On October 4, 2008 Jenny Block spoke at the Poly Pride Rally in New York City. The rally was part of Poly Pride Weekend, a gathering for polyamorous people, those who maintain multiple loving relationships at the same time. Jenny is the author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage, which all started on Tango, in her essay, Portrait of an Open Marriage.

*****

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wanted to say to you today. A lot. You’re not an easy crowd, you know. First, you are being treated to an incredible line-up of speakers. I mean the gang’s all here—Tristan Taormino, Cunning Minx, Anita Wagner, Nan Wise. Not to mention our fearless leaders Birgitte Philippides and Diana Adams. And second, well, it’s Central Park for God sake’s New York City. A girl wants to make an impression.

I was asked if I might say a few words about communication and it got me thinking about just how many different kinds of communicating we all do—how we communicate with our partners and within our relationships; how we talk to other people about our relationships (both those who agree or support us and those who do not) and how we communicate with one another, many of us strangers and yet all of us connected. And seeing how the focus of today is really all of those types of communication, I thought I might start off by saying the one thing I want to communicate more than anything and that is—thank you. To all of you.

You represent a community that has welcomed me in and supported me in a way I could have never expected or imagined. And you need all the support you can get when you’re sharing your personal life with what feels like the whole universe.

You see, I never set out to be a spokesperson or poster child for polyamory. I’m a writer and what I write about is my life. And so when I was asked to write a book about the fact that I was in an open marriage, I was thrilled. And then, I was terrified.

What will people think, I wondered. Here I am living the life I want, gliding under the radar of most and feeling pretty good about how I was able to be living what many might consider a fringe lifestyle in the middle of a gated community. And that’s where the part about communicating with people outside of our relationships and outside of the community who may or not support, condone, tolerate, or accept who and how we love comes in.

Before writing Open, I went to my daughter’s soccer practice with my husband and our then girlfriend, Lisbeth. The three of us went to the neighborhood happy hours and she joined us on our vacations to the North Carolina shore. People never even asked. They assumed she was the nanny, my sister, a dear family friend. And we never gave them reason for pause. Never gave them the opportunity to think otherwise.

But then there was this chance to write a book, to communicate to the outside world, to tell my story and the writer in me couldn’t resist. But there is only one good way to write a book about your life—you have to tell the truth. At that moment I had to decide, my family had to decide whether or not we were ready. After much talking and thinking and debating and sighing, we decided we were ready. We weren’t, of course.  We couldn’t have been.

How can you ever be ready for the wrath of some people, the pity of others, and the surprising amount of love and community that comes as well? And how could you be ready to show up at a television station to talk about your book only to find yourself sharing the green room with the show’s other guest—a three-legged, mangy white puppy saved from a lifetime of torture in a puppy mill? How can I compete with that tiny face who has posed with the likes of Barack Obama and Lindsay Lohan. The dog has her own tour bus!

It all came as quite a shock. The scathing comments being the biggest shock of all, of course. The first ones on the web called me a whore, implored my husband to leave me, damned me to hell, and caused my cheeks to catch fire, my nerves to clench, and my stomach to heave. But then the comments of support came rolling in and soon it was an even tide. An ebb and flow of commentary that quickly became an education that I couldn’t have come by any other way.

And that has been the thrill of the last four months, for nowhere else could have I experienced the power of a skill we have come in many ways to take for granted.

I like to think I’m a pretty good communicator. I know when to speak and when to listen. I know when to share and when to hold back. I know how to manipulate language to make it do my will. I was on the high school debate team after all. And I’ve been married for eleven years. Nothing like a long-term relationship to teach you the power of communication.

For my husband and I that doesn’t always mean talking. Sometimes, it means quite the opposite, in fact. Sometimes it means asking, “What’s the score?” instead of pleading with my husband to change the channel away from yet another college football game. Sometimes it means putting the laundry in the dryer even though I have a strict “I am not the maid around here” policy. Sometimes it means not demanding a conversation and accepting that “I’m fine, baby. Everything’s fine” actually means “I’m fine, baby. Everything’s fine.”

