Marriage Without Monogamy
One couple's alternative to traditional vows? A legally binding contract.
Our hero gets engaged to the girl of his dreams, a friend of a friend who just so happens to hate the concept of marriage, and who prefers the convenience of an open relationship. Here, an introduction to their not-so-traditional first encounters.
It’s just after midnight, and I’m huddled into a bar booth next to Ray, an old college friend who has lately become my very frequent drinking buddy. Ray and I went to the same state school in Pittsburgh, and although we both fled town almost as soon as we graduated--Ray went to New York City and then L.A., while I lived in San Francisco and Seattle--for various reasons, we’ve both moved back. Neither one of us is especially pleased with the way our adult lives are turning out. And that’s probably why we both end up at dive bars three or four times a week, bullshitting about college, and guessing at the fortunes of our old friends--especially the ones we haven’t heard from in 10 years.
But tonight, Ray and I have company: Michael and Carrie, a couple I’ve been hearing about for ages now, and who supposedly have an open relationship. Michael and Ray were friends back in school as well, and for months now, Ray has been regaling me with stories about their college-day exploits. They were obsessed with hip-hop at the time, and on occasion they would dress up in hoodies and baggy jeans, and descend upon the city at night with stolen spray paint cans and giant Sharpie markers, prepared to carve their tags onto every blank surface in sight.
But that was ages ago, of course. Ten years. These days, Ray is much more into real estate and designer suits, which is probably why we get along so well. But lately, Ray has been dropping warnings to me about Michael, who apparently still fancies himself something of a thug--the type of guy who doesn’t hesitate to throw a punch when someone looks at him sideways.
I have a bit of a reputation myself: I’m the type of guy who likes to hit on girls who already have boyfriends. I’ve never really understood why I do it. But ever since I first laid eyes on Carrie at a house party, I wanted nothing more than to devour her whole. She was beyond gorgeous, and by the way she confidently strutted her way through a room, she obviously knew it. And then when Ray told me about her long-term boyfriend--six years!--and about the fact that they both sometimes slept with other people, I could literally picture myself sinking my teeth into the back of her neck, and drawing blood.
I was probably on my fourth or fifth Dogfish Head when I felt the side of Carrie’s foot rubbing lightly against the side of mine, underneath the booth. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure it had actually happened. This was quite possibly the most stunningly sophisticated woman I had ever laid eyes on, after all. And she was sitting right next to her boyfriend. The thug.
I carefully rubbed right back, and when I saw Carrie’s eyes meet mine, and then her lips tighten into a conspiratorial smile, I lifted my foot just an inch or two and started rubbing it in small circles on the outside of her left leg. Eventually, I pried my fingers off my pint glass and slowly moved them underneath the table, where they brushed up against Carrie’s knee, and then her fingers, and then the underside of her wrist. At one point I went so far as to reach down for her ankle, and then the curved, smooth brown skin on the back of her leg.
The entire time this was going on, by the way, I was carrying on a conversation with Ray and with Carrie’s boyfriend, and when the realization of what I was actually doing finally hit me like a smack in the back of the head, my entire body started shaking involuntarily, as if I had the chills. I excused myself from the booth and went into the bathroom, and I looked at myself in the mirror and tried to take deep, slow breaths at the same time.
After a minute or two had passed, I came back to the booth, and Carrie and I started touching each other under the table again. Eventually she and Michael got up to leave, and I shook Michael’s hand, and told him how good it was to have finally met. I gave Carrie a friendly hug, and she simply smiled back at me, as if nothing unusual at all had just taken place.
“We should do this again sometime,” I blurted out. And Carrie just smiled again, and nodded. And then she and Michael walked through the bar’s door and went home.
So that was how I first met the woman I plan to spend the remainder of my life with. Speaking of which, this would probably be as good a time as any to mention that for as long as I can remember, I’ve planned to spend the remainder of my life with no one at all, other than myself. I was raised by two loving parents who are still happily married, and yet I have always been cynical about the concepts of marriage and monogamy.
As Carrie and I slowly got to know each after that night of fumbling under the bar table, I was thrilled to learn that she was equally as cynical about the concept of happily-ever-after. And yes, as it turned out, she and Michael did have an open relationship. This worked out quite nicely in my favor, because while the two of them obviously had no plans to split up anytime soon, I was more obsessed with Carrie than I’d been with any other woman, ever. There were times at the beginning of our relationship when we would lie in bed for hours, literally, and just look into each other’s eyes. I’m not sure what Carrie was thinking then--for some reason, I’ve never asked her--but I can certainly tell you what was going through my head: How the hell did I ever get so lucky?
