I’ve spent a lot of time asking myself why I like sex so much. And for some reason I’ve yet to discuss in therapy, I’ve found comfort in answers linked to purity: I like it for the pleasure, the connection, the intimacy, for discovering the truth of another person. But when my partner and I decided to have an open marriage four years ago, I found it hard to admit that a large part of my love for sex had to do with my ego—with feeling hot, feeling desired, feeling chosen.
We’d both had sex with other people for the first time, separately, on a Monday night in June. My date (and sex) with someone who wasn’t my partner of six years was really quite mind-altering. The sex itself was as good as sex goes, but the reminder that I was desired by someone else, chosen by someone else, found sexy by someone else, left me reeling: so much potential, so many new ways to find pleasure. A whole new dimension seemed like it was opening up in front of me.
But so too had it opened for my husband, and when we reunited the next day, I felt the earth shaking beneath me. He’d obviously had a mind-altering experience too. I couldn’t really believe it. How could he? This isn’t what the books had told me this would feel like. Comparison is this thing that all the poly people talk about—good jealousy, we’re happy that our partner is happy! But I wasn’t. It felt ugly to admit it to myself, but I was jealous, insecure. The problem was further compounded by the fact that in a crisis of self-confidence about your desirability, the last thing you want to do is tell your partner you don’t feel desired. Neediness is next to ickiness.
I was still texting the guy I’d slept with on Monday. We planned to meet the following Monday, and that felt great. The quantum splitting of an atom or something: A whole me was feeling jealous, insecure, not hot. Another me was setting up dates with people, feeling desired in all these ways I’d forgotten about. And by the time my partner and I had sex, I had convinced myself that he was doing it because he should, but that he would much rather be sleeping with someone else.
There were a few moments in those weeks proceeding where I felt almost like I was losing my mind. Things I’d never had to worry about when we were monogamous seemed to become obsessions: Who is he texting? Should I read his messages? (I would never!) Why is he in the other room for so long? Did he always spend this much time on his evening skin care routine?
Funnily, during that period I never worried he was going to leave me for someone else, which may seem surprising, but it was never the love between us that was in question. You don’t walk away from good love, and you don’t find it in a night. It was a question as simple as: But am I hot? Am I the best you’ve ever had? I felt uncomfortable losing the position as the person he had committed to desiring the most in his life. Meanwhile, I was waking up in the morning and answering texts from lovers about our future sexcapades before I had rolled over and said good morning.
In the end, I sort of exploded and asked him not to go on a date so we could talk about these feelings I was having. Neither of us were breaking any rules we’d made by dating people or sleeping with others, but all of these feelings I was having existed in a gray area that didn’t seem to have any relation to the rules we’d spent so long confecting prior to going open.
We talked a lot about how I felt insecure, and how it had led to me feeling not super attractive. I wanted him to say that I’m the most attractive person ever, that I’m the best sex ever. But life isn’t a rom-com, and he didn’t. What we both came to was something harder to countenance, but perhaps more enticing and convincing in the long run: That the sex we have with different people is different, and the sex we have with each other is different. Some weeks we might have technically better sex with someone else, some weeks we will definitely have the best sex with each other. It’s relative, contextual. And really all the sex we have folds in on itself to make a sexual life.
And over a long-term relationship, a partner becomes arguably the most significant part of your sexual life and history. They inform and shape your tastes and you theirs. When I sleep with different people, our sexual connection exists in the canon of people I have slept with: some memorable, some forgettable, some momentarily mind-blowing, some mediocre—all framed by my sexual life with my partner, and yet not all about him.
And in the end, that’s better. It’s what I want. And it feels more alive to the reality of how sex with multiple people should be. It seems fair to other people we sleep with too. And in some senses, it’s freeing to release yourself of the pressure to be someone’s number one. It actually means that when we sleep together I’m less obsessed with how I rank, and I’m more invested in the mutual pursuit of pleasure. Not always (I’m only human), but most of the time.