The 5 steps to opening up your marriage
I don't like saying "comprehensive," but this is comprehensive as fuuuuuck
I also hate “steps” to do anything because there is no such thing. There are no real “steps” in opening up a marriage because it is so complex and raw and all over the place.
But for the sake of starting somewhere, I decided to create a cute little roadmap.
This is also roughly what I shared during the fireside I hosted earlier this month on opening up your marriage without losing everything. It was a lovely fireside, and I loved that I got to share this with the people who attended. I thought it would be shameful if I kept it a secret because it saved my fucking marriage and my sanity and my humanity.
But everybody is in different places in their mind and their body when it comes to opening up their marriage, so as always, feel free to pick up whatever you want to pick up, and discard the rest.
So here we go.
Step 0: The Regard
I am in a space called “Regard” with my teacher James-Olivia Chu-Hillman and a few other people, where we literally sit around for three hours every other week to simply regard the other. We show up, bring whatever feels true, and the conversation goes from there.
To me, a self-designated relationship junkie, that space feels like a spiritual balm. It is where I practice requiring nothing of myself or anybody else.
To regard is to tend to, to pay attention to, and to heed.
There is no agenda or outcome. There is simply walking with the person or the people that are with us.
So the very first question is: How do you practice regard?
When you find yourself wanting to have sex with other people, do you tell yourself to stop or do you wonder why we’re not allowed to fantasize?
When you find yourself feeling shitty, do you pathologize your feelings or do you allow yourself to experience your humanity?
When you find others feeling shitty, do you rush to make them feel better or do you experiment in caring for them the way they want to be cared for?
There are no right or wrong answers here. There are only answers that you like or don’t like. Sometimes, I will wonder to myself, “Why the fuck did you ever have sex with that person?!” Because sometimes shaming myself is hilarious.
There is no moral ground I am interested in subscribing to here. It tells us nothing about what we actually want.
Throughout the course of opening up your marriage, there will be a billion opportunities to look at the things we are ashamed of:
Am I doing this right?
I should have been more loving.
What am I even doing?
Is this a total waste of time?
I am definitely, for-fucking-sure, doing it all wrong.
I should not want to have sex with other people.
What the fuck am I doing when I should be working?
I hate everything.
All of the above, over and over and over again. Ad nauseam.
When these moments of shame arise, it is an excellent opportunity to practice regard.
Most times, shame lives in the word “should.” So when we encounter a “should,” here is my favorite way to turn that shit around: reverse the sentence, replace “should” with “would,” add “of course” in the beginning, and add some expletives as you desire.
Examples:
I should have been more loving. → Of course, I would not have been more loving. My body is telling me to take care of myself first.
I should not want to have sex with other people. → Of course, I would want to have sex with other people. Who made up this stupid rule?
I should be better at this by now. → Of course, I would not be better at this by now. Nobody taught me this. How fucking brave am I to even take a stab at it?
I should be working instead. → Of course, I would not be working instead. Who decided that shareholder values are more important than my goddamn life?
If the 180-degree turnaround doesn’t feel very accessible to you, what is also available is to simply poke at the “should” statement.
If you feel like you should have been more loving, for example, you don’t need to turn that sentence around. Instead, ask: is that really true?
Challenge those should statements and see how they meander around in your head thereafter.
When we regard and tend to the thoughts that give us the ick, we build skill in witnessing our humanity without spiraling into paralyzing shame.
We get to see more of who we really and what we really want.
This is an ongoing practice, whether it’s before, during, after, or anywhere outside the opening of a marriage.
Step 1: The Invitation
The mechanics of the invitation itself is very similar to any other kind of invitation. It’s essentially this specific question:
Hey, I want to do something with you. Will you partner with me?
The reason this question feels so charged for opening up a marriage is that the person receiving the invitation (the invitee) has ideas around what it means about them.
They typically have two main questions:
What the hell does an open marriage mean?
Am I not enough?
And they typically answer these questions on their own, which is when they begin writing their own stories around what must be true from their perspective. Stories like:
My partner’s gonna fall in love with someone else and leave me.
I am not good enough. I did something wrong.
If I had done something differently, none of this would have happened.
These are fascinating and understandable stories, but stories nonetheless.
The reason we remain attached to our stories is that we don’t have any evidence to the contrary.
So we are looking for evidence that you will not fall in love and leave and that they did not do anything wrong.
That kind of evidence is impossible to find because (1) we cannot predict the future around whether you will fall in love and what you will do about it and (2) it’s not helpful to decide whether anybody did anything wrong when we’re trying to find out what we want.
When there is no such evidence that is available, we build trust in our own knowing.
Meaning, we find support in the deep knowing that we are loved and lovable regardless of the circumstances.
So we love.
To break it down a bit further, that may look like involving three of the following ingredients to the invitation:
A remembering of how much you love your partner
The willingness to set aside your own judgments to understand their experience from their perspective.
