[Two Pronged] An open marriage finally works in the wife’s favor, and her husband isn’t pleased

Rappler’s People section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr. Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in three continents, he has been training with Dr. Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.

Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer,

My husband and I, married for 18 years, decided to have an open marriage after 2 years of marital “bliss.”

I was 20, and he was 30. I was happy, but to my surprise, he was not. He said he loved me but he was just bored. He said he didn’t think he could love any other woman as much as he loved me, that it wasn’t my fault because no one else proved as exciting as me – both in bad and out of bed, but this was just his personality.

He hoped I would learn to adjust to his needs. He felt too old and bored — a boredom that could be alleviated by sleeping with other women.

For the last 16 years, this has worked more in his favor than mine. He was the only one finding new women to sleep with and, because we had an open marriage, I just had to grin and bear it.

This changed six months ago when I met a widower, Alex, at an event my husband was too bored to go to. When Alex found out I had an open marriage, he started to pursue me. Alex invited me for a luxury getaway, five nights in Tokyo.

When I told Greg, he flipped. Greg seems to have forgotten all the benefits he had with our open marriage.

This is the first time I will have similar benefits. What to do?

– Maria

Dear Maria,

Open marriages mean different things to different couples but ideally requires all parties to have agreed to the rules and boundaries, making consent and communication the cornerstone of whatever follows.

Everyone involved should understand what is and is not acceptable. Are both of the primary parties nonmonogamous or only one? Are outside relationships limited to occasional physical encounters or are deeper emotional attachments ok? Time, place, frequency, etcetera are also subject to agreement.

The essence of a successful open marriages is mutual trust and respect, otherwise introducing additional parties will likely exacerbate existing issues rather than making a positive contribution to the primary partnership.

It would appear that in your case, Maria, you and Greg have not clarified all the boundaries. First, he has effectively imposed an open marriage on you and secondly he has come to believe, correctly or not, that your role in this is, and should be, monogamous, hence his reaction to your proposed Tokyo trip.

You, on the other hand, see an opportunity to embrace the openness just as he has up to this point. Now you could both argue over what the agreement previously in place actually was, referring to all the benefits it gave him for example, but that would still not help chart the way forward. Instead, it would be more useful to establish a new set of rules and boundaries as a framework for how you both wish your marriage to function in the future.

This time you should explicitly agree to the freedoms and limitations of the arrangement so that it accurately reflects a mutual understanding of the need for clarity, open communication, trust, and respect.

Should it transpire that Greg wants to have all the benefits but does not wish them to extend to you, then of course you will need to decide whether this is in fact a marriage that is worth continuing.

All the best,
JAF Baer

Dear Maria,

Thank you very much for your letter.

The answer to your letter seems obvious: an indignant observation that up until 15.5 years ago, only he was enjoying the “open marriage” you both agreed to. Now that you have a chance to enjoy the same benefits, he flipped. This is unfair because what is sauce for the goose surely should also be sauce for the gander.

However, this “equal footing” that you now want in your marriage is not what you agreed to in the first place. I think that was mainly because of the power differential between the two of you. Not only in terms of age but perhaps also in terms of adult life experience — one could even say that, at your 20 to his 30, the odds were strictly in his favor, his 3 to your 2.

In addition, you were happy in your marriage the way it was. He, however, just needed your permission to be sexually unfaithful and you probably felt it was churlish to deny him this one simple thing (and it could have been to him, as it might have seemed to you then) that he needed to be as happy as you.

No wonder you grew to resent this situation more and more. But did you share this resentment with him as it grew?

I think you did not.

Not because of anything nefarious, but simply because neither of you had the bandwidth to insist on a change for a marriage that seemed to be chugging along ok.

But that was before Alex came along.

Now you have more skin in the game and thus want to level the playing field. And good on you, Maria. And good on you too, Alex, for being the catalyst for Maria and Greg to examine what they want from their marriage.

Mr Baer and I agree on this: So far, feelings have centered on whether you can (that is from Greg’s perspective) and why you should (from YOUR perspective) go to Japan with Alex. It could also lead to a new understanding of the open marriage you had in the past. Not one where only he “benefited” but a more egalitarian one, where you both do.

OR…

You could take this as an opportunity to either make or break the marriage. And why not, right? (Though admittedly, this is from a co columnist who Pollyanna-ishly (and sometimes wrongly) believes you can change your world no matter how daunting it seems or how old you are).

You could take this as an opportunity for your marriage to be more meaningful to both you and Greg.
How? By having conversations that matter. By sharing what you both really want from your marriage and what you are each willing to do to attain it.

Do you think you will be happy with your marriage once you, too, can sleep around the way he doe? Does Greg, at almost 50, still only want a wife who agrees to his catting around?

If so, then by all means, discuss new terms of engagement which follow the spirit of “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

However, if each of you want more than having an open marriage? More from each other?

BUT… if there is even a smidgeon of hope that this initial misunderstanding can lead to sharing what each of you truly need from someone you loved enough at the start to forsake all others, this might be the very time to start exploring these possibilities.

All the best,
MG Holmes

– Rappler.com