That’s what’s on this week’s episode of Non-Monogamy Help.

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Podcast Transcript

I have agreed to be in an open marriage with my wife and I am struggling a lot because even though she states that she wants me to be happy, I am finding it very frustrating and difficult to be happy when I sit here knowing that she has another person and I don’t.  She won’t even try to help me find someone.

But my true question is how do one go about finding someone that is open minded enough to be with someone that is in an open marriage?

I want to have my needs met and fulfilled but it seems that all these “polyamory” women don’t want a man that’s in a marriage.

What am I supposed to do?

Response

So first and foremost, I just want to say that it's not your partner's job to help you find someone. In fact, I think you would have a lot less success if you tried to find someone or your wife was out there trying to find someone for you. That is a — I kind of wonder if you've been very involved in the polyamory community because that is like a huge thing that many many many, many polyamorous women do not like.

And I'm pretty sure you didn't mean like your wife going out and pretending c to only be a single woman interested in finding other women and then going like, “oh, by the way, my boyfriend or my husband…”. I don't think that's what you meant, but that is something that happens. It's called unicorn hunting. People really hate it for very understandable reasons.

But a lot of people don't want to date couples. And it's a weird thing to — I mean, just think about it. Like what if your friend was trying to — like it's one thing to be a wing man. It's another thing for your friend to be like, out there be like, “So do you want to date my—” like people do meet other people that way but like yeah. It's unless you mean like that she's going to polyamory events and she could like keep an eye out and be like, “Oh, I'd like to introduce you to my partner” or something like even then though, like it's a bit mehhhh. Some people don't feel keen on that.

I don't know if, if you're actually polyamorous or you have an open marriage. There's a difference between those two things. Right?

If you have an open marriage where you are going to have only a romantic relationship with your wife, but you're having sex with other people and it's just sex, then a lot of polyamorous people will not be interested in that. Because polyamorous people tend to be interested in developing multiple romantic relationships with other people.

So they don't— it's not to say that they don't have casual hookups or aren't interested in Friends with Benefits situations or things like that, but they particularly want people to develop romantic relationships with so if you are not looking for someone to bu ild a romantic relationship with then polyamorous people are generally not going to be interested in that.

It also kind of concerns me a little bit that you're kind of saying “I want to have my needs met and fulfilled”. I don't know what the impetus was to open your relationship with your wife. I don't know what context that was in or — but it does concern me a little bit because a lot of people do sometimes open their marriage to fix problems within the marriage that opening the relationship can't fix. So if there's a problem between you and your wife and the kind of like relationship that you have together that needs to be addressed, rather than just opening up the relationship to fix that.

People aren't need fulfilling machines. And the point of polyamory isn't to find multiple semi sustaining relationships until you reach a level of permissible stasis. The goal isn’t that, “Okay, this relationship is kind of bad so I'm gonna go find another relationship that's at least somewhat kind of good. So I can be kind of happy”. That's not what it is. So that's another issue.

And then I think, yeah, there are a lot of people who are not going to be interested in someone who is already married because there's a power differential there, right? So if you are looking for another romantic relationship, and you aren't clear about how that other person fits in with your marriage — Like have you discussed with your wife how much time you spend with each other versus how much time you spend with other people? Where are those other people fit in to your life? Do you have shared assets together?

Like are you just married or do you have a house together? Do you have children together? Like there's all kinds of different things that make you an established kind of couple that sometimes make other people feel like okay— some people are fine with that some people don't want to have that kind of established relationship with somebody else.

They’re fine with someone who is already established with someone else, but there are a lot of people who are looking to be just as established as that with somebody but in a polyamory context, so you might be running across a lot of people we're looking for “primary partners” who aren't interested in somebody who already has a primary partner essentially. So yeah, that is probably another contributory reason why you might be struggling to find people.

Also in general, as I've said, there's a podcast episode that I put out, I think it's called like Polyamory for Straight Men. You can look it up but basically a lot of men have issues when you have a traditional heterosexual cisgender couple, or like you have like a husband and a wife, very stereotypical, very typical, who open up and try to find partners generally speaking, it's within a heterosexual typical context a lot of women tend to find it easier because there are a lot of men who don't care if (the women) are cheating or not.

There are less women who don't care if the guy that they're dating — because a lot of people say they're in an open marriage who aren't. Like there are people who lie about it. And there are people who are just cheating. And a lot of people who are not used to polyamory who aren't in the polyamory community who don't understand, have never really encountered an open marriage are just thinking that, “Oh, this person's lying about it”. And it isn't fair necessarily. I'm not saying it's fair, but I think, yeah.

