{"id":868,"date":"2016-06-05T14:14:52","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T14:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=868"},"modified":"2016-06-05T14:14:52","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T14:14:52","slug":"sex-tinder-india-open-marriage-open-relationship-dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=868","title":{"rendered":"The Veiled Secret of My Open Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"container page-content\"><p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span><\/p><\/div><p> went out on a Tinder date tonight because I wanted some sex and my husband was stuck at work. My date was one of those cool dudes \u2013 long hair, sharp jawline \u2013 who know they\u2019re good-looking. He kept flicking the hair off his face; I wanted to tie it all up in a fountain on top of his head.\n\nDespite holding forth for two hours on Charles Bukowski\u2019s poetry, Mr Fountainhead turned out to be extremely good in bed. We stumbled into his house at 9 pm (him a little more drunk than I was) and had sex. Twice.\n\nMy husband was awake and staring morosely at some spreadsheets on his laptop when I got home. I told him about Fountainhead; he didn\u2019t think Fountainhead had ever read Bukowski. But I\u2019d never had sex twice on a night out until today, so he was happy that something had gone right. As we got into bed, he said that my mother had called and he\u2019d told her that I was out with my girlfriends for the night.\n\nI cuddled him close and went to sleep.\n\nOur Mangalorean families don\u2019t know about our open marriage. I fear they\u2019d have a coronary if they ever found out. I suspect some of my friends would too. Which is why we never speak of it. It\u2019s our little secret.\n\nIt all started a year into our arranged marriage. We were both 26 and equally apprehensive about the veritable stranger who was now a life partner. Our first year together was okay. I wasn\u2019t miserable; he wasn\u2019t an asshole. But when it came to sex, it was pretty boring. The crushing monogamy of retracing your partner\u2019s skin for the thousandth time was getting to me. I fantasised about a lot of men just to make it better.\n\nOne evening, we were sitting on our terrace having dinner when I first broached the subject. It must have been a Saturday because we were three vodkas down, and we\u2019re never three vodkas down, unless the following day is a holiday. My husband was telling me about a colleague and his many secret office hookups. \u201cI\u2019m sure he\u2019s had sex with <em>at least <\/em>three different women in the office,\u201d he exclaimed.\n\nI thought he sounded a little wistful, so I took my chance. \u201cYou know, I was just thinking\u2026 have you thought of being in an open marriage?\u201d\n\nThere was a long pause, not long in the way where time slows down when you\u2019re buzzed. The silence must have lasted a full 10 minutes. Then, much to my surprise, my husband said that he had given open marriage a thought too, but had never dared to ask.\n\nThe rest of the night made way for one of the few real conversations we\u2019d had in our one-year marriage. My husband had no idea that I had been in only one other exclusive relationship and that was when I was 15; all my other relationships had been open. That night I told him everything.\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>I told him that I loved him, asked him to trust me, and that I only liked this other man because he was funny.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nIn our drunken stupor, we set some rules that night. No snooping around, no dating people we know mutually, and no going on a date to the same place. Imagine introducing your date to your husband or wife. I didn\u2019t really care about this rule, so I didn\u2019t fight over it. The only one I did fight for, was the \u201cno kissing\u201d rule he tried to impose. He said it might make things romantic and that would be \u201cdangerous\u201d. It was like he was repeating lines from <em>Pretty Woman<\/em>, so I convinced him, over a lot of vodka, that a bit of romance was also the point. Thus the \u201cno kissing\u201d rule was vetoed.\n\nThat night our marriage changed forever.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">* * *<\/p>\nOpen marriage is like a complex dance form. It\u2019s a pain to learn, but when done right, it\u2019s beautiful. I had some practice, but my husband had never been in an open relationship before. I remember once I\u2019d gone out to meet a man for the third time. I didn\u2019t know that my repeatedly dating this guy bothered my husband until I got home that night. So much so that he\u2019d cancelled his own date. \u201cWhy are you seeing him so many times,\u201d he asked me.\n\nIf it had been any of my older boyfriends, I would have simply told them that it wasn\u2019t their business. But this was my husband. I told him that I loved him, asked him to trust me, and that I only liked this other man because he was funny. \u201cI can be funny too,\u201d my husband retorted. I must admit that it was an odd, but sweet thing to hear.\n\nAfter this incident, I insisted that my husband should tell me if something upset him; it really wouldn\u2019t work if he kept such emotions to himself. If talking is important in a marriage, then it\u2019s doubly so in an open one. There can be no room for insecurity.\n\nIt is this insecurity which is the fundamental problem with the idea of open marriage: What if he or I were to fall in love with someone else? When I began getting into open relationships, long before I met my husband, I somehow assumed this didn\u2019t happen. That was until one of the guys I was in an open relationship with, dumped me because he fell in love with someone else. It did bother me for a while. Have I come close to falling in love with another man? Maybe. Funny Guy was possibly the only one.