About four and a half years into our relationship I had a very brief amorous encounter (non-penetrative) while on holiday. which left me feeling very happy and free, but I knew I couldn’t tell Sylvia. I excused my behaviour because (a) I didn’t have full penetrative sex and (b) I was upset with her for going off to visit someone I didn’t like. I did feel uncomfortable when she came back and I now had a secret, though I was already experienced in not talking about sex or other women and so it remained a secret from her.

Within a year or so I had a one-night stand at a festival, and after that I found sex with other women easy to find, enjoyable partly because it was secret, but also I didn’t respect myself in the way that I do now. I think I justified my behaviour by somehow thinking that my sex life outside of the relationship was separate to my relationship – a kind of parallel life. I didn’t like any deception that I did, but in my mind there was a pile of excuses – it was ‘only occasional’, or ‘only at festivals’, or it was OK because Sylvia didn’t trust me. But then it grew so I had several ongoing ‘physical friendships’.

I was aware that I didn’t like having slices of my life invisible or lied about to Sylvia, as I much prefer being honest because it’s easier. And of course I was enjoying the illicit fun, which also caused me to keep doing it and not tell Sylvia. Opportunities arose, I took them and chose not to share the information.

I’m sure my ‘playing away’ was obvious to Sylvia, it’s just that she was blinded by love and (probably) didn’t want to believe what I was getting up to. I do have regrets that I didn’t have the guts to be honest. I was afraid to tell Sylvia my true feelings, which were that I still loved her and could have lived with her but felt the need to have other female intimate company.

There was enough positivity in the relationship still, plus history, for this discomfort and deceit to be pushed out of my life, because I wanted to continue with Sylvia. What I mean is that the ‘good stuff’ outweighed the bad stuff – the conflict in my head and the occasional conflicts Sylvia and I descended into.

I’m not proud of this bit of my life because I hurt Sylvia such a lot with that behaviour, when she found out. The end of the relationship happened when a friend of ours was having coffee with Sylvia. Sylvia was burbling on about how wonderful I was and the friend said something like ‘how can you say that when he’s such a shit?’ Sylvia asked for explanation and the friend revealed I’d had sex with one of her friends at a juggling convention. Sylvia asked me directly as soon as she saw me: had I had sex with such and such at the festival? and I answered honestly.

I was due to go away the next day for nearly a week. When I got back Sylvia had moved out, and we didn’t speak. It wasn’t a dreadfully horrible break-up and we remained civil, but we haven’t spoken much since, and she’s moved away.

I have a general feeling of not respecting myself (or her) during the last few years of our living together, and my current honesty and openness (which is easier in the long run) is partly to atone or make-up for that period of deceit.

The deceit trap

I think this part of Russell’s story shows how easy it is to go from a little deceit to hiding a large part of your life from your partner. Once you have decided not to mention an encounter, it is hard to mention any future encounters because that would mean having to admit that you have lied before. The only way to end the lying is with a crisis – coming clean or being found out.

The excuses Russell made to himself are ones that unfaithful people have made throughout the ages. ‘I didn’t have full penetrative sex’, ‘I was upset with her’, ‘It was only occasional’, or ‘It was only at festivals’. In the end there are no excuses – and yet, there are logical reasons why people behave like this. When your choice seems to be between monogamy and cheating, and monogamy is simply too difficult, what other choice is there?

If you’re in Russell’s situation, if you’re cheating on your partner but not knowing how to tell them, I can sympathise, but I have to remind you of the stark fact: sooner or later, the truth will come out and a crisis will be reached – the only question is how soon that will happen. Unless you’ve got very strong reasons for keeping your relationship superficially happy but dishonest, I would recommend telling the truth sooner rather than later, as it can only get harder to tell the truth the longer you leave it.

And by coming clean, you also have a chance to control how the information comes out. Your partner might well be angry, but probably not angry as Sylvia was when she found out from a friend rather than from Russell. You can choose when and where they find out, you can be there to answer their questions, you can give your explanations.

Russell’s suspected that Sylvia probably knew about his cheating but didn’t want to admit it to herself. I’ve heard this again and again from people who have cheated and those who have been cheated on. I suppose none of us want to accept the idea that the person we have chosen as an ideal partner isn’t quite so ideal after all.

