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By: Erica Schwiegershausen, a senior writer at The Cut covering parenting and health
When Olivia met up with an ex for coffee last year, she wasn’t thinking of it as a date. Both of them had young kids, and years of breastfeeding and co-sleeping had killed her sex drive. She was also married.
Olivia and her husband, Will, had been nonmonogamous before, but in the seven years since becoming parents, they’d been too exhausted to see other people. When her ex asked if she and her husband were still open, Olivia laughed. “I was like, Who has time for that?,” she says. But after that coffee, something shifted. Soon, she was sending her ex flirty texts. “I suddenly felt like a sexual person again,” says Olivia, who, like most of the parents I spoke to for this story, requested a pseudonym. When she asked Will if he’d want to reopen their marriage, he didn’t hesitate. At the time, they were barely having sex: “He was just like, Yep, sure.”
These days, it’s no longer shocking to hear parents negotiate who will handle homework and bedtime while the other meets a crush for drinks. Even momfluencers in Utah are posting about their throuples. The most obvious perk of an open marriage is getting to hook up with other people. But the more poly parents I meet, the more I hear ENM framed as a co-parenting hack. These moms aren’t venting about being stuck at home with the kids while their husbands woo other women. They don’t seem to be stuck keeping score of who handles the grocery shopping and takes the most days off when the kids are sick. And they don’t feel guilty about taking time for themselves. For these moms, non-monogamy seems to offer more than just a way to reclaim their libido. Could it also be the secret to raising kids without completely resenting one’s husband?
Olivia isn’t the only mom who told me that it took another man expressing interest to make them feel like having sex again — though, for some, that realization came much sooner after giving birth. After her C-section, “my stomach looked like it had been run over by a lawn mower,” says Danielle, a mother of two who chronicles her open marriage on TikTok. “I had crazy stretch marks, and my boobs were all leaky. I just felt gross.” She started going out on dates four or five months after her daughter was born, wearing two bras to avoid milk stains. When her husband told her she was beautiful, she’d roll her eyes — it felt like he had to say that. “But having another man finding me attractive turned on my desire again,” she says.
When Maya and Scott were struggling to conceive, sex started to feel stressful and awkward. The solution, they decided, was to get on Feeld and start hooking up with other couples. At first they stuck to foursomes, but after a few months, Maya and another husband were spending more and more time alone together. When she got pregnant, their sex only got hotter. “He was so into the pregnancy and how my body was changing,” she says. Sex with him was erotic in a way that wasn’t possible with the father of her child: “It really made me see myself in a very different way.” After she gave birth, Maya had “a huge appetite for sex,” and a few months later, she was back to having threesomes with her partner and his wife. Soon, they had a baby of their own sleeping in a bassinet in the bedroom when Maya went over to their apartment.
The time Maya spent away from home felt like a fantasy version of her life — one where she didn’t have to worry about who was going to cook dinner or clean the bathroom. She got to escape the role of mother. When she was with her partner, they could just focus on each other. “He got the best of me,” she says. But once their kids were no longer infants, the reality of life with toddlers started to intrude. After starting day care, everyone was sick all the time. “We had, like, two COVID scares and the flu, and all of a sudden it had been two months since we’d been able to have sex,” Maya says. “That was really upsetting for me, and less so for him, which raised a red flag.” In the end, the logistics were too much to manage. Her boyfriend dumped her when she was pregnant with her second child. (Talking to these parents about canceled dates felt, at times, like a tour through childhood illnesses and injuries: lice outbreaks, hand, foot and mouth disease, ER visits after toddler accidents.)
Then there’s the fact that one partner will probably always be dating more than the other — who will be at home with the kids. When Danielle’s husband started going out with someone new, she was happy for him. But soon, the fact that he had a scheduled night off every week started to get on her nerves. “I got so angry, but I wasn’t in the mood to date,” she says. “He was like, just take a night off — but I kept not doing it.” It felt hard to justify taking time away from her kids without a good reason. Things got heated one night while she was making spaghetti, and her head was spinning trying to keep track of all the laundry that had to be done and lunches that needed to be packed. “He literally took the spoon of tomato sauce out of my hands and was like, Get the fuck out of the house. Like, I shouldn’t have to force you.” He was right, she says — just taking some time for herself helped: “Now I’m taking a watercolor class with a bunch of 60-year-olds.”
