Open Relationships

A young woman meets a man. She had already been traumatized by a series of men who had dumped her, so her confidence was not exactly in the clouds. So, she met a wonderful man and engaged in a wonderful loving relationship with him. I know, it already sounds a bit mushy, but, hold on.

After a few months he announced that he wanted to sleep with other people. Presumably, that means other women. But that he still wanted to continue his relationship with the woman who calls herself Just Not Enough. He was willing to accord her the role of main squeeze. If we are to believe Ask Polly, open relationships are something of a thing among sophisticated urban professionals.

Today’s letter writer explains her situation. When her boyfriend told her he wanted to sleep around she told him to take a hike. Can you blame her? And yet, she is dogged by the feeling that she was just not enough. She is in therapy and what good is therapy if it does not teach you to beat yourself up for someone else’s bad behavior. Because, after all is said and done, the man in question treated with extreme disrespect.

Just Not Enough writes:

Several months ago, after a long string of 30-year-old guys dumped me unceremoniously after our fourth dates (you could pretty much set a watch to it), I met someone I adored, and who I’m pretty sure adored me, too. He was a brilliant listener, open and kind, had a great career, a sense of humor, and an affection for me I’m not sure I’ve felt before. But a few months in, he told me he needed to see other people. He wanted to see me, too, but he said there had always come a point in his relationships when he wanted to sleep with other people, and now he needed to make a lifestyle shift, and would I like to be his primary partner? He told me all this in a fog of emotion after I opened up a what-are-we-doing-here conversation; he got shifty, quiet, had a hundred weird other reasons not even worth repeating, cited his depression, said he didn’t know who he was or what he wanted, exactly, but that he had to try this. It’s funny, because in the hours and days before this happened he told me that what we had was incredibly special and rare, that he felt “understood” by me and that he hadn’t felt this way in a very long time, and also that the sex was better than any he had before. Anyway, I said no. I didn’t want an open relationship. It pained me then and it’s killing me now, but I couldn’t do it, especially not when the decision felt so fear-based and not before we had a chance to build a basic level of trust.

My therapist told me that we can give my now-ex credit for being honest about the fact that he needs to be with other people. Okay: good for him. Credit where credit is due. But as much as I am trying to applaud his resolution, I don’t understand it, never having had real issues being loyal to anyone (even to the wrong people). And what’s more, it makes me feel horribly inadequate.

Because the truth is I wasn’t enough. He needed more. More what? More sex, I guess, despite what we had getting a pretty glowing review. More conversation, maybe, even though he said he felt he could tell me anything. 

More beauty? I’m not Miss America, but I’m not an ogre, either, and that seems like a dumb reason for a good guy to bolt. Until everything fell apart, this man looked me in the eyes and told me how much he cared about me, and I could see — am I crazy?? — I could see he was beginning to fall for me. I felt so safe, and then it was over. He seemed 100 percent in, until he was out. I’ve come a long way as a woman, a human, in the last few years, and I think I know I am enough. But still I feel like I wasn’t. He needed something, someone, more….

I looked at him and saw a big, beautiful mess with a million jagged edges, but also someone who naturally made me peer into the future, and who made the future look like a place that didn’t seem so scary. After a difficult 20s and a long string of disappointments and a lot of hard work and a few losses and a few gains, I look at myself and I think: I contain multitudes. Aren’t multitudes enough?

Just a quick thought here. Of course, it's better to discover this now, rather than later. Better to discover his character flaw now, not later. And also, what happened to anger? Why should she feel that there is something wrong with her? Why shouldn’t she feel that there is something wrong with him and that he has treated her appallingly badly? Why is her therapist giving him credit for being honest instead of letting her feel angry for being mistreated?

I will spare you Polly’s paean to romantic love and great marital sex. In another context it would be called: too much information. And yet, she informs us us that open relationships are the plat du jour in some of our urban centers.

In her words:

We happen to be living in a moment when lots of young urbanites believe that open relationships are the way and the light. There’s this very common notion that sex always gets very old with the same person, and once that happens you’re fucked, so why not structure your life differently? Young people regularly talk about monogamy like it’s this trick that the Man plays to get the sheeple in line, or it’s some dying gasp of a conservative, religious world that had yet to be emancipated by the infinite choices and glories of Tinder.

Free to be used… liberated to be one of several mistresses… is this what women’s liberation was about? Why are sophisticated urban women accepting these conditions? Is monogamy really a patriarchal conspiracy? If it is, are women accepting open relationships because they can now have sex with all the men they want?

Strangely enough, or not, neither Just Not Enough nor Polly considers that the new arrangements will allow women to have more sexual partners themselves. Could it be that this is not what women want?