If you’ve been in Sylvia’s situation, suspecting that your partner is not being monogamous, bear in mind that they may still love you and feel committed to you. Be wary of the common assumption that if your partner cheats it must be because of something you’ve done wrong – it could just as easily be that they find monogamy difficult and don’t know what else to do about it. This blog is here to give people an alternative.

After the crisis, someone who has cheated then has an opportunity to decide how to change things, and they can choose to avoid being deceitful to future partners. Russell took this opportunity, as he explains in the next post.

The edifice of lies

First of all, cheating by definition involves lying to your partner.
You have to avoid mentioning this new interest in another person, even though you’re probably thinking about them all the time.
You have to lie about where you’re going when you’re planning to meet the new person, and lie about where you were afterwards.
You have to lie about why you are suddenly glowing, or excited, or turned on.
You have to lie about how you learnt that new sexual technique.
You have to lie to your friends and family as well, to avoid word getting back to your partner through the grapevine.
You have to remember what story you told all these people and keep your story consistent.
You have to hide electronic traces of your affair as well as physical ones.
…and so on and so on.
It takes a lot of effort to build and maintain an edifice of lies of the size needed to hide a new relationship from a partner you spend a lot of time with. Personally I find this all far too difficult, and any lies of mine tend to be seen through by anyone who knows me.
Some people manage it, and even keep up the lies for years on end. Most are discovered sooner or later, and being discovered is always a risk. You can’t control every bit of information your partner receives – even if you did, this control would itself become obvious to them. In the long run, they are almost bound to find out.
Rona Subotnik and Gloria Harris, in their book Surviving Infidelity: Making Decisions, Recovering from the Pain, mention one woman who found out about her husband’s affair after his death – it was no less devastating than finding out when he was alive. And as he was no longer around to talk about it, she found it hard to work through what it meant about their marriage.

Lack of respect

Even your partner never finds out, the fact that you are lying to your partner means you are choosing not to give them any influence over one part of your life. Your choice to do this can only mean that your respect for your partner and their autonomy is lessened.
‘Oh no,’ you might say, ‘I’m keeping the secret from my partner because of my respect for them, because they would be upset if they knew.’
Really?
They will be upset one day anyway. And what kind of respect reduces someone’s ability to choose their response to the situation?
If you lie to someone about something this important, you are not respecting them – full stop.

Hidden means stifled

If a new relationship is hidden, it has little chance to grow. The new lover cannot become part of your life as new partner would usually do, such as by meeting your friends and family, going to events with you, being mentioned in conversation. If your new lover is single, they can’t start telling everyone they know about their new lover, so they become isolated. If they have a partner, they have to lie to their partner, so the same issues apply to as to your partner. (This doesn’t apply if the infidelity is a one-night stand or a series of one-night-stands, of course.)

It is often said that the secrecy and illicit nest of secret affairs is part of their attraction. Perhaps that is true, but compared with what you are losing through the secrecy, this seems a poor reason to have an affair.

She has interviewed over a hundred people who have had no-strings-attached sex while married, without telling their spouses, and concludes that this is becoming more and more common in the UK. She also concludes that many of them don’t feel guilty about it. Women are no longer much less likely to have affairs than men, and age isn’t a barrier either.

Like so many journalists writing on this subject, Levin completely ignores the idea that someone might be honest about having sex with someone else. None of the interviewees seem to have considered for a moment the idea of telling their partners about their need for more sex, or about the fact that they are having sex with someone else. As usual, the choice seems to be between monogamy and cheating. The third article talks about what happens when the other spouse finds out, though this never seems to be through a confession.

Interestingly, there seems to be a consensus among the people interviewed that this extramarital sex keeps them sane and happy and therefore saves their marriage. To some extent I would agree with this: sex with others can enliven a relationship, as I have found myself and heard again and again from the people I’ve interviewed. But Levin does point out that “the partner who chooses to have a fling has to live a life of subterfuge and always be on the alert in case he or she is found out”. Yes, it is a big price to pay. I would go further: I’d say it the deceit that causes most of the problems, rather than the extramarital sex itself. In fact, if there is no deceit, sex with others has a much better chance of enlivening the relationship.

I want to say loud and clear to people in this situation: there is another way. You don’t have to be monogamous and you don’t have to cheat. But it requires talking to your spouse and telling them about your needs.

Here are some thoughts from an Open Fidelity perspective for someone who is married and considering having, or has had, a no-strings-attached affair, and who wants to stay in the marriage.

