Open Marriages Can Get Complicated - with @drpsychmom

Okay, I brought in Dr. Samantha Rodman-Whiten for a follow-up to a Dear DSO that I already did a video on. And this is a woman who is in an open marriage. They have teenage kids, two teenage kids, they've been together for 18 years. About 5 years ago, they said, let's spice things up. And it's worked well for them. Worked well in terms of she has a steady How did she put it? Steady. This is her word. She had a steady side piece. But he has had 2 or 3, like, one-night stands, nothing consistent. And he, though, much to her chagrin, has started forming an emotional relationship with another woman. And she's like, I don't know about this. But her The way she has framed this, why she's not sure about it, is she's watching her husband put on this little mating game of forming an emotional attachment with this other woman. He is not disclosing to the other woman the open marriage thing. So other woman, as far as she's concerned, has met this really great guy at work, and they're having coffee, and they're doing lunch, and everything's wonderful. And wife is here saying, Dude, you gotta tell this woman. You're leading her on. She's gonna fall in love with you. And he says, you don't understand, this is the male mating game here. He's dangling the carrot of potential relationship in front of this woman and genuine connection. And I guess his plan is to yank the carrot back at the last minute and say, guess what, I'm in an open marriage.

I think his plan is to leave her because he sounds terrible. He sounds like a liar. And I think she's 100% right. That is totally unethical. Yeah, incredibly unethical. The other woman is a person, and she thinks that she's met like this awesome guy. What he's basically saying is he's like the— you know, he does— he feels like his only worth, the, the only attractive thing that he has for a woman would be a potential provider mate, you know. So because he hasn't done so well leading with his sexy side, which other women don't seem to think is too sexy. Now he's just lying and showing himself as a provider. So this is— first of all, it's bad because he's literally a liar and he's unethical. Second of all, I feel like he's gonna leave her, you know, which I mean could be good for her because she got her side piece. She could be living her best life. But he is not doing this. He's doing the— let— no, he's not even doing the letter of the law. He's doing nothing in the law, not the letter, not the spirit. He's just lying. He— and if this woman falls in love with him he's probably going to leave the— or he is at risk of leaving the wife to go to the woman because the woman will have built him up so much in her mind that, you know, and whatever else. So I do not— that guy's wrong.

You nailed it. That's exactly what I said. I said there was two things possibly going on here. One is that he's just being this asshole that is leading this woman on, and then as soon as he gets in her pants, he's like, oh, by the way, I didn't mention there's a wife in the mix here. And let's see, whatever happens happens. Thing 2, I said, there could be something more nefarious here, which is I'm actually falling for this chick too, and I don't want to let her go. And if I tell you that, wife, you're going to be like, dump this woman. And now I got this weird, what do I do thing? So I'm just going to try and play both sides of the coin here and see what happens.

Exactly. This happened, by the way, with Easy on Netflix. Have you watched Easy?

I always love how you mention shows and movies.

You have to watch it. It's very good.

I got to watch it, apparently. Yeah. Easy on Netflix. I'll check that out.

Same thing. He's this schlubby guy and she's this hot woman. They do this open marriage. She has immediate success, but he has this emotional entanglement and you gotta watch it. It's very good.

And this is part and parcel for the grand lesson to be learned in all this is a relationship is complicated. Between one man, one woman. We want to be monogamous and stay sexy forever. Holy shit, that's hard. Well, some people have tried to kind of short-circuit this whole operation and say, well, let's— there's, there's, there's a middle ground here. There's from A to Z. Z would be, let's, let's— would be let's bring in other humans into this relationship. There's a lot of shit in between that a lot of people skip, you know, having all kinds of fun and role-playing and all kinds of kinky little fun things, whatever it may be. But a lot of people are like, well, you know what, the short-circuit way to get this sexy engine running again is— and they're right, they're absolutely right. There's nothing more holy shit than a new mate, the old Coolidge effect we've talked about.

Right? Yes.

And, uh, but relationship complexity is here between man and woman. Now let's add some other humans. Relationship complexity just went up to here. And a lot of people don't emotionally have what it takes to navigate those waters. It's very turbulent, and shit like this can happen.

The best with the people that do it together like that, or like, um, well, yeah, in like the poly community, everybody knows they're a couple. They're engaging with other people who are couples. It's, it's like their social life and their sex life in one. So it's kind of like, uh, it— everybody knows more of the rules. This guy in your Dear DSO is going way off script, and he is like completely not being above board. This poly works the best for people where they were always kinky, always in the lifestyle of some sort, two-sexual open-minded people that are then interacting with other similarly minded people. It's, it's a whole vibe, it's a whole lifestyle. But like, when people are just trying to go basically like cloak having an affair in the rhetoric of ethical non-monogamy while not even being ethical, this is not I think this guy is illustrative of the—

now that we're in this little kinky, sexy world, we can let loose of a lot of our little social mores, whatever you want to call it, our rules. Um, yeah, sure, I was having a little secret texting conversation with somebody on the side. What, what does that matter? He's like, well, we need to be above board about this stuff, kind of stuff. What you're— you are, um, you're opening yourself up to more of that kind of stuff, and you're opening yourself up to seeing what your spouse is kind of made of when it comes to this stuff. And she's seeing that hubby there is like, oh, he's got kind of a— it's kind of a dark side to him. That's, uh, that's kind of scary to sit back and watch. That is— all we're talking about is him going out and having sex with others, and that brings this out of him. And, uh, oof, right?

