For the last several years, Jill and I have described ourselves as “monogamish”, not quite monogamous, but definitely not open. However, the fact is that for more than a year now, we’ve had a completely open relationship. You may have gleaned this if you follow us on Twitter, or if you’ve caught the occasional reference here on our blog. However, there hasn’t been any sort of official announcement here, no blog post dedicated to declaring our availability to perverts throughout the blogosphere, no full-page ad in the New York Times. So I guess I’d better explain how it all started.

While on a road trip in April 2016, Jill and I met a couple we knew from Twitter. The four of us had talked online on occasion, Jill with the other husband, and I with the other wife (and on a fairly regular basis the other husband as well). We talked about sex, certainly, but we also discussed life: Parenting, marriage, popular culture. This wasn’t just a hookup in the making; it seemed to be a close friendship. We frequently entertained the possibility of meeting. It was bandied about with some regularity, as one of those “might happen someday” things that proliferate on Twitter. Luckily, they were less than a day’s drive from us, and it occurred to me that it was less a question of if than of when.

The other couple had long been non-monogamous, and they were ready to take our budding friendship to the next level. We, on the other hand, were not so prepared. Well, I’d like to think I was, but the thought of bringing it up seriously with Jill as something I actually wanted to happen rather than something I was content to leave as mere fantasy was, frankly, a little daunting. We weren’t planning to meet this couple to discuss politics over breakfast, or roast marshmallows over their backyard fire pit (though we have since done both of those things with them). Any eventual meeting was almost inevitably bound to involve sex.

And it did. Not just any sex, mind you; we had the kind of long-smoldering full-swap foursome I didn’t think my wife would ever be on board with. After all, while she’d let me have sex with other women, even without her present, her long-held position was that she didn’t think she’d ever want to have sex with another man. She didn’t need to; after all, I was the man she married, and she’d been raised to believe in monogamy, not just sexual monogamy but emotional monogamy as well. Obviously we’d pushed against this programming in the past, usually in the context of threesomes. But it still wasn’t her natural way of being.

That said, Jill likes getting romantic and sexual attention from people other than myself. And why shouldn’t she? It’s a natural thing, I believe, which is why even those who are dyed-in-the-wool monogamists often find it difficult to resist such advances. That said, while she’d fooled around before, I’d never watched her. And while I’d long found such a thing enticing on a fantasy level, there was no way to know how I’d feel once it was actually happening. Still, given the connection I’d developed with the other wife, I was willing to take the risk.

Over the following twelve months plus, we enjoyed a still-ongoing journey that was mostly ups with some minor downs, and not just with this other couple. We re-examined the boundaries we had previously set, and in most cases, dismantled them. We broadened our sexual horizons – admittedly already pretty broad – while exploring polyamory and in general opening ourselves to a breadth of new experiences. We got on a plane – something I hadn’t done in more than three years – for the express purpose of playing with others. And overall I don’t believe Jill nor I have any regrets.

There is much I’ve wanted to write about the adventure on which we find ourselves. For various reasons, including hesitation to record my thoughts on our experiences as they were still happening, I’ve neglected to do so. (Note that I have blogged in a limited fashion about my experiences with Rye.) However, the sensations, feelings, and memories of the past year are still vivid, and I believe I will dedicate a few upcoming posts to various reflections, thoughts, and specific experiences. As with everything I post to this blog, I do it for ourselves, so that we have a record of this particular time in our lives. But I also hope that, in the event anyone sees fit to read it, they enjoy it, and maybe feel equal measures enlightenment and arousal. Stay tuned.