What a romantic idea.  The shadows of dim blue light piercing through the curtains, the intimacy and stillness, the sheer potential of creating anew from the ashes of the night before.

But in practice, it almost never works out.  My body is typically not very alert and responsive unless I am carrying around energy from the night before.  And then there’s the structuring of time first thing in the morning (stage 1 – quick email check, stage 2 – stretch the joints and muscles, stage 3 – shower, stage 4 – breakfast with/without family, stage 5 – dash to the train/pool).

Many days I do schedule myself an extra 15 minutes to meditate, either to a Chopra/Oprah series or my own timed musical selections.  I’ll post some of those at some point.  It’s a perfect moment for sharing and connecting with my wife, hit the reset button and enter the “field of pure potentiality” as Chopra likes to call it.  One of the perplexing benefits of deep meditation is that once we hit the “zero point”, we can be whatever we want the next instant.  We can literally program our subconscious to whatever direction we want.  If I entered into meditation angry or fearful, I can come out however I want to be if I have gone deep and still enough.

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha wrote a provocative, insightful, thoroughly researched book by this title.  You’ll find a link in the “Resources” tab along with a link to Christopher’s TED Talk.  Among many other books, “Sex at Dawn” has been very influential in my thinking.  Maybe a good backwards rationalization tool.

So let’s get it out there.  Here’s my Dirty Little Secret No. 2: I loooove women.  I love their looks, their smell, their company, their voice, their words, their touch, their demeanor, their style, their character.  My life has been surrounded by women for a long time, at home, at work, my hobbies, my quests.  It’s no accident.  It’s not that I am not at ease among men.  I have several very good male friends but they all go back a long time.  I haven’t really made any new close male friends in over 10 years even though I  interact with men in business all the time.  But over the last 10-15 years I have met wonderful women who have become my friends and filled many spaces in my mind, my heart and my spirit.

I have and have had several very close relationships with women.  For starters, I have a beautiful, loving, evolving and growing relationship with my wife.  Hasn’t always been easy and we’ve been at the edge of the precipice many times.  But after almost 18 years, we still share and enjoy many spaces of our lives.  I love and admire her for accepting me exactly the way I am and letting me be.  It’s not an easy feat.

The universe has blessed me with very close friends who have been part of my daily tribe for many stretches of my life.  As a very close friend of mine says, we float down the river of life; sometimes we travel together for a stretch, hold hands and support each other, but we never know at what bend in that river we will follow separate paths.

I consider myself a sexual and emotional “omnivore”.  I fully believe  that the quest for diversity is in our genes, our nature.  We are animals first and foremost.  No matter how elevated and special we want to feel above all else in nature, we are squarely part of it.  Pure monogamy left our family tree 30 million years ago.  Our species is stronger with greater genetic diversity.  We’re better off accepting who we are first, then we can decide how we behave.  First feel, then talk and do.  It’s a choice like painting the canvas of life with red paint or blue paint, but with conscience.

During my first marriage, I was fully monogamous for its full 5 years.  In my second and current marriage, I was also fully monogamous for the first 5 years.  That’s not to say that I wasn’t tempted.  On the contrary, temptation has always been there.

After one angry night of bad sex at home, which was probably my own fault any way, I made the decision that my sexual fulfillment was going to be my responsibility, not my wife’s.  I won’t go too deep into the nature of relationships and responsibility yet, will save that for a later post.  So if there were things that were not working out, if she and I were not on the same page, then it was up to me to get what I needed.  I hinted at what I meant but didn’t quite make it explicit to her.  And so started my first affair a few months later.  And a clean break with Middle Class Morality.  An affair that lasted 10 years.

I don’t embrace the idea of one-night-stands.  I have relationships, friendship, love, with other women, which sometimes also involves passion and sex.  I have befriended wonderful, passionate, loving, thoughtful women.  When we’re on the same page, when the love flows and our expectations match, it’s what I would imagine heaven would be like if it does exist.  But then the river of life keeps flowing, things change, we change, and sometimes we get off the same page.  I’ve been told and I have said “I can’t do this any more”.  Sometimes we have been able to stay friends, sometimes it’s not possible.

I have been through the whole range of emotions, from the warm glow of  connection to deep down head over heels in love.  I have also discovered what I thought was not possible a few years ago: to deeply and emotionally relate to and love a woman without actually having sex.  Every relationship is different.  It has all been worth it.  I have received many blessings of love, passion, self discovery and emotional support.