Willingness to set aside any expectations of how the conversation will go.
Here are some common objections that I’ve seen and experienced, along with my brief suggestions on how to respond to them.
Did I do something wrong?
You did everything right. That is why I feel safe enough to explore parts of me that have been shamed. I am coming to you with this invitation because I feel like I have experienced the greatest heights of love, which has animated my capacity to love even more.
Does this mean I am not good enough?
“Enough” is not a standard I measure you against. You are essential. Every part of you is essential - even the parts of you that are “inconvenient” or uncomfortable. You’re like my heart. Just because you are essential and keep me alive doesn’t mean I don’t need other organs to sustain me. I am committed to breaking down this cultural narrative that your role in my life is any part diminished because I decide to go after what sustains me, and I would love to do that work with you.
Will you leave me?
I don’t know what will happen in the future. But what I know is that there is no chance I want to leave you right now. I love you so much, and that is why I want to partner with you on what is important to me. This question is not as important as partnering together on finding a way to love that works for both of us to feel alive.
I kept these short because these are just my words. They are almost useless coming out of your mouth because you are an entirely different person who carries different truths at different times. Feel free to use these to the extent that they remind you of your own truth in relation to your own partner.
Step 2: The Disentanglement
Entanglement occurs when two people become intertwined in ways that compromise their own sense of agency.
Entanglement is often confused with love.
We often believe that when we fall in love, we need to hop on the relationship escalator where we “need” to move in, eat together, do household chores together, get married, have a garish fucking wedding, have children, do childcare together, have regular sex, and it just all never ends.
No wonder people are so afraid to fall in love. We lose almost everything.
Entanglement often feels obligatory. Because we often feel the need to abandon our sense of agency, we engage in incompetent relating by engaging with things like contempt, coercion, and manipulation to regain a sense of control.
Contempt is the act of disregarding another in an ineffectual attempt to be seen. Example: “I would not come home after 8pm. If I were you, I would come home before 8pm.”
Coercion is the act of forcing physical consequences for another person’s decisions. Example: “If you don’t come home before 8pm today, I will lock the door.”
Manipulation is the act of forcing mental consequences for another person’s decisions. Example: “If you don’t come home before 8pm today, that means you’re a really bad partner.”
And now we find ourselves outside the territory of love because we no longer have a sense of agency.
Love, as bell hooks defines it, is: “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual and emotional growth.”
The key word here is the word “will.” There is no will to entertain when we don’t have a sense of agency.
That is why we turn to interdependence instead of entanglement.
Interdependence occurs when we love one another out of the willingness and compassion to be a resource for the other.
I scribbled a little illustration to draw the distinction between entanglement and interdependence below.
In entanglement, neither line can really go anywhere without the other because their lives are to intertwined.
In interdependence, we go out own separate and interesting paths, but we remain in proximity and extend ourselves to the other as we are able. Sometimes we extend more, and sometimes they extend more. It is all out of love.
To create some space for interdependence, we keep in mind this particular paradox:
What your spouse experiences is not your business.
You can always offer to be a resource based on your capacity.
For example, if you made a decision that disappointed your partner, we first recognize that their disappointment is their experience and that it’s nobody’s “fault” because mistakes are relational. Meaning, your decision to make pasta for an evening can be a very neutral event for someone while it is a very deeply offensive event for another given the history and context of your relationship with them and their own life experiences.
We then recognize that, based on our own capacity and willingness, we can offer to be a resource. It could be asking them how you could be a resource. It could be apologizing. It could be staying with them in silence. It could be giving them a hug. We have so many ways to experiment in how we want to be a resource for their experience of their own humanity.
I want to emphasize here that there is still no moral ground in looking at entanglement and interdependence. Neither one is inherently “better” than the other.
Sometimes, the human experiences we encounter are too big to handle on our own, like childcare. When you have two whole living beings whose safety you are responsible for with your partner, that partnership will have moments of entanglement because we are so burnt out.
It also doesn’t have to be something so big like childcare. Even if it is something as simple as a bad day, you may experience moments of entanglement where you find it easy to manipulate your partner into doing things for you. Sometimes it is a tool we use because we are human beings. When we notice that scenario, the only question here is what I didn’t like about it, if at all, and how I want to do things differently next time.
Step 3: The Renegotiation
In monogamy, the terms of the marriage have already been defined for us: no romantic relationship with other people, build a nuclear family, and try not to get divorced, ever.
The Renegotiation is redefining the terms so that they are your and your partner’s terms.
A marriage is simply an institutionalized word for partnership.
A partnership is a relationship in which two people partner on certain things they have consented to partnering on.
Sometimes it’s sex. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s childcare. Taxes. Household chores. Planning parties. Relationships with family. The list goes on.
None of these are requirements, and yet the institution of monogamy have led us to believe that they are.
One obvious term we renegotiated is that we are not required to be the only provider of sexual pleasure for the other.
