Why Open Relationships Are A Bad Idea — No Matter How Good They Sound

–Analysis–

BERLIN — The relationships of my female friends and acquaintances are at an end. I hear it everywhere, on the phone, at lunch, in the sauna, in the hotel resort on the longue chair next to me. The stories usually go like this: both (mostly heterosexual and white) had great jobs until the children came along.

Now, she works part-time, he works full-time — and the father does a considerable amount of care work. He takes the younger children to kindergarten, teaches them to swim, reads to them in the evenings.

She helps the older ones with their homework five days a week and puts the pieces of her career back together in her home office in the mornings.

They have sex once a week — or not. Behind closed doors, they call it maintenance sex.

The end of the nuclear family

This is where both classic and modern marriages end up in a dead end. Yet few of my acquaintances break up. Instead, they come to an arrangement, continue to live platonically under one roof or “open up” the relationship, as they say these days.

In the end, I find this very hard to understand. Why wouldn’t you rather break up than see your once great love before and after sex with others? Or while flirting. Or when you’re lost in thought and have a crush because the other person is suddenly in such a good mood in everyday life.

People naturally want it all.

“Passion rarely lasts for many years or even decades,” political scientist Mariam Tazi-Preve writes in her book The End of the Nuclear Family. The fact that partners stay together after an initial flush of love has much more to do with couple relationship being a socially desirable form of life in reality — and with children and possessions tying them together.

According to Tazi-Preve, the extent of love, sexuality and passion is to be distinguished from the quality of life together – and rarely linked. But people naturally want it all: passion, sex with eye contact, adventure, silliness with each other — and, of course, stability.

In theory, this means exactly what I observe: Many no longer want anything from each other in the classic sense, find each other boring, or wish for more (amorous) freedoms. They argue, hurt each other, argue more and more violently in front of their children until they realize: It’s not working anymore. At least not like this.

The rise of open relationships

Much more often, I observe in my circle of acquaintances – from Munich to Sindelfingen, Rostock and Berlin – the aforementioned coexistence under new conditions. Which means that everyone, sometimes openly, sometimes more covertly (depending on the couple’s deal), has sex on dates outside the home.

A colleague recently told me that he lives with his wife without having a sexual relationship with her. They had come to this arrangement because of the condominium and the children. Each lives their own life and occasionally has something going on. This is perfectly fine because he travels from congress to conference, and she’s at home. They don’t get in each other’s way.

A friend of mine does the same. Once upon a time, they built the house together, from savings, from inheritance. There are three children and they wear designer clothes. My friend works remotely and goes to Pilates twice a week. Why give all that up when you still get along so well. Why give up everything: the tax benefits of the spousal tax splitting, the property. Why tear everything apart and cruelly divide it up in a family court, only allow the children to have their father at the weekend when you can simply have an agreement at home, my friend thinks.

Soul-crushing routines

I can’t yet say (much) about long-term relationships, about sex with a partner of many years, about growing together and growing apart because the other has become so different. Six years ago, I separated from the father of my two older children without breaking much china. After that, I had two more children with my new boyfriend. It’s all still very fresh, the babies (as we call them) are 2 and 4.

But what I’ve known for a long time is that family is where the magic doesn’t happen.

My boyfriend and I wake up every day (thanks to toddlers in bed) in a twisted, unhealthy sleeping position next to each other and fall asleep an hour apart next to each other in the evening. We are raising four children between the ages of 2 and 12. The hour-and-a-half in the morning alone between waking up, looking for socks, calming toddler meltdowns, scraping porridge off the floor and going to nursery couldn’t be further away from the idea of harmony.

I often wish our relationship wasn’t so packed with responsibilities.

Also, the evenings when my boyfriend goes through my receipts for the 2023 tax year with me on the couch or we organize the coming week would rather lead two people at the end to shake hands like business associates than to have sex.

Everyday life with grumpy teens and screaming toddlers triggers escape reflexes in me toward nightlife — hanging out at a party, going to a bar with a friend, dancing with strangers — rather than the desire for a date with each other. And he probably feels the same.

Society expectations vs reality

But I’m supposed to have exclusive intercourse with the same person with whom I share finances, reproduction, my will, and my living will. That’s what the church, society and the law (see spouse contributions) want.

Doing all this with one and the same person is already strange. A thought that I apparently share with many others. American comedian Amy Schumer, for example, who says in her latest stand-up show “Emergency Contact” that she can’t have sex with her husband because he’s family.

And I understand her thinking.

I often wish our relationship wasn’t so packed with responsibilities. That my boyfriend and I could date and miss each other. Like we did before the children. That we didn’t have to be parents, business partners, buddies, cleaners, managers and then also lovers.

We often say to each other in everyday life: “Give me a hug.” And at least one of us then thinks: “Oh, right, that too!”

– YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

Desiring something new

Another friend of mine has known her boyfriend for more than 10 years. They have three children, a huge house, and they’ve split up a few times. They still live together more out of habit than anything else. Basically, she’s been asking herself and me for years if she should try something new.

“Now even my psychologist has said that I should have an affair,” she said the other day over coffee. My friend thinks her psychologist is at his wits’ end: that he wants a new perspective for her, a positive experience that will in turn release new impulses.

“An open relationship, wouldn’t that be something,” I ask naively. She would have less stress and wouldn’t have to hide anything. No, her boyfriend wouldn’t want that. My friend scratches around on her banana bread with her fork.

Relationships with children are all about endurance.

In the evening, we go out with another friend who has been in an open marriage for years. We women in our mid-40s dance to pop music from the nineties. It’s the kind of party where everyone knows what it’s all about. Some call it sex-positive, others stick to the 90s word: making out.

The women are wearing mini dresses, some of the men are topless. My friend comes to me at some point, annoyed. She wanted to start something with a guy. Too late, she realized it was the still-husband of an acquaintance.

She has to talk loudly against the music so that I can hear her. She says: “That’s kind of too close for me now. I mean, I’ve had his kids home on playdates for years, cut apples for them, and they’ve called me to wipe them.”

I admit it doesn’t sound very exciting, and we laugh. Of course, you also meet discarded husbands in nightlife. And you don’t necessarily want them either.

Why not try it out?

A day later, my running acquaintance explains the rules of her open marriage to me while jogging. Don’t bring anyone home, no second dates, no daytime meetings and no overnight stays. I listen with interest. But inside, I already know that I’m far too controlled, unimaginative, uptight and somehow overall strangely faithful for such flings or opportunities.

My boyfriend doesn’t think much of open relationships anyway. And he doesn’t want to deal with it either. When I ask him about it in the evening, he doesn’t even look up from his laptop.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Because it’s the end.”

Aha. We’re silent for a few seconds. Then my boyfriend says, “In the past, people said you have affairs. Today it’s called an open relationship.” He’s probably right, I think to myself. It’s probably the same as before.

Long-term relationships were probably already hard to bear 50 years ago when it came to lasting love and sex. Only the terms have changed. The desire for sex with other people has remained. But at least today, some people talk about how they want to shape their relationship sexually. How and with how many. That’s an advantage.

Back then, in my parents’ generation, it was still called: “Dad’s going to the pub.” Most of the time, the woman got the short end of the stick because she was a good care worker, which back then still meant a housewife, and the man could let off steam.

A different kind of commitment

I can’t imagine just living side-by-side for the children. I wouldn’t lovingly squeeze an orange juice for my boyfriend (he doesn’t drink coffee) when he comes home from a date. Instead, I’d probably smash the cast-iron press in his face, quite old-fashioned. I also wouldn’t want to have sex in a hotel and never be allowed to see the other person again, just because that’s the rule.

Perhaps the most beautiful declaration of love is to break up when the relationship has become indifferent — before it becomes a friendship or just an arrangement. Perhaps it is a sign of love, perhaps also of consistency and openness for the partner but also for myself; I would rather be alone — without compromise.

Relationships with children are all about endurance. For the family, for the big picture, for emotional hygiene, it’s constant work and endurance. That’s what they all say. For me, it’s not. Just enduring and arranging would be the end for me.

“I’ll never put up with you,” I say to my boyfriend. And it’s the greatest commitment of our time.