In Mina’s recent post about the our decision to spend less time marinating in erotica, we received one comment that I think deserves a long-form response. Bill wrote:
You are feeling this way because you rely on deviant behavior for kicks rather than good old fashioned monogamy. A drug addict also needs more and more powerful fixes. The extra marital crap destroys marriage
Now my first reflex is to kick in my natural sarcastic gear. Wait?! You mean this wildly unconventional aspect of our marriage that we debated for months before engaging in and throughout ever since is possibly the source of what’s going on? OF COURSE! How come we didn’t think of that? But I think it’s worth taking a step back, really holding the cube up and examining it from all sides here.
First of all, Bill plays a little fast and loose with his terminology, conflating deviance with polyamory. But, we should tackle those issues separately, because they relate to different aspects of our lives. As far as “deviance:” for Mina and I our primary form of deviance is in BDSM. The truth is that, if anything, our desires for BDSM go in the opposite direction with time. There was our first exploration when we first got into it where we slowly crept up on stronger and stronger extremes until we reached the limits of our interest, then a slow walk back to find our center of gravity. Today, it primarily takes the form of mind games and the occasional barehanded spanking. I’m sorry to say Mina probably gets spanked maybe once or twice a month, and only cropped/belted/paddled/caned/etc. once every three or four months. Yet we have sex fifteen to twenty times a month. Although it gets written about more, BDSM is not a major part of our lives. Granted, our regular sex will often have a kinkier style that what we believe average is, but our “sessions” are much fewer and farther between than a reading of our blog would indicate. That’s large a byproduct of “newsworthiness.” What makes for something interesting to write about? We’ve both written so many sex scenes, that describing how I woke her at 2 AM the night I returned from Europe and had her just doesn’t have much appeal for us – even though the actual doing of it does.
Turning to the open aspect of our relationship, and our involving others. To date, there have been three couples and two singles who have been fortunate enough to be in our bed, and only one of those couples was truly directly involved with us. Our last plural experience was in 2009. We have chosen not to write about them any more, simply because not everyone signs up to be written about. At the end of the day, the publicity of one’s sexuality is not a comfortable experience for everyone, and we don’t think that people should have to adjust to that because they like us. So, there is both more there and less there than you think. Secondly, we have learned that pickiness is a virtue. Every experience has been better than the one before, and some have been intensely sexual and enriching. Would we do it again? Absolutely, but ONLY for the right person. And not just “right,” but “completely right.” We are not actively searching right now, though. We have decided our best policy is simply to keep an open mind, and see what people that wander into our lives seem to fit the mold. No matter what, although there have been some bumps along the road, I think we would both say that openness has added enormous dimensions to our relationship, and made us both very happy.
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But, everything’s not working right now. Of course, we both immediately had the exact same thought as Bill. It’s just too obvious not to. For the record, let me state something unambiguously right now: If I thought it would make us happier, I would shed every bit of kink in a heartbeat. We’ve both considered that option, too. We’ve both wondered if maybe it was a simple escalating function, where we constantly had to go for bigger and bigger “hits.” Further, we reconsidered it, and we always do. I never, ever, stop questioning the assumptions that ungird my life.
For an outsider looking in, I can see how it’s easy to look at this blog, which prominently chronicles our decidedly deviant sex life, and say “Ah ha, there’s the problem.” After all, every good therapist seizes on the first thing and assumes that’s the issue.
Sorry, got snarky again.
Here’s the point, and one every blogger has to make from time to time: You don’t know us. You know certain intimate things about us, but you don’t know everything. Here is a semi-complete list of some other things going on in our life, for your information:
- A year ago, Mina was laid off from her dream job. In addition to leaving her unemployed, it has severed a lot of lifelong connections, which inflicts its own sort of emotional trauma. This is setting aside the stress of the lost income, and the slow torture of having to be busy, high-energy person that now sits at home all day, looking for work.
- About the same time, Mina’s mother and her mother’s husband found out that they had invested their life savings in a Ponzi scheme, and lost everything. Their house, their money, their car – everything. Her mother’s husband suffered a mental breakdown, and has become senile, irrational, and increasing abusive. His children have left her alone to deal with him. Her mother is her only family on this continent.
