I will begin Part II of Open Marriages with a comment posted on Part I of Open Marriages Are You Just Afraid They Will Cheat Anyway?
The sex we have outside of our marriage makes it that much more incredible when have sex with each other
The first eight words immediately strike every moral bone in my body. “The sex we have outside of our marriage.” Is it just me or does that just sound dead wrong? The comment above was posted by someone who says they are currently in an open marriage, and have been married for thirty years. The commenter did not state whether this marriage started off open or some event or mutual desire led to it becoming an open marriage. I have a feeling that some event or mishap (cheating or the desire to cheat) is what ultimately resulted in the open marriage.
Over and over again I hear from people who see nothing wrong with open marriage that religion doesn’t and shouldn’t play any part in the conversation concerning Open Marriage. However, I am pretty sure that many of the couples involved in these open marriages took vows in a church with a ceremony performed by a minister or pastor and they said things such as before God and these witnesses. Don’t all of those things scream religion?
A question that always comes to mind when I think of open marriages is, Why Get Married? From what I have heard and read from those in open marriages their one partner does not satisfy them completely or they still enjoy sexual and non sexual relationships with various people. So why even bother getting married? Why not live your life as a single person, or if you do have a special someone who you want to remain with and they agree that you two can and should see other people, enjoy that type of relationship minus the wedding vows and marriage license.
Doesn’t that make sense?
When speaking on those couples in open marriages that start off knowing the marriage will be open, what is the real reason behind sharing your spouse? What component/s of marriage is it that makes you agree to be married, yet feel it is worth it to freely see other people? Is it the benefits (life insurance, financial stability)? Or is it that having an open marriage is an easy way to have your cake and eat it too? For many people it seems that if they can have more, they will take more, especially if they have someone willing to accept them having their cake and eat it too.
The main point I have tried to make with these blog posts is that if you want to date or have sex with various people what is the point in getting married? Marriage means a committment and being faithful. When and Where marriage began taking on the terms of sex outside the marriage is acceptable, dating outside the marriage is acceptable and it is all okay because the two people who are married agree is all a mystery to me. However, it has been said a million times before and today I will say it again “YOU CAN JUSTIFY ANYTHING.” Just as many alcoholics justify their alcohol abuse and just as many cheaters justify the reasons they cheat, many of these people who once believed in respecting their vows and being faithful are now justifying living lives that go against the very marriage vows they made. When it comes to the alcoholic it is justifying wrongdoing, when it comes to cheating, it is justifying wrongdoing and when it comes to the open marriages it is justifying immoral wrongful behavior. BUT like I said, you can |attempt| to justify anything.
Related Articles
- How Open Marriage Works (bettyconfidential.com)
- What Hollywood (and the World) Needs Is More Open Marriages [Free Advice] (gawker.com)
- Courtney Cox: Did An Open Marriage End Her Relationship With David Arquette? (sugarslam.com)
Black Girl Thinking 
Marriage is not a commitment. You can get committed… Marriage is finding someone you want to go through life with. How you go through life together is YOUR business. There are some people who don’t care for sex. Yet they can still love someone. Lust and love are not the same thing. Having an open marriage means you have a partner to go through life with and you have full trust in each other. I don’t go roaming the countryside looking to spill my seed everywhere. But if there is some sparks or some fun flirting it’s all good. No guilt, no worries. I’m the rock in my wife’s life. She couldn’t find another goofy loving bastard like me. There are some things I don’t like doing in the bedroom, should she suffer or resent me till death do us part? None of this even touches legal/money issues that being married benefits from. Life companions aren’t recognized very often…
As to justifying anything… Hitler only killed six million with his well organized death camps, the Catholic church killed over nine million during the Inqusition. And they felt justified.
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LMAO!
Ok, I got that out. So let me first address your definition of marriage. You state “Marriage means a committment and being faithful”, yet the dictionary’s definition is marriage: the social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc.
I believe I have that in my Open Marriage.
Second thing I like to help clear up is why are you pushing the Why get married question? I want to be married to my husband as he does to me. And saying this doesn’t detract from the fact we ARE married!
How can you JUSTIFY “Why not live your life as a single person, or if you do have a special someone who you want to remain with and they agree that you two can and should see other people, enjoy that type of relationship minus the wedding vows and marriage license.” You’ve just Okayed my relationship with my husband and you are a hypocrite in thinking that a piece of paper changes everything.
We are not justifying anything, were are realists that believe in being able to feelings for other people and because we can act on them with consent from our spouses we are ridiculed for that.