Now, when we first opened our relationship, it did mean talking ad nauseum. It seemed like there was no way around that. It was a huge step for two long time monogamists (or supposed monogamists, anyway) to take. How would this work? What would the rules be? What about jealousy? What if you love her more than me? What about our kid? What about my in-laws? Is this a bad idea? Are we bad people? Am I a lesbian? Do you want to leave me? We’re freaks, aren’t we? Will there be sleepovers? Will you watch? Will I? Will, well, you get the idea.

We probably did more communicating the year before we opened our marriage than we had ever done before or since. And it was where I learned the most valuable lesson about communication that I could have ever hoped for—you can never, ever be prepared for people’s reactions, the responses—whether negative or positive that always say so much more about the speaker than about us.

No matter how well you might think you know your partner. It’s almost impossible to know what they’ll say when you say, “Honey, I’ve been thinking. And what I’ve been thinking is that I want to sleep with other people.” Seems to me, if you can say that to the person you promised to love, honor and cherish until death do you part, you can say ANYTHING to them. And once you can say anything to them, well, it’s a heck of a lot easier to say anything to other people too.

And that’s why as unprepared as I was for people’s reactions, those reactions brought out, I think, the best in me. Their comments—no matter how harsh or unkind or unfair—make me calmer and stronger and smarter. And they honed the skills that I had been working on in my marriage. In turn, I brought those skills back to bear on my marriage and my relationship with my current girlfriend Jemma. Being with her has taught me once and for all that love isn’t a limited commodity. That being poly is about honoring one’s sexuality not exploiting it. And that just because you feel like you’re alone in the world, alone in your views about love and sex and life and relationships, doesn’t mean that you really are.

Of course, just between you and I, she’s always teasing me that she’s more of a duo-amorist rather than a poly one.

All of this has made me acutely aware of how much the people who came before me in this fight have done. How much all of you have done just by living your lives without compromise. How tirelessly those who have long been fighting the good fight have inspired all of us to communicate honestly in all of our relationships, with intimates, friends, or family. How they have taught us how to communicate with the rest of the world so that there might be more acceptance and less hate as we move forward. This is not to imply that we have to tell everyone everything. But it does mean being true to ourselves when it comes to the messages we convey to others.

This is never easy in the best of situations.  But what I have learned is that it’s worth it, what it teaches us as a community is that we are worth it and so I try every day to live fully and honestly and authentically. To, as an old theater director used to tell me, “Really be there. Be where you are.” All of you have been my guides in doing that, and though we will continue to face those whose lives are controlled by hate and fear, we must rise above and show them by example just how delicious life can be.

My truth is this. Talking to my partners will always be priority one. But if I want to feel truly comfortable in the world at large, talking to the public has to run a very close second. And both have to be treated with equal care.  It’s a daily challenge to be sure. A challenge when I meet new people and wonder whether I should use the word “girlfriend” when I introduce Jemma. A challenge when I do an interview and I know the people I love and the people who love me are watching. A challenge when I write something that I know will reach exactly the ears I’m longing to truly reach.

It is something that all of you and the rest of the poly community have made possible for me to shoulder.  Which is why I wanted to take my time today to say the two words that I truly cannot say emphatically or sincerely enough—thank you.

“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” the old adage goes. But we do, all the time. He’s a player. She’s a slut. He’s uptight. She’s frigid. Each of these titles comes from a different outward appearance and each suggests traits of the people behind the face, or inside the clothes. And it’s not just personalities that people assume. It’s also relationship styles.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as guilty as the next girl when it comes to this. I see someone and off goes my brain, making decisions about who that person might be; whether or not I’m interested in engaging with them; and, more germane to this conversation, what type of relationships that person might be involved in or want to be involved in.

