Moment of Truth: Is non monogamy really working for us?

Trying to be honest about how it’s going, even if the truth is hard to face

Photo by Michael Carruth on Unsplash

My husband and I started exploring non monogamy almost four years ago. Like many people as we approach the end of a calendar year, we are reflecting on the past and feel it’s time to re-visit the big question: Is non monogamy bringing joy into our lives?

For those of you who have read my previous posts, our exploration into non monogamy has been a roller coaster. We have navigated through burning, seething jealousy, tried out and tossed out way too many rules, spent many hours in couple’s counseling… Yeah…. It hasn’t exactly been an easy ride, especially in the first year.

Over time though, we have slowly started to figure out how to “do” non monogamy. It’s become easier, less raw and more like what we had imagined.

What had we imagined, exactly?

When we first decided to open up our marriage, our hope was that it would help us grow as individuals and as a couple.

My personal motivation was to feel more autonomy and freedom to explore my sexuality with new partners. It was my hope that this would allow me to feel less trapped in my relationship with my husband and that this freedom would allow me to be more grounded, present and happy with him and within my life.

My husband’s motivation to open up our relationship was similar, but different. For him, in addition to wanting the freedom to make his own decisions about sex, he wanted to have more sex and to explore kinks that I didn’t share with him. His sexual needs had always been different than mine. We had spent over 20 years dealing with those differences in our bed — and making the best of it for the record — but it felt like taking that tension away would be good for our relationship.

In a nutshell, we both hoped that non monogamy would bring lots of joy into our lives and that we would be able to give an enthusiastic “yes!” to anyone posing the question about whether we were happy to have opened up our relationship.

So, in all honesty, is non monogamy bringing us joy?