And further more my wedding ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace with simple vows that had not a word of god written in it. Religion has nothing to do with our lives together as we see fit to live it.
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@Dick thanks for stopping by and commenting
Your explanation of your open marriage sounds like justifying the reasons your wife ALLOWS you to cheat.
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@House Ho Coming from someone with the username House ho I don’t expect any moral values to be present.
Marriage SHOULD consist of being committed and being faithful yet so many people take wedding vows that really mean nothing.
In my opinion Open marriages are just relationships where ppl who have no desire to be faithful give permission to have relationships sexual and/or non sexual outside the marriage.
In those relationships if the ppl are ok with sharing their partners then to each his/her own. Those ppl may be happy because having multiple patners & being allowed to do WHATEVER makes them happy. Everyone’s happiness is not produced by the same things
And I have also come to realize that many people have no God so, no they don’t take vows before God, no they don’t respect the institute of marriage and No they don’t believe that sleeping around when you are married is wrong
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I feel people gone defend there lifestyle no matter what but if you feel what your doing is right. What we say or our opinion won’t strike a nerve!yall can change what marriage stands for all you want but the reasons given for open marriage is bthe reasons single people say there single.and there should be communucation and love and honesty regardless .we all lust and find others attracted but take what you like in the other and share it with your mate!some just wanna be a freak be a single freak!and condoms don’t protect everything . All marriages need spicing up eventually and it don’t take multiple sex partners to do that!just say it for what it is your marriage defines freak !!nothing more nothing less.
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I say do what you do. What might work for you might not work for me.
But as for ME, if ever the day I get married, it’s gonna be made CLEAR that if you marry me, you fuck ME and ONLY me. PERIOD. Even while we are DATING. Your pussy is off limits to the next fool. If you wanna fuck him, you can DO so but know that’ll be the end of US if you choose to.
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Actually, I was married in a Births, Deaths & Marriages office (Australia), so no religious hypocrisy here.
Many ask: Why bother getting married?
We get married because we’ve met someone we’d like to spend the rest of our lives with. On our part, we’re best friends, confidantes, lovers and there’s no one in the world I’d rather be with long-term. That said, there are a lot of exciting people out there who are fun to play with temporarily. We separate love from sex quite easily and know there doesn’t have to be love to have great sex with someone.
I also think a big difference in thinking is that those of us in happy open marriages don’t see anything wrong with having our cake and eating it, too. What is with the inherent need for sacrifice and struggle in a marriage? Why the need for a denial of anything, especially when the having of it doesn’t affect the marriage negatively and, in fact, many times makes it a lot more fun?
The funny thing is that most in open marriages *don’t* recommend them to just any married couple. There are a lot of provisos and warnings made about laying the groundwork for a successful open marriage. It’s a given that there has to be complete respect for the marriage first and foremost before even entering into something like this if you want the marriage to last.
The funnier thing is that those pushing the monogamy card don’t have anything new to offer, just the same old morality clauses that result in broken hearts and divorce 50% of the time. What great feat is it to have serial monogamy complete with broken families, multiple children to multiple fathers and struggle for many families?
Open marriages work for some of us and it’s a beautiful relationship to be in.
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Standing in a church taking vows doesn’t make you married. A marriage license makes you married. Not everyone puts religion in their marriage. I think you need to open your mind a little bit before you continue to discuss this topic in hopes to bring more hits to your blog.
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Damn the religion part ! Its not just that yall talking like single people you aint saying nothing spectacular!just fucking diffrent people wow!@ Mona you will never understand this ish your mind is not on that level !hey yall enjoy your open marriages live like you will never die live it up!
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I’m not saying that the church Or the marriage license make the marriage. What I am saying is that if you don’t plan to be with one person why make the vows and get the marriage license?? Just live happily with that person..no need to start all of these twisted marriages
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I am finding all of this tedious and lame.
V – You are ignorant and it shows with your words.
black girl thinking- I’m happy and my husband (Dick who posted here as well) do not find anything you say justifiable and we will live our lives the way we choose to becuase guess what. It has nothing to do with you!
And if my husband and I choose to have threesomes which we frequently do, does that justify us cheating on each other? No, its just sex and we love it. Try it sometime.
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No v is real and yall just nasty and we say what we want. So you think what your saying is smart! Your not saying anything spectacular you talk like a fool! And like I said if your lifestyle is right why call names be humble.seems like I struck a nerve .lol!calm down its not judgment day we are people with opinions you don’t like it don’t stay on here ignore it.
