Podcast: Challenging Monogamy: Women Leading the Way in Open Relationships

Tammy Nelson, PhD, is a Board Certified Sexologist, an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Imago Relationship therapist, and a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor with over 30 years of experience working with couples and individuals and flexible monogamy relationships. She is a TEDx speaker and hosts “The Trouble With Sex” podcast. She speaks worldwide and consults with institutes, think tanks, and corporations on communication, integrity, and relationships. At this time of great global stress, Dr. Nelson helps people cope with working from home, disruption across all industries, and social distancing.

Our host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, “Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations,” available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author.

Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now can’t imagine life without.

To book Gabe for your next event or learn more about him, please visit gabehoward.com.

Producer’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.
Announcer: You’re listening to Inside Mental Health: A Psych Central Podcast where experts share experiences and the latest thinking on mental health and psychology. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. I’m your host, Gabe Howard. Calling in to the show today, we have Tammy Nelson, PhD. Dr. Nelson is a board-certified sexologist, an AASECT certified sex therapist, and a licensed professional counselor. She’s also the author of many books, including “When You’re the One Who Cheats.” Dr. Nelson, welcome to the podcast.

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Gabe Howard: Oh, thanks so much for being here. Now, before we get started, I want to give a great big shout out to AshleyMadison.com for hooking us up. I want to ask as a, as a doctor, as a sexologist, a site that brags about helping people have affairs. Is that empowering for relationships or not empowering? What are your thoughts on that?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Well, I don’t know if it’s Ashley Madison that is the impetus for people to have affairs. I think because of the size of their platform, they have like 80 million members worldwide. It has become sort of a cultural phenomenon, a place for people to outsource some of their relationship needs. And I mean, currently 20% of their membership is identifying as being in an open relationship, which is the part that is intriguing to me that they’re changing a bit of their social construct around what people are really looking for. And that’s, I think, fascinating.

Gabe Howard: You know, many people believe that men are the gatekeepers of monogamy. Society believes that it’s men who are most likely to cheat, that it’s men who are most likely to push for alternative lifestyles. And on a more misogynistic tone, people believe that men are in charge of keeping their female partners in line. But you have found out, and Ashley Madison has found out, that women are actually the gatekeepers of monogamy. Is that true? And how do we even truly know?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: I mean, I don’t even know where that line comes from keeping their women in line. That sounds a little archaic. But the idea that

Gabe Howard: It’s very archaic, but people believe that’s why men are in charge. I know, isn’t it? It’s terrible. It’s terrible. But it’s one of the things that came up.

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Yeah, it sounds like kind of abusive, but the reality is research and my own clinical experience over the past 35 years and just anecdotally from places like Ashley Madison or places where people are actually, you know, quote/unquote hooking up, the reality is that men, let’s say, who are looking for alternative partners or affairs, actually are looking for relationships. So even if they don’t want to end their marriage, they don’t necessarily want just sexual partners. They want an actual connection with someone in order to have sex with them. And interestingly, this is for heterosexual people. Women just want sex.

Gabe Howard: Really?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: They don’t want to hear their outside partners problems with their marriage. They’re like, you have a wife for that. Like, I don’t want to get involved with your problems, like just have sex with me after I put the kids on the bus and then let’s never talk again. So it’s really a misunderstanding and a little bit of gender coding to think that men just want to have affairs for sex and women want emotion. It’s actually clearly not the case. And I think it’s, you know, we’re not giving men enough credit to ascribe to them this idea that they just think about their penis and about sex. Because I think that we, especially as we age a lot of men are looking for the emotional connection that perhaps they’re not getting in their long-term relationships at home.

Gabe Howard: When you go out into society and you talk about monogamy, it’s very much believed to be male driven, but it’s female driven. Where do we get that disconnect so much that we believe that men are in charge?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Well, the reality is that women statistically lose interest in monogamy much sooner than men, and men will stay in a monogamous relationship to have sex, even if it’s like, okay, sex and women won’t. Women will cheat much sooner and much earlier in monogamy than men w will. It doesn’t work for them as well, and for obvious reasons. I mean, women have in heterosexual relationships have more responsibility, particularly with families. And so they get burnt out and tired quicker. And it just it’s not as refreshing. I mean, it’s not pathological to lose desire for boring sex. There’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t want to have sex, if it’s like, not rewarding. And so women actually won’t settle for sex that’s not rewarding anymore. We’ve come a long way and we’re not going to take boring sex. So, statistically, women actually cheat as often as men and now they have as much opportunity to do so as they ever have. You know I’m looking at you and you have red hair. There’s a reason that there used to be the joke that the postman or the mailman was the person you had the affair with, and that’s why the kid had red hair like the mailman. Because that was

Gabe Howard: Yeah.

