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Ksenija: does an open marriage really work or is that a construct that we make to accept a situation that is far from ideal, far from what we romanticized about, fantasized about, but that truly in an open marriage one side is going to be more at ease than the other. We're discussing Vladimir the novel by Julia May Jonas. There's also a Netflix series with Rachel Wise and Leo Woodell, the gorgeous Leo Woodell. the main character and her husband are in an open marriage. He has been having affairs with students throughout his whole career. and she knew the whole time and she accepted it. She also had her own affairs. So, for all intents and purposes, It's the definition of an open marriage. I can't help but wonder does an open marriage really work What do you think?
Sue: That's an interesting one. I would say that it it depends on the structure. So in w the way you're describing the relationship setup in the book, it sounds as if the husband is very much the one setting the parameters of the relationship, and he is actually the one seeking for it to be open and not so much the wife. So it sounds as if this label has been attached to him having serial affairs, but the two of them staying together out of convenience, if not love, at this point. I've Okay.
Ksenija: She's not very clear on that as a narrator. She constantly has the need to say that she accepted this. She was okay with this. She cheated too. So that's her way of
Sue: Thank you.
Ksenija: exonerating him in a way for having these affairs. She is not the most reliable narrator in the world, obviously, and I think that you are right, even though she doesn't spell it out. It's between the lines and it makes sense that yeah, she does accept it, but at the same time, it's kind of imposed on her. She
Sue: Mm-hmm.
Ksenija: says several times I could not stand a husband that is constantly leaning on me and wanting me all the time that would be so oppressive. But there is also a question of what is the story you're telling yourself so you can live with the situation better. And that is the crux of my question of this whole topic. Is open marriage a story we are telling ourselves so we could more easily accept a situation that is not normal or is it something that should be normalized?
Sue: Let me start with whether marriage who marriage serves. And you if you look at the way humans behave in general, most humans are not really hardwired to be monogamous. And marriage is of course a very social construct. And oftentimes it was a patriarchal one to control women, women as property, women as ways of creating alliances, women as ways of
Ksenija: Having a free maid and cook.
Sue: Having a free maid, having a free housekeeper, having a you know, a way of continuing your legacy, your bloodline, creating ties, all of all of those things. But they very rarely had to do with whether the woman in question desired the man in question and wanted to spend the rest of her life in a monogamous relationship with him. so the The construct of marriage being kind of a monogamous relationship between a man and a woman is very much a fabricated setup. It's convenient for child rearing, for continuing families and things like that, but it's probably not highly aligned with how our species is designed to work biologically. So whether it's women cheating or men cheating, you know most species, and I think humans included, aren't monogamous over the course of their life. So when you put a kind of social framework on top of it that says you have to be monogamous, you're putting a constraint on something that doesn't naturally want to go that way. So it in a way, marriages set up for failure from the get-go, in my opinion, which is why a lot of people I think have opted out of traditional marriages at this point, because it doesn't It served a purpose when you know when women needed to be controlled, let's say, when women didn't have their own assets, but it serves that purpose less and less. And I think independent adults can choose that. Here in San Francisco, we see all sorts of interesting structures for marriages and not marriages and threples and things like that. And All I can say is humans are humans and we all have relationship challenges, whether they've been blessed by the church or you've filed the paperwork at City Hall, or you're just you know together in a partnership of your own creation. The The hardest part about any marriage is the two people working together to create and sustain something that works for both of them. And I think when you have a big power imbalance, like we were
Ksenija: I think we can have a big problem balance.
Sue: talking about age differences, or you have a big asset imbalance, and somebody
Ksenija: Mm.
Sue: literally doesn't have their own savings and somebody controls all the money, there are lots of ways that there can be a structural imbalance in a relationship, and certainly a sexual one. might be one of those two. But I think there's a, you know, a fundamental challenge with marriage being assumed to be monogamous and the fact that it's been created for an entirely different reason than keeping two people in a relationship who love each other.