And that’s the part that has me befuddled right now. I don’t want anyone telling me what to wear or how to look and I certainly don’t expect to make those decisions for other people. But I am becoming more and more conscious of how other people’s presentations affect me.

The most visible members of a group end up defining the look of the group. Despite the fact that this is an inaccurate and unfair, it’s also inevitable. If I had a magic wand, it would be one of the first things I’d change (after getting rid of world hunger and professional wrestling.) But I’m not waiting around for fairy dust any longer.

This has been on my mind for a very specific reason. I have chosen to write about my life and when I’m asked to speak publicly about that writing people are often surprised when they see what has been described as my “conservative look.” It’s disappointing, quite frankly. People in open relationships don’t all look the same.

And therein lies the issue that compelled me to write about this—stereotypes: judgments that originate in truth but are exaggerated until they become ridiculous. Stereotypes come from what we see most frequently, and they are limiting to everyone.

The only way to eliminate stereotypes, of course, is to expose the truth. And what I’ve discovered is the value of presenting the image I want to portray, regardless of how incongruent it might seem at first glance. I want to compel others to feel comfortable being who they are.

Allow me to elaborate. If you walk into a room and no one looks like you, you might assume—wrongly most likely—that you don’t belong in that room. But if you enter that same room and you see yourself in someone there, you will likely feel better about the room and the people in it.

We all have the opportunity to be that familiar face. I won’t bother suggesting that we stop judging one another. Sadly, I don’t think will ever happen. And I wouldn’t want people to change the way they look to satisfy someone else. Nope. I’m suggesting that we start outing ourselves.

Do you like to wear short skirts as much as you like to play chess? Do you like to dress conservatively and dance outrageously? Do you like to don the attire of one group and join the members of another? Do it. Know that you will be judged for it. And do it anyway.

You don’t have to be who you dress and you don’t have to date or have the kind of relationships that your style—or even lack there of—prescribes. You can look suburban and have an open relationship and you can dress edgily and be the model of monogamy. Whatever your thing, there are others like you, trust me.

We don’t have to let the image we project—or the images others project onto us—keep us from our own happiness and desires. The truth is, we can’t expect people not to judge us. But we certainly can allow ourselves to surprise people—maybe even enough that they too will choose to live outside their own closet.

I’ve been thinking about intimacy, those moments of understanding between two people where no words are, or need to be, spoken. I’ve been thinking about inside jokes between friends, new and old. I’ve been thinking about still being in my pajamas at noon, sitting toe to toe with another person, forgetting to eat, dissecting the lives we lead and that we want to lead. I’ve been thinking about intimacy that comes through sex and intimacy that develops outside of it. I’ve been thinking about roommates and lovers and family, relatives and strangers and even enemies.

I know what intimacy is. I’ve enjoyed it in any number of permutations.

Scene:

I sit with a group of women in a circle of mismatched chairs: a rocker, a ladder back, an upholstered wing chair, weathered and worn. The women are 20 and 40 and 80. I haven’t seen them, or even exchanged emails with some of them, for a year. We cannot pull ourselves from the room. We share story after story of the year gone by, the life gone by, and the futures that may lie ahead. In this circle, there is no age; there is no distance; there is no race or class; the superficial falls away. There is just that moment, amongst a dozen writers who come together every year to write and talk and revel in the intimacy that every day life often doesn’t allow. They are the kind of relationships that developed instantly out of one common trait—the love of words—and that have lasted indefinitely.

Scene:

My husband and girlfriend and daughter and I (or my father and my husband and my sister and her girlfriend and I) sit on the floor of our family room and play a board game.  The competition is fierce and friendly. The hours disappear. And we are saddened when the game ends and wonder each to ourselves, “Why don’t we do this more often?” We clean up the board. We put away all the pieces and we congratulate ourselves on giving the answers to the questions we never imagined would be asked. The questions on the cards that someone at Milton Bradley or Hasbro conjured up perhaps with exactly this sort of “togetherness” in mind, the kind where everyone gets a turn and everyone wins, if not the game then the opportunity to enjoy one another.

