My partner and I are both AFAB nonbinary queers in our mid-30s and have been together a long time. We don’t believe lifelong monogamy is realistic. We even started our relationship practicing ethical non-monogamy, then defaulted to monogamy for many years. We now have two very young children and are planning a third in the near future. Between parenting and a longstanding libido mismatch, our sex life has been hard for years. When we do have sex, it’s good, it’s just infrequent (maybe 1-3 times per month) and logistically difficult. I’m generally content, and sex simply isn’t a high priority for me right now.

Over the past several months, my partner has asked about opening our relationship again. I’ve tried to engage, while also feeling that this stage of life might be the worst possible time to experiment with our relationship structure. Recently, after a long conversation about opening up, including explicit discussion about consent and buy-in, my partner told me they had already joined a dating app and had been messaging people for about a week. Nothing physical happened, but they didn’t tell me during our conversations.

My questions:

1. Is there a sweet spot in child ages where opening a relationship actually makes sense? I don’t want to postpone this forever, but I also can’t imagine having the emotional capacity to navigate it anytime soon.

2. In the context of non-monogamy, does joining a dating app before mutual agreement count as harmless exploration, or is that already crossing a line?

I want to be GGG and sex-positive, but also scared to make our relationship worse in an already stressful time, and right now I’m struggling to see how to balance those things.

Overloaded Parents Exploring Now?

P.S. I carried and I will again, since I do think that matters. A bit over one year postpartum now.

1. I used to roll my eyes when straight swingers would say — in documentaries about straight swingers that were coming out twice a year in the 1990s — that of course they waited until their kids were older before getting into the lifestyle. Of course. And while that may have been true in some or even most cases, it couldn’t have been true in all cases. It felt like something straight swingers privately agreed to say to documentary filmmakers to avoid being judged for fucking around when their kids were still very young. Because fucking other people is risky. You could catch feelings, you could contract an STI, and you could — if you were young, fertile, and opposite sex — make another kid by accident.

But let’s say there was a sweet spot where it was safe for a married couple with kids to open their relationship — just for the sake of argument — and let’s say that sweet spot was when your kids were twelve. Would your partner be willing to wait that long? The fact that they already joined a dating app is a pretty good indication that the answer to that question is “no.” Your partner isn’t gonna wait until your third child — who hasn’t even been conceived yet — is almost a teenager.

2. In most relationships, non-monogamous or not, getting on a dating app without your partner’s consent would definitely cross a line. But your relationship isn’t like most relationships. Your relationship was open before you “defaulted” to monogamy after having kids. You’ve been discussing reopening the relationship. And your partner told you about getting on that dating app — they disclosed — before meeting anyone. Not “best practices” where ENM is concerned, but rounding it down to “harmless exploration” instead of rounding it up to unforgivable betrayal is probably your best course of action.

And it’s possible your partner was trying — consciously or subconsciously — to send you a message: they can’t wait a dozen years before opening your relationship back up. Meanwhile, you’re trying to send your partner a very different message: you don’t think it would be possible for them to fulfill their responsibilities as your partner and the co-parent of your very young children while dealing with the emotional/sexual/social distractions of fucking and dating other people.

While I am inclined to side with you — even if we set aside the emotional risks, fucking other people when you have three small children is nearly impossible for logistical reasons — the two of us can’t impose terms on your partner. You two are going to have to come to some sort of agreement and one of you is going to have to give way.

P.S. Does your partner want another child?

P.P.S. The risks of opening the relationship seem obvious. There are risks in refusing to open the relationship that are just as real but less obvious.

 
Bi curious 38-year-old woman from the UK here. I’m in an ethically non-monogamous long-term relationship with my partner of four years and I have been in contact with an old fuck buddy who I haven’t seen for twenty years. He’s married, and I assume, monogamously so. He was the one to get in touch a couple of years back and we stayed in touch. We even arranged to meet once, and I wound up pulling the plug at the last minute. The thing is, I imagine the attraction will still be there and I really want us to fuck, and I have full permission from my partner to hook up with this guy. The ethical aspect goes a little squiffy considering he’s married, which was why I canceled our last date. Now, six months later, we are both going to be in the same city at the same time on our own and we have agreed to meet.