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Ok leme throw my two cents in.. first Black Girl are you married??? If your not then your just outside looking in. let me tell you my lil story.
Like most of us I was raised to think that marriage was like on TV and the movies. The Bradey Bunch the Cosby show and all of that. I dated my wife and thought I picked the innocent that I was the one that had all the experience( it was kinda true) I planned how we would live together when we got our house when we were to be married and even when to concieve to have my child in school early. I didnt go out with my Friends if it pissed her off I did the “sacrifice” thing I forsaked all others and I believe she did to. I did the cooking and cleaning while she layed in bed. Here is the thing all this time I put her on a pedistal and did what was expected of a good husband. Yeh Im a big ass firt but thats how I always was. yeah women feel they can share with me but thats how it always was. I wasnt whoring down the place.
Heres my point in spite of all that she still snooped around pretended to be women to see if i would pick them up and infiltrated mail and even wrote mail to whom ever she thought I was seeing. Marrige is nothing like tv or moves or what other married poeple say it is. your mate may look one way but as the years go the fasade falls.
This is not an endorsement to have mutiple partners or “cheat” that is the last part of the puzzle with marrige. the real issue is we are raised to do a thing that is against our nature. We see our potential mates as a forever thing that (at least in the begining) has no flaws. we sacrifice our own preservation to support a notion that man (or God take your pick) has made to prove us different from the animals that we have reason a soul. well cheating aside we are not different we have urges we have needs we are animals. we were not ment to give up our joys (be it sex or bowling night or whatever to sooth the minds of those we are told we have to be with till death do us part) it goes against our nature and I believe that is wat makes us stress out.
Benifits of being married? thats easy tax returns health insurance supposed free ass on a roladex (ooo roladex im old and no yall unmarried people jus cus you married dosent me you get ass). but there is also a lot of bad that comes with that good (too many to list). And the sick part of the joke is you dont really know who you pledged your life to untill years after you pledged your life.
Im all for a marrige as long as the two are on the same page. I feel marrige is a crap shoot a gamble that you get looked down on if you want to fold, change the rules or play another game.
Take sex out of it for a second. Just imagine going out to the moives with your friends when your mate hates going out to the movies movies would be cheating (mind you going out with the opposite sex is an extream no no for what ever reason). the running theame is if your mate dosent give you want makes you happy you should just suffer or not have a mate at all. being in that dynamic is crazy in itself (to deny yourself for the sake of another).
In my marrige I found that though im no saint I would do and my wife would cruse and if I didnt say anything she would let it go on. In my later years I feel you have one life to live. yeh love and marrige is nice and all but once your in it its a whole other ball game. Do as much as you cant to make the other happy but at the end of the day have no regrets in your happiness because when your in that pine box by yourself guess what your in that pine box by yourself
getting off the soap box now
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oh one more thing never had a threesome how is that??? lol leme guess new topic
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@Trickydadian
No I am not married but I in no way intend to go into a marriage saying yes it is okay to sleep with other people, yes it is okay to date other people, yes it is okay to have any kind of romantic relationship outside the marriage.
Your case sounds like you married someone that was not a good match for you. Yes sacrifice is a part of marriage, but just because you get married doesn’t mean you are now JUST a husband or a wife. You are still your own person with your own friends, life and ideas.
No marriage is perfect because no HUMAN is perfect. So of course there will be disagreements, arguments times when you want to call it quits. Does that mean that married couples should all just say well you don’t make me 100% happy so lets open up the marriage?
To me that is utterly ridiculous that people are opening their marriage to multiple sex partners and other outside relationships because they are not completely satisfied with the person they married. You still won’t be 100% satisfied with the people you mess around with…so what is the point.
I am not married, but I do take marriage seriously and as a sacred vow. I do not believe that two people should okay sex outside the marriage.
I in no way think that marriage is all peaches and cream. I know enough married people that can quickly tell me differently. That does not mean well we have problems, well we aren’t happy right now lets open up the relationship or lets get divorced.
I feel that many people in these open marriages are just making excuses for CHEATING and their bad behavior. No matter how you look at it, cheating while you are married is WRONG. It is a way to have your cake and eat it too it just has a label…open marriage
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@ Black Girl Thinking Who came up with the definition that marriage should be between just two people? Please tell me that and point me in that direction. Is it your religion, is it society?
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Deanna I am a Christian so yes it is my belief that marriage should be between one man and one woman.
I guess though with the world the way it is today people see fit to marry who OR what they like. If there is no guidelines I guess it is also okay to marry your pet dog or marry an imaginary friend? I don’t know….