Another mom told me that when she dates other women married to men, they compare notes. “I quickly got disgusted. Like: Wait, so now that you’ve opened up, you have to manage his whole dating schedule, and now he doesn’t take the kids to their sports game because that’s his date night?” And sometimes, kids just want their mother. “We haven’t entirely broken the classic gender division of default parenting,” Olivia says. ‘If I’m home, I’m always going to be the person to lie down with them at night and help them go to sleep.”
And sometimes, the amount of work required to manage each of your partners’ feelings just gets exhausting. Emily and Laura met through a mom’s group when they were both pregnant and due within a month of each other. Laura had a 1-year-old at home and was feeling isolated, but she and Emily soon became inseparable, spending their days at the park with their kids while their husbands were at work. When they realized they had feelings for each other, their husbands agreed to let them explore the relationship.
In the years that followed, Emily and Laura’s lives became tightly intertwined, to the point that they thought of themselves almost as parents to each other’s children. But around the same time that the pandemic hit, Emily started to develop an autoimmune disease and was sick in bed for three months straight. It felt like Laura needed more of her time and attention, while, at the same time, “I felt like I needed less,” says Emily. But the real breaking point was that Emily could tell that her husband wasn’t truly onboard. While he had initially supported Emily dating Laura, he was never interested in exploring non-monogamy himself. “He’s pretty selfless, but I think it hadn’t been working for him for a while,” says Emily. She doesn’t think he would have ever told her to stop, but she could see he was uncomfortable.
Trying to juggle two serious relationships on top of being sick and parenting a 6-year-old felt impossible, she says: “It felt like, We don’t have the time in the day to keep this up.” Laura eventually broke up with her. “Honestly, I have never felt so relieved in my life,” Emily says.
Getting dumped is never fun — but sometimes, after the dust settles, you can better appreciate what you do have. There was a stretch of time when Maya was spending so much time with her boyfriend that she felt less close to her husband. Now she’s in her third trimester, and it’s hard to imagine meeting new people. She and her husband are currently going through “a romantic renaissance,” she says. “I definitely think it’s because we’re very focused on our relationship and not prioritizing other people.” But she’s not giving up on non-monogamy: “I am kind of fantasizing about a world where I get back in shape and get Botox and have a different hairstyle and get back out there.” That is, after she adjusts to the reality of life with two kids.
By: Erica Schwiegershausen, a senior writer at The Cut covering parenting and health
When Olivia met up with an ex for coffee last year, she wasn’t thinking of it as a date. Both of them had young kids, and years of breastfeeding and co-sleeping had killed her sex drive. She was also married.
Olivia and her husband, Will, had been nonmonogamous before, but in the seven years since becoming parents, they’d been too exhausted to see other people. When her ex asked if she and her husband were still open, Olivia laughed. “I was like, Who has time for that?,” she says. But after that coffee, something shifted. Soon, she was sending her ex flirty texts. “I suddenly felt like a sexual person again,” says Olivia, who, like most of the parents I spoke to for this story, requested a pseudonym. When she asked Will if he’d want to reopen their marriage, he didn’t hesitate. At the time, they were barely having sex: “He was just like, Yep, sure.”
These days, it’s no longer shocking to hear parents negotiate who will handle homework and bedtime while the other meets a crush for drinks. Even momfluencers in Utah are posting about their throuples. The most obvious perk of an open marriage is getting to hook up with other people. But the more poly parents I meet, the more I hear ENM framed as a co-parenting hack. These moms aren’t venting about being stuck at home with the kids while their husbands woo other women. They don’t seem to be stuck keeping score of who handles the grocery shopping and takes the most days off when the kids are sick. And they don’t feel guilty about taking time for themselves. For these moms, non-monogamy seems to offer more than just a way to reclaim their libido. Could it also be the secret to raising kids without completely resenting one’s husband?
Olivia isn’t the only mom who told me that it took another man expressing interest to make them feel like having sex again — though, for some, that realization came much sooner after giving birth. After her C-section, “my stomach looked like it had been run over by a lawn mower,” says Danielle, a mother of two who chronicles her open marriage on TikTok. “I had crazy stretch marks, and my boobs were all leaky. I just felt gross.” She started going out on dates four or five months after her daughter was born, wearing two bras to avoid milk stains. When her husband told her she was beautiful, she’d roll her eyes — it felt like he had to say that. “But having another man finding me attractive turned on my desire again,” she says.