Scene:

He is my waiter at a restaurant and I am far from home. There are few diners that night and he pays me more attention than he otherwise would. But it’s not just the empty dining room; we have that strange connection that makes us barrage one another with questions and wish it was another time and another place where we could fantasize about a future where all of those questions might be answered. But for four days, in a hotel in nowhere, we are lovers. Maybe not the ones crossed by stars. But certainly the ones we will remember and be glad for and maybe even long for on some night when the restaurant we are in is empty but our hearts long to be full.

And yet, despite all of my experiences, I am regularly reminded how narrow the common definition of intimacy is. Why do we have such a limited understanding? Man and woman and marriage seems to be the only acceptable way to achieve true intimacy and then, of course, only with each other, to the exclusion of other people.

I think I know the answer, although it doesn’t sound very nice. People embrace a closed definition of intimacy to excuse their own lack of it. They dismiss the intimacy and legitimacy of non-traditional relationships so they can create or elevate it for themselves. That is foolishness, of course, but it’s not surprising. We are insecure creatures seeking approval and longing to prove our own worthiness.

Opportunities for intimacy are all around us, and they don’t need to be sexual. (But they certainly can be…) We can have intimate moments with family and friends and they need not have naughty overtones. But we can also have intimacies that are rooted in sexual desire, and having and desiring and pursuing those relationships need not be precluded by our marital state. I hope that everyone who is married has intimacy with their spouse. But I also want to dispel the myth that marriage is the only thing that can provide “true” intimacy.

We meet a stranger on the train and we say, “It’s like you know me.” We see an old friend after years of not being in contact and we say, “It’s like we were never apart.” We talk to a family member about moments from a shared past and say, “It’s like we are inhabiting one mind.” Those are all intimacies and each is as valid as any other. So why when it comes to relationships based in romantic love, do we feel so sure that it is only with one partner that true intimacy can be found?

I don’t believe that only monogamy can bring intimacy, just as I don’t believe that only time can bring us intimacy. Moments of instantaneous connection can occur any time we are open to having and making those connections.  For those who find no need for intimacy outside of their marriage, sexual or otherwise, feel free to ignore what beckons. You likely are contented enough not to even hear its call. But for those of us who do, I see no harm in heeding it. I see nothing “lesser” about those chance, momentary opportunities of connection and meaning. Intimacy is not the property of marriage. Each of us owns our right to be intimate with whomever we want, in whatever manner makes us most happy.

If we are lucky, we have experienced all kinds of intimacies throughout our lives. The thing is, many people only accept of certain kinds and only when they fit neatly within certain boundaries. But just as those kinds and boundaries can be different for different people when it comes to relationships with family and friends, so too can it be different when it comes to sexual relationships. The thing is, we limit ourselves when we spend so much time and energy defining what intimacy “should” be.

No one type of intimacy should be held as more valid or vital than another. And relationships that are not “traditional” should not be seen as barring or lacking in intimacy because, well, they’re not. Intimacy within non-traditional relationships is just one variation among many. It is as legitimate and nourishing as the intimacy of traditional marriage. So why not open up to unexpected experiences of intimacy?  Why not accept the value of intimacy, no matter where it comes from?  Why not spend more time seeking to be happy than worrying about being right?

Juliet:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Those were Shakespeare’s thoughts, but I’m not so sure. I have friends who have been together for seventeen years, a lesbian couple who live in California, and just got married. When they refer to one another they say, “my wife.” But they said that even before the state deemed their love legal.

I have another pair of friends, also a lesbian couple, who got married in Hawaii years ago and were together for many years prior to that. They call each other, “my partner,” and always have. The piece of paper didn’t change that for them. They tried girlfriend for a while but it always felt too casual for them, which brings me to my point:

“Girlfriend” sounds kind of casual to me, too. But it seems like it’s all I got.

