Poly Life
The joys of marriage to a poly woman by a mono man
By Brian O’Connell
My wife told me that the first time she saw me she knew she was going to leave her husband for me. We met at a party on the West Side of Manhattan, which she came to with her husband, and within a minute or so of conversation she asked me to take her to my apartment. She never really left and got a quick divorce and married me before the divorce was actually finalized. And she did this over the strenuous objections of her family because she is Jewish, her ex-husband is Jewish and I’m not. In fact, I am also ten years younger than Nancy and was just starting my career when I met her. It was an unexpected whirlwind of a courtship and marriage that sort of overwhelmed me at the time but, as the saying goes; you buy the ticket, you take the ride.
Nancy proposed to me knowing me well enough to know that my favorite response to every one of her requests is yes. She also laid down the structure for our marriage, the central tenet of which is that she is poly and I am not. Considering my marriage was born out of an extramarital affair, the premise for our relationship had effectively been laid out beforehand.
The unspoken conditions to the marriage were just mutually agreed assumptions at the onset of our relationship. Nancy is a self-admitted Jewish American Princess (JAP) who was spoiled by her wealthy family and her ex-husband. That is just who she is and, if you love her, you have to accept that and learn the art of taking good care of a JAP. That’s one of the most enjoyable aspects of our marriage. Nancy is extremely intelligent and witty, but she is not career driven. She wants to live life as an adventure and I am more than happy to support her in that. I didn’t marry her for who she was at the time, but for who she would be in five, ten or twenty years later. We are at the ten-year point now and she is more exciting and interesting than ever, and better dressed.
Another precondition that Nancy laid down was we had to get as far away from her ex-husband and her family as possible, ideally outside the United States. I came from somewhere between nowhere and goodbye and grew up in a poor single parent family and I had an accent then that identified me as just that. But I had a law degree from an American university and a further degree in European Law from Maastricht University. Thanks to the latter qualification, we were living in London just two months after we met.
We don’t think of ourselves as a poly couple nor do we identify with that community. I think that’s been to our detriment and I am now becoming more interested in the experience of others. And like-minded people would be enjoyable to meet.
We have had our difficulties. The first real relationship Nancy had outside our marriage was with a fairly well-known musician in London and her frequent and prolonged absences made me deeply insecure. I was not jealous as such but given that I married am impetuous woman, I worried that she would leave me. We discussed this and she asked me what would make me feel more secure without limiting her freedom. We agreed that she would, thereafter, always have more than one outside relationship on an ongoing basis but she would have the freedom to spend substantial amounts of time away from me without guilt.
Nancy is, as you can see from the picture above, a very attractive woman, so it’s no surprise she currently has two primary relationships with single men who adore her almost as much as me and a few secondary lovers she sees infrequently. She’s a self admitted ‘art slut’ in London, with one of her lovers owning a prominent gallery and the other being the presumed next Lucien Freud. Through them she is friends with the likes of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and other prominent UK artists. That portion of her life is hers, not mine to share, but her happiness and excitement spills onto me.
Nancy takes two three month long holidays with each lover a year and, more often than not, is gone for the weekend. Right now, she is with a lover waiting until the pandemic ends on the leeward side of an Indian Ocean island while I am doing legal work in the Middle East. We haven’t seen each other since February but talk every day. We missed our ten-year wedding anniversary in June of this year. In a normal year I may get 50 percent of her time, and that seems to have worked well for us in the last nine years. I also am the primary parent for our son and the only breadwinner, but I enjoy taking care of Nancy just as much as raising our son. In fact, if she didn’t let me take care of her and spoil her, my insecurity would come roaring back. She may be with her lover, but I make sure she has the money to pay her own way
I have had a number of women approach me with ‘concern’ about my marriage and offers to have coffee to talk it over. I’ve had women knock on my door and try to come inside my apartment in London to talk to me. I have had friends of Nancy try to seduce me over the years and even her mother, who is the second most attractive woman I have ever met, has a crush on me and calls me every day. I am confident in my looks and masculinity, but I have never wanted to not be in a monogamous relationship with Nancy and that gives her the confidence to live the life she lives. Being a secure anchor for my wife may seem a mundane life to many, but it is what I know she needs and it’s something I want. She’s not the woman I married ten years ago, and she won’t be who she is now ten years hence. I want to be there to see that.
