CAN being "stray mates" help you stay together? This author believes open infidelity can keep the home fires burning. For most women in long-term relationships, the question of whether we’d willingly permit our partner to have sex with someone else - or even play away ourselves - would elicit a resounding “No”.
However, Sydney-based author Holly Hill, 44, believes that not only allowing your man to stray, but actually condoning his infidelity (and should you so fancy it, your own) isn’t a fast track to the divorce court, but rather, the key to a happy, healthy and stable relationship.
Hill and her long-term partner Phil Dean* encouraged each other to be open about their desires for others. “If he went to the pub, spotted a girl and wanted to go back to hers for a quickie, I’d be like, ‘Go for it, darling!’” she says.
“Because when you have occasional lovers outside of your relationship, you don’t take your partner for granted. In fact, it often helps reinforce why you love your partner in the first place.”Hill likens her philosophy to drinking fine wines. “If you only ever drink Grange Hermitage and don’t go near plonk, you don’t fully appreciate how good the Grange is,” she explains. “It’s the same with your partner. The quickie with the woman from the pub is never going to be as good as what he has with you.”
Hill believes this "negotiated infidelity" is a great way to preserve a happy and healthy home life rather than destroy it, especially when you take into consideration different partners’ sex drives.
“We’re conditioned to share absolutely everything in our lives, except our partners,” she points out. “I came to the conclusion that if my partner was more highly sexed than me and if I wasn’t going to use him 24/7, why shouldn’t I share him with another woman?
Or if I spot a hot guy in a bar and we connect, why shouldn’t I explore that? If [two people] really love one another, they respond to each other’s needs.”
Although more than 120,000 Australian couples registered marriages in 2009, with 80 per cent of those walking down the aisle for the first time, it appears that once the confetti has blown away, ongoing fidelity is becoming increasingly difficult for many people.
Last year’s successful Australian launch of Ashleymadison.com certainly suggests as much. The website facilitates secret affairs between members and, in the past 12 months, more than 386,000 ready-and-willing-to-cheat Aussies have uploaded profiles in the hope of initiating a fling.
The amount of people signing up doesn’t come as a surprise to Ashley Madison’s founder, Canadian Noel Biderman. “When our life expectancy was 40, it was a lot easier to remain faithfully married for life,” he says. “But now we can live to 100, is it realistic to expect lifelong monogamy to someone you met at 22? It would be nice, sure, but for many people - both men and women - it’s not realistic.”
And from the gender ratio of members on Ashleymadison.com, it’s clear that infidelity is on the minds of both sexes. “In Australia, 40 per cent of our members are women,” says Biderman. “It’s not just guys who want to stray.”
Hill believes such websites encourage people to be dishonest, whereas she would prefer couples to be “open about their sexual needs with the person they love the most”.
Biderman disagrees: “Many couples are more comfortable doing something behind their partner’s back rather than having that difficult, ‘I’m not happy sexually’ conversation,” he says. “One of the most common things I hear from clients is, ‘I love my partner and cherish my family, but I need more sex, love and attention.’ Rightly or wrongly, an affair - whether it’s negotiated or illicit - is the marriage preservation device they’ve chosen.”
So how does negotiated infidelity work? “Rules and boundaries apply,” explains Hill. “The ‘negotiated’ part is really important. Phil and I had a policy of always sharing - nothing was secret. As long as we played within the boundaries we’d negotiated, it was fine.”
Hill’s rules included Dean not being allowed to spoon, give gifts or go away for the weekend with other women. “There was no way I was going to lie in bed unspooned when some other woman was being spooned, especially in winter!” she says. “Basically, anything that could trigger jealousy was eliminated.”
Dean’s rules stipulated that while on dates with other men, Hill wasn’t allowed to wear any sexy clothes he’d bought for her; she also wasn’t permitted to see a man more financially successful than him.
“Our rules show the difference between what’s important to men and women,” Hill adds with a laugh. “I thought his rules about clothing and status were weird, and he thought my rule about spooning was weird. But because we loved and respected each other, we respected each other’s rules.”
The couple gave each other permission to meet other partners on separate nights out, but they would often enjoy ‘hunting’ together. “Part of our fun was to go out and spot each other’s type,” says Hill. “I’d point out a woman I thought he’d like, or he’d spot a guy who was my type and we’d try to get phone numbers.”
During her five-year relationship with Dean, Hill believes their extracurricular activities were evenly matched. She also claims she was happy having a quiet night in “with a takeaway and a face pack” while he went out to hook up.
“Faithfulness is often wishful thinking,” she says. “Monogamous men exist and they’re heroes because often they’re fighting a very strong sexual drive. Most men who cheat don’t want to leave their wives or girlfriends - they still love them. But sex with another partner is just an itch they have to scratch.”
Despite Dean having previously been in a 15-year monogamous marriage, Hill insists jealousy was never an issue. “If Phil came home and told me he’d had sex with a woman, I’d be pleased for him. It was as if he’d come home from a sports match and had a good game. I’d be like, ‘Yay team!’”
Relationship expert and social psychologist Dr Dina McMillan is unconvinced about the benefits of negotiated infidelity. “Whenever we have an affair, negotiated or otherwise, we risk becoming emotionally attached to that person,” she says. “In partnerships that practise ‘negotiated’ infidelity, all too often what I see is one person secretly experiencing a lot of pain because they’re giving in to the concept in order to keep the other partner happy.”
She warns: “If we continue to see sex as a recreational activity and a right rather than precious, intimate behaviour to be shared only with our partner, then we’re placing too little importance on the glue of our relationship - loyalty.”
Hill acknowledges her attitude is controversial and admits it needs finessing, given the fact she and Dean recently broke up. “We remain the best of friends, but I think the mistake we made was making the infidelity the central part of our relationship rather than a delicious treat to enjoy occasionally,” she explains. “If we went out, we’d both assume it was OK to pick up someone else rather than ask for each other’s permission.”
Despite the demise of her relationship, Hill maintains that negotiated cheating can be beneficial. “I’ll absolutely go into my next relationship with an infidelity ‘clause’ in place. Relationships grow and change and the notion that lifelong fidelity is possible - and desirable - for all men and women isn’t always realistic.”
*NAME HAS BEEN CHANGED.