I call my significant other, “my girlfriend.” One of them anyway. The other one I call, “my husband.” This language allows me to get away with a certain amount of ambiguity, to “pass” if you will. Once I say husband, it’s assumed that, when I say “girlfriend,” I’m using the Southern version of “friend who’s a girl,” no romance implied. But that’s not what I mean. Nor do I mean anything dismissive or fleeting when I use that term. And so, I wonder, do I need a new word? If I do, what would it be? If not, what happens to a relationship that’s not properly named?

For me, partner has always connoted a business relationship, and wife or spouse has connoted a legal relationship. Girlfriend sounds like pre-fiancé, and fiancé, well, then the question is, “when’s the ring coming?” And that’s not a question that either my girlfriend or I are asking, not at this point anyway. So, what’s a girl to do? It goes back to the question of which relationships are real or acceptable or important. It almost feels like if there’s no language for it then it isn’t “real.”

I’ve heard folks in open or polyamorous relationships use terms like significant other (S.O. for short), partner, primary, secondary, and of course, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, spouse, and lover. But there are all sorts of thoughts and ideas that follow those words, both real and implied, connotative and denotative. I just want to be able to say what I mean, mean what I say, and not have to explain myself ad naseum. I’m a dreamer, I know.

I wonder sometimes if my girlfriend feels slighted when I introduce her as my girlfriend and people assume we’re just friends. But I also wonder what my husband would think if I adopted language that seemed to compromise our relationship. Words are messy business. And, yes, I admit, I’m prone to over-thinking. But if the world demands labels (and I think we can agree it does) I feel compelled to comply, at least sometimes. Yet, I don’t always know how.

I got a form the other day that asked me for the names of two emergency contacts. The blanks were followed by boxes labeled spouse, relative, colleague, and friend. First I listed my husband. Then I listed my girlfriend, and I thought, “What box do I check?” I know, I could’ve just checked friend and moved on, but how would you feel if the person with whom you are in a romantic, committed relationship referred to you as a “friend”? My guess is that you’d be none too thrilled.

In theory, my girlfriend wouldn’t care. But in reality, I think it would sting. In fact, I know it would sting. “What is she implying?” she would think. “Is she embarrassed? Not as invested as I? Hiding from me or herself or the person she’s filling out that form for?”

None of the above, I’d have to say.

Just add it the frustration pile, I suppose. Who are you if you don’t have a name? And, further, who are you if your name doesn’t truly fit? Like jeans that either hang too far or cling too tight, you just don’t feel like yourself. The language of relationships is important.

And, although, when it comes to my own relationships, I have no doubt how sweet it is, I can’t help but wonder if we could ever prize the Scabiosa the way we do the Lily…

From the book Open by Jenny Block. Excerpted by arrangement with Seal Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2008.

As time went on, she realized that several key elements make a successful open marriage, and though those factors involved the community of people she surrounded herself with, it was mostly about how she chose to act and react, and how to be in her relationship and her own skin. Having come this far, she more than realized that it was never going to be easy. She was always going to need to protect her daughter. Things couldn’t always be exactly as she wanted them to be. But she was doing it, and she knew she wasn’t alone in her journey.

Being in a successful open marriage is about four things: 1) finding the support you need, both within your marriage and from the people around you; 2) accepting that jealousy is a manufactured emotion that, with enough conscious effort, you can learn to let go of; 3) treating an open marriage as you would a “traditional” one—that is, normalizing it as a choice for everyone; and 4) overcoming people’s fears and misunderstanding of open marriage and its supposed consequences on society at large.