Tammy Nelson, PhD: The only person you had opportunity to do it with. That was the only person that came to the house. You never went out. You didn’t have a job. You didn’t go out into town. But now women have just as much opportunity, right? Because they’re out in the world. But we do know that men brag about their affairs and women will still hide their affairs because there’s more consequences for women, you know, there’s more name calling. There’s more. We still have a fear of losing our children or being berated or losing our financial security, all that stuff. So women have become very good at hiding their affairs over the years. So, is it more common for women to cheat, or is it just more open? Like, the reality is women, because they have more options, because they’re out in the world more because they have more opportunity, and also they’re not settling, and they are much more transparent about the need to have multiple partners and not settle for partners that they’re not happy with.

Gabe Howard: Let’s talk about open marriages where people are open, you know, ethical non-monogamy, polyamorous relationships, relationships where people are very open not only with their partners, but also the general society that they’re in this open marriage. I was surprised to learn that more often than not, it’s women who are driving that and not men, because the stereotype is that the man is unhappy and the woman gives in. Can you help bust that myth for us?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: The truth is that women are the gatekeepers of open relationships. It only happens in heterosexual relationships if the woman is ready to happen, make it happen. Unless it’s like a coercive, manipulative, abusive relationship where the male partner says, if you don’t do this, then I will fill in the blank. I’ll leave. I’ll, we’ll get divorced. I’ll cheat on you anyway. And then we’re not talking about an open relationship, right? It’s a non-consensual non-monogamous relationship in that scenario. But in open relationships, the more common scenario in male/female monogamous relationships is that it may be the male partner that thinks of it or brings it up first, or wants to do something spicy, like have a threesome. It takes the female partner a little bit longer to wrap their mind around it. They might do what I call communication fatigue, sort of talk it to death for a while, but then once she says, okay, let’s do it, then the gate is open and they try it and they experiment. And many times it’s the man that wants to shut it down first and says, okay, I tried this, this is no fun anymore. And she’s like, I’m good. Well, I’ll let you know when I’m done. And that’s a really common just anecdotally that’s a really common scenario.

Gabe Howard: Is this a generational thing? Is the younger generation driving this, or is it just always been there? Just we’re now talking about it more?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: For sure, in the last couple of generations, kids have grown up with parents that got divorced or cheated on each other. And this is a generation that’s saying, you know what? Just because we’re in love or married doesn’t mean we’re dead. Like we’re going to be attracted to other people, but we don’t want to lie about it like our parents did, because we learned that that’s where the pain points were growing up, and that divorce really didn’t work for us like that destroyed our parents financially. It destroyed us emotionally. You know, we all had to go to therapy. Like, we don’t want to do that to our children and to our families. And I also would say that you know, just like women in the 60s were sort of the gatekeepers of the open sexual revolution. That big shift happened in our culture because women could have access to birth control. And because of that, they really took charge of their sexual lives and things changed dramatically. But also because women are like, I’m going to decide what my marriage is going to look like. And so once again, it’s optional for women because marriage is optional for women for the first time, probably in 200 years. We don’t have to get married to have life insurance, health insurance, children. We don’t have to get married to have sex. We don’t have to get married financially. You know, if we’re privileged enough to have money to support ourselves. This is not true for everyone, obviously, but if marriage is optional, then we get to choose who it’s with and how we’re going to do it. And that’s really what has shifted dramatically in our culture. That’s why I think we’re in a monogamy revolution.

Gabe Howard: You know, Dr. Nelson, I’m just curious. Let’s say that you’re listening right now and you’re thinking, I want to open my marriage up. I want to practice ethical non-monogamy. I want to start having sex with multiple people. I’m. I’ve still got my looks. I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready. But obviously, you don’t want to hurt your partner. So you don’t want to have an affair, but you want to

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Mm-hmm.

Gabe Howard: Do this. Okay? So now you’ve got to sit down and discuss it with them. Do you have any conversation starters for this?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Yeah. So this is what I call open monogamy, which is my most recent book, Open Monogamy, which is a guide to co-creating your ideal relationship agreement. It’s really about creating an agreement. So the first conversation would be, oh, I heard this podcast and I’d like to talk about our open monogamy, which implies that you have a central or primary relationship at home. So your marriage or your committed partnership is your priority, right? So that is our like North Star, our shared value. We’re always going to come back to this relationship. But what can we add or expand on or what do we have enough of that we can use as like overflow? So it’s not that it’s going to take away from us, and really figuring out what your boundaries are going to be, what your guardrails are.

Gabe Howard: Let’s say that you bring this up to your partner and you say, hey, I want to have an open marriage. I want to practice an open monogamy. And they freak out, you don’t love me anymore. You want a divorce? You’ve got one foot out the door. Who is it? Who is he? Who is she? Who is she? You know, everybody’s just. Pandemonium breaks out. How do you deescalate?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Right.

