Why My Husband & I Sometimes Have Sex With Other People

I vividly remember the first time I felt it. My husband and I were in the backyard, lazing in the sun, sipping drinks as he told me about what he got up to the night before. As he talked, his face looked brighter, his eyes clearer. I saw a sudden reemergence of his vitality I hadn’t fully seen in our domestic nest for many years.

“Baby!" I exclaimed, genuinely excited, “I am so happy for you!”

There’s actually a word for the joyful feeling that a person has when his or her lover or spouse walks through the door after making love to another lover: it's called compersion. Compersion is such a novel concept that you won’t even find the word in the dictionary, but it's a well-known idea among polyamorous people and people in committed open relationships.

Feeling all warm and gooey because your spouse had a great time banging someone else is not something we’re socialized to feel.

But in that moment in the backyard when my husband was describing a spontaneous makeout session, I felt exuberantly happy for him about his connection with someone else. I felt slightly freakish for it, but it was at a point in our marriage when romance in the bedroom was at an all-time low. Sex in long-term relationships fluctuates, and between financial stressors, raising kids, and working like crazy, we weren't having much fun. So, quite frankly, I think I was just happy to see that my husband was still sexual.

But it also felt scary. Not because it wasn’t a great way to love someone, but because of the anticipated judgment from "the marriage police," those people I run into at PTA meetings, school sporting events, and at my suburban grocery store. They would resoundingly disapprove of my husband having a lover and would heap even more disapproval on me for being happy for him. Even as it becomes more common, there's a strong stigma around consensual non-monogamy.

Compersion fascinates me because it sanctions the idea of our partner deriving pleasure in a context separate from us, and from another source. In this way, compersion is antithetical to how we view relationships and expect to operate in them. We are raised to believe that when we are one half of a couple, we should derive all our happiness and pleasure from that single partner and only experience it together with that partner.

And compersion, of course, challenges this ideology. It supports the idea that you are individual beings with perhaps divergent desires or needs. Having separate sexual and love experiences doesn’t mean your relationship is a failure; to the contrary, it can actually strengthen your connection.

In my research (which consists of Socratic-style questioning of hundreds of friends, acquaintances, coworkers, clients, and strangers) I’ve seen how the whole relationship lockdown breeds an almost viral tendency to take the other person for granted, to have huge expectations, and to deliver this all from a sense of duty and obligation — without a thank you! This stifling setup can prohibit the joyful feeling of compersion.

Can you pursue compersion in a monogamous relationship? Yes. It's a quality that can help enliven any relationship. By giving it a go you could open your heart to many happy and interesting possibilities. There are so many polyamorous practices that could help monogamous couples.

Sometimes people ask me if I get jealous. I absolutely do — I feel it all. But as Esther Perel, the famous psychotherapist and author of Mating in Captivity, has said, “We need a productive conversation about infidelity.” This is my productive conversation. And it is just that: a conversation, dynamic, evolving.

I would not call myself polyamorous nor would I say I am monogamous. I have no interest in relationship labels and trying to follow someone else rules, especially in the most intimate of chambers — my marriage.

There are times my marriage is open. There are times it is shut. There are times in my life that it was perfect to be polyamorous; there are times when I did not want to “share” my partner.

But here’s the thing: in my “modern marriage” (for lack of a better phrase) I reserve the right to have choices. I want an ongoing, open conversation with my spouse. I frequently turn to my man — when we are relaxing together, sipping martini’s at a crowded bar, lying in a meadow near our road bikes after an exhausting ride — and I ask, “How’s it going for you? What do you need?” It’s a casual inquiry that happens about once a week. Because love is a verb, and I want my actions to be responsive.

Of course, many forces threaten eros — bills, caring for kids, ambitious careers. But I still want an erotic charge in my marriage — and sometimes that comes by way of another person. That’s normal. Let’s not pathologize these very natural eruptions of eroticism.

My husband and I deliberately choose to have conversations about what we do with these sexual attractions. Sometimes it’s nothing at all. Sometimes it’s “legalized cheating." I purposefully use this absurd phrase because “legalized cheating” seems to be the only way some people can wrap their minds around what I am doing. It’s as if they think that there are “marriage rules” ordained by God and society, and that any deviation of the rules — even if consensual — is "cheating."

Cheating is so much more digestible to many people than "ethical non-monogamy." For some, monogamy is the only way to construct a relationship, and if we have “slips” or affairs, at least we are still faithful to that supreme goal of monogamy.

But my intention in my marriage is so much broader. I want longevity, sure. A 50-year golden anniversary sounds great. But only if we are still in love, if there is still a spark, a passion an excitement to connect. Having this open and honest communication keeps that spark.