The ideal time to talk to your spouse about this issue is when you’re starting to feel unhappy and are tempted to cheat but before you have done anything concrete to find another sexual partner. It will be much more difficult to try and find a solution if you have already broken your original promises. But even that can be done. The longer you leave it, the more difficult it will be, either to keep the secret or to come clean. And the secret is almost bound to come out at some point.

Tell your spouse that you are having problems being monogamous. Tell them you have considered looking elsewhere for some sex, or that you have done so if that is the case. Also tell them how much you love them, how committed you feel and that you don’t want to leave them. Say that you would like to work out a way in which both of you can be sexually satisfied while still managing to stay together.

Then wait for the suggestion to sink in, for your spouse’s anger to die down, and for them to consider their options and the alternative options (the two of you splitting up; you having an affair behind their back; and you being unhappily monogamous). If your having sex with someone else with no strings attached will really not affect your love for your spouse or your relationship with them, it might be possible to convince them to accept this too (but make sure you are certain of it first!).

If you have been unhappy, the chances are they have also been unhappy, so they might be glad for the opportunity to talk about their difficulties. Who knows, they might also have been wanting something different in their sex life and have been wishing they could tell you. They might even have already guessed that you’re thinking of an affair. This will be an opportunity for you to work out what you both want and find a way in which your probably differing needs can be made compatible.

Then try, tentatively and gently, to negotiate with each other a solution that involves you getting some sexual fulfilment while staying with your spouse. I can’t say what the solution will be – each relationship is different – but I can, over the course of this blog, give you examples of people who have tried this solution and what they have learnt from the experience. Are there some rules that you can agree that will make it easier to cope with each other’s liaisons? Practising safe sex is an obvious example. Perhaps a period of strict monogamy would be a good idea while you find ways to make non-monogamy possible. Are you prepared for your spouse to have lovers too? If you find this idea difficult, ask yourself why. Look for support from others who have tried honest non-monogamy, perhaps via this blog and the links from it.

This whole blog is about this alternative to monogamy and cheating, called Open Fidelity, so keep reading if you want more tips.

• ignore the feeling and stay monogamous;
• leave their partner in order to get together with a new partner; or
• cheat on their partner with the other person.

I’ve talked a bit about staying monogamous, though I’m sure there will be more on that in future posts. Leaving the original partner is always a possibility, but often the person does not want to leave, for reasons such as:

• they love their partner
• they feel committed
• they don’t want to be seen to break their promises
• breaking up would cause upheaval (emotionally, practically and/or financially, particularly if they are married or have children).

For those who don’t want to leave their partner but are finding it hard to reconcile this with an attraction to someone else, a secret affair is the only other obvious option in our culture.

So given that other options aren’t obviously available to most people (a situation I aim to change), it isn’t really surprising how many people cheat on their partners. It seems to be almost expected by western society today that many people will enter into ‘monogamous’ relationships (such as marriage) and will then, sooner or later, have sex with someone else without telling their partner or spouse.

Here is Nell describing her experience of being unfaithful:

“I was monogamous for seven months with one boyfriend. When an opportunity for sex arose with a close female friend, I was very happy to go with it. But now I knew I was supposed to be monogamous, and so this was clandestine. She knew of him, but he was unaware. For the following year I was increasingly sexual with others. My boyfriend remained mostly unaware, though I sailed close to the wind several times. I understood that the status quo was supposed to be monogamy, and I simply saw myself as destined to be unfaithful. I knew that I didn’t love my boyfriend any less because I was sharing sexualness with other people, in fact some of these others offered things that he never could, and maybe it helped us remain together. I rarely had guilt at my sexual relationships with other people. I knew he would find it hard to know, but I was becoming increasingly aware of my own discomfort at this dishonesty.

“It seemed wrong that the person I professed to love most was not the person I could share everything with. It’s not the practice of deceit – I’m exceptionally good at deceit, and always have been – by nature I was secretive and I found the act of dishonesty very easy. However, emotionally, it had stopped making sense. I needed to be able to share the fullness of my life and relationships with the person I was having my most important relationship with. Yet I didn’t know how to do this without destroying that relationship. Already, several times, I had had to admit to being sexual with another, and twice, he had broken off the relationship because of this, though only for a matter of weeks. He had also asked me to be monogamous, and I had said ‘yes’, because I didn’t know how to say anything else. Each time, shortly afterwards, I had broken that decision and given myself a hard time about my inability to trust myself to remain faithful. And yet knowing, still, that I didn’t love my boyfriend any less.