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So wow you are christian? Do you think the way you are being now is going to win people over to your religion? Is that not the concept of christianity…love? I am not feeling the love from you now and if I was an atheist I would want nothing to do with your God.
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Your definition of marriage again screams narrow mindedness. Your christian beliefs will also make you think that gay people are not allowed to marry as well. Yet they are just as committed to one another as I am to my husband.
You rather sleep with your christian morals at night then more power to you.
You fail to see that my husband and I looked at a flaw in our marriage and compromised to make it work. You on the other hand choose to be self righteous, single and bitter as you point at us happily married couples with your wrath of moral wrongness for us being stronger then you are.
Thats all this is. You are weak and your crutch is your christian faith that will leave you cold at night. You choose not to make your relationships work and took the easy route of running away to play the victim.
Nothing you can say will ruin my relationship that I have with my husband into thinking that is wrong. You are just making yourself look narrow, bitter, and closed minded.
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I have been in my marriage 4 years and no marriage is not easy nothing in life is. We are in no why trying to change anyones mind on there lifestyle.we are simply trying to see where this came from just as the down low lifestyle. Everyone is giving in to whatever for physical pleasure even there soul.I feel there are ways to keep plesaure and spice in a marriage without multiple sex partners.you have to be honest with eachother tell each other your needs and fulfill it works.no one is what you want them to me you just have to love and avept eachother. A lot of cheating come from trying to change the other not listening not fullfilling or the person may not be ready for committment. We are not animals some just have a mind like animals.I have learned that outsider can’t fullfill anymore than my mate its a mind thing. Whatever that person can do your mate has the same organs to do the same.I will never understand open marriage and some things are best to keep that way.I just wonder in this world what’s next.
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all im sayin is why is it about open relationships (i guess its the topic of the post) I mean really Ive heard women say oh if he fantasizes about another its cheating or if he talkes on the phone its cheating. again it seems its just a matter of people and their personal issues. I say live your life with reguard to your mate if you have one but live your life.
Black girl I dont want to beat a dead horse but if and when you do get married 5 years after that tell me how it is. (oh and by the way Christian religion is riddled with contratcitions most of all fedelity (priests, book of ruth etc) not to jump on the religion beatting band wagon but im just sayin 🙂
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ava DeLuca. Ava DeLuca said: Open Marriages Part II-Why Get Married? « Black Girl Thinking: So why even bother getting married? Why not live yo… http://bit.ly/bx54Z0 […]
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Answer this if open marriage is so great and so normal. Why do a lot of you on your personal blog say everyone doesn’t know like co workers and some family. If you are so happy why hide happiness. And if its just about sex why are some of you falling in love with your sex partners. Its all fake and crazy a lot of you have hidden pain and issues and you use this lifestyle as a cover up.
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Because we allow each other freedom – in all areas, not just sexually – our marriage is extremely easy. We don’t have huge fights and our occasional squabbles are limited to business related issues because we’re both headstrong Leos who were bosses with different business styles before we met. That said, compromise is easy for us and we certainly don’t hold grudges or do the cold shoulder treatment. It’s all about respect which should be the common theme for open & closed marriages.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot to lose in this world that prefers people fit in with social mores. Stigma is a powerful controlling force for those who depend on family, friends and status to get by in the world. That said, there are many who have realized that happiness trumps all and I’m happy that I’ve chosen to live life openly to friends and family. I don’t hide our open marriage from anyone and invite questions from the respectfully curious.
It’s not really fair to paint this bleak a picture of open marriage when traditional marriages aren’t a bed of roses for most. Hidden pain and issues aren’t simply limited to open marriages – you’ll find plenty in traditional marriages.
We’re not robots and humanity is all about emotions and feelings. There are millions of wonderful people out there and to think that there’s only one person who can inspire loving feelings in another is downright silly. However, the key is respect – both ways. In our marriage we have guidelines we both find easy to be true to and the first is that the primary relationship is the most important. I *know* there is no one I’d rather be with forever than my husband. I’ve also been lucky to share loving feelings with another wonderful guy for a short time. My husband wasn’t threatened because he trusted me not to lie to him. It is possible to love more than one without damaging a marriage.
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It is a matter of society influence that causes the secrecy. we are conditioned to behave by what society says and how you are stigmatized. Regretably that treatment would not change in our generation. We do not hide our happiness from those who we feel would accept but from those who would react with negative behaviour.