Gabe Howard: That and reassure your partner that one? It’s just a discussion. Nothing has happened. And two, you want the discussion to be serious, but you also want to reassure them that they can still trust you.

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Tammy Nelson, PhD: You know everybody has what I call the monogamy gap in their relationship. Even if it’s just like I believe that my monogamy includes masturbation. Like that’s no big deal. And your partner’s like I thought you’d stop that when we got married. And your partner’s like. I’ve been doing that since I was 12. It really has nothing to do with you, you know? Like, where is the gap in what you implicitly assume is monogamy and your partner disagrees with you know, it may be you believe. You know, it doesn’t count. If I go out with my friends and we go to bars and flirt with people and your partner’s like, no, you’re never flirting with anybody. Maybe you look at pornography together. Maybe you have fantasies that you talk about, but you never take into reality. Maybe you have one threesome together on like, your anniversary, but you never do anything else separately. Like what are the parameters that are in your gap, in that gap between what you believe and what your partner believes and reassuring them, like when you say you want to open your relationship, your partner might be thinking, oh, that means you want to go date other people. You’re going to fall in love with someone. You’re going to leave me. And you’re thinking, no, I just wanted to, like, go to a party and walk around and look at people like, I just thought we could, like, share our fantasies and maybe flirt with someone online, like, go on Ashley Madison and go shopping. Like we’re looking at shoes together. Like, maybe, maybe you need to, like, just get a little bit more finite about what you mean and reassure your partner. No matter what, our relationship will always come first. And this is not an alternative. This is like the icing on that cake.

Gabe Howard: Dr. Nelson, I got to tell you, one of the things that’s been most fascinating to me is when I was doing research for this episode, it was always how to get the sex that you want, how to find the sex that you want. And the entire time we’ve been talking, you’re talking about getting the sex that you need, and it hits very differently. This is the sex that you need. This is what you need to have a good life. Are people looking at sex wrong because it is always tabled as a this is what I want, this is what I want, this is what I want. But I. I just couldn’t help but notice that you’re always framing it as a need.

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Well, I mean, it is true that good sex will perpetuate a healthier relationship. It’s not only good for you as an individual, it keeps you younger. It keeps you healthier, keeps you happier. But it also is the number one indicator of a long-term happy relationship. So you want to know what to work on in your relationship. Work on your sex life like that is the thing that is going to keep you from feeling disheartened and hopeless. There’s two parts of a relationship, right? There’s companionship, which is like your roommate ability, your get along, hang out, pay the mortgage, watch Netflix, you know, walk the dog. And a lot of people are really good friends. They’ve been living together for a long time. They can hang out, they can be roommates. But the whole other side of your relationship is eroticism. And that’s where the passion lives and the aliveness and the not just I love you, but I’m in love with you. And we have this misunderstanding that if you’re just good enough friends, then your sex life will just take care of itself. Well, it actually works the other way. Like the safer you are and the more you focus on your roommate life, the less erotic your relationship becomes. And so we’re not really taught how to work on our sex life. We’re not taught how to talk about it. We’re not taught how to make it happen in our relationship. Like maybe, yeah, put on a costume and roleplay, play, but there’s really no other advice. There’s a lot of advice on how to cheat and how to split that erotic relationship energy outside of your relationship. Go find it with someone else, go on porn like, you know, split it off. Outside of this, there’s this, you know, sort of joke about marriage gets boring. You’re not going to want to have sex with your partner. That’s just not true. But it does take as much work as it does to make your companionship work, to make your sex life stay hot or even get more exciting as you get older.

Gabe Howard: And I think that’s the dream, right? For your sex life to get more and more and more exciting. I’m. I’m just curious, Dr. Nelson, are there any common mistakes or pitfalls that couples fall into when they’re opening up their marriage, and if so, do you have any hints or tips on how to prevent that?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Yeah, I think the number one mistake is don’t do it too fast. Like, slow down, slow the train down. Talk about the fantasies first. Do the what if conversation. And the second one is, don’t put so many rules on each other. A rule is something that you put on the other person and then the relationship becomes very parentified. So a rule is something. First of all, it’s meant to be broken. Second of all, someone has to maintain the consequences for that rule being broken. So if I say, well, there’s a rule that you have to be home at midnight, then if you come home at 1215, first of all, I have to stay up till midnight, and then I have to punish you somehow for being home late. And now I’m like your mother, and now you’re like the bad kid. That’s like doing something wrong. And now, like, who wants that kind of relationship so you can’t make rules. What you can do is have boundaries for yourself. Boundaries are something you put on yourself, and your own boundaries can be flexible, but you can’t decide what somebody else’s boundaries are. So I might say, you know, my boundaries are that we have to really agree on times that work for us. And I can’t be out late at night. I’m just too tired. Like, I would just work too long hours and I can’t sleep. Well so my boundaries are like, I got to be asleep by ten. And so your boundaries might be that you know, you need to hear from me every day by text.

