Wednesday, Jun 30, 2021 • 20min
When Two Open Marriages Collide
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What are the boundaries of an open marriage? And what are the boundaries of an open marriage when your wife’s boyfriend has an accident that puts him in a coma? Do you introduce yourself to the hospital workers as the patient’s girlfriend’s husband?
Wayne Scott and his wife, Elizabeth, have a “creative arrangement,” as Wayne puts it in his Modern Love essay. They share the children, the cats and the mortgage, but they have permission to see other people romantically.
On today’s episode, we hear Wayne’s story about an accident that tested the parameters of their marriage, and we talk to Wayne and Elizabeth about how they have navigated their relationship in the years since.
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Talking about
Speakers
(5)
Edoardo Ballerini
Daniel Jones
Elizabeth Thielman
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Transcript
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Break
Daniel Jones
01:41
I'm Dan Jones from the New York Times.
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Miya Lee
01:43
And I'm Miya Lee, this is The Modern Love podcast.
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Daniel Jones
01:47
This week's essay really broke open, for me, the idea of what a marriage can contain and how traditional boundaries don't necessarily have to apply.
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Miya Lee
01:56
And how actually expanding those boundaries can help your marriage and strengthen your bond with your spouse.
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Daniel Jones
02:05
The essay is called "Two Open Marriages In One Small Room".
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Miya Lee
02:12
It's written by Wayne Scott and read by Edoardo Ballerini.
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Edoardo Ballerini
02:20
"I want to see the body", said my 12-year-old son, Miles. He and I were sitting in our minivan outside of the hospital. "Miles, it's not the body", I said, "you only say the body when a person is dead, Eric's still Eric, he just had a terrible accident". I texted my wife again. "We're waiting in the parking lot, will you come down? Your burrito is getting cold".
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02:54
We weren't supposed to go inside. This was intended as a quick favor bringing my wife dinner, so she wouldn't have to eat more institutional food. I texted my wife again, "honey, please". "I want to see him", Miles said, "can we go inside just for a few minutes? " "It's private", I said. "well, mom is there". "Mom and Eric have a special relationship", I said.
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03:24
"Eric is in an intensive care unit, they're cramped spaces full of sensitive equipment, we don't want the room to be too crowded". "I think it's just mom there and Eric", Miles said, "maybe Shelley". Here's where it gets interesting. Shelly is Eric's wife, my wife and Miles's mother is Eric's girlfriend. We all have open marriages and respect each other's privacy, but this accident propelled us into a new reality.
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03:59
I stared at my phone, hoping for the gray bubbles of appending response. One of my wife's sweetest qualities is her focus in real time on the people she loves. I imagined her at Eric's bedside holding his hand, talking even though he was not responding. It had only been three days since the semi truck cut off his motorcycle and sent him spinning, landing so forcefully that his helmet split.
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04:26
Her phone was probably buzzing in her purse even though she knew we were coming and that I didn't want to come inside. "Let's go! " I said, grabbing the bag with the burrito from her favorite food cart and opening the car door. "Excellent", Miles said, as if we were going on a macabre amusement ride.
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04:49
Even though I'm not good at mathematics, I found myself ruminating on the cruel geometry of the accident. The driver of the long semi truck swinging out at a wide angle that unexpectedly narrows, blinding him to Eric's presence. The rear of the truck breaking the trajectory of the motorcycle's path.
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05:10
There were two impact points the middle of the truck, his head, then the asphalt, 30ft away, the left side of his body, the hypotenuse of flight, smashed ribs, traumatic brain injury, a compound fracture of his left leg, a shattered left arm. I didn't want to see him broken.
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05:39
"Which way to the acute care unit? " I asked the front desk attendant. We followed signs along a circuitous route as my stomach roiled with dread.