I guess that’s what it’s like to be in love.
Carrie and I had been dating for almost two years when she and Michael finally decided to go their separate ways. It was by far the messiest breakup I had ever seen, but that’s another story.
This story--the one I plan to tell in a series of columns for Tango over the next few months--is about the life that Carrie and I now live together. Or rather, the life that we’ll be living together very soon: Much to my surprise, we got engaged recently, and I still regret that I didn’t somehow manage to capture the look on my mother’s face when I first tried explaining to her what it was, exactly, that we had in mind.
Because we aren’t getting married. Not exactly. But we do both want to be partners for life, for reasons that are both romantic and practical. And we want to celebrate that decision, just as couples who’ve chosen a more standard arrangement, and a more standard future, want to celebrate theirs. So we’re having a wedding, although we’ve been referring to it lately as a Life Partner Ceremony, regardless of the fact that “Life Partner” sounds flaky and New Age-y. And since our partnership won’t be legally recognized by the state, and because Carrie is a co-owner of her family’s business, and because I’m in the process of starting a business of my own, we’ve spent a lot of time wondering how to keep things simple and uncomplicated in the case of a break-up. Eventually, we both decided that the smartest thing to do would be to simply start a business together, which would at least transform half of our partnership into a legal entity.
Carrie is the left-brained half of the couple, and so she worked out all the details with a lawyer: We’ll be creating a holdings company, which won’t actually do anything--it will simply exist as a sort of alternative savings account. The rules we’ve set forth are simple: In the instance of a break-up, Carrie would get nothing that belonged to me before the holdings company was formed, and I would get nothing that had previously belonged to her. We’ll make deposits into the company’s account only when we make a profit on a project that we’ve worked on together, like a real estate flip, or a writing job.
Naturally, we’re both hopeful that our business will never have to be split. And yet we’re doing our very best to be proactive and realistic. And yes, just like Carrie’s relationship with Michael, ours is an open relationship, although we’ve managed to tread very lightly around that privilege so far. And yes, we do realize just how self-important and precious this partnership probably looks to those of you who’ve spent many long, hard years working to improve upon your own marriages. But as we’ve stayed up late at night and laughed with each other about the incredible ridiculousness and the incredible seriousness of what it is that we’re about to do, we’ve come to realize just how proud we are of ourselves for at least trying to improve upon that mousetrap known as modern marriage.
And of course, whether or not that wheel becomes something we manage to reinvent remains to be seen. I hope you’ll choose to come along for the ride.
(So to speak.)
Dan Eldridge is a Lonely Planet guidebook writer, the author of Moon Handbooks Pittsburgh (Avalon Travel), and the publisher of Young Pioneers, a magazine about creative entrepreneurs. He lives in Philadelphia, and his website is pioneercontent.com.
Discussion
I predict that in a few short years you will go the way of Michael - or vice versa, as you each find people new people that give you the emotional highs you relish in the newness of a relationship. Why else would you be open to sex with someone other than your "life partner" than to fulfill your primal urge?
I guess I don't understand why you and Carrie are going through all of this hassle. You're not getting married. You're not even dating exclusively. So why are you bothering with the joint accounts, the joint businesses and the "life partner" ceremony? Just date each other, and date others as well. Simple as that.
It sounds like you're going through an awful lot of hassle to pretend that your relationship is something that both of you know it isn't. Just date each other and date others as well. No fuss, no muss.
"Having children is what makes life rewarding in the long term."
Well, for some people, yes. For others (growing in numbers, according to Pew Research), it is becoming less important as the holy grail of happiness. Sorry to say that some of the most recent surveys of married people indicate their "unhappiest" time together is while they are raising teenage children. Their reported happiness trends upward after the little darlings leave home.
Likewise, for men at least, a very recent survey showed the trough of their satisfaction with their lives was around age 44 - precisely when most are married and raising children (often for the second time in a second marriage).
So, Anna, methinks thou hast gone a bit too far.
If you believe in your anthropologists, then you perhaps believe that monogamy is natural for human beings, i.e., we tend to have intimate relationships ("marriage" if you will) with one person at a time. Monogamy, however, is not to be confused with sexual fidelity. On that count, both men and women (where they are not burned or stoned for the crime) are not famous for their faithfulness. Perhaps it is only fair to say that being sexually faithful to a partner is "natural" for something like 50% of the population - and for the remainder, it is not.
