Recently, I went on a hike with a friend who’s dating—huge inhale—a pansexual, polyamorous, married man. They’ve been on about five dates, and so far they’ve discussed his relationship with his wife (the primary), how he prefers to have two girlfriends or boyfriends at a time (secondaries), how his wife prefers to have just one, and how everyone manages this arrangement.
Oh, boy, are there rules. So many rules. It starts to sound more like an LSAT logic question than a sexual tryst. Person A may sleep with Person B and Person C. Person C and Person B can hang but not have sex. Person B is also sleeping with Person D, who can have sex with Person C but not Person A.
My friend, I think, was Person C in the scenario, though, honestly, it’s hard to tell. That’s probably why she and Peter Pan–Poly spent their dates discussing sexual arrangements instead of actually having sex. That’s right—they hadn’t even started playing the game yet. Six weeks in, they were still deep in the rules.
I understand how we got here. You get married, and oops, the urge to have sex with attractive strangers does not go away. But also, you want to be a good person. You are a good person. So you “open up” the marriage. Consciously. Mindfully. Maybe you start a Substack about it. Then you’re so proud of how conscious and mindful you’re being that you make it a core tenet of your personality. Let’s meet up and discuss my brave new way of living! Let me tell you how I, enlightened human, am better than the base philanderers of the past. Therein lies the problem: sanctimony is just not sexy.
Have you noticed, in all the trend pieces about polyamory, exactly how much talking about said polyamory is involved in being polyamorous? In a New York Times Magazine interview with a 20-person polycule, one of the members brags about spending months listening to all the podcasts, reading all the books, and having “six-to-ten hour poly-processing conversations.” Six to ten hours. Of talking. When you could be having sex. I get that monogamy can be stale and impractical, but how is the alternative so boring?
O.K., disclaimer time: I’m sure there are some people out there just living a sexually free life the way it should be lived—fantastically and with less self-aggrandizement—#NotallPolycules, etc. And I’m sorry. This rant is not about you. It’s against the people who tweet things such as “We need to talk about how giving people a ‘plus one’ for events is low-key polyphobic.” No, we don’t need to talk about it. You need to sit in the corner and have a time-out.
Therein lies the problem: sanctimony is just not sexy.
I’m not going to argue that having sex with a lot of different people isn’t fun. It most certainly is! But—and I apologize if I sound like an old, decrepit Republican; promise I’m not—I do think with all the pizzazz around open marriages and thirds and ethical non-monogamy, we’ve forgotten what marriage is actually good for. Specifically, marriage is great for not dating. No more apps. No more awkward glasses of wine with a dentist who tells you, once you get to the bar, that he doesn’t drink. No more stalking the house party looking for prey. No more endless trying.
I’ve known two couples in open marriages, and it turned all four individuals into desperate characters. One of the husbands became, way too late into his 40s, a reply guy. As in, he replied to every single woman’s Instagram stories. A female friend finally wrote back, “Hey, can you stop?” He countered with “No, it’s okay! We’re open.” As if that would elicit “Well then, come on over!”
All this makes me miss affairs. Remember affairs? (For the young people: an affair is when you’re married but you have sex with someone else when you’re not supposed to.) Cheating isn’t morally commendable, but then again “morally commendable” isn’t the go-to descriptor I want my sexual encounters to fall under. And, boy, affairs can be titillating: My co-worker and I got drunk at the holiday party and ended up having sex on a freezing hotel roof … I had a catch-up drink with my ex-boyfriend, and we didn’t look at our phones once, and then he reached for my hand …
As somebody who unapologetically loves gossip—DeuxMoi, c’est moi!—I want to hear about any and all heady, fumbling, disastrous, amazing affairs. What I don’t want to hear is your takeaways from The Ethical Slut. (One of the great things about life is that it’s not college.) Yes, affairs hurt people. As someone who has been cheated on, I can personally attest that it sucks. But does it suck more than your partner coming home and telling you he wants to open up the marriage, spending $35,000 on couples counseling, and then getting assigned three months’ worth of gender-studies reading? It’s hard to say.
I guess I’m saying there might not be a solution. Monogamy is always going to be monotonous. Contain some degree of yearning. And a polycule of Wesleyan grads has its own problems, and just happens to be my personal nightmare. Life is inherently unsatisfying—sorry! Oh, and by the way, both those couples that opened up their marriage? They’re getting divorced.
Lauren Bans is a Los Angeles–based television writer