Despite the fact that few people who are in open marriages talk about it either publicly (in the media, for example) or openly (that is, within their own community of friends and family members), open marriage—in any number of forms, and going by a variety of alternate names—is becoming more and more common. Oprah has featured couples in open marriages, and it’s the subject of a variety of new books and articles, from Tristan Taormino’s book Opening Up: Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships to Em and Lo’s article in the June 2007 issue of Glamour magazine, “The Secret Sex Lives of American Couples,” which featured a couple in an open relationship. In other words, if mass media is any indication, it’s increasingly treated as a viable lifestyle choice (though only in more progressive areas, of course).

Unfortunately, I don’t live in a particularly forward-thinking part of the country, which means I have to live less openly than I’d like to. That is, although I don’t hide the way I live, I don’t announce it, either. I introduce my husband as my husband, and my girlfriend as my girlfriend, and answer any questions that might arise. But unless friends and neighbors and colleagues read my work, they might not have any idea about the way I live. We are neither out nor closeted. In a way, it’s terrific that it then is no big deal, because why should it be? By the same token, it would be nice to be surrounded constantly by like-minded people with whom I could discuss freely the ins and outs of living openly.

I will say, though, that in certain venues and events, my situation is readily accepted, particularly in the LGBTQ and arts communities. We now know that non-monogamy has a long, long history; it’s just that it hasn’t always been referred to as “open marriage.” But many people are beginning to see lifelong monogamy for the facade it is. Along with soaring divorce rates, more and more people are defining for themselves what their families will look like, and open relationships are gaining traction.

In my very humble opinion, this has a lot to do with people’s wising up. Many thinking men and women find themselves reflecting on why their marriages aren’t working, and what marriage might need to look like in order for it to succeed. And for those people, who want to retain a relationship they value but that is lacking something, be it large or small, open marriage can be a long-term, happy, and healthy solution. It’s the smart way of approaching something that deserves more reliance on logic and less on magic. It takes a heck of a lot more than fairy dust to hold a relationship together.

So, back to the things you need: Number one is support from your spouse. Open marriage is productive only if both partners are onboard. And because the rules can morph and change, it requires ongoing attention and communication. I remember when the need for Christopher and me to support each other, unconditionally, first became abundantly clear to me. It was after our first major “bump,” which happened early on with Lisbeth. It was after she decided she no longer wanted to sleep with me, but did want to continue sleeping with Christopher. I specifically asked him not to have sex with her one night, but he did it anyway. I was crushed. His explanation? He thought my request was silly. I was astounded. His behavior showed a blatant disregard for the boundaries we had set. And what’s the point of setting boundaries if they’re going to be so casually dismissed? Without at least some sort of guidelines, our open marriage simply wasn’t going to work.

When I found out that he had specifically ignored my very simple wish, I felt compelled to leave him—not because he’d slept with her, but because he’d betrayed me. My anger and frustration weren’t about sex; they were about trust. I reminded him how betrayed he had felt when Grace and I were together, and with that, he was able to see my perspective. He apologized, but I still felt torn. It was obvious that he was genuinely sorry, but I was also incredibly upset. The bottom line was that we were just beginning to navigate how our open marriage was going to operate, and it dawned on me that the only way it could work would be if we caught each other when we stumbled, even if that meant supporting each other in what seemed like unusual ways. I had to juggle being the hurt wife and the friend to the guy who’d hurt his wife. It wasn’t easy, but it also turned out to be a very deep way of better knowing someone I already loved.

Because most people consider being in an honest open relationship living alternatively, it’s not always easy to get the support you need. I’ve been lucky enough to find it through the friends and family members I’ve told, as well as from online communities like Polyamory.org and PracticalPolyamory.com. (You’ll find a more complete list of sites and publications in the appendix and the Works Consulted pages of this book.) No one has rejected me because of my choice to open my marriage. I also know that not everyone understands. Through the friendship grapevine, it has gotten back to me that some of my friends can’t completely wrap their heads around it, but they have been supportive nonetheless. I believe that’s because Christopher’s and my friends genuinely care about us, even when they need some help understanding our choices.

