You're listening too, I'm Amama podcast.

You know, I brought this up with my husband.

I was like, Okay, look, you know we're here, we're young, we're reasonably hot.

We should go and try these things while we still got it.

And his response, of course, coming from where he was coming from with his family contact and you know how he'd been raising, he's like, decent people don't do this, Decent married people don't do this, and definitely, you, as a decent married woman, should not even be thinking about this.

Hello, and welcome to No Filter.

I'm Kitline Brook.

It feels like everyone is suddenly talking about open marriage, partly because of Lily Allen, who revealed on her latest album that she and her husband David Harbor had opened their marriage and that it went very, very badly.

Her songs paint this picture of hurt and resentment and the kind of emotional fallout that instantly makes you think, well.

That's why you shouldn't do it.

But that's only one version of the experience, and today we're bringing you another, a very different one deeper