\n\nBut one also has to keep in mind, how an open marriage is different from any other relationship? We\u2019ve all heard of regular marriages where partners have fallen in and out of love. Having sex with another person is not going to make you fall in love any faster. Not unless you\u2019re a hormonal pre-teen bred on <em>Mills &#038; Boon<\/em>. We\u2019ve all come to a place where we know the difference between love and sex. Tinder is testament to that.\n\nBut yes there is plenty of room for things to go wrong in an open marriage and that\u2019s where our rules help us. My husband goes out on fewer dates than me. My needs are different and he gets that. We usually see other people once a fortnight on the same evening. Fountainhead was an exception.\n\nIt\u2019s been six months now and things are looking good. Our open marriage has been a healthier marriage for us \u2013 it has made us talk more, perhaps because we realised that trust and vulnerability are at stake. The quality of our conversations has improved.\n\nMy husband and I have had eight months of sufficiently random conversations before our wedding. I knew he loved Paulo Coelho and listened to instrumental music while working. He knew how I liked my coffee and just how runny I wanted my eggs. But I didn\u2019t know what he wanted from life, what made him tick, and he didn\u2019t know stuff about me either. This isn\u2019t to say that there can be no real conversations outside of open relationships. But we only began talking intimately about our lives once we could freely talk about our sexual needs. The matter-of-factness with which we now have conversations about other men and women, and ask each other questions about dating and sexual gratification (or not), has ended up translating into every other aspect of our marriage. I can now say that I love him without a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach.\n\nTomorrow, my husband is going on a karaoke date with a woman he met through a client at work. I\u2019ve always hated karaoke nights, but he loves them because he plays the guitar. His new date apparently sings beautifully.\n\nI know they\u2019ll have a great time. I can\u2019t wait to hear about it.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A year into our arranged match, my husband and I decided to get into an open relationship. It\u2019s done wonders for our marriage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1567,505,19,1568,1569,1570,1571,408,1051],"class_list":["post-868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love-and-sex","tag-charles-bukowski","tag-dating","tag-india","tag-open-marriage","tag-open-relationship","tag-paulo-coelho","tag-pretty-woman","tag-sex","tag-tinder"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Veiled Secret of My Open Marriage<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A year into our arranged match, my husband and I decided to get into an open relationship. It\u2019s done wonders for our marriage.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=868\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Veiled Secret of My Open Marriage\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A year into our arranged match, my husband and I decided to get into an open relationship. It\u2019s done wonders for our marriage.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=868\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arr\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-05T14:14:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1490693112.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1520\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"850\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aishwarya K\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"The Veiled Secret of My Open Marriage\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"A year into our arranged match, my husband and I decided to get into an open relationship. It\u2019s done wonders for our marriage.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Aishwarya K\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/?p=868#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/?p=868\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Aishwarya K\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.201.39.237\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/881d61f626e32a511710be9e59a8c0fe\"},\"headline\":\"The Veiled Secret of My Open Marriage\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-06-05T14:14:52+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/?p=868\"},\"wordCount\":1372,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/?p=868#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/1490693112.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Charles Bukowski\",\"dating\",\"India\",\"Open Marriage\",\"open relationship\",\"Paulo Coelho\",\"Pretty Woman\",\"sex\",\"tinder\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Love and Sex\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/?p=868\",\"url\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/?p=868\",\"name\":\"The Veiled Secret of My Open Marriage\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.201.39.237\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/?p=868#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/?p=868#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.207.105.184\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/1490693112.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-06-05T14:14:52+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/13.201.39.237\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/881d61f626e32a511710be9e59a8c0fe\"},\"description\":\"A year into our arranged match, my husband and I decided to get into an open relationship. 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