Sex With Each Other Became A Chore, So We Opened Up Our Marriage

My husband and I met in our late 30s, and had kids right away because it was “now or never.” It all happened very quickly. Before meeting him, I had a lot of boyfriends and frankly, an unspeakable amount of great sex. I was blessed in that department. Almost all of my exes were phenomenal lovers, or maybe I just had awesome chemistry with them. All I know is that before meeting my husband, and before having kids, sex was a huge part of my life. I never understood women who were like, “Sex? I could take it or leave it.” I was always like, “I’d die without sex!” Cut to me at 51, in a sexless marriage.

It’s not that my husband and I didn’t have good sex, it’s just that we became parents together so quickly that we never really had the time to explore each other sexually, and my body never learned to want or desire him in that way. I love him immensely, but sex with him is not something I crave. It’s more of a chore. And he knows that I feel that way, and it’s not great for his confidence or for our overall connection. We’ve tried to work on it, but I’m just not a good faker. I love him, but I rarely want to f*ck him, and that’s our reality.

Now that our kids are in middle school, and we are somewhat “out of the weeds,” we decided to buckle down and talk about our sex life and what we could do to fix it. I’ve casually had ENM [ethical non-monogamy] on the brain for years, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to seriously think about it until recently. A year ago, it was New Year’s Eve, I said to my husband, “Both kids are in the double digits now. I have a thought, please be open-minded. Want to try opening our marriage?”

I never understood women who were like, “Sex? I could take it or leave it.” I was always like, “I’d die without sex!”

He wasn’t surprised — we were both frustrated with our sex lives and bedtime had become so awkward — but he also worried it would or could hurt our family somehow. I was like, “Babe, we’re in this for the long run. I never want us to break up. Let’s just try this and see if we like it? I want you to have rock star sex, I want to revisit my old slutty self. Come on, we’re still young, let’s see what happens?”

It’s been a few months on Feeld. We both have our own accounts. Our rules are that if either of us has a question, the other must answer honestly. No lying. However, in our short time as an ENM couple, we both find that we don’t really want or need to know how the other person’s dates are going. I know my husband is having a little bit of sexy fun and I love that for him — that’s the extent of it for me. It’s not really my business.

Scheduling has been a bit tedious but not that hard. I’ll text my husband something like, “Can I go out Weds night?” He’ll check his calendar and write back if it works or not. And vice versa. It’s the same as scheduling work dinners or a girls night out. Take a bit of back and forth but it’s not brutal. We each have about one date a week. We’ve both had sex with other people (and enjoyed it!) but nothing has turned into a sleepover yet. In fact, that’s one of our rules. We both have to wake up in our family apartment so our kids see us together in the morning.

I think our kids just want their parents to be together, and they don’t care about the specific rules or structure of it all.

As for our kids — these are Brooklyn kids. They are open and “cool.” We have not told them that we’ve opened our marriage, mostly because they’re at the age where that would just be a giant gross-out. We’ve definitely put things out there, like, “Monogamy works for some couples, but not for others, and we’re still not sure where we stand on the subject…” We’ve floated the concept of us having crushes on other people. Our kids’ reactions are mostly like, “OK, Mom, we get it. Stop talking!”

I will say, at one of our lowest points a few years ago, we were fighting all the time and that was really hard on our kids. The concept of us breaking up — which was not said out loud but was definitely in the air — was very unsettling for our children. They picked up on that. It rocked them. Now that my husband and I are really connected about trying ENM out, and we’re having a good time with it, the vibe in our household is better, and the kids seem really good. I think they just want their parents to be together, and they don’t care about the specific rules or structure of it all. They just want us married and for the family to be together.

I know people’s reaction will be, “This is going to end badly.” I’m not sure. Fighting and feeling stuck usually ends badly. This feels like something born out of curiosity and the pursuit of mutual pleasure. Maybe it’s not the thing that will break us, but the thing that will save us.

Interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Alyssa Shelasky is the author of This Might Be Too Personal and Apron Anxiety. She is also the writer of New York Magazine’s popular Sex Diaries column, and star of the HBO Sex Diaries docuseries. Her work can additionally be found in The New York Times, The Zoe Report, Elle, Conde Nast Traveler and more. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.