When Maya and Scott were struggling to conceive, sex started to feel stressful and awkward. The solution, they decided, was to get on Feeld and start hooking up with other couples. At first they stuck to foursomes, but after a few months, Maya and another husband were spending more and more time alone together. When she got pregnant, their sex only got hotter. “He was so into the pregnancy and how my body was changing,” she says. Sex with him was erotic in a way that wasn’t possible with the father of her child: “It really made me see myself in a very different way.” After she gave birth, Maya had “a huge appetite for sex,” and a few months later, she was back to having threesomes with her partner and his wife. Soon, they had a baby of their own sleeping in a bassinet in the bedroom when Maya went over to their apartment.
The time Maya spent away from home felt like a fantasy version of her life — one where she didn’t have to worry about who was going to cook dinner or clean the bathroom. She got to escape the role of mother. When she was with her partner, they could just focus on each other. “He got the best of me,” she says. But once their kids were no longer infants, the reality of life with toddlers started to intrude. After starting day care, everyone was sick all the time. “We had, like, two COVID scares and the flu, and all of a sudden it had been two months since we’d been able to have sex,” Maya says. “That was really upsetting for me, and less so for him, which raised a red flag.” In the end, the logistics were too much to manage. Her boyfriend dumped her when she was pregnant with her second child. (Talking to these parents about canceled dates felt, at times, like a tour through childhood illnesses and injuries: lice outbreaks, hand, foot and mouth disease, ER visits after toddler accidents.)
Then there’s the fact that one partner will probably always be dating more than the other — who will be at home with the kids. When Danielle’s husband started going out with someone new, she was happy for him. But soon, the fact that he had a scheduled night off every week started to get on her nerves. “I got so angry, but I wasn’t in the mood to date,” she says. “He was like, just take a night off — but I kept not doing it.” It felt hard to justify taking time away from her kids without a good reason. Things got heated one night while she was making spaghetti, and her head was spinning trying to keep track of all the laundry that had to be done and lunches that needed to be packed. “He literally took the spoon of tomato sauce out of my hands and was like, Get the fuck out of the house. Like, I shouldn’t have to force you.” He was right, she says — just taking some time for herself helped: “Now I’m taking a watercolor class with a bunch of 60-year-olds.”
Another mom told me that when she dates other women married to men, they compare notes. “I quickly got disgusted. Like: Wait, so now that you’ve opened up, you have to manage his whole dating schedule, and now he doesn’t take the kids to their sports game because that’s his date night?” And sometimes, kids just want their mother. “We haven’t entirely broken the classic gender division of default parenting,” Olivia says. ‘If I’m home, I’m always going to be the person to lie down with them at night and help them go to sleep.”
And sometimes, the amount of work required to manage each of your partners’ feelings just gets exhausting. Emily and Laura met through a mom’s group when they were both pregnant and due within a month of each other. Laura had a 1-year-old at home and was feeling isolated, but she and Emily soon became inseparable, spending their days at the park with their kids while their husbands were at work. When they realized they had feelings for each other, their husbands agreed to let them explore the relationship.
In the years that followed, Emily and Laura’s lives became tightly intertwined, to the point that they thought of themselves almost as parents to each other’s children. But around the same time that the pandemic hit, Emily started to develop an autoimmune disease and was sick in bed for three months straight. It felt like Laura needed more of her time and attention, while, at the same time, “I felt like I needed less,” says Emily. But the real breaking point was that Emily could tell that her husband wasn’t truly onboard. While he had initially supported Emily dating Laura, he was never interested in exploring non-monogamy himself. “He’s pretty selfless, but I think it hadn’t been working for him for a while,” says Emily. She doesn’t think he would have ever told her to stop, but she could see he was uncomfortable.
Trying to juggle two serious relationships on top of being sick and parenting a 6-year-old felt impossible, she says: “It felt like, We don’t have the time in the day to keep this up.” Laura eventually broke up with her. “Honestly, I have never felt so relieved in my life,” Emily says.
Getting dumped is never fun — but sometimes, after the dust settles, you can better appreciate what you do have. There was a stretch of time when Maya was spending so much time with her boyfriend that she felt less close to her husband. Now she’s in her third trimester, and it’s hard to imagine meeting new people. She and her husband are currently going through “a romantic renaissance,” she says. “I definitely think it’s because we’re very focused on our relationship and not prioritizing other people.” But she’s not giving up on non-monogamy: “I am kind of fantasizing about a world where I get back in shape and get Botox and have a different hairstyle and get back out there.” That is, after she adjusts to the reality of life with two kids.