So the question you might ask yourself dear reader is, what does this do to my marriage and my wife?  Of course, I would love for her to write her own impressions but won’t push her to do that too hard.

I have been told that, like many women, my wife is a victim because her choices are awful: stay in a bad marriage or break up and struggle.  I have been told that I brainwashed my wife.

She’s a beautiful, loving, caring, lively, fun, intelligent woman.  She did not know I had other sexual relationships for 9 years.  Intuitively, I felt she wouldn’t mind it but I was scared to approach it.  I hinted for a couple of years but she didn’t catch on.  Maybe she didn’t want to catch on.  We commented on “Sex at Dawn” with friends, her parents, her brother, but she never asked the question.  I struggled with the secrecy.  Often I would think about Dostoyevski’s “Crime and Punishment”.

One day, I decided to tell her.  I was terrified.  Didn’t know what the outcome would be.  I explained as lovingly as I could that it wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t an indication that I didn’t love or desire her.  I told her it was simply something I needed to do for myself, for my sanity, to be true to myself.  I told her she was absolutely in her right to end the marriage right then and there and I would support her financially.  But she decided to stay saying she believed I am a good man.

I am sure it was not easy for her.  She said the fairy tale had ended and a model had been broken.  Her view of marriage would never be the same.  But applauded my candor and courage in telling her.  She was not interested in who, where, how and I wasn’t about to tell her either.  What she was interested in was what level of commitment I had for her and our daughters.

The reality is that I was bitter person, often angry and critical, particularly with those closest to me.  When the parallel relationships started, I mellowed down.  I became more attentive and focused at home.  I was less demanding and expected less at home.  I literally became more loving and more giving.

I now believe that love and sex are expansive resources.  In economics 101, we are taught that the “economic problem” is scarcity of resources: if I use a resource somewhere then there’s less of it to be used elsewhere.  That is absolutely true of money, time and space but is absolutely not true with respect to spirit, love and sex.  I have found out that the more I love, the more capacity I have to love.  The more sex I have, the more sex I want and can have (within limits of course – it’s been a long time since I was able to ejaculate 6 times in 1 day).  But of course one of the secrets is to stay present wherever and with whomever I am and not escaping to another reality.

My marriage has never been better, not even as newlyweds.  Our sex is better than ever.  It’s not perfect of course and we both have to exercise acceptance and tolerance.  But it’s honest, transparent and real.  I have offered her that I will try monogamy if that’s important to her, but she has told me she would rather I stay happy and true to myself.  It’s a great display of love.

So if polyamorous life seems so rosy, then why is it not the norm?  “Sex at Dawn” does a pretty good job of reviewing this.  I will also recommend further reading when we talk more about marriage itself.

There are three core problems with having multiple partners:

First and probably the most prevalent problem is that multiple partners tends to take the form of cheating, lying.  A woman can ask her partner “are you having an affair?” and he can very easily look at her straight in the eye and say “no, you’re crazy”.  I’ve seen it happen many times, just weeks or months before the evidence comes out to light.  We do that because we think we can get away with it.  But in the long run, it’s a very poor strategy.  In the world of spirit, everything is known and with sufficient sensitivity, anyone can figure it out.  I don’t condone lying and I am profusely sorry for myself that I lived with the anxiety of “the secret” for 9 years.

Second, Middle Class Morality teaches us the folly that our partners are “ours”.  We officialize it when we say “I do, ’til death do us part”.  While I believe stable relationships are wonderful, enriching and beautiful, nobody is ours and we remain independent individuals even in the tightest of marriages.  Even at the moment of simultaneous orgasm, we remain individuals experiencing life through our own lens.  Pretending that someone is ours is selfish, insecure, possessive and purely an expression of ego.  We need to define ourselves by our own words, feelings and actions and not depend on what anyone else thinks or does to us.

Third, Middle Class Morality makes us place the responsibility for our lifetime fulfillment in our partner’s hands.  Pure monogamy says “I will only experience sex/love/passion with you, so you better live up to my expectations”.  We know the reality of how most marriages work long term.  More on that later as well.  If our partner shares sex/love/food/time/space with someone else maybe that doesn’t say anything about us or our inadequacies.  It simply says we’re human and we like diversity.  When we wake up and take responsibility for ourselves and not define ourselves by our partner, we will live more consciously and less by the frailty of our egos.

I know I have touched on very sensitive topics and I know many out there will strongly disagree and maybe even condemn me.  My words may also be liberating and resonate as true to others.  I invite sincere, enriching dialogue.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life and the second half could very well be different than the first 19,000 days.