In Trinidad, few persons are involved in open marriages and those that do are seen as ‘horners’ to john public.
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The inherent need for sacrifice in marriage is not for the sake of misery, it’s because life and love mean more than satisfying personal pleasure. Sometimes, learning to deny yourself and say no to something because you love someone (that someone being your spouse) more than you love yourself, is more satisfying than trying to fulfill a physical desire. Love, in its very nature, is sacrificial…..if you believe in that sort of thing. To me, if it’s not love the way God defines love (1Corinthians 13), then I don’t want it.
1 Corinthians 13
The Way of Love
1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
So, yeah. I’m not perfect…, I’m going to make mistakes, so will my husband. I don’t expect perfection. In fact, I don’t want perfection. I love that I get to spend my life with my best friend and pursue this life with God together. I had been single long enough to recognize that prince charming is a fraud and the reality is soooo much better than the myth.
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Anything goes these days. *rolls eyes in disgust*
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Okay, I take back some of what I wrote back on the original post.
Way to pull out the complete and utterly moronic “well, if we let the gays marry or let people have sex outside of marriage, what’s to stop them from marrying a carrot?” bullshit. What are you, 12? Is this nonsensical straw man tripe the only thing you can come up with? I weep for my country we are so god damned ignorant and not the least bit ashamed of it.
Have you even read your bible? You talk about Christian this and moral that and you’re just spreading more ignorance and hate, as I have come to expect from so-called Christians. So much god damned superiority and really you don’t even know what you believe or why you believe it.
If you’re going to say you’re doing something because you’re a “Christian” then don’t you think you should read the damned book you supposedly base your morals on? Because if you did, you would find that God is totally in favor of men having multiple wives, and on top of that multiple concubines. In fact, if you read that book you would discover that “adultery” is not what you think it is.
I know what’s in my bible because I used to teach it. I have many friends that are biblical scholars and most of them say the best way to convert a Christian to atheism is to have them read the bible. If you want to see this in action, pick up Julia Sweeney’s “Letting Go of God.” Or read some of the “de-conversion” blogs out there. The bible is full of so much misogyny and violence and genocide that I laugh whenever anyone suggests it as a moral foundation for anything.
If you want to understand marriage, read a book or two. Learn something instead of just arguing from personal incredulity. Don’t sit there all high and mighty judging other people’s commitments and marital agreements when you aren’t even married, let alone for decades like some of us (and for the record – my wife was my first and only sexual partner, so I’m not rationalizing or justifying any past cheating or desire to cheat). My only hope is that you’re 17 and still in that “I know everything” phase when you don’t know shit. There’s a lot that personal experience can teach you. If experience can shift me from being a born-again fundamentalist pro-life “traditional family values” conservative to a pro-choice liberal feminist then imagine what a little bit can do for you.
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Wow!that was cold!but its the world we live in.so many against the bible and everyone has there on version of what they think it means.bottom line people gone live how they see fit and this world is only gettin worse. I just try to live right and teach my kids the same.
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I find it interesting that you think that it is a horrible thing to get married and have an open marriage becuase of God, but you find it okay to live out of wedlock having sex and dating other people when that too is a sin under God. People who are married take vows to love, honor, and respect each other. When I took my vows it was not in a church, and they were realistic. My husband and I have just decided to start having an open marriage, and it’s not for everybody, but it is not for you or anyone else to judge what we do either. We just decided that instead of resenting each other and growing to hate each other for denying ourselves what we want and what would make us happy resulting in a divorce, this may be a better alternative. Neither one of us are “cheating” at the moment, but if the time comes when either of us thinks something may result from a friendship that we have then we should be open and honest with each other about it. My main thing would be finding out about it later, or looking like an idiot for believing that he hasn’t done anything when he has. That would be a deal breaker, but being honest about it when we know that affairs happen, I think is smarter. This lifestyle is not for everybody. You have to be secure in your love for each other. It is possible to fall in love with more than one person, and it does not mean that you no longer love the person that you’re with. There are a lot of reasons why people come to the conclusion that an open marriage is for them. We have children, and we refuse to split up because of a sex act with someone else. We choose to leave this part of our lives away from our children as most parents choose to leave other issues away from their children. I see nothing wrong with it, if it works and it keeps the family unit in tact. I wonder if you think that divorce is a better option.
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@Zakiya
Thanks for stopping by and commenting
This blog post was created in no way to judge those who have chosen to be part of open marriages. It is however my thoughts and opinions on open marriages and why many of them were started.