People who choose open relationships have to be prepared to stretch a little, too, both to help other people understand and to support one another within the relationship. Sometimes the only person you have to talk to about what’s going on is the very person you are having the relationship with, and you can often talk to each other in ways that might not be possible in closed relationships. For example, people in traditional marriages may not be “allowed” to express love or sexual interest, or perhaps any feelings whatsoever, for anyone other than their primary partner. Being closed necessitates hiding. Being open necessitates revelation.

Christopher and I recovered from our first big debacle almost instantly, simply because we decided we would. So much of navigating a new lifestyle involves letting go of the “norms” and “meanings” to which people have grown accustomed. We were figuring things out together, and we had to learn to talk to each other and to listen—not to what we thought the other person was saying, but to what they were actually saying. We continue to work at that. Of course, people in monogamous relationships must work at this, too, but because of the intricacies of open marriages and polyamory, being extra communicative becomes, or at least feels, more crucial.

Even though we know that talking is paramount, it’s not always easy, especially for Christopher. For example, when things ended with Christopher and Lisbeth and we all went back to being “just friends,” it was tough for all of us, as any change is. But Christopher suffered a different kind of loss than either Lisbeth or I did—and, I believe, a more difficult one. She and I fell back into our friendship easily, but he had had no real relationship with her before our sexual one started, and so he was left feeling like an outsider. He had been intimate with her, as physically intimate as any two people can be, and then suddenly he was back to being the husband of her best friend. Period.

“Is this too weird?” he asked me one night as he described his feelings of loss.

“Not at all,” I answered. “I’m the only one you really can talk to, and I’m happy to listen.” It was an amazing affirmation of our choice to be open, and in terms of communication, the experience provided a bridge of sorts for us. We were talking as we never had before.

Christopher’s loss was real, but it was also strange and uncharted in terms of my helping him to work through it. How do you comfort your husband when he has broken up with his lover? The same way you would help anyone else you love survive a difficult time: You listen and love them and appreciate what they are experiencing for what it is. And you don’t insert yourself. It would have been easy for me to say, “How can you be so upset if you love me?” or, “What does this say about how you feel about our relationship if you’re so worried about losing her?” But I had nothing to do with what he was feeling. And seeing him through it—watching him, listening to him, helping him—helped me, once again, to see him as a whole person, and not just as who he was in relation to me. It’s a marvelous human and intellectual challenge to think solely of someone else, and to not interject yourself into their particular scenario. It is not something we do often enough. Open marriage and polyamory have given me that opportunity at many turns, but it’s not for the faint of heart.

If you do want to give open marriage a shot, you have to be strong enough to deal with all of the new feelings, problems, and experiences that it might throw at you. You have to know that jealousy is bound to rear its ugly head. This is the second issue on my list, because it’s the unfortunate sibling of the supportive lover. It’s a dangerous relation, and you’ll need to decide what you will do with it when it inevitably arises: allow it to eat you up or make you question yourself and your relationship? Or can you use it as a chance to address why you’re feeling jealous in the first place? We feel jealous when we feel insecure, so it’s imperative that we examine our relationship’s security, or lack thereof, and where it’s coming from. Is it you? Is it your partner? Exploring your reasons for feeling jealous can help you gain some perspective on it.

I’m not suggesting this is easy—not by a long shot—but I do believe that it will allow you to see yourself and your partner differently—as individuals, not as wholly defined by each other. And that can result in your creating a space where more love can grow, instead of one in which resentment insinuates itself as it does when jealousy, rather than understanding, is your guide. Not being jealous has to be a conscious choice, and it’s a choice I have to work at and remind myself of, one that requires years of deprogramming.

Acknowledging, assessing, and discussing each issue, challenge, and question as it comes up has taught me things about both Christopher and myself that I could not have otherwise learned, and that, to an extent, I did not previously imagine were possible. It’s not easy work, but the pleasure is in the challenge. When Socrates was on trial for heresy for prompting students to think for themselves and challenge what they had been told, he responded by telling the court, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I couldn’t agree more. It might seem easier, but what’s the point? When I started looking at my own life and my marriage was when I figured out how to get to where I wanted to go—that is, how to continue my journey toward having a happy partnership.

