Open Marriage

Open Marriage

How do I feel about the open marriage culture? To be honest I find it unfair. Why should one be able to sleep with whoever they want and be still classified as married or tied down? I think the whole purpose of marriage is to be completely faithful to one, and only one person. And what happens if one person gets feelings for another person and decides to divorce their spouse? Do they then marry a new spouse and continue the lifestyle? Why not then stay single? And prevent having to be tied down to one person. The couple should just be swingers and stay single.

I understand that in the Stone Age, being monogamous was probably unheard of. However we have developed as a species to experience jealousy. If we could sleep with whoever we wanted there would be no purpose for marriage, and jealousy would almost always be a factor. 

To be completely honest I think open marriage is caused by either one member of the relationships selfishness or one member being a push over. It is not fair to one person in almost every situation. One man wrote a book on open marriage and in his 30 years of counselling open marriages, not one out of 5000 marriages had longevity like non open marriages. 

I hope my marriage is like my grandparents marriage. Long, happy, stable and full of triumphs over conflict. I hope to be married only once and put my 100% into making it work. If my effort isn’t enough I would go to marriage counselling for as long as possible and only if my spouse broke it off would I allow the marriage to end. It takes a great deal of commitment to make a marriage last, and it’s not an easy road, but it is a battle I would go into whole heartedly.