I suppose the question is whether or not we should be striving for sexual fidelity as a human goal. Evolution and natural selection clearly did not favor such a trait, but this does not mean we cannot make a collective decision that it represents a moral high ground.
My problem is, I really don't see how it qualifies as a moral high ground. More often than not, it simply reinforces our childhood indoctrination in one monotheistic religion or the other. If you don't subscribe to the sky-fairy version of human creation and purpose, then what problems are we left with?
1.) Unplanned or unwanted pregnancy
2.) Sexually transmitted diseases
3.) The emotions of sexual jealousy and betrayal
The first two, while not entirely conquered yet by modern technology, certainly will be. Contraception can be nearly 100% effective even with the tools we have available today. In the future, more than likely, both men and women will have very reliable, low overhead methods of contraception available.
Concerning STDs, again, I would guess we are no more than 10 to 20 years away from either near 100% effective vaccines, or therapies that make the contraction of STDs no more threatening than the common cold.
That will leave us with the toughest knot of all - the emotions of sexual jealousy.
If Dan, Carrie, or anyone else has made a conscious decision to ignore or at least actively question their feelings of sexual jealousy as a means to preserve an important relationship, then I have a hard time understanding why anyone would object?
As usual, in this world, why can it not be that unless we see harm being done to others, we are at worst neutral, and at best supportive of our fellow homo sapiens?
Isn't something like "live and let live"?
Anna, the world is not dangerously underpopulated. Let's hope that we can find meaning and purpose without the requirement that all of us reproduce and raise children to adulthood. In fact, it is perhaps key to our survival as a species that we convince large numbers of people to avoid exactly that.
I would guess at least some of us are flat out "jealous" (ha) of Dan and Carrie's good luck to have found each other. They have their friendship and mutual support, without at the same time being asked to kill off the very emotions that brought them together in the first place. That has always struck me as a square peg in a round hole.
And as far as the dire prediction of their future break up - they will likely do no worse than those who have walked down the church aisle and "promised" to stay together forever...... in other words, they have about a 50% chance of staying together for a lifetime.
Dan and Carrie, I hope we meet someday. You're much more interesting to me than those who still think the apex of human achievement is to keep it in their pants.
Whatever.
Peace.
Hi everyone, this is Dan Eldridge, the author of the essay in question. A few of you mentioned being interested in hearing more about my story, and I think one of you was interested in an update.
As it happens, you're in luck: "Marriage Without Monogamy" is now a biweekly Tango column, so you'll be able to check in on Carrie and me every two weeks.
The column's second entry went live a few days ago, so if you haven't seen it yet, cut and paste this URL: http://tinyurl.com/39ch4q
Carrie and I are both looking forward to reading your comments!
Anna, you are correct. The endless adolescence described in this article will have definite negative consequences as this relationship unfolds.
Left unsaid by anyone so far is that the trouble we go through to be monogomous is rewarded in spades by years of goodwill and faithfulness. Once the sexual high is gone (and it will be, eventually), one or the other of you will be left feeling very empty and lonely indeed.
As someone who has been cheated on, I know these things to be true.
I agree with Anna. I'm not a believer in marriage either because I think it's played out, but I do think that open relationships are just selfish and sex is used as a drug, looking to get high on confidence and attention from new people. If you want to have sex with other people, why even be in a relationship? Security?
I'm glady to hear that you've worked out an accomodation for the two of you.
I'm even more glad to hear of somebody running with the idea of marriage as an incorpation between two people. It is far and away the most effective method of disaster control, as well as offering a load of benefits.
Lastly, to people like Mirandawilde.. I think you've missed the point of the word 'open'.
I'm in an open relationship. I've been in previous open relationships. I've been primary, and secondary.
If you love somebody, and are confident that they love you, what on earth makes you think that..
1) You cannot also love somebody else, time permitting.
2) That love must be exclusive? What actual principle of love requires exlusivity?
Trust is the importance, and trust is a flexibility entity.
If Dan knows, understands and trusts Carrie, he should be happy with who she is, and accepting of the fact she may enjoy a relationship with other people.
It doesn't have to impact on Dan/Carrie.
How do I say this. I saw a T.V. show with two nerdy types reviewing movies. Both talked about nerds in the third person. That's when I realized, everyone thinks someone else is a nerd.
Dan, you are new-agey weird - not that there is anything wrong with that. Once you get used to the idea, you'll see yourself more clearly.
I once had a girl friend told me that she loved me because I was down to earth and sensetive. I didn't believe the later. It took some time. But, she was right.