There are a lot of women who, if they open a profile, they're heterosexual, they're looking for men, and they're cisgender. And they're, you know, they're not dating within a queer context. And that's just, you know, and they say, “Oh, I'm in an open marriage”. There are a lot of men who don't care if they're — if it's cheating or not, like and whereas there are a lot of women more who do care. So that is kind of sometimes the obstacle you run up against within that community.

So I think there are a few things here that you can do. First and foremost, if you're not looking for another relationship, if you're literally just open insofar as you have other sexual partners, you can hire a sex worker if that is something that is legal and available within your area. If it's just about having your sexual needs met, there are sex workers and sex workers are nice and they can help out with things like that. So that is an option for you if you can't find someone who will be your partner.

If you are actually looking for a romantic partner, then what I would do is look within — I wouldn't say that you have an open marriage if what you want is actually polyamory, if what you want is another romantic relationship —First I'm would have a discussion with your wife about where another full on romantic relationship fits within your time so that you can be clear when you meet a new person you can be like “Yes, I have a wife but this is where another person would fit in”.

I think you need to be honest with people that you have a wife and be aware that some people will still within the polyamory context find this something that is to unequitable for them and that's fine. But if you know where the other person fits in your life, then you can take that and go into polyamory communities specific polyamory communities, and say you're looking for another partner be really clear about what you want.

Because if you say — if you go into polyamory community and you say “I have an open marriage”, most polyamorous people are going to take that as you're not actually looking for another romantic relationship. You're just looking for hookups and some polyamorous people are interested in hookups not just relationships, but not a lot of polyamorous people — Well, I don't know. I don't actually know what the statistic is because I don't know if it's ever been studied.

But based off of purely my experience in multiple communities. There aren't necessarily tonnes of people who are looking for just hookups. They're looking for other relationships. So that may be why you struggle if you're specifically going into polyamory communities and saying that you're in an open marriage and not saying that you're polyamorous then that is probably a big reason why you struggle.

So yeah, I think to sum up, unless it's outside of like the way a friend would help you find a partner, it's not really your partner's job to help you find someone. And in fact, I think you would experience even less success if your partner tried to help you find someone. So I really, really wouldn't recommend that.

I think you need to be a little bit clearer about what it is that you're looking for. Are you in an open marriage? Were you just looking for sex or are you in an open marriage that's actually — you're actually polyamorous, you're looking for other romantic relationships. If you're just looking for other sexual experiences, I would definitely recommend you guys check out the swinger community.

You look at sex workers if that's an option available to you in your area. And look at what you can do to you know, find other sexual relationships and just be honest that that's what you want. I know that in some places, like Tinder is really good for — not really so good for established relationships but good for hookups but like specifically ask for hookups. Like if you're looking for a friend with benefits, ask for that.

And if you're looking actually for another polyamorous relationship, then you should say you're polyamorous if that's what you're actually looking for, and you should go into polyamorous communities understanding how another person fits into your life or multiple people fit into your life having had that discussion with your wife and being really clear with people about like — that you're married, but you're looking for other partners and things like that.

So I think if you try few of those approaches, depending on what you're looking for, that will help and also last but not least, I think like, generally speaking, it's quite common when people open the relationship for one person to have “more success” than other people. I don't know what's going on with your wife if she actually has another established partner or if she's just having hookups.

But if she's just having dates, and she's just getting more messages, I would really, really encourage you to remember that more messages and more attention doesn't necessarily equal dating success. Again, I don't know what's going on with her. Maybe she does. She found another partner like super quick Bada bing bada boom. But if she's just getting a lot of messages, I think that's — that is a frequently misunderstood thing within almost every community.

Just because someone gets more attention and more messages from other people doesn't equate always to dating success, right? Like sometimes it’s just more shit you have to go through in order to find some quality connection. So if that's the issue, I wouldn't be jealous of that. However, it's quite normal for one person to have, you know, find a partner and the other person to take a longer, that's pretty normal.

You can have a feelings about that and that's fine, but just like, understand that it's not her fault either. And it's just kind of the luck of the draw. And, you know, seek therapy to talk a little bit about that with so — like don't vent that with her because it's not her fault. There's nothing she can do. And I can see why she would feel bad about it. But like there's only— and she doesn't want you to be happy.

But there's only so much he can do about your luck finding partners. That is completely out of her control. So just remember that and try to make sure you're venting your feelings at the appropriate time to the appropriate people. But yeah, I hope that helps and good luck.