A Political Deduction From the Experience of Opening Up My Marriage

I'm almost out of my first, and maybe only, extramarital affair since my husband and I opened up our marriage.

I can not even begin to express what a beautiful experience it has been. I don't regret it at all. That same sentiment is shared by my husband and, I believe, I can say, at least overall, by the other man.

There have been mutually beneficial experiences, a few truths either learned or deepened (including ones which would be a cautionary note to others considering the same road), and an unexpected personal growth experience or two. Not to mention, a new, very dear friend gained through the respect generated from the successful travel of a shared, uniquely personal journey.

I have had the mind-blowing experience of giving and receiving love to two really, really, really good men at the same time. Never, at any moment, was my marriage to my best friend and life partner in danger while I loved on the other man.

Even though this was not a road we - my husband and I - were even remotely, consciously looking to travel, when challenged to consider it, we found that it was an appealing road. After months of thinking and researching, we decided that we wanted to see if we could travel it. At exactly the right moment, another wonderful man saw me walking and decided to find out if he could travel the road along with us. As a maiden voyage, this was perfectly what it needed to be.

Think of me whatever you want, minimalize or moralize it in your mind if you need to. If I hadn't lived it, I would probably do the same, but you can't take away from me the fact that at the end of my life, I'm going to look back and be able to say we three did, pretty successfully, what few are able to even consider. I'll look back and remember that time when I was, literally, the luckiest woman in the world, and remember, fondly, maybe even proudly, how capable I was of generously making sure that both men knew just how grateful I was for their time, attention, and love, and how, for a time, we were all content to be doing what we did.

It was a risky freedom to try to grab a hold of, but I think we all did a pretty damned good job of not fucking up each other or our lives, and of knowing when to stop walking that road when hurting each other became a possibility.

I don't know, for my part, if I'll continue on or not - it's a lot of work to balance 2 men - but I do know this:

People must be free to try to travel the roads they believe they're capable of traveling.

And, rather than trying to preemptively prevent other individual's consequences from the morally safe position of "impact on the collective", we'd be a far better society if we taught people to count the cost of grabbing hold of their liberty and encouraged people toward maturity, toward understanding that freedom comes with personal responsibility. So, that, when people travel out unto the roads they want to explore, as they surely will, they do it with a level of care and thoughtfulness that would minimize the negative impact on others around them because they'll have no choice but to clean up any mess they make along the way or suffer the natural, relational, and/or reputational consequences of being irresponsible.

I haven't been perfect (because, honestly, there's no road map for going off the high sexual/relational moral ground), but I have tried to balance my own freedom with my personal responsibility while letting those around me balance what they thought they could embrace with that for which they could be personally responsible. It's a complicated road, and a complication which is completely avoidable, but where would the fun be in always traveling well-trod roads? And, I'll be damned if anyone is going to tell me I have to travel them.

I'll be writing soon, on my other minds account, about the lovely surprises and the honest pitfalls I discovered along the way when I've had time to process and analyze the experience for myself. However, if you want to know something, ask. For my own part, I'll answer as honestly as I can.

I'm absolutely sure this post will be #stunning to some of you, and I don't care whether you think I'm #brave or not.