It's his own low self-esteem too, because like he cannot lead with being honest. He doesn't think he would have anything to offer. And that is not confined to ethical non-monogamy. That's a lot of the guys that you deal with, a lot of guys that I see. All they think they have to offer is themselves as like the provider guy. And then later they come back and get mad at her for being— saying that he's like a boring kind of stable provider guy, in not so many words, you know, like, oh, Juan, you're just that guy that's so reliable. And then they'll get like their feelings hurt, and it's like, that was literally how they were selling themselves 100%, because they didn't think they had anything to sell besides that. So, yeah, you know, it's difficult. You know, that's a no-win situation.

I've done a lot of content on the whole phenomenon of newly divorced men going out into the dating world, and they take out into the dating world this provider, you know, they wear the provider suit and they're like, hey everybody, here I am. And a lot of women come back with, I just left a guy like that. I'm looking for fun. Can you be, you know, fun and sexy and let's go out and do things? And the men are like, I don't know fun and sexy. I know, I know work my ass off and buy things for people. That's what I know.

It's like, Yeah, or like telling the woman, I got like one day I can meet you for lunch because I have children activities from like 6 to 10 on every single night because you're being super dad.

Doesn't that make me awesome? You know, date people like, I'm super dad. Like, no, that just— not at all. Side note, after talking to, I would assume, hundreds and hundreds of couples and people that are going through relationship issues and so forth, how common Well, let me preface this by saying I'm surprised. I guess I've lived such a boring life for so many years. How common the whole world of— you use the term lifestyle. That's the term that they use. Swingers, poly, whatever you want to call it. A lot more common than what I ever thought. It is.

Yeah, I'm in a coastal city.

What was that?

I'm in a coastal city. I'm in a big city. I know I was from New York, then DC. I mean, this is kind of where people do things is in the big cities. Oh, do they?

So you're If you're closer to the water in a coastal city, that brings about the—

People say to me things on my site and I'm like, you just need to move to a city. It sounds like you are not meeting the right guys or the right girls to be able to do this stuff. People are more liberal. I mean, in the more liberal areas, then there's certainly going to be more lifestyle.

You bring up a topic. I mentioned this in my— in a DSO fraternity meeting, dsofraternity.com, for those interested, private group for men only. I said, you know, I said, I'm a pretty centrist guy. I see both sides of the political aisle. And I see both are equally crazy. And both have their ups and downs. But there's something I've noticed. A lot of men in our, in our group come to me, to our group because of the book I wrote, The Dead Bedroom Fix, and all the content I have about marriage and sex. And I was like, is it a coincidence that A lot of the guys that come to me with that are of the conservative bent. They're a lot of—

I didn't even know how many conservative guys existed in the universe because remember, I went to Columbia University. It's super liberal. Where I was raised in Brooklyn was not super liberal. But then after that, kind of everything was. Graduate school was at Maryland. Women will tell me things that guys say and I'm like, are we in this century? Like, what are we even talking about?

Totally different world.

Yeah, yes, totally different world. And when people— and it's not like just that there's all liberals in the lifestyle, but it's certainly people are more open-minded, like open-mindedness. Yeah, I think that's about the role of sex. So there's people that come on my thing on my Facebook and they're like, but you took vows, you can't be ethically non-monogamous because you took vows. I'm like, I don't understand. They're like literally both deciding to do something. Like, how? And then they're like, but this goes against, you know, like all sorts of stuff.

Yeah, it was explained to me by a very conservative guy in the group. He said his thought was, we are more apt as conservative men to want to work on the relationship, which is why all of us gravitated towards your book, because the book is, if you want to save your marriage and remain sexy and do some things, here's a step-by-step on how maybe you can do that. And they're like, oh, thank goodness, because even though I haven't had sex for 12, 15 years, I'm still willing to work on this. And a psychologist type may say, dude, maybe look into the old codependency thing and your self-worth. They frame it as, no, I made vows in a church and that means something, damn it.

Yes, it's a totally different culture. So there's no like, you can't put one framework on the other thing. They're coming at it totally different, you know. I mean, it's, it's just, you know what, you, you make fun of me for saying what I have, what you have to watch on TV. You know, you're gonna get lots of mileage from Brother Husbands. There's a show about brotherhood. You got— you, if you thought Esther Perel, if you didn't like the Esther Perel thing to open up the marriage, man, man, you gotta watch it. The women are the only ones, they have another husband in the mix. You, you— I would really like you to do a reaction video.