- Over the course of the last year, my boss became increasingly abusive, drinking staggering amounts of alcohol at the office, and hurling increasingly personal and long-winded tirades at me. My stress reached a level where I was throwing up in the parking lot before work. (I have not thrown up since ninth grade.)
- As a result of the aformentioned abuse, I took a new job, and moved all the way across country, taking a $50,000/yr pay cut to do so, simply because I couldn’t handle the insanity any more. (In case you are wondering, that represents an extremely nontrivial portion of my income.) As a result, our finances have become considerably tighter. This is heightened by the fact that California keeps jerking her around on her unemployment.
- To take this job, I moved Mina out of Southern California, where she had lived her whole life, and away from a new group of friends that we were forming very genuine bonds with, into a small, conservative town, where we are slowly working to find out niche again. As a result, she is now sitting at home, with NO ONE to talk to.
- Shortly after taking this job, I was assigned to work in another country for a month – with longer assignments to follow.
So, naturally, looking at all these stressors (and these are only the ones I am willing to share!), one would of course conclude that the kink is our problem. But our lives are more complex than that – and our lives are very real, and not that abnormal. Taking your argument at face value, purely on its merits, I have to say I disagree with your assessment.
I recoil from anyone who says “good old-fashioned.” There are a lot of things we used to do that we don’t do any more. Churches don’t sell indulgences, start Inquisitions, or launch crusades. Scientists don’t derive everything from Aristotle, assume that the sun revolves around the earth, or reduce everything to combination of fire, air, water, and earth. Doctors don’t bleed patients to release humors, pray to the sun-gods for healing, or operate on conscious patients with dirty tools. It’s not the good ol’ days any more: it’s a damned sight better.
Monogamy “worked” for a long time for a simple reason: people had no choice. Henry VIII had to start his own church to get a divorce. Sexuality was not understood, or cherished, or even permitted to be openly enjoyed. Women’s sexuality, in particular was repressed, as too dangerous to allow. (It still is in parts of the world.) Today, we appreciate sex as a means of connecting and building intimacy. It is not just a functional act, like it was in the good old days. But when I look at the high divorce rate in the world today, I don’t see that people just need to go back to the good old days. What I see is that people just marry the wrong people – a lot. It makes sense, since we often date the wrong people. The only difference is that today we can do something about it. We can separate and move on.
One vantage point I have from this blog, and having been so open about my past, is that there are a lot of people out there in unhappy or unsatisfying marriages. In fact, I’m getting ready to start a club for “Everything’s Perfect But The Sex” marriages, I’ve met people like this so often. It’s a mistake to assume that just because people have been married a long time, that they are happy. Oftentimes, being married a long time simply means that they never got a divorce. (I can think of several couples I personally know that have been married twenty-plus years and can’t stand their partner, but stay together for religious or practical reasons.) But that is what good old fashioned monogamy is. I can’t help but think of my aunt who spent months dreading an impending two week Caribbean cruise, because it meant she would be spending so much time with her husband. But their church does not recognize divorce…so there they are.
When you throw out a breezy comment like this, diagnosing our problems and wagging your finger to tell us we need to go back to the days of coopers and consumption, it’s dismissive. Since we choose to be open to about our lives, good or bad, we realize that we invite people to have a quick snack of schadenfreude at our expense as they look for the opportunity to validate their already-held beliefs. If you want to beg the question, that’s fine, but don’t expect me to be impressed.
But if you’d like to have a real conversation about it, Bill, hopefully you’ll see in these 1800 words that I have opened the door to real discussion. I do not delete comments, and I believe firmly that freedom of speech is not negotiable. So – here it is, if you care to have the conversation. If you just want to toss off some bitter bromides about moving back to Mapleton Drive, well, I can play the insult game, too. And, I should say, for the record, that going back to a monogamous relationship is still on the table. If we think that’s the best option, we’ll take it. I’m not dismissing your idea out of hand. I just think you’re a jerk.
Your turn.
Posted by Sylvanus 