An open semi-committed relationship is nothing more than a customized marriage. But make no mistake, Carrie isn't committed to you. You've just adjusted yourself to accommodate her. It's old wisdom - the person who love's the least controls the relationship.
So congratulations to you for your happyness. Just sorry it wasn't something even more happy.
Remember that "conspiratorial smile" you saw on Carrie's face the first night her? I wonder if you'll recognize it when she's playing footies with your friend's friend across the table in a few years.
i look fwd to more posts from this guy (is he really "dan eldridge"? not that it really matters although i'd be esp impressed w/ his candor) ... very hard to wrap one's head around an open marriage where you're "with someone for 2 years" before breaking up with the main squeeze. would kinda like to learn more about the "thug"
Both desperately naive. Sorry for you. Seen too much of this kind of "creativity" in my time. Seen too many desensitized 40-year-olds who made sex, and all its attendant feelings, the center of their lives.
And, of course, too many messed-up kids. The good news is, most people like this usually are too self-centered to have them.
The problem is, this isn't love. It's all about you and your feelings. When you don't "feel" love anymore, one or the other of you will move on, and pursue new "feelings" with someone else. Over time, you will need more and more of a dose to get the same high.
Congratulations to the person who just "opened up" in her marriage. Check back in a few years. I think you're deluding yourselves.
Most of the time, I find, one or the other partner is transitioning out into a new relationship with a third party. As occurred in the above relationship.
This kind of relationship "work" when other people outside the relationship are used as tools for your own excitement.
Problem is ... it's all about "you." You putting the package together that makes things more thrilling for "you." There's no love in that. Just the commercialization of a kind of love to make things work for you.
I speak from experience. Been there, done that, washed the car with the T-shirt.
Commitment, responsibility, love that bears it even to the edge of doom, are viewed as imprisonment nowadays. But these are the things that make rewarding, rather than merely fun.
Having children isn't always fun. But I promise you that it is what makes life rewarding in the long-term. Same with marriage, career, vocation, anything else.
I think these people are vile.
I frankly don't give a flying f*ck about their personal "preferences", and their consideration of themselves as a corporate entity I find revolting.
I hope they go out of business. Whe the oil runs out, I wil cheerfully eat them both, and consider the contribution of their flesh to my survival possibly the most important thing either of those two worthless pieces of crap have ever done in thier pathetic misbegotten lives.
Many of us would like to believe that this arrangement will work and there will be a 'happily ever after' but the reality is that the only way this relationship will last long term is 1. no one ever needs to share intimacy with someone else, or 2. both are without an ego.
I don't believe that it is humanly possible for this to work out without someone feeling that they are somehow inadequate. Perhaps with a few million years more of evolution this concept could work, but not now. Dan is in denial about this woman who will most likely move onto greener pastures again some day.
Dan, What's so "new" about this? You didn't marry her; she didn't marry you. She didn't really commit to you; you didn't really commit to her. You are living together for awhile.. until she gets bored and dumps you. This is an old practice. Its called 'shacking up'.
Aren't all relationships better without monogamy?! Marriage the "old fashion" way?! Maybe there is a reason the divorce rate is around 46%.. maybe monogamy isn't the way to go!
I'd really love to hear an update on how this arrangement is working out. It sounds crazy because it's such a departure from the norm, but I think many people question the institution and our society's dedication to monogamy without actually challenging it.
LOL you must be a christian
you people just love to hate dont ya
nasty sex ewwwww!
LOL
My husband, of 15 years, and I have just opened our marriage. It has been tough but a wonderful experience so far. We have a solid relationship built on trust and openeness and this has enhanced our life. If you are for monogamy, practice it. But, if it doesn't feel right to you and your partner, there are others ways. Congratulations to you Dan and Carrie!
While I admire your sense of freedom and creativity when it comes to defining your relationship, my only warning and caveat is that once either of you desire children, the whole dynamics are going to change. While you and your partner are adult enough to understand an open relationship, your children might not be. And while your children are young, under say 10, you really won't need to worry, but eventually they grow up. It's going to take a whole lot of work to keep your family healthy. Good luck to you both. I truly hope it works out for you. By the way, now that my child is almost an adult, I have a similar arrangement with a friend. We do not live together, but are quite happy together.
I heard a lecture on the radio a few years ago by an anthropologist who claimed that the only species that was monogamous were vultures. She said the female of almost all species were more likely than the male to seek alternate partners because of their instinct to have the best possible chance of producing viable and healthy offspring.