What is this? Where, where is this?

I don't know, it's on whatever the tackiest is of the streaming services, and it's like Looking for Brother Husband.

Brother Husband.

I'm gonna go watch it now because I just remembered it. It's hilarious. The women are saying basically like the men— so, so like there's this one couple, she got two husbands already, but she wants to move to a bigger house because she wants to start dating. And the second husband, and the second husband is like, um, I'm starting to feel like you're not into me anymore. And the first husband's looking at her like Where have you been? Like, what's wrong with you? It's so, so—

oh, this is awesome.

The woman self-actualizing. Yeah, we don't go out the marriage. It's all about the woman. It's very— it's, it's great.

Well, hey, you're bringing up a point, and this is something again my ignorant mind was awakened to years ago when I got into this, was open marriage. Number one, oh shit, that's way more common than I ever thought. The other holy shit epiphany was hot wife stuff. No, it's the women initiating it more so than the men, to a large degree. And I quoted— I did research on it. And there was, there's a website for people in open marriages called openminded.com. And they have like 60-some thousand couples on this website, the forums and all this stuff. And they polled their members and said, who was it that came up with the idea of the open marriage first? Who present? And it was like two-thirds of the couple said it was the woman's idea. That, that blows people away, especially your more conservative types.

Don't want to not have a libido. Like, that's like what guys don't understand is like, guys will be like, oh, she's going through menopause, it's so hard for me. I'm like, is she? It's hard for her too, you know? Like, she's, she's losing something of herself too. And of course there's something to be gained in every stage, positives, negatives. But when women's libido goes down in monogamy, they feel a loss and a grief too, especially if they used to identify as strongly sexual. The man with more testosterone can, despite the Coolidge effect and the attenuation thereof, he still can feel sexual, you know. The woman, she just doesn't, and she misses that part of herself, and she deeply feels like, okay, I've researched it, I've thought about it, maybe there's a way to feel sexual within this, you know. So yeah, and that brings me back to Easy, where she was the one who suggested it after the role play, after and all these other things because she just couldn't make it happen with him, you know.

The old— and for those that don't know, the Coolidge Effect, it's a cute little name which has like a little urban legend attached to it. But basically it's the observation that when you introduce a new novel mate in the equation, libido goes up for both men and women.

Yes, there is a little graph that I did a video with, with the man's refractory period. When it's a new mate, when he's met the mate once, when he met the mate twice. So all these guys that go out on the dating market, they're like, oh my God, I'm a stud, I didn't know I had it in me. Twice.

Give it time, give it time. Yeah, give it a few weeks. Refractory period, for those that know, means the time between orgasms. Is that what you're referring to?

Yeah, yeah, the time to recover. The time to recover. That followed me, um, and said something once on my site, made a very good point that I did a podcast about Um, he said like, for men who are trying to understand how women feel, think about how you feel once you ejaculate. You don't want sex right then. And I was like, what a good analogy. And I did a podcast about it. Your refractory period can help you be more empathic to your wife because no matter how sexual of a man you are, in your refractory period, you're not interested, you know, at least unless you're like 20 years old. But you know, it's just not there. And that is how women feel.

There is a—

decreases like all the time.

There's a very crude phrase to describe that period. They call it post-nut clarity. Yes, there you go. There you go. So if you ever have thoughts of doing something crazy in order to get a woman, rub one out, dude, and then you'll be like, oh, okay, never mind. It's just all that, uh, that urge dissipates, and then you're left with clarity.

Most of the time, especially after ovulation in the second half of the cycle, they feel like that. Then yeah, you could really understand it. They love the guy, you know, like you love your wife after you ejaculated, but you still can't have sex with her, nor are you that interested. You want to get up and do something else.

Well, as always, a pleasure.

Okay, on that note, on that note, I gave you a lot of recommendations. You're gonna love that Brother Husband thing, man.

Brother Husband, will I? Will I love it, or am I just gonna throw something at the TV?

It's amazing.

All right, Brother Husband. Uh, the other one was Easy, and I think that's it for today.

Yes, yes. And yeah, and I didn't mention this, but The Golden Bachelor, by the way, is also a very good show. But on The Golden Bachelor, there was just a scene where he literally did what you were talking about. Like, she was like 'Everybody has abused me. Everybody has left me in my whole life.' And man, does that turn him on. No, geez. But he's like so into it. They're not gonna live long enough for like much bad to go wrong.

Let them have their fun. Yeah, Golden, meaning— I think I saw an ad for this— senior citizens, basically. What, 50, 60-some-year-olds?

I mean, for 70-year-old women, they are like— they're bound.

Well, yeah, they're not gonna put the— they're not gonna put the ugly grandmas on there.

Women in the Walker. But I mean, they're pretty hot.