed-upon limitations if you like. I had an affair once with a guy whose agreement with his partner was, “No more than once a month” . . . an agreement that worked out amazingly well, for a good long time.)

For me at least, the main joy of non-monogamy isn’t all the different hot babes I get to boink. The joy of non-monogamy is knowing that different hot babes are an option. And it’s the pressure that this option takes off of our relationship. The joy of non-monogamy isn’t all the Other People. It’s the transformation of Other People from tantalizingly forbidden fruit into just another choice, one more potentially fun thing that I could theoretically be doing with my ever-vanishing spare time. It’s the transformation of Other People from high drama into no big deal.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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This entry was posted on Friday, 2 May 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.