Even when you do have a relatively easy time transitioning into an open marriage, it’s highly unlikely that everyone around you will see your choice as something they understand, or even consider legitimate, either socially or romantically. Despite having my family’s and close friends’ backing, I have had plenty of experience with people whose responses to my lifestyle have been anything but supportive. These include being aggressive, condescending, and just plain mean-spirited. As I mentioned earlier, people who see open marriage as deviant feel perfectly comfortable labeling me a whore. It makes it easier for them to rationalize and compartmentalize my life. Thinking of me as a bad person and a bad wife and a bad mother is convenient and facilitates their separating themselves from me. Otherwise, they could be just like me. And that’s simply too scary a proposition to address. The best thing I can do for myself, then, as well as for others who choose to live in open relationships, is to own being open, and to respect it as I would any more traditional arrangement. Normalizing open marriage among its participants is the first step toward gaining acceptance in the community at large.

For me, it’s not so important to meet the standards that other people impose upon me as it is to be able to live in harmony with my neighbors and friends and acquaintances, particularly where Emily is concerned.

The scenario I fear most—which, thank goodness, hasn’t happened and I pray never will—is that people will stop letting their children come over to our house to play with our daughter. One of my very closest friends, Alex, ended up taking issue with my lifestyle at one point in our friendship. She was worried that her children might “see something” when they were playing at our house. She felt unnerved by my own comfort with my open relationship, and because she and her husband and I had experimented a bit together at one point, she lashed out at me, rather than talking through her reasons for feeling upset or regretting her choice, or whatever the issue was for her. I respect my partners’ privacy just as I expect them to honor mine, but other people can be unpredictable, to be sure, and that is one of the greatest hazards of being in an open relationship. That risk can require significant management, and it cannot always be controlled.

Alex and I ended up having a long talk and working out our problems, though I don’t know that we ever quite got to the root of her discomfort. The problem stemmed from her not being able to wrap her head around what had happened. There was no tidy little box into which she could fit our liaison—or me, for that matter. I had no problem with what had happened with Alex and her husband, and I didn’t want us or our children to lose out on the friendships that were at stake. But without the box, she questioned her own acceptance of me.

It’s sad when we question our own judgment, our own gut instincts, because they don’t mirror what everyone else is saying or doing or believing. Making an open marriage effective means being prepared to work through any rough spots with your friends, surrounding yourself with as many enlightened people as you can, and setting an example for people of just how normal and reasonable an open marriage can be. I feel like I’m finally at a pretty good point with most of my close friends, but there’s always the potential for missteps with them, and then there are the issues that arise when I meet new people or acknowledge my circumstances to current acquaintances, particularly people I know through Emily’s school. It’s a calculated risk. But I can think of few things in life worth doing that aren’t.

Things are different for me now because Jemma is the only person I see outside of my marriage. Without doing a lot of dating and having various relationships, I have less potential for turmoil, to be sure. But it’s still hard to juggle. I want to be with Emily and Jemma and Christopher all the time, yet I can’t because Jemma doesn’t live with us. And that makes me sad sometimes. When I think about it in the simplest of terms, our arrangement feels like a forced, contrived, and unnecessary separation of people who, outside of social conventions, would likely live together. The idea of living with my family and Jemma has certainly occurred to me, but that’s not something any of us want, at least not for now.

This has to do with where I live, my desire to protect my daughter, and the fact that our society cares too much about how people love. And so, despite my comfort and my openness, and despite living alternatively and following my heart in my relationships, I still, in many ways, live under the thumb of others’ expectations and ideals. That will likely continue as long as Emily lives at home, because I want to protect her from other people’s ignorance and potential wrath.

What an