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05:52
It seemed wrong to visit at such a vulnerable time, his survival is still uncertain, it should just be family, which we weren't exactly. I didn't know what my relationship to Eric was. Like, other couples we know in open arrangements, my wife and I compartmentalize keeping our dating relationships mostly off each other's radar, a buffer against jealousy and insecurity.
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06:19
To most people, we look like a conventional family. Two parents who met in college, three children each spaced two years apart, pretty four bedroom brick house. Close friends and family know the deeper story, but otherwise we keep it to ourselves. I'm careful about how I move in the world because people judge, or they are uncomfortable, are they avoid.
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06:45
This situation, entering the hospital room of my wife's lover, risked exposing our oddness in a way that unnerved me. "Elevator six over there", Miles said, "step it up Dad the burrito will get cold". "I'm pretty sure it's already cold, buddy".
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07:03
My wife and I have what psychologists call a mixed orientation marriage. I'm bisexual and always have been. When she and I fell in love, we both wanted to think we could work as a monogamous, conventional couple.
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07:17
We married, bought a house, had children and made a go of it. But ultimately our relationship didn't fit that particular script. After a lot of talk and therapy and even a few moments of nearly splitting up, we arrived at this creative arrangement. Will and Grace with children, cats and a mortgage.
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07:39
When we first settled into this Platonic agreement, a shared life with permission to see other people romantically, miles was five. Unlike his two older siblings, he didn't understand open marriage, despite our attempts to explain it in a way that we hoped would make sense without overwhelming him, it didn't matter.
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08:04
Miles has always known his parents living under the same roof, each other's dearest mooring in the world. As the youngest, he's been the most comfortable with our unconventional arrangement because he never knew anything different. He doesn't know the distance my wife and I have long struggled with, having married according to a traditional template before creating this new one.
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08:32
"This is it Dad" Miles said, "level one Trauma Center, wow man". I wasn't clear if we were allowed to be here. "We're here to see Eric", I said to a nurse, "I'm bringing his friend some dinner, can we stop in briefly? ". "She's the girlfriend? " The nurse said. Eric's wife had confirmed with hospital staff that his girlfriend would alternate sitting vigil with her.
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08:58
My wife was sitting in a green chair beside the bed, her hair rumpled from a night of uncomfortable sleep. Her face drawn with worry and hunger. She had been there all day. I couldn't bring myself to look at the formless heap beside her. "Here's your burrito", I said.
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09:17
When she rose, I gave her an everyday kiss before gathering her in a hug. She held on longer than usual and started to cry quietly. "Thank you for coming", she said. "Why isn't Eric awake? " Miles said, I want to hear about the accident", she sighed. "He has to remain in a coma for a while, he wouldn't be able to tolerate the pain of so many broken bones".
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09:47
After my wife had been seeing Eric for six months, I arranged to meet him for coffee, a marital courtesy. I didn't think we would be friends, but it seemed right not to be strangers. Trim and athletic, gray brown hair that was thinning on top. He was the same age as me. He had one child to my three. We were both in healthcare, me a psychotherapist, he, an audiologist.
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10:13
We talked about the challenges of running a practice, he offered to connect me to the woman who handled his billing. I knew we liked the same music and poetry because my wife accompanied him to concerts and readings that I wished I could attend too. Sometimes it seemed that she had simply found a more heterosexual version of me and just so, you know, Eric said, as we were parting, "I respect your marriage, I don't want her seeing me to pose any threat".
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10:44
His words, surprised and reassured me, even if that's what he was supposed to say. He and his wife had been in an open marriage for longer than us, he knew the map of this strange terrain. I thought he was a mensch, and we were lucky she had found him.
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11:03
Still avoiding looking at Eric's bed, I stepped over to the window. Mile's voice had a new solemnity, as if this was something other than an interesting adventure story, he wanted to hear. "Dad", he said, "this should never have happened". "You're right, buddy", I said.
