“WE’RE HAVING OUR BEST SEX IN YEARS… JUST NOT WITH OTHER PEOPLE” It’s not going exactly as expected for our polyamory columnist

Polyamory was supposed to mean endless guilt-free hook-ups for Jack* and his wife of nine years. In reality? It’s had an unexpected benefit much closer to home…

Since my wife and I embarked on our new, open, honest and non-monogamous lifestyle, I have become jealous of her success with a younger man. Although Mike* lives nearly 100 miles away, she has still managed to see him on several occasions, and he has become a new fixture of our relationship that I never could have predicted. But as things between them pass from casual territory into something more settled, the cracks have begun to show.

She becomes increasingly annoyed at his seeming inability to communicate. Text conversations are left hanging for days when he doesn’t respond, and on one date she doesn’t even get a confirmation he is going to meet her until she is actually getting off the train at his stop.

I have to consciously rein in the temptation to gloat. However, it has provided a much-needed reminder that our marriage is still important to both of us, and not just me, as I’d first feared when she told me she wanted to try polyamory all those months ago.

Indeed, as Lucy* and I stumble around the pitfall-strewn world of dating, increasingly we appreciate what we have at home. After two years of sleeping in separate beds, we’re having our best sex in years. Being with other people has brought into focus just how hard it is to find someone you have a meaningful, long-lasting connection with.

The crunch point for Lucy’s first relationship outside our marriage comes when she offers Mike a spare ticket to a festival she’s going to. First he says he’ll be there. Then he can’t make it. Exasperated, Lucy even dumps him at one point, only for the relationship to be reinstated a few days later with the agreement that he will, indeed, join her at the event.

Mike turns up late, and Lucy is surprised to see he is carrying his own tent. He then insists on setting this

“I have my second onenight stand in a month”

up some distance from hers,“in case I pull”. Their festival night out turns into something of a farce as Mike proceeds to get off with the first girl he meets – right in front of Lucy – and takes her back to his tent. It’s the end for Lucy and Mike. While polyamory may be non-monogamous, each relationship is intended to be self-contained and respectful. Being polyamorous doesn’t mean you are anti-commitment. Well, at least that’s the idea…

Encountering this lack of respect for polyamory brings home to Lucy and I that, while we are beginning to understand the logic behind our lifestyle choice, to most other people it’s quite strange – offensive, even. Monogamy is deeply ingrained, even in the young, as the only route to loving, meaningful relationships. Stray from the path, and some see it as the moral right to punish you. I don’t know if that’s what’s happened between Lucy and Mike, but I’d hazard a guess it had something to do with it.

None of this stops me clocking up my second one-night stand in a month (via Tinder), while also going on my second date with Nell* – the beautiful poly girl I had a chaste rendezvous with just after Lucy dropped the nonmonogamy bombshell on me.

Nell and I have dinner and kiss. But… seeing as we both have partners at home, we have nowhere to go afterwards. The irony of our new poly set-up is that Lucy and I are having way more sex with each other than we are with anyone else…