Ksenija: I think that what you're saying also has a lot to do with with where you live and with the United States being such a big country and people living so far away from their parents. Because in Montenegro, if you were to say that and some people do say it, that marriage is just a piece of paper, that can be true in New York or in San Francisco or in Chicago, but it's not true in Montenegro. We all live nearby, our parents are nearby, and when you get married. Everything changes, the the families come together. It becomes a huge societal structure that you are part of. And it's not as easy to break as simply saying, Okay, we're done, let's go and and sign a divorce, and that's it. You become part of another family, your husband becomes part of your family, everyone's
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involved, the parents meet, they start to hang out. There there are so many moving parts there that Honestly, if God forbid my marriage were to end, it would not be only me parting from my husband. It would also be me parting from my in-laws, whom I love to death, and from my brother-in-law and from his family, and that whole part of my life that I would I would be devastated to to to have to lose. And my husband is also part of my family now, and he would definitely not be thrilled to no longer be related to these people. So there's so much going on, not to even start with what that means for the children when you have children together. at the same time as you were you were talking earlier about monogamy and whether that is something that's natural to us. If you think about it, the word love Is not part of the term husband or wife in any language. It's part of lover, the person that the husband or wife has on the side. Because marriage, yes, because throughout the centuries, marriage was there for having children, for securing partnerships, kingdoms, economics,
Sue: Is yeah.
Ksenija: and love. was searched for somewhere else. It was not expected to be in the marriage. today the big issue is that the partner is expected to cover the roles that a whole tribe covered before. Your partner's supposed to be your husband, your lover, your older brother, your defender, your shoulder to cry on, you everything. And that is a new paradigm. But we have had a paradigm shift in the 20th century where it has become the norm that you want to marry for love.
Sue: Mm-hmm.
Ksenija: That marriage is no longer arranged by your parents who evaluate who is this family you're going into, who are these people, who is this man, are you going to be provided for? Or, you know, the the dowry and all that. Like the whole economics of it. Now we go into it and we go into it because we fall in love. we go into it with expectations of being loved, respected, and faithful to. Which is why I find the idea of open marriage so antithetical to everything we likely believe in, because if That was not what they believed in. Why did that why did they get married? They could have lived together, they could have been partners
Sue: There a lot of
Ksenija: like that, they could have been roommates who have sex, they could have been roommates who decide to have a kid. Why do you do the traditional thing called marriage if you're then going to be in an open marriage?
Sue: If you're in the US, there are tax advantages to being married. There are, literally.
Ksenija: Ha ha ha.
Sue: And there are tax advantages to having kids. Then there are also health health elements that come with it. Like before gay marriage was legal, one of my girlfriends was gay and there was a concept called domestic partnerships. But they didn't convey the rights to determine healthcare for your partner. And her partner's family had a terribly toxic relationship with her her partner. And i it i
Ksenija: So we go back to the convenience part.
Sue: or at least the you know, there's a big legal wrapper around marriage.
Ksenija: There is, but there's also the love thing and the wanting to be faithful and take care of each other. I mean, come on. Who gets
Sue: And we can
Ksenija: married and from the get go decides we're gonna sleep with other people? Okay, maybe when you're fifty and and you no longer are in love but you don't want a divorce, but come on.
Sue: But you hear you hear all these stories of people like screwing the bridesmaids at the wedding. Like there I don't think in general people enter into a marriage thinking the first thing I'm going to do is figure out how to have affairs, you know, in my marriage. but I do think that there are many reasons that a couple might want to stay together equally
Ksenija: yeah, for sure.
Sue: and find a way through.
Ksenija: Okay.
Sue: the complexities of r you know real life and and what that brings and what you know certainly the the man in the marriage as you're portraying him s doesn't sound like much of a prince charming in terms of how he he relates to his wife and and kind of the legacy of affairs that he's had. but to your point when she's saying she's accepted it She does have a choice and she does have agency in her own marriage. I don't know what's portrayed in terms of her options of staying married or not being married, what what that might mean. And that's a heavy decision. so certainly being in an open marriage might be a better outcome for her and for many than legally separating and being single or no longer being in a marriage. I don't I you know, I don't know. but it's it it's certainly a complicated structure and I think like any anything that's not traditional and even traditional marriages need a ton of communication and a lot of work to make them work. And I can't imagine the more variables you add to it, it's just gotta get even harder, don't you think?
Ksenija: For sure. So to conclude, open marriage, are we or are we not judging? We're judging, all right. Agreed. Agreed. We are, we are, we're
Sue: We're judging. It's tricky. boy.
Ksenija: judging. All right.