Does Cheating And Rule Breaking Have To Be The End?

Name one thing you’ve done perfectly, every minute of every day since you’ve been alive……I’ll wait.

To get things started, I’ll go first……………………………

If there’s a thing to do or be done, I’ve fucked it up at some point along the way.

I’d argue that making a mess of whatever, licking our wounds, and moving on, is what defines us and gives us our humanity. We live, and we learn; we improvise, adapt and overcome. (props to Gunny Highway)

Among the many *cough* gifts religion has given us, is that at some point we’ve lost focus on the strive part and become fixated on actually being perfect. What a crock of shit.

Perfection is both aspirational and boring. If either Kate or I were perfect, we’d not be where we are today.

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 and cuckold spectrums; Kate has a boyfriend (or two) and is a Hotwife. It’s neither of our first marriages. We met in 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.

Cheating and being shady is everywhere, as is “rule” breaking. I’ve learned that since starting this epic blogging about non-monogamy adventure. The Algorithms have somehow equated writing about ENM and realated adventures to cheating and “rule” breaking. Our Medium feed is chock full of tales of woe about infidelity in relationship X or cheating bastard Y; as is my Google and Tik Tok FYP’s (For You Page in case you’re not a Tik Tok’er). It’s always been there in the gender themed grocery magazines and sites; how to avoid it, signs it’s happening, how to do it and get away with it, should I divorce my spouse.

We as a society cheat at an astronomical rate, the studies seem to say it happens in 20–25% of marriages. Kate’s empirical beauty salon experience / talk puts that number probably double. First time marriages end in divorce 40–50% of the time, second and beyond marriages more frequently than that.

I’m not here to condone cheating or being caviler with “rules” or being shady, I’m for damn sure not here to condone the sanctity of the marital bed and that being the sole place for having only enough contact to reproduce. I’m not even going to argue that we’ve been wired since the dawn of time to be non-monogamous and that monogamy is a construct of religion designed to keep women down and in their place. I’m here to say that cheating and “rule” breaking doesn’t have to be the end.

Kate and I are here today as the couple we are beacause of things happening in the shade.

Early in our relationship, it became clear that Kate had patterns of behavior. This wasn’t a plot twist, but a shitshow ended up shining a new light on these patterns for the first time. She always had to have a just in case guy, or someone on the side she would keep him on the back burner in case the main relationship failed. This was always an in the shade relationship. Sometimes it moved from the back to the front burner if ya get what I’m saying.

This was a lifelong pattern for Kate that came home to roost the morning after she got back from her first trip to Mexico.

As Kate was in the shower, a text notification popped up on her iPad (I wasn’t snooping, it did the notification thing) from a guy we both knew saying he’d be over at 1100 I think it was. Well, it was 915 or so that morning and Kate hadn’t made any mention of his coming over to me. I picked up the iPad and went snooping.

There was a flirty string of texts, including bikini pics from Mexico between the two of them. Nothing overtly sexual but reading the texts it was pretty clear to me what he hoped was going to happen when he visited.

Kate and I were in a delicate place at that point, only together for a couple months, still figuring out who we are as a couple. This was a significant disturbance in the force for each of us.

To her credit, she canceled the visit and before the day was thru recognized what was for her a lifelong pattern of keeping things in the shade. My 12 step sponsor had dealt with similar stuff all his life and he proved a welcome ear and help for Kate.

This led to Kate going to a sex and relationship focused 12-step program that deals specifically with these kinds of issues. We won’t name program names because it’s not what’s done publicly. If you or a loved one has an issue, email or dm us, we’ll point the way.

This program has no abstinence requirement; some do. That’s just a nonstarter for Kate. Instead, this program focuses on behavior and what an individual’s acceptable bottom line is with respect to that behavior. Kate’s bottom line is not lying / cheating, and no secret keeping.

It was a struggle for us getting thru this and the layers of aftershocks. Added in to the mix, I was doing my pre-Covid travel gig, and was on a different continent every couple weeks.

Nine months later, more or less, I dropped Kate off at her lady friends house for a play date, kicking off our grand non-monogamous adventure.

How did we get from Kate’s life long patterns of in the shade “spare”guys, and my lifelong adopted kid driven abandonment issues? Well, this is where we learned about doing all the work we blather on and on about in this delightful blog.

This might not have been our first venture to the tropical paradise that is Uncomfortable Island, but this is when we learned it’s value. We both knew what we had and we wanted to fight for it. We had no real idea how to go about that, so we figured it out.

Our sober journey played a big part in figuring this out. We had each learned that getting sober necessitated getting down to brass tacks, causes and conditions. That it took getting raw, being vulnerable and honest. We knew that it frequently sucked, and was a lot of work. We also knew the process bore results. We didn’t (on the surface anyway) do the 12 steps on our relationship, we damn sure applied many of the lessons tho.

We learned that the more measured approach afforded by texting or emailing has it’s advantages at times. We learned how to sit and facing each other on the couch and communicate authentically; we learned how not to lie when getting raw.

This is why we don’t tout the virtues of whatever relationship book or program; we figured out how to communicate by ourselves, guided by our 12 step experience. Books like “The Ethical Slut” or any of the other ENM resources wasn’t remotely on our radar at this point.

That much of this happened while I was in Korea or Alaska or Norway or wherever ended up being a positive. We each had time to process and think about stuff between talks. The forced silence caused by 10 hour plane rides and 36 hour time zone differences helped. It at times let hotter heads cool down, and gave what would have been an unskillful comment time to be reconsidered.

Here’s where a specific working with newly sober people lesson came in. New people are the sickest of the sick, it’s unreasonable to approach them from a high lofty position, you’ve got to be able to meet them where they are. They frequently don’t have many life skills, their heads are on fire and their asses catching. There’s legal and financial woes, kids, parents. Meeting them where they are doesn’t mean compromising your principles or message, it’s an empathy and compassion thing; sometimes a soft touch, sometime’s a firm one, never mead spirited; never shoot the wounded.

In a lot of ways the geographical space allowed each of us in turn to meet the other where they were.

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that this 9-ish month period became our bedrock. Our experience dealing with the fallout of the ipad text episode gave us the confidence we needed as a couple to explore non-monogamy.

I guess the point is should you find yourself in a broken rule or hurtful situation, maybe take a pause and try to dial back the reactivity. In another parallel with recovery, the low point can become a springboard to better days.

Quiet long weekend here at Casa Da Sam & Kate. Well, more like Casa Da Sam & Clifford The Wonder Dog. Kate is off on a silent meditation retreat this weekend. She’s a couple states away, her phone has been off since about 4:30 yesterday (Thursday) afternoon; I’ll hear from her at the conclusion of the retreat Monday afternoon.

Clifford and I have BIG plans, big I tell you, BIG!!! There will be runs in the woods, probably a swim or two in the creek, and a bath. Just so we’re clear, that’s all for Cliff. I’ll be doing some spring cleaning tasks, playing my guitar, probably watch a movie or two. It’s a re-charge weekend for me as well as Kate. Life’s going to be getting busy again in a couple weeks, and I’ve learned to take down time when I can. Among other things we’ve booked a weekend at the local (-ish) nudist resort in June; going to go out on a limb and guess there will be a post about that weekend.

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

Sam & Kate