My question is this: If we fuck, Dan, and I really want to fuck, is it really my problem that he’s married? I don’t see a world where I want anything from him other than dick. I don’t believe people are property, and if he promised monogamy to someone else, and he’s not monogamous or can’t be monogamous, he’s going to cheat with someone sooner or later. And if it isn’t me, it would be someone else.

Dithering Into Carnal Knowledge

P.S. I see this man — and his dick — in two weeks. Please rush a response.

“If not me, who? If not two weeks from now in an upscale hotel room while his wife is at home, when?” — Hillel the Elder (in a new translation by me)

You’ve already made up your mind to fuck this guy, DICK, and your handwringing — in the form of this letter — reads to me like a performative act of contrition. (“So long as I have the decency to feel bad about this bad thing I’m about to do, then I’m still a good person!”) You’re going into this second meeting armed with a rationalization that makes you far less likely to bail (“he’s going to cheat with someone sooner or later”), DICK, and I can offer you another: for all you know, DICK, there are extenuating circumstances that would move his cheating from the morally indefensible column into the morally ambiguous column, e.g. his marriage could be loveless or sexless or both, he might have very good reasons to stay in a sexless marriage (kids, finances, interdependence), and he’s doing what he needs to do in order to stay married and stay sane. (And for all we know, DICK, so is his wife. One can hope.)

You would know whether his marriage open and/or he was doing what he needs to do, etc., if you had asked this man a direct question. But you haven’t asked him a direct question, DICK, because you would have your suspicions than have your suspicions confirmed. For his part, if his marriage was open, DICK, he probably would’ve told you that — married straight men who are allowed to fuck other women tend to lead with that fact — and if his marriage was sexless and/or loveless and fucking around was a necessarily evil (infidelity) in the service of a greater good (marital stability), DICK, then he would’ve told you that already too.

Which means there’s a greater than 50% chance, DICK, that this guy is just a cheating piece of shit. It’s not your problem that he’s married, of course, and, indeed, people are not property. But if you fuck this guy without getting answers and/or despite the answers you do get, DICK, you lose your right — at least temporarily — to identify as ethically non-monogamous. If you’re willing to suspend your ethical code when the right dick comes along, you were just pretending.

 
I’m looking for advice on dating in my early 30s. I’ve had two long-term relationships: one from age 19 to 24, and another that started two weeks later and lasted until I was 31. Since that last breakup, I’ve either chosen to be single or lost all desire for anything casual — I’m not sure which. I’ve only had sex once since the breakup, and that was just a random encounter at a sauna. I seem to have lost my sexuality. But I am incredibly lonely and desperately want a partner. I try using Grindr, but I don’t connect with anyone on there. I live in Derby, a small town in England, and the gay “scene” is just one overpriced gay pub that’s usually filled with straight women. So, in Derby, it feels like it’s “Grindr or bust” if you want to find a boyfriend. But after putting that I’m looking for monogamy on my profile, no one messages me.

I really don’t know what to do. I am terrified of being alone forever. My family has all passed away; my life is just me, my two cats, and a few close friends. I’ve considered moving somewhere else to find what I’m looking for, but I don’t have much money, and moving without a support system feels like a massive risk. I don’t have “issues” I need to work out. I’ve done a lot of self-reflection during these last few years alone. I’m confident, I’m good-looking, and I’m trying, but it’s just not happening. Sometimes I think the problem is that I’ve never actually dated. I met my first boyfriend at university at 19, and we broke up when I was 24. Two weeks later, I met my next partner. We got engaged and stayed together for nearly seven years. I’ve wondered if my previous relationships created unrealistic expectations, but even so, I can’t find guys who want to go on actual dates. Even the ones who say they do usually just want a hookup, which doesn’t appeal to me.

You’re the expert, Dan. Please give me some advice on how to find a boyfriend.

Gay And Lonely

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Read the rest of this week's column here! And this week on the Lovecast: A concerned listener asks “Where’s the lube?”—specifically about movie scenes showing gay sex.

A woman in a red state makes it clear in her dating profiles that she is a leftie. She attracts men who claim to be moderate, but are really stealth MAGA creeps. Why do they do this? Why?!

Our Magnum guest is the effervescent internationally renowned human sexuality professor, author, and speaker Dr. Nicole McNichols. In her very popular Diversity of Sexuality class, she gets tied up and whipped as part of a lecture on communication and consent. So. She and Dan talk about the difference between bad sex and traumatic sex. They also dig into the data on why young people are having less sex these days. LISTEN HERE!