“In the end what happened was it seemed to be that if I said I would be monogamous, almost immediately I’d be sexual with someone else. It was like I was proving to myself that I couldn’t keep that promise. Apparently I didn’t want to even try. Reading my diaries, I had written something like ‘I can’t even trust myself, I only promised last week that I wouldn’t be sexual with other men, and here I am, this has happened, and I can’t keep my promise’.”

Have you had an experience like this? Have you had a secret affair and felt guilty? Have you promised yourself that you would never do it again, and then broken that promise? There is a solution.

Nell later discovered for herself that it was possible to be nonmonogamous in an open and honest way. Many other people I have interviewed have also discovered this. She learnt about polyamory, which means having honest, loving and/or romantic relationships with more than one person. I’ll write more about polyamory in the next post: it is not exactly the same as open fidelity but has a lot in common with it.

I am using the word ‘monogamous’ in this blog to mean ‘having sex with only one person over a period of time’. A person who is monogamous is someone who, over the course of, say, a year, has sex with only one person. I will usually mean ’sexually monogamous’, that is, if someone has a romantic attachment to more than one person but has sex with only one, they are strictly speaking being monogamous. Of course there is plenty to discuss in all this, but this definition is where I am starting from.

Helen Fisher, in Anatomy of Love: a Natural History of Monogamy Adultery and Divorce, defines the term differently, as ‘having only one spouse’ regardless of any short-term sexual relations with other people. This is more of an anthropological definition, used in discussions of forms of marriage in different cultures.

I think the definition I am using is the more widely used one in general western culture, and so will make more sense to people. Besides, we need words that distinguish people who have sex with only one person from those who have sex with more than one person.

Partner

I generally talk about partners in all my writing, rather than about husbands, wives, girlfriends or boyfriends, for two main reasons. Firstly, what I am talking about applies just as much to same-sex relationships as it does to relationships between men and women. And secondly, whether a couple is married or not is not usually relevant to the argument, as nowadays many couples live together (or even separately) without being married but the same issues surrounding monogamy still arise, just as they would if the couple were married. I am aware that ‘partner’ can mean ‘business partner’, but here it won’t mean that.

The problem with the gender-neutral approach is that you can end up with lots of ‘they’s and confusion about who is being referred to. I don’t think it is useful to use ‘he or she’ all the time, and grammatically I don’t have a problem with using ‘they’ in the singular (it is very commonly used). If you talk about a husband and a wife, you can they say ‘he did this, she said that’ and it is clear, but with two partners, ‘they did this and they did the other’ is not. I will try to make it as clear as possible, sometimes by using examples with names when no other method works. Please add a comment if a particular sentence isn’t clear to you, for this or any other reason.

Infidelity

One of the main arguments I will be making is that ‘fidelity’ shouldn’t mean the same as ‘monogamy’. For the purposes of the next few posts, however, while discussing the status quo, I will use ‘infidelity’ to mean ‘having sex with someone who isn’t your partner without your partner’s knowledge or permission’. Someone who does this could be called a ‘cheater’ and their partner has been ‘cheated on’. These terms are not ideal but I choose to use them because they are generally understood.

In mainstream British society nearly 21st century, as in many other countries today, it is expected that it person will fall in love with someone, ‘go out’ with them for a while (and not go out with anyone else during that time), and either split up or go on to marry them or at least stay together long-term.

(It is most common that these relationships are between a man and a woman, and in some circles this is the only accepted option, although in many places now same-sex relationships are also accepted. But whether same-sex or opposite-sex, it is expected that each person has only one relationship at the time.)

However, it is also widely acknowledged that people in relationships or marriages often get tempted to have sex with other people. When this happens, this is meant to be kept a secret. And if someone find out that their partner is having an affair, they are expected to be devastated, to lose faith in the cheating partner and to end the relationship.

This way of having relationships seems to be accepted by the majority of people. But is it the only way? Is everyone happy? How else could we do things?

I suggest a solution called open fidelity: a way for partners to be faithful to each other while leaving open the possibility that each of them could have other lovers or other partners at some point.