Monica, 33
If anything, my problems enrich our relationship. I feel more confident, sexy and take that energy home
Ever since we met 11 years ago, Gracie has been joking about opening up our relationship. She says it all the time. “At one point, I want you to go out and sleep with the other women. I'll be at the house waiting for you and sipping cocktails.” I think she started making that joke because she had noticed the gap in our age. I met when I was 22 and she was 33.
We had two children and our fertility journey was difficult. Gracie carried our first child and had a hard time getting pregnant. I carried the second and the hormones sent me to prenatal depression. I was a butch lesbian and hated the femininity that pregnancy had in my body. I never had sex while pregnant. Although it turns out to be difficult to care for the first child, Gracie was understandable, kind and loving. We weren't sexually intimate, but I was still approaching her.
Luckily, my hormones stabilized after giving birth and I started to feel like a sexual presence again. Before I met Gracie, I had only had sex with one person, but that didn't bother me. But after those difficult times I realized that there is a part of me who wanted to go through those wild years when you sleep around and learn about yourself in the process. When our kids were two and four and we had more breathing space, we went back to the idea of non-monopoly, but this time we weren't kidding. I created an action plan.
With Gracie's blessing, I recently started seeing someone. There were moments when my date made Gracie uneasy, but our boundaries are harsh. My emotional commitment is to Gracie and my kids. When I'm with Gracie, I never think about this other woman. When you start a relationship, you put a lot of energy into fantasizing about future life you may have together – but I'm not looking for a future with this other woman, so I don't spend time visualizing things like that, so it's not distracting from focusing on Gracie. If anything, it enriches our relationship. I feel more confident, sexy and I take that energy home.
So far, Gracie has no interest in meeting other people. She says she played the field in her 20s. But that may change. Because our arrangements feel more equal.
Gracie, 44
I helped set up Monica's dating profile and found it very exciting at first.
Monica and I met at work and kept our relationship a secret for a while, and it was fun. I remember the excitement of dressing up for her every day. Once I lifted my office skirt and showed her I was wearing stockings and a suspender belt. We found them at our local cemetery during our lunch break, or we pulled Sicky on the same day and met in my bedroom.
I was embarrassed at first about the gap in our age. I told her that Monica was 25 years old, so when she actually did it Three years later, I turned 25 and it was awkward. I was the second Monica had slept with me, and that's part of why I'm open to having sex with other women.
Pregnancy was painful for us, and Monica's pregnancy was extremely difficult. It took us a few years and now we want her to have all the fun she didn't get in her early 20s.
I helped set up Monica's dating profile and initially found some very exciting ideas about all the other women wanting my hot wife. However, I struggled a bit as Monica actually started having sex with someone else. I'm not a jealous person. I'm not in a house where I'm tortured by her thoughts with this other woman in bed. On my good days, I draw actively to turn me on. But sometimes I enter a spiral of anxiety and imagine Monica leaving me. I recently lost my job and I don't think I would feel this way if I was thriving in my career. I tend to get into my head and say to myself: you are 44 years old, you don't know where your life is heading, you will be abandoned!
Being confident about my anxiety at Monica opened up a new, more vulnerable kind of communication between us. She reassures me that our family is at the heart of her life, and this extra relationship is a kind of satellite that orbits it.
I don't have the urge to go out and find my own satellite, but I have mostly crushing and fantasies. For now, I'm happy at home with cocktails.
