Why We Chose an Open Marriage Without a Legally Binding Contract

I must have been on my fourth or fifth Dogfish Head when I felt the side of Carrie’s foot lightly brush the side of my foot, under the booth. At first I wasn’t entirely sure if it had happened. After all, she was probably the most stunningly sophisticated woman I’d ever seen. And she was sitting right next to her boyfriend.

I carefully rubbed her skin, and when I saw Carrie’s eyes meet mine and then her lips tighten into a conspiratorial smile, I lifted my foot a few inches and began rubbing it in small circles on the outside of her left leg.

Finally I lifted my fingers from the glass and slowly slid them under the table, where they brushed against Carrie’s knee, then her fingers, then the underside of her wrist. At one point I went so far as to reach for her ankle, then the curved, smooth brown skin on the back of her leg.

The whole time this was happening I was talking to Ray and Carrie’s boyfriend and when it finally hit me what I was doing it hit me like a punch to the back of the head, my whole body started shaking involuntarily like I was having chills.

I got out of the stall and went to the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror and tried to take deep, slow breaths. After a minute or two I went back into the stall and Carrie and I started flirting under the table again.

Eventually she and Michael got up to leave, and I shook Michael’s hand and told him how good it was to finally meet. I gave Carrie a friendly hug, and she just smiled at me like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“We should do this again sometime,” I blurted out. And Carrie just smiled and nodded. And then she and Michael walked through the bar door and went home.

This is how I met the woman I plan to spend the rest of my life with and create an open marriage.

This shouldn’t surprise me so much, since more and more Americans are opting for polyamory, according to research. And speaking of which, this is probably the best time to mention that for as long as I can remember, I’ve planned to spend the rest of my life with no one else but myself.

I was raised by loving parents who are still happily married, yet I have always been cynical about the concept of marriage and monogamy. Research from the Institute for Family Studies even shows how unrealistic monogamy is.

As Carrie and I slowly got to know each other after that night of digging under the bar, I was thrilled to learn that she was just as cynical about the concept of a happy ending. And yes, as it turned out, she and Michael had an open relationship.

This arrangement turned out to be very beneficial for me, because although neither of them planned to break up anytime soon, I was more fascinated by Carrie than any other woman, ever.

There were times early in our relationship when we would literally lie in bed for hours and just stare into each other’s eyes. I’m not sure what Carrie was thinking—for some reason I never asked her—but I can definitely tell you what went through my mind: How could I have been so lucky?

I guess that’s what it’s like to be in love. Carrie and I had been dating for almost two years when she and Michael finally decided to break up. It was definitely the messiest breakup I’ve ever seen, but that’s another story.

This story is about the life Carrie and I have together now. Or rather, the life we will soon have together: To my great surprise, we had recently become engaged, and I still regret that I could not somehow capture the look on my mother’s face when I first tried to explain to her exactly what we meant.

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Carrie and I do not intend to marry, but we both want to be partners for life, for both romantic and practical reasons.

And we want to celebrate that decision, just as couples who have chosen a more standard arrangement and a more standard future want to celebrate theirs. So we are getting married, although recently we called it a Life Partner ceremony, even though “Life Partner” sounds uncertain and modern.

And since our partnership won’t be legally recognized by the state because Carrie co-owns a family business and I’m in the process of starting my own, we spent a lot of time figuring out how to keep things simple and uncomplicated if we split up.

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Eventually we came to the conclusion that the most prudent thing to do would be to simply form a company together, which would transform at least half of our company into a legal entity.

Carrie is the left-brained half of the couple, so she worked out the details with her lawyer: We’ll set up a holding company that won’t really do anything — it’ll just exist as a kind of alternative savings account.

The rules we set are simple: In the event of a separation, Carrie would not get anything that belonged to me before the holding company was formed, and I would not get anything that belonged to her before. We would only make contributions to the company account if we made a profit from a project we worked on together, such as real estate or writing.

Of course, we both hope that our business will never have to be divided. Yet we do our best to be proactive and realistic. And yes, like Carrie’s relationship with Michael, ours is an open relationship, although we have managed to handle that privilege very carefully thus far.

And yes, we realize how important and valuable this partnership seems to those of you who have spent many long, hard years working to improve your marriages.

But as we sat up late into the night laughing at the incredible ridiculousness and incredible seriousness of what we were about to do, we realized how proud we were of ourselves for at least trying to improve this mousetrap known as modern marriage. And of course, whether this wheel becomes something we can reinvent remains to be seen.

Dan Eldridge is a Lonely Planet guidebook author and author Pittsburgh Lunar Manuals, and publisher of Young Pioneers, a magazine about creative entrepreneurs. His work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, Toronto Sun, Paste, and Seattle Magazine.