Tammy Nelson, PhD: And if you don’t, you get uncomfortable. That’s not a rule. If I don’t. If I don’t do it, you’re not going to punish me. You might have to change your boundaries and we might have to have discussions around it. But that is a big mistake people make. And I hear that all the time. Like, okay, let’s talk about the rules of our monogamy agreement. A monogamy agreement is really about a what if conversation along the monogamy continuum. What are we going to do if this happens? What will we do if this happens? What can we do if this happens? I have a like a free handout. If people want to email me that say they heard me on this podcast, I can send it to you. It’s part of the open monogamy agreement. Like, what do we ask each other to make sure that we hit all those points so that there’s no misunderstanding, and then you can change your mind like that’s the third and last point. Like this is flexible and fluid and ongoing. Whatever you agreed to today, it can be totally different next week. And it should be you should revisit this all the time. I mean, you know, we redo our driver’s license and our passport every couple of years. We should redo our monogamy agreement, too. It’s not like a one time I said I would never cheat on you once, and I’ll let you know if I change my mind like that. This should be ongoing.

Gabe Howard: Oh, Dr. Nelson, thank you so much. I have one last question I wanted to save for towards the end. Again, in researching for this show, one of the things that came up over and over and over again is that opening up your marriage is the last-ditch effort for divorce. Now, nothing that you’ve said in the show indicates that at all. In fact, it indicates the opposite. But it was a persistent thing that came up over and over and over again. Why this belief out in society, that couples who are opening their marriage are just trying to save it?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: Well, I think there is a percentage of people that are doing that. I think it absolutely, it’s an alternative to trading each other in for someone else. And so some couples will look at it as well. I don’t want to get divorced, but and I don’t want to leave. And I’d like to continue to co-parent, and I’d like to live in the same house. And it’s too expensive to live separately. And divorce is financially ruinous. And but I want to be with other people. And so a lot of people will try that option. And I think some of those people are sort of looking to swing from branch to branch with the safety of their current partner. Like, I’m just sticking around until I can find someone else. And I think in a way that’s sort of parent-ifying your partner, like, just give me permission to go out and cheat until I find someone else, and then I’ll leave you. And, you know, maybe that’s part of the monogamy continuum, too. Like, the reality is some people say they couldn’t give their partner permission to be in an open relationship because they’re afraid they’ll fall in love. Well, first of all, it’s not your permission to give. It’s your partner’s decision to make. And secondly, your partner could fall in love at any time. Just going to the grocery store like that is not preventing your partner from leaving, or falling in love, or wanting to be with someone else.

Tammy Nelson, PhD: An open relationship is actually the opposite. It’s actually many ways preventative because now you have the openness of a conversation where you can say, you know what, I’m starting to have like weird feelings about this person. I’m either gonna see it till it gets to its natural conclusion. When, you know, I realize I really don’t want to marry this person. It’s too complicated. I have all this history with you, and that’s much more valuable. Or I’m going to pull out of this now. We’re going to have like a veto where we go, oh, this is this is dangerous. And remember, our relationship comes first. So anything that feels threatening, we should just get out and to be that open about it. You know, if people that cheat, they don’t come home and say, oh my God, I met someone and I’m really attracted to them let’s talk about it. They go, oh, I met someone, I’m really attracted to them. I’m going to go for it because that must mean that I should sleep with them. It doesn’t necessarily mean you should sleep with them. It means that you’re human. And we sometimes are attracted to other people. And wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to process that with your best friend at home and figure out what to do about that?

Gabe Howard: Dr. Nelson, thank you so much for taking the time today. Where can folks find you online and where can they get your books?

Tammy Nelson, PhD: You can go to my website, DrTammyNelson.com, DrTammyNelson.com. You can go to openmonogamy.com. If you want to find that book. And please email me, Tammy@DrTammyNelson.com and say you heard me on Gabe Howard’s show. And I’ll be happy to send you an open monogamy agreement form. You can find more details in the book, of course, but in all my books I have six books. They’re all on Amazon as well.

Gabe Howard: Dr. Nelson, thank you so much for being here. My name is Gabe Howard, and I’m an award-winning public speaker who could be available for your next event. I also wrote a book. It’s called “Mental Illness Is an Asshole and Other Observations,” which you can get on Amazon, but you can grab a signed copy with free show swag or learn more about me over at gabehoward.com. Wherever you downloaded this episode, please follow or subscribe to the show. It is absolutely free and you don’t want to miss a thing. And do me a favor. Recommend the show. Share your favorite episode on social media. Bring us up in a support group. Sharing the show with the people you know is how we grow. I will see everybody next time on Inside Mental Health.

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