We also do not require the other to do anything else, either. But we talk about how it would be wonderful to still partner on childcare and taxes because we don’t really like the alternative.
The basic element of renegotiation is boundaries.
Boundaries are if/then statements that inform your response to a scenario.
For example:
If you have sex with someone who has not gotten a negative STD/STI panel, I will not have sex with you until you or that person obtains a negative panel.
Boundaries can also be in the form of declaration statements, like:
Don’t have sex with someone who has not gotten a negative STD/STI panel.
These can still be communicated as boundaries for the sake of conversation, but ultimately they will be harder to enforce and may more easily prompt a rupture because expectations without clear consequences are easier to violate.
So the question here is: what are the boundaries that are important to me?
We start there.
And a common misconception about boundaries is that they are set in stone, inflexible, and solitary.
Boundaries often evolve with time and new information, and we discover new boundaries all the time.
For example, one time, Dan had a guest over and had dirty dishes from the drinks they had. When I saw them in the sink, I had a swing of resentment come over me, and I realized I had noticed a new boundary. I told Dan that I am not available to clean up after his guests.
However we bring boundaries into our relationships and develop them with time, we will likely experience ruptures from a miscommunication or a misunderstanding or a straight up violation of a boundary.
Here are some questions to consider as we move forward in our partnerships:
Am I willing to repair our relationship from this rupture, and what resources do I need to feel prepared for the repair?
How do I want to be prepared if I want to use the rupture to bring us closer together rather than drive us apart?
How am I willing to extend myself and my partner grace as we continue to learn and unlearn stories that play a role in our relationships?
The renegotiation piece is heavy in the beginning, but it is ongoing, and we get more skilled over time.
Step 4: The Opening
Of course, my favorite part. The Opening.
The Opening is where both parties fully consent to opening up the marriage where we feel free to exercise our own agency in meeting people and developing relationships on our own terms outside of the marriage.
This is where we feel a bit more skilled in the way we relate to others but find endless opportunities to remain humble and open in the face of meeting a lot of different humans that inhabit this planet with us.
As you continue to build your relationship with yourself, your spouse, and other people, look out for the following:
Assumptions: what I think is true without proof
Example: When we first opened up our marriage, I had made the assumption that nobody would ever want to date me. It was an assumption I felt great about because it kept me feeling familiar and safe. I collected new information that this assumption was not true when I decided to challenge the assumption by meeting people and finding out what was true.
Expectations: what I think should be true
Example: “This conversation should result in sex.” This is often how a lot of relationships go awry. People feel entitled to a certain outcome after putting in effort into the relationship. The remedy to this problem is to extend yourself only to the extent that you are willing without need anything from them in return. The question here is, what does it look like to love with desire but without making anybody responsible for that desire?
Judgments: an evaluation of whether something is good or bad.
Example: “This guy is a total wreck.” Sometimes judgments are helpful because it gives me information about what I don’t want. And sometimes judgments are not helpful when I use it to put someone in an inferior place without getting the information that is helpful for making my next decision.
Any information you extract from examining the above are great bits of information to collect about yourself, what you want, and how to get it.
The question here is: what are my assumptions, expectations, and judgments telling me about who I am, what I want, and how I am showing up to the relationship?
Whether I know I am getting the relevant information is often revealed in whether we feel powerful or deflated. If we feel like we are getting the relevant information, we will most likely feel powerful and armed with what we need to move forward. If we feel deflated, chances are, we are using assumptions, expectations, and judgments to concoct stories about the world and shame ourselves in ways that feel conclusive and uninspiring.
Here are things to note:
Examining your assumptions, expectations, and judgments helps you quickly identify your share of the contribution in any rupture or conflict.
NOT examining your assumptions, expectations, and judgments is an exercise of grace for your humanity.
Both are equally valuable.
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There you have it, the essentials of opening up your marriage.
But let me tell you. Even if you were to follow everything on this roadmap to the dot, it will still feel like a total mess. Because there is not one roadmap in the world that will help us avoid our humanity altogether.
So if you find yourself marinating on just one sentence from this entire piece, that is sufficient. I trust that your body will tell you what you where you want to go next with that information.
And if you find yourself scratching your head and wanting someone to sail with you as you navigate these tough waters, send me a message.
I’m game if you want to talk about:
Whether an open marriage is even the right fit
Wanting to quell some of the shame that arise in being curious about an open marriage
Realizing that there is a very specific problem that you just can’t figure out on your own
Having some things you wanna talk about that you don’t think you can talk about with anyone else
Needing some space to breathe with this whole fucking open marriage thing.
I recognize the magnitude and the monstrosity of this work, so there is no part of me that wants to rush you. If you’re experiencing darkness that resonates with some of the stuff I’ve shared, I honor that experience and how little I know of it. I only remain curious about how you relate to your own darkness.
Send me a message only if it feels right in your body to talk about it.