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11:23
Sometimes a child's innocence supplies the soundest etiquette in an uncertain situation. "Dad" Miles said, "you need to look". So I turned my gaze to Eric though I was ashamed to as if looking at him while he was comatose was a violation of something tender, as if the compartments of our lives, our everyday still applied in this sanitized room that didn't belong to anyone.
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11:58
A chorus of machines surrounded his body, beeping and blinking, yellow, green, blue. Eric's face was puffy and unrecognizable, purple, red, swollen, stubbled. Gauze bandages covered his head and neck. His left arm and leg were enshrouded in casts. It seemed as if every piece of him had been bandaged and stapled and pushed into place. If the bend of cruel geometry that landed Eric here, comatose and broken, came from not being seen. We now needed to give him our attention generously, unflinchingly.
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12:49
Months later Eric would come through all of this ambulatory and healed if altered. But that evening, looking at him, I felt a fluttering in my gut, a stir of mortal awareness as if holding him in our gaze was the only thing tethering him to the earth.
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Miya Lee
13:40
After the break, a conversation with the writer Wayne Scott and his wife, Betsy Thielman.
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Break
Daniel Jones
14:34
Hi, Wayne and Betsy.
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Elizabeth Thielman
14:37
Hi.
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Wayne Scott
14:38
Hey Dan.
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Daniel Jones
14:39
So, Betsy, I want to start with you and just take you back to that time of the accident, that I imagine that was such a jolt to your relationship and your marriage. What happened after that?
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Elizabeth Thielman
14:51
Well, Eric was in intensive care for quite a while, and he went into a rehabilitation facility, and then he was eventually able to go home, and I continued to be with him hang out with his family while he recuperated, and it was hard on so many levels seeing somebody that one loves who's so hurt and not really knowing what once places.
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15:21
And I just have to give a call-out to Shelley because she could have easily said "close the ranks, this is for family only", and what she did instead was to open up the door and say, you know, "it's all hands on deck", you know, the more love the better, bring it. And happily, he's now totally ambulatory. He's even driving again.
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Daniel Jones
15:46
That's good news.
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Elizabeth Thielman
15:47
Yeah, he's made a really profound, significant recovery.
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Daniel Jones
15:50
Let me turn to Wayne. How did all of this affect your marriage to Betsy?
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Wayne Scott
15:56
I think, if anything, it underscored what was really important, you know, our marriage has been open for a while at that point. And so we had kind of figured out our routine. We put a lot of energy into being careful about our reputations, being careful about who knew, sometimes worrying about if people would find out like at work and things like that.
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16:18
But then this thing happens, this tragic thing happens, and my hesitation to go into the hospital and be seen as the husband of the girlfriend. It suddenly seemed puny and small of me, right. And Eric up to that point had been actually a tremendous resource to us as a couple.
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16:39
He and he and Shelly have been going down this path for longer than we had, and I don't know that we would have been a successful if they hadn't shared some of their ideas and wisdom things they learned because they've just been doing it longer.
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Daniel Jones
16:53
And in that way it strengthens your marriage?
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Wayne Scott
16:55
Absolutely, I think that Eric's involvement with Betsy, you know, strengthen the two of us together. His involvement with me strengthen the two of us together because he and I also would meet, and you know, meet his friends just so you know I get to know him and he's not just this mysterious person who waits out in the car when she goes out of the evening, you know.
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Daniel Jones
17:12
Yeah and Betsy, what do you think about that? Is that what Wayne was saying about how sort of mentorship in a way, is that ring true for you too?
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Elizabeth Thielman
17:21
Absolutely. I think that they have a very brave and honest relationship, and what Wayne was saying about our kind of compartmentalizing our relationship for safety purposes.
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17:36
Eric and Shelly didn't do that, and because our family is a system and part of that protection that I think Wayne and I were practicing was to keep the kids out of like what we considered to be something that didn't necessarily concern them.
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17:52
But our youngest son, Miles was very curious about Eric before the accident and there would be times when Eric would come to the house, he wouldn't come in because he was honoring our desire to keep the kids separated from all of that. But Miles would find excuses to come out just to ask me one more question before I left.
