How to Keep Yourself Sane (-ish) in the ENM World

We’ve all learned the unwritten rules of monogamy. No one reading this will need me to explain the next two sentences. He cheated on her. She was unfaithful to him.

How about these two sentences…..Kate is spending the night with her boyfriend. We met a great couple at the club and went to the playrooms with them.

All four sentences convey the same basic point; someone had sex with someone they’re not married to. The first two have quite the shitshow component, the second two have the potential of course, but there’s much more going on there.

Sure, the details may vary, and any of those sentences could lead to hushed tones conversation around the water cooler. We all understand what rules have been broken in the first two, and perhaps aren’t all the way sure about the second two; there’s room for context and nuance with the latter pair. The second set have agreements between a couple at their core, the first two are rules based.

By way of an introduction if you’re reading us for the first time……Kate and I are a married couple in our 50’s whose relationship is Ethically Non-Monogamous (ENM). We’re swingers, our marriage is open; we have sex with other people. We’re in a committed relationship, and somewhere on the polyamorous spectrum; Kate has a boyfriend and is a Hotwife. It’s neither of our first marriages. We met at a 12 step meeting; we’re each more than a decade sober now. If you’re curious about how this all works, we talk about our relationship in varying degrees of depth in other posts. We have an email address listed in our “about” page if you would like to contact us.

Kate and I are flexible with agreements today. We understand this and realize their nature is to evolve over time. Rules are hard and fixed and tend to put limits or confines on specific behavior. They can be written or unwritten.

Like most couples new to ENM, we had a list of rules a mile long when we started: No longer than an hour with someone. No overnights. No men. No lifestyle stuff with others. No texting. No phone calls. No snuggling. No emotional connection. An FFM threesome? You can play with her but not him. And so on. No shortage of things for either of us (but mostly Kate) to get perfect, and very little room for the human part.

Agreements are looser than rules, aren’t punitive in nature, and seem to focus more on the positive than the negative: We agree to have contact with each other at some point when either of us are out. We agree our relationship isn’t monogamous. We agree to the extent possible, our time together is our time. (Given family, lifestyle connections, and our sober networks; this is a decidedly moving and flexible target.) We agree to talk and listen, to communicate the hard things.

As it happens, our gateway to the ENM world was a shitshow stemming from breaking unwritten rules. It’s been pointed out by people waaaaay smarter than me that pain is the touchstone to spiritual growth. This also seems to be appropriate in emotional and relationship growth.

Without the story I’m about to tell, Kate and I as a couple are probably not here today. This is what opened the door up to our ENM journey. It wasn’t easy, but we got thru.

At our core, we love each other and want to be together. We had to learn how to be vulnerable with each other, and we each climbed some pretty big headspace mountains. Rule breaking doesn’t have to translate into a door closing, it can go the other way.

Very early in the history of Sam and Kate, before we opened up, Kate went to Mexico for a Goddess Retreat. It was a weeklong trip in a very remote spot named Yelapa. Lots of meditation and yoga, a group of women stepping away from the world for a little while to honor something they shared and felt very strongly about. It was an amazing experience for Kate.

A couple years later, while in Puerto Vallarta, Kate and I found ourselves in Yelapa for a day trip. It’s a wonderful spot that has deep roots for us.

Part of Kates old pattern was to always have an in the shadows reserve guy. Someone kind-of in the on deck circle should something go wonky with the main relationship / guy. I believe she’s not the only person to have done this; raise your hand if you’ve had a reserve person….

Kates reserve guy back then was a guy she’d known forever named Jeff. I’d met Jeff, he wasn’t a stranger, and I thought (and still do) he’s a decent guy. I wasn’t aware he was the reserve guy. From today’s point of view, we both suspect he’s somewhere on the ENM spectrum. Well, the E part is debatable.

While Kate was in Yelapa, she was in regular contact with Jeff. Among other things, she sent him flirty bikini pics she didn’t send me. This goes really well with the first pair of sentences from a couple paragraphs ago.

The morning after Kate’s return from Mexico, while she was in the shower, I saw a notification pop up on her iPad. It was Jeff asking what time he should come over. Of course, I opened the iPad and read what the two of them had been texting. This is how I saw the flirty bikini pics.

This was a watershed moment for Kate and me. We’ve mentioned at some point in the blog, I don’t remember which post, that on our first Valentines Day together we went to a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting. The Jeff shitshow was how we got there.

During the fallout from this episode, we both realized Kate’s just not monogamous. We started the ENM heavy lifting process. This was in February of 2019; in November she had her first ENM date. There’s been no contact with Jeff since that February morning.

There’s more to say about this and the process of what happened in those 10 months, perhaps in a post down the road.

So far as I can tell, it’s human nature to want to find loopholes, an angle, a shortcut. Given the percentages of “monogamous” couples who have some history of infidelity and cheating, this applies to relationships. As any good NASCAR crew chief knows, the rules are made to be at least massaged, if not outright broken. That’s one thing in a competitive environment, ask Bill Belichick, (or perhaps more topicaly, the Canadian soccer program) but is it really how you want to live your life with your partner and partners?

The way my brain works, rules are basically standards than must be met. 22 years of good ol fashioned US Army “task, conditions, standards” left a mark for sure. I would use rules as blunt tools, bludgeons really, and keep score of how many times Kate broke one. It was impossible for her, and I made myself totally fucking crazy with it. Eventually, and it took time and no small amount of pain, (perhaps a use of Apple Care Plus as well….🙄) I realized the only way for this to work was to just trust Kate, and to let go of the fear.

The mistake I made was assuming it was Kate’s behavior than needed to change. She was 100% set up to fail. When she inevitably did, I pounced and lorded her “rule breaking” over her. When we see this kind of thing now we shake our heads.

It was me who needed to change. I was blind to a simple fact: using rules to force Kate to fight against her nature in order to keep my headspace calm was pretty shitty.

For us, we’ve found rules can be a path to envy or jealousy. It’s a constant struggle to manage their enforcement in a fair manner. They give rise to the tit for tat mindset, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander sort of thing. We’ve found, for us, rules have too sharp of edges, and are both too linear and literal.

At this point, we have effectively two “rules”; no lies and no surprises. At this point, even those have got some latitude in them. We’re both turned on by the prospect of Kate fucking someone without me knowing about it before hand. A new guy. Time will tell….

Thanks for reading!!! Be kind to yourself and others!!

Sam & Kate (and Clifford) (Clifford is such a good girl she doesn’t need any rules)