Your comment made me wonder what yourself and others are thinking of when entering into marriages. Since you say it was not in a church and there was no religious symbolism to your vows or matrimony, what exactly were the two of you considering when he asked you and when you agreed to be married? What idea/s of marriage was it then that the two of you were willing to agree to. Because I just wonder how ppl justify open marriages by saying leave religion out of it. So when you married, what exactly was it based on? Since its not a traditional marriage, what view did the two of you have when you made these vows?
And I would like to also add that when people stay together for the sake of the children it does not always end up with the children living happily ever after. Many times when ppl stay together for that reason the adults end up unhappy and so do the children.
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BGT – please read Marriage Makeover by Joshua Coleman. The book is rather insightful about the effects of staying together on children as compared to those of divorce. Sometimes staying together is better, sometimes separating is better. It’s important to know what the indicators are that would suggest each course of action.
As for open marriages, I think it’s less about religion and more about redefining the primacy of sexual exclusivity. There are so many facets of our relationships where we do not demand exclusivity but rather priority. We do not say to our partners, “you can only go out to dinner with me” or “you can’t have any friends other than me” or “you’re not allowed to love or care for anyone but me” and if we do say those things, we are rightly viewed as controlling and abusive.
We do say, however, that when making plans, or forming friendships, or loving others, that we be considerate of our partner and give our relationship with them priority. What some people in open marriages have done is simply extend that concept to sexual relationships.
You should consider two things. First, the Christian bible does not advocate the “traditional marriage” you seem to want. That type of marriage is barely 40 years old, and so I’m not sure in what sense you can even use the word “traditional.” Nor is monogamy necessarily our natural state. The Myth of Monogamy by David Barash and Judith Lipton dispels the idea that most animals are monogamous (in fact, less than three percent are sexually monogamous). Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá advance this work to look specifically at primates, focusing in particular on our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and the bonobos. It traces the evolution of marriage from polyamory through the monogamy of today. Finally, The Marriage Go Round by Andrew Cherlin places our ideal of marriage into context within the history of marriage in America, and also within the western world.
I think these books can provide tremendous insight into what is a very large and complex question.
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To answer your question for my point of view, I still love my husband and he loves me equally. We are not staying together simply for the children, we love and respect each other, and as of right now, neither of us are going outside of our marriage for anything, but we are open to the possibility that situations come up, and instead of saying, “you don’t love me because if you did you wouldn’t have done XYZ,” we say “if you lie to me then you don’t love or respect me.” I come from a broken home, and I have a father that has a hard tim staying faithful to one woman, so I am simply realistic of the possibility that things happen. I understand that this is your opinion, and open marriage is not for everyone, but like I said before, don’t throw in the Bible about your opinion, when the Bible also clearly states not to fornicate, yet it seems that you would be okay with that. Having sex outside of marriage is not a deal breaker for me because I am confident in his love for me, and it may simply be just something that I am incapable of giving him, and that is not on me, that has everything to do with his needs, but do I want to get a divorce when I know that he loves me, and I love him. When we got married it was because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with anyone but him, but does that mean that my life has to be closed off to the rest of the world too? Not to me. We were both so called players before we met each other, and for the most part we have been completely faithful to each other, but realistically, we got married young, so there might be more out there in store for us, and why deny ourselves the possibility. As long as he knows that I come first, and he comes first for me, our love will keep us together. Even if our marriage was closed, I know that if he cheated, I would still love and care for him enough not to get a divorce, and visa versa, so why fool ourselves into thinking it wouldn’t happen? And there is more than one kind of open marriage, it is not all about sex. For some it is, but for some it means becoming emotionally attached to someone else as well. Like Courtney Cox-Arquette’s situation, if they had an open marriage for emotional reasons they would not be getting a divorce right now. And also consider that divorce is also a sin. So now you got divorce and fornication and lying as better alternatives then simply opening up the marriage to different possibilities. I am in no way going to try to convince you that open marriage is for you, but I will simply say that it is what is working for me at this point, and if the time ever came where it was not working for me, we will fix it again.
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[…] Open Marriages Part II-Why Get Married? […]
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I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
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*** Jesus was begotten not by Joseph, but by God, being born to Mary through a “virgin” birth. ***
Sounds like an open marriage to me! Whether or not Mary enjoyed some extra sausage in her life or simply accepted Holy Sperm, Joseph was cool with marrying Mary after she was pregnant with a child that wasn’t his.
If it was good enough for Joseph, Mary and God to use a 3some as the basis for the Christian church, who are we to argue?
:}
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