Jennie and Philip met at university and got married the year they graduated. They were open to each other about their feelings, and quite early on, Philip told Jennie that being a man was something he found difficult. When they made love, he never wanted to be the active partner as he felt expected to be. Neither of the couple were very happy with their sex life, but they were happy to be together. As time went on, they had two children.

Several times in the first ten years of their marriage, Jennie found herself getting infatuated with someone else, and she told Philip about these feelings. Philip was not a jealous person and told Jennie that the marriage could be open if she wanted; Philip didn’t want another lover himself, partly because he was unsure of his own sexual identity. None of Jennie’s early romantic attachments led to any sex, and she was open about all of them. Later, however, she had several affairs that involved sex, and at that point she felt it would be fairest on Philip not to tell him. In one of these Jennie explored a side to her sexuality that she hadn’t explored before – her desire to be submissive to a dominant lover.

Why didn’t she tell Philip earlier, given that he had said he wouldn’t mind?

It’s traditionally seen as a betrayal when you’re sexually active with somebody else and you don’t tell your partner about it, but in a strange sort of a way, I felt very strongly at the time that it was helping me to keep the marriage together. I wouldn’t do it now, but it seemed to make sense at the time.

The affairs had been going on for over 15 years when Jennie finally decided to tell Philip. He seemed, from little teasing comments he made now and again, to have already guessed.

It was almost as if there was a challenge there to say ‘Come clean, I’m ready to hear it now’.

His response was a surprise: he was relieved. Philippa (as she is now called) says

She said she wasn’t seeing me as a man, and that she needed a man, and I said ‘Well in that case, I might as well stop trying to fake it.

Philip explained his wish to live as a woman.

To tell or not to tell?

The fact that Jennie decided not to tell Philippa about her affairs shows that, even with the best of intentions, it isn’t easy to be open to your partner about your interest in someone else. (Note that I will call Philippa by that name from here onwards, to respect her female identity; also, all names have been changed.) Philippa had already told Jennie that the marriage could be open, and yet Jennie felt it wouldn’t be right to tell Philippa about her affairs. When Jennie looks back, she clearly finds it hard to remember how she came to this decision at the time and, as she said, she wouldn’t do the same now.

Jennie’s silence makes some sense to me, though, given that there is strong pressure from society to keep affairs secret, stronger perhaps than the pressure not to have affairs in the first place. However idealistic you might be, the assumptions of the wider society can get into your head and lead you to conform, even when you have good reasons not to.

The complications in Jennie and Philippa’s relationship – Philippa’s difficulties with living as a man and Jennie’s new-found desire for a dominant lover – might have made talking about the affairs harder. Eventually they did talk, though, and talking about one issue seems to have made it easier to talk about other issues. It must have been hard for Jennie to finally admit her affairs, but she doesn’t regret doing it for a moment.

Did Jennie’s affairs help them to stay together? I think they probably did. She wasn’t happy with their sex life, so when someone offered her a kind of sex she preferred, it gave her a way to be sexually fulfilled while staying with the partner she loved. Despite her lack of honesty about her affairs, they don’t seem to have hurt Philippa and they gave Jennie an outlet for her sexual feelings. I wouldn’t recommend keeping an affair a secret, but in this situation, who am I to say it was wrong?

First, you’ve probably guessed by now that I’m not the kind of blogger who writes in intimate detail about my daily life. I’ve never quite understood why some people want to do this – it’s just not my thing to reveal so much to the whole world. One reason is that Anna is my real name, so I can’t hide behind a pseudonym. But I will reveal bits of my life as we go along, when they are relevant to what I’m trying to say.

Some basic facts: I live in London, UK; I’m in my mid-30s; I am a bisexual woman. I am in a long-term open relationship; I am good friends with my previous long-term partner, with whom I also had an open relationship. I’ve been researching ethical non-monogamy since 2004. I am a Quaker. I am very lucky to be part of a close family that have supported this project from the beginning.

Personality-wise, I’m a bit of an intellectual: sometimes I’d rather retreat into a book than deal with the world around me, but sometimes I think I can be intellectual in a useful way. I have been accused of being tactless, though I can be sensitive too. I have lots of good acquaintances and just a few very close friends. I can bluff proficiently in geek, but I’m not really a geek (I’m on the edge – see below). I like personality tests, so for those who are interested in them too, I am a type 5 on the Enneagram and INTJ in Myers Briggs. Oh, and a Capricorn if you believe in that stuff too – the bit about being down to earth seems right, anyway. I value free time over possessions and comfort over beauty. I’m a fan of Terry Pratchett, Heroes, OpenOffice and David Attenborough.

One thing I’ve realised is that I’m someone who feels comfortable on the edge of groups of people. Most relevant to this blog is that I’m on the edge of the bisexual community. I am sometimes attracted to women as well as men, and I’ve been to events such as Bicon and London bisexual groups (BU and LBWG) for ten or so years. But for most of that time my primary partner has been a man and I find I fit well enough into the mainstream heterosexual community. Well, mostly: I’ve always had a problem with marriage and the assumption of monogamy, so I knew I wasn’t going to settle down and be a good wife, even if I did find one man I wanted to stay with. This led me to the polyamory community, which I suppose I am part of, though I sometimes get the feeling I’m ‘not poly enough’.

Through the bi and poly communities I’ve met quite a few people who are into BDSM (Bondage and Discipline (BD), Dominance and Submission (DS), Sadism and Masochism (SM); see this useful article for a fuller definition). I’ve discovered that the BDSM community is a thriving one that overlaps with the bisexual community. This is particularly important here, because although I’m only on the very edge of the BDSM community, I have learned quite a bit from them about negotiation, about being straightforward and upfront about the kind of relationship and/or sex and want, and about going out to find someone who wants to offer you that. It is the antithesis of the hetero romantic ideal of just waiting for someone special to come along and then sticking with them even if you find they can’t turn you on. I find this a refreshing way of thinking and I would like to help those not in the BDSM community to hear more about it.

So that’s an advantage of being on the edge: you can help one group to understand and learn from another, while not being so deeply involved in either group that what you say isn’t heard by the others. Of course the risk of being on the edge is that you can be accused by both groups of not knowing the full story!

Another group I’m on the edge of is ‘religious people’. I am part of the British tradition of liberal unprogrammed Quakerism, which I see as sitting on the liberal edge of Christianity, and perhaps even on the edge of religion altogether, which allows Quakers at times to help nonreligious people to understand why the concept of God is useful to some, and to help religious people to understand why it is less useful to others. You won’t see much about religion in this blog, but Quakerism has very much influenced my ethical principle, and particularly my willingness to question assumptions about morality.

Finally, I am also on the edge of the ‘scientists’ group. I studied biology, did a PhD in evolutionary biology and did a research job for a couple of years, became an editor on several biology journals and then went freelance – moving one step away from scientists and then another but still reading research as part of my job. I’m hoping that in the Open Fidelity project I can use the scientific way of thinking and apply it to human relationships, in so far as it can be applied to such complex systems. For example, I like to state my assumptions, put forward hypotheses, look for evidence, and question any conclusion that lacks strong evidence. I also like the way that scientists criticise each other’s ideas as ideas, usually managing not to make criticisms personal. I hope you will criticise my ideas in the same spirit.

I hope this helps you feel you know me, at least a little. In the next post I promise I’ll start on the real-life stories of Open Fidelity without further delay!

[Edited 2009 to remove surname]