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18:15
And Eric was delightful with him and would just talk to him about pets or whatever it was interesting to Miles or that he was asking me about, and it just made it normal, you know, in a way that I don't think Wayne and I had necessarily anticipated, you know, I think we thought that the kids were going to have a big emotional reaction, and they didn't at all.
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18:40
So that was another way I think in which Eric and Shelly modeled norming it for kids. This idea that there can be a lot of loving adults in their parents lives, and it doesn't have to be a threat.
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Daniel Jones
18:55
And were there other ways that Eric and Shelly guided both of you? That really made a difference.
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Wayne Scott
19:01
So there was a period of time where I was pretty seriously seeing a man who lived up in
Seattle
. He was also married to a woman, and they had an open arrangement. And at a certain point, I was interested in having Betsy meet Tim, and I think her initial reaction was one of kind of hesitation, some anxiety.Share
19:21
I didn't ask her to do that kind of thing that often, but at a certain point, she kind of surprised me, and she turned around, and she said, "okay, you know, the next time Tim is in town, I'll meet him", and I was like "well what changed what happened? " And she was like well Eric told me I wasn't being fair.
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Daniel Jones
19:36
Oh, that's so interesting.
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Wayne Scott
19:37
But it gets even a more little bit more interesting, which is that Eric actually stepped it up one more step and said "you know what, when you meet Tim Betsy I'll go along with you". And so we ended up, the four of us going out, having a lovely dinner together and that was how Betsy met the guy I was going out with at the time.
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Elizabeth Thielman
19:56
It was a little odd, and it was also lovely because they were all just interesting people who have common interests. It made me feel a lot more relieved and also like I could see integrating the people we care about more closely into our lives.
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Daniel Jones
20:16
But ahead of that you'd obviously had reservations about it, and then you had a conversation with Eric.
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Elizabeth Thielman
20:22
Well you know to be fair I mentioned that he and Shelly are brave and wide open and so a lot of times I would be over at their house and hanging out with them and their family and having conversations and then Eric and I would go out and go on a date and so it was seamless, and it was really easy to be integrated, but I wasn't offering the same opportunities.
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Daniel Jones
20:50
Right? But you explained that to Eric, and he said get with the program?
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Elizabeth Thielman
20:55
Yeah, he did, yeah, he schooled me.
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Daniel Jones
20:59
Eric and Shelly., are they still in your life after Eric recovered from his accident?
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Elizabeth Thielman
21:06
Yes, we're still friends, and I love hearing about their daughter and seeing how they're thriving, and we're going to have coffee tomorrow.
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Daniel Jones
21:18
Well, thank you both so much for talking to me today, it's been really good to get to know you.
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Elizabeth Thielman
21:24
Too.
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Wayne Scott
21:24
Thank you, this is lovely.
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Daniel Jones
21:25
Goodbye.
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Elizabeth Thielman
21:27
Bye.
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Wayne Scott
21:27
Goodbye.
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Miya Lee
21:33
Modern Love is produced by Julia Botero with help from Hans Buetow and Elyssa Dudley. It's edited by Sara Sarasohn. The executive producer is Wendy Dorr. This episode was mixed by Corey Schreppel.
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Daniel Jones
21:47
This week's essay was written by Wayne Scott and read by Edoardo Ballerini.
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Miya Lee
21:53
Special thanks to Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Bonnie Wertheim, Anya Strzemien. Pastrami in Sam Dolnick and Ryan Wegner at Audm.
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Daniel Jones
22:03
I'm dan jones
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Miya Lee
22:04
And I'm Miya Lee.
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Daniel Jones
22:06
We'll be back next week with more stories from Modern Love.
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Miya Lee
22:09
Thanks for listening.
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Daniel Jones
Miya Lee
Edoardo Ballerini
Elizabeth Thielman
Wayne Scott