Hey honey, I'm taking a Free Day! Be home by midnight!

Even if an open marriage and "negotiated infidelity" end up being the exact same thing in practice, something strikes me as being profoundly unhealthy about "negotiated infidelity." Just the mindset of "I can't trust you, and you're going to cheat on me anyway, so I might as well manage it to my advantage" strikes me as supremely fucked up in what is ostensibly an intimate relationship.

 

I don't think it's about trust as much as it is about exploring. What happens when you're 43, and all of a sudden want to try banging someone with a strap-on, but your husband is really not into it?

Your spouse is for a deep connection that you would never experience with someone else. Your 'infidelities' are for trying new things.

 

Depending on who you're banging in the ass with that strap-on, they may be willing to increase the depth of that connectivity, though. I hear lube and alcohol helps.

 

But that's my point. What you're describing is an open marriage. "Negotiated infidelity" as described by the author, while operating the same in practice, has a profoundly different mindset underpinning it.

 

Maybe she wants it to seem different, but in my mind it sounds exactly the same. You acknowledge your desire to sleep with other people and create boundaries to make sure it doesn't diminish your own relationship while you're doing it.

Once you've acknowledged your partner is going to sleep with another person, it's not exactly cheating or infidelity, it's just playing by the rules.

 

This is really the only thing that stood out for me. Whatever happened to communicating your desires? I've never had a problem saying, "This is what I like. This is what I don't like. This is what I'd like to try." Especially if you've been in a relationship for a long period of time. I'm not sure I'd want to be with someone that would react negatively to something that would satisfy me sexually.

 

It's time to let that one go, and find a new partner. That's one of the reasons I got divorced and one of the reasons another long term relationship ended. The first was her wanting more, the second was me.

I'm not picking on you or anyone else, really. To each their own. Still, I will echo the posters here who simply can't wrap their heads around this. The thought of my wife being with another man has made me feel sick to my stomach and I was very alright with her feeling the same way. Maybe the people who claim to be able to do it will say that I'm the fucked up one, or that I have different psychological disorders (possessive, controlling, etc), or that I'm not very enlightened, or confident, or secure. Maybe they’re right to a certain extent, but honestly, I don't care. I'm pretty fucking open minded, and will do a lot of things to please, or to satisfy the curiosity, of my partner, just as most of my partners have done for me. Still, I'm not open enough to share. I can't imagine just sitting at home casually watching the food network knowing that somewhere my wife is in some other guys bed, and he's balls deep in her, telling her how good she feels, while she urges him to do it harder. GOD...just the thought of something like that makes my skin crawl and I'm single right now. I know how people sound in bed...what they do, what they say...I don't want my wife saying or doing that shit to anyone else. If I married her that also means that I'm not going to be doing that to anyone else either.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I've always thought that was why you got married instead of just being life long fuck buddies. Again, hats off to you all that can, I guess. I'm not judging you; I just know it's not for me.

 

I have always felt like long term relationships need a lot of compromise, the type of which only the people in the relationship can determine and negotiate. Further, I strongly believe that the relationship I have with my husband is based on a lot more than sex.

So, after we got married, I told him that if banging some strange every once in a while would ever be necessary for him to feel fulfilled, that we could talk about it. I'm not talking about a full-on open relationship - I know a lot of people have marriages where they have girlfriends and boyfriends on the side that they stay with long term and have very deep feelings for, and that would be way too much for me personally to handle. I'm talking about the occasional one-night stand, if he needs it to prove to himself that he's still got it or if he ever regrets getting tied down so young and wants to explore what he missed (he's 26) or if there's ever anything he wants to try that I'm just not up for.

He was, to put it mildly, shocked. At first he was freaked out, because he's a really good dude with a really traditional conception of marriage, and he hadn't ever thought something like this would be on the table. Then he had the guilts because he felt like if he never took me up on it, I'd feel like he was lying to me about not wanting to take me up on it. Then he got all mushy because he decided it showed how much I love and trust him, and how my ultimate goal is for us to stay together happily (all true). Then more guilt because he realized he couldn't give me the same permission - while laid back and not particularly jealous, this man does NOT share, the way that many guys in this thread have described.

At this point in our lives we're still relatively early in sexual exploration and we want to get it on roughly the same amount with the balance actually tipping towards me, so we're not discussing extracurricular hookups in the immediate sense. However, getting that out in the open and talking about it has been awesome for our communication about sexual things (which, if I may say so myself, was always pretty good). For example, he went to some strip clubs at his buddy's bachelor party last weekend. My usual rule for strip clubs had always been "look all you want and at as close a range as you'd like, just don't touch." However, I felt ok asking him if he wanted to touch, and he felt ok talking to me about how yes, he would really like to touch some sweet stripper boobs, but the way he might feel about it afterwards (dirty) wouldn't be worth it, at least at this point in his life when he still has a perky set of boobs to come home to. This led to reminding him that we can always renegotiate and discuss things as we go along, he should never feel trapped or resentful.

Not to say he has open season, the main stipulation is that if he wants to bang someone else, we need to talk about it and negotiate how, if at all, it's going to go down. But ultimately, for me, a one-off hookup is just sex. And if I know he loves me, just sex doesn't matter.

 

I was a bit uneasy the first time because it was new and I didn't 100% know what my feelings would be about it. I knew I was open to the idea, but the reality is sometimes different. It wasn't I was totally fine with it. A few friends and family members are aware of our relationship and none of them get it either.

 

So just as an alternate perspective on this - Nikki and I are pretty unusual in that we've done the alternate explorations of relationships and sexuality thing for a while. Nikki had a live in girlfriend and husband for years before we got together, and was in multiple partner relationships with other people in the interim - and I've been doing weird shit since I was pubescent and I'm emotionally retarded. So we've respectively got a pretty good handle on where all the bugbears are for us.

But right at the moment, we're working through adding another girl into our kinky circle - and she's going through the weird of it. She's a pervert - but not as experienced at this as we are, and she's never been the other woman when a wife has actually been aware of her existence. So she's still working out how to fit in with the dynamic and how it all plays out.

As an interesting conversational fork - I'm kind of wondering how those of you with morals/a conscience/some kind of emotional range would handle being the third party with someone who had an open marriage/negotiated infidelity. Could you handle 'dating' someone who was entirely up front about the fact that you were less important then their spouse? Could you hang out on the couch and watch movies/snuggle/etc with them and their spouse? If it would work for you, what shit would bug you? What would you worry about? What would be awesome?

 

I would have to say, though the concept is intriguing, the practicality of it wouldn't work with me, or my wife I am sure. We're both pretty set against sharing, so fantasies get to stay as fantasies since often reality doesn't work the same.

However though, I wonder if the adjustment of being the "other woman" though with permission reduces the thrill and excitement since it is out in the open and allowed by the other partner?