Retracting monogamy?

BluepillProfessor · 2015-05-31T16:02:45+00:00

/u/RPSigmaStigma had a thread that talks about this issue:

http://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/2u7nzg/mrp_thoughts_on_openpoly_marriages/

theoretickle · 2015-06-01T17:00:31+00:00

I have successfully retracted my vows of monogamy and my wife and I now enjoy a fantastic open marriage with a great deal of sex, variety, affection and independence.

That's not to say things are perfect - we have our quarrels from time to time like every couple, occasionally epic, and that's just the price of open and honest communication in a high testosterone environment :)

I've been lurking in MRP for a while now and have realized that whatever pill I'm on, it's not red, and it's not blue. While many of the methods here (the 'praxeology' if you saw that thread) work, the philosophy breaks down when applied to open marriages. You won't get much love from the community either. Please join me in petitioning RPSigmaStigma to get a new sub started for us.

None of what I'm about to write is MRP, I hope the mods will indulge me.

Onto answering your question. This is how I did it. It took a while, but we're trying to change some deeply-held beliefs so it's worth doing properly.

Stage 0 - trust

You need to get your relationship to a healthy place. You should be making love regularly and you should be able to openly discuss most things. There should be mutual trust and respect. You should not, in general, be a pussy. You should not, in general, be an asshole. MRP will help you with all this. But go easy on the captain/first mate stuff - you guys should be a team and your mission: to have the best damned marriage anyone has ever seen, by your own standards. That means no coveting your neighbor's wife's ass, and for her no envy of her friends' engagement rings or other chattel. You need to both have your own vision of what a marriage is, openly discuss it, design it, own it. At this stage I would say you're already beyond where MRP can take you.

Stage 1 - doubt

Open, honest, positive discussions about marriage are the venue for starting to deprogram social indoctrination for both of you. But go slow - let her draw her own conclusions. Here are some questions you might raise:

why is it celebrities so often have affairs? Tiger Woods was married to a model, why wasn't he happy?
is sex the most important thing in a marriage? What's really keeping us together?
what's up with the Coolidge effect?
if someone has an affair, should they tell their partner? If they can keep it secret, isn't it kinder to do that and suffer the guilt alone? Isn't seeking forgiveness the dick move in this scenario? (Note: my wife is Japanese so there was a cultural angle here - the Christian doctrine of forgiveness of sin is far from universal. I learned early on that if I fuck up, I don't get forgiven, I just have to own it and do better next time. Ergo, confessing is pointless and just increases her suffering. Man up and shut up.)
what's up with bonobos? (read Sex at Dawn, maybe even get her to read it - there is ample anthropological and physiological evidence that humans are polyamorous, and a ton of interesting questions in there such as why do women have multiple orgasms when men just have the one?)
where did marriage even come from? Is it for the good of individuals or for the good of society? Is it possible that things which are good for society are not necessarily the best for individuals?
is a marriage which allows for extra-marital sex stronger or weaker than one which doesn't?
is a couple which never admits attraction to other members of the opposite sex really honest with one another?
could it be the case that a lot of married couples are secretly enjoying open marriages? (Hint: yes.)

Women just love discussing this stuff. As long as you're not discussing her marriage she'll take great pleasure in dissecting and speculating on how humans really work.

It's up to you to gently get your own views across in these discussions and maintain a strong positive design for your marriage, i.e.:

the marriage is not based on sex, sex (while good) is not even the best thing in the marriage
marriage is not ownership
sex is a fun activity engaged in by adults, not some sacred oath
healthy adults are interested in sex with other healthy adults and that's ok
your relationship is stronger than any fling or casual encounter could possibly be
obsession with sex tears apart relationships
using sex for coercion, at the level of relationships or societies, is immoral

... hopefully you see where I'm going here. Depending on your own level of indoctrination (you can be as atheist as you like, but if you grew up in America, Europe, Africa or the mid-East you're at least partly Judeo-Christian) you'll both take some time getting comfortable with questioning these issues and coming to your own conclusions.

By the way, a useful technique here is discussing movies and drama. Watch Revolutionary Road and question whether Leo's character was really doing the right thing when he fessed up. Watch Mad Men and see what you project onto Don Draper (my wife was genuinely surprised to find out that many Americans see him as a Bad Guy).

Stage 2 - changing the rules, accepting the changes

Now you can start to explore how some of the above applies to your own marriage, in theory. Don't get too practical too quickly.

