MONOGAMOUS EVER AFTER?: Joe Kort

[If you're wondering why I'm posting this older piece, I found it via the comments here and thought it was interesting. --Eve]

I've wanted to write an article on this topic ever since I began working with a gay male couple who told me that they were monogamous. After several months, however, they informed me they had had a three-way. When I asked if they had changed from monogamy, they said, "No."

I was confused. Maybe I hadn't gotten the correct information in our initial consultation? I told them, "I thought you told me you were monogamous," and they said, "We are." Now I was REALLY confused! So I said, "But you just told me you were monogamous."

Their reply was, "We are monogamous. We only have three-ways together, and are never sexual with others apart from each other." Okay, now I was slowly getting it.

I quickly learned to ask what a couple means when they say they're monogamous. Now, in fact, I routinely ask each couple, gay or straight alike, what their contract is around sex and commitment. Do they have an assumed or an explicit contract, verbal or otherwise? I don't assume that every couple or individual who comes in for therapy is in an open or closed relationship. Nor do I assume that they have--or have not--talked about it. ...

When it comes to open relationships, judgments are changing. Historically, it was believed, and still is, that if a couple was open to bringing in others for sex, that was the beginning of the end for their relationship. Also the thought of a couple in an open relationship coming to therapy has been--and still is--seen as one of the problems for them, even if they themselves denied it. But too many happy and successful relationships, both gay and straight, have open contracts around sex.

Meanwhile, some monogamous couples struggle and disintegrate for not being willing to open up their relationships at all. ...

Open relationships are controversial, to be sure. Claiming that gay male couples can show how to manage them successfully is even more controversial, at a time when the issue of gay marriage is making headlines. However, many heterosexual couples' lives are torn apart because of affairs and cheating; and only rarely do these couples talk openly about their sex lives. This is far worse than a couple talking openly and honestly with each other about a sensitive topic like sexuality.

At a recent talk I gave on gay marriage, a group of Caucasian CEOs challenged me on the concept. One man in particular asked, "If we open the doors to gay marriage, then what's next--polygamy?" Interestingly, another man in the group looked at him and asked, "How could you be against polygamy? You've divorced three wives and are looking for a fourth!" ...

Here are 10 smart things Gay Couples can teach other couples about sexual monogamy versus non-monogamy...

more

posted by Eve at 11:35 PM VOTE

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home