Lead by example. Don't start by talking about what happens if you cheat, talk about what happens if she does. You need to be able to say the following, and mean it:

"Honey, I don't care if you have sex with another guy. Just stay safe, don't be manipulated, don't fall in love with him, and don't spend my money on him."

If that scares you (and it scares the hell out of most so-called 'alphas'), go back and work on stage 0. You need to be 100% confident that you are her best option and she needs to be 100% confident she is your best option. You both need to be actively working to make that the case. Luckily, a marriage is something you build - every year you add to that relationship, the stronger it gets.

The darkest part of all this is that you also need to be OK with the idea that perhaps she will find another guy objectively better than you and leave. Are you up to that challenge?

There is also space at this stage for some real 'rules'. Ignore the RP thing about no rules in relationships - you need these. You have to figure out whether - in principle - you're more comfortable with "don't ask, don't tell", you need to talk about - in theory - STD tests and so on. There is a ton of good information out there. STDs in particular aren't the bogeyman they've been made out to be in recent years provided you're sensible. That information is essential for the comfort of both of you. Lastly, you need to be clear about who can know your status and how you're going to protect each other from social embarrassment. Luckily I live in a big city but I still don't hold hands with a FB in public.

Stage 3 - getting practical

If she is truly bought in to the ideas introduced in Stage 2, you'll be on the way to changing your marriage in many more ways than just who you have sex with:

you should both be enjoying independent time with your own friends
you should be scheduling time together like you used to before you were married, not assuming you're both going to be slumped at home in front of the TV on Saturday night
you should both have the freedom to travel independently
you should have complete privacy for your email accounts, phone etc. and it won't be a problem because you trust each other completely.

All of these points are things you should be promoting to your wife and not just claiming for yourself. If she is lax on her own privacy or independence, tell her off - it's important that she has her own space and time and interests and friends. In the long run, it's important for the relationship - it will go stale if you only spend time with each other, doing the same things with the same people.

In my case, having established this kind of relationship, a surprising thing happened: she told me to get a girlfriend. No kidding. Women are turned on by knowing their man is attractive to other women and in my wife's case, she was 100% confident that any other women wouldn't have a chance at being my No.1. A strange thing happened to me when she said that: I was more attracted to her. Weird huh? I still remember it now. Actually it still works any time we discuss our relationship and she says something like that, it turns me on. My girl is awesome.

Of course, she's likely to say something like that if she's interested in having a boyfriend or if she needs to justify some encounter she had earlier on (yeah, AWALT - but it's no big deal, since obviously she came back).

If over the course of all your discussions nothing like this happens, you're going to have to be the one to say it. If you've set the stage correctly, it shouldn't be a problem.

I've really only scratched the surface here, there are so many points we could go so much deeper on. This was my story and I hope some of it's of help to you but it's going to be very dependent on the cultures you both grew up in and the one you live in now.

You also might find that you can just go nuclear and do everything in a couple of conversations (there is a book by Blackdragon detailing that approach). I don't recommend it though - you might scratch an itch but you won't have done any favors to your primary relationship.

Some other sources I'd recommend:

Open Marriage (Nena & George O'Neill) - oldie but a goodie. Their description of marriage in the 60s complements Mad Men well. Sex at Dawn (Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jethá) - mentioned above Anything by Dan Savage using the word 'monogamish'

Good luck!

abdada · 2015-05-31T12:54:02+00:00

Dread Level 10/11/12?

Only if you've performed the first 9 levels of dread.

UEMcGill · 2015-05-31T15:04:32+00:00

Wrote this awhile back...

http://www.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/2mwtjt/ultimate_dread_tell_your_wife_youre_going_to_have/

MgFeSi · 2015-05-31T18:38:40+00:00

No and hell no. I'm happy in monogamy now. And there's no way I'd be a cuckold.

Ryanami · 2015-05-31T21:32:02+00:00

Being RP in a marriage is already a massive challenge, you're basically doubling it while also making it impossible to pass any comfort tests, yeah this sounds like a bright idea.

Title	Retracting monogamy?
Author	RedOkra
Upvotes	9
Comments	15
Date	May 31, 2015 12:43 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MarriedRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/37yblt/retracting_monogamy/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MarriedRedPill/retracting-monogamy.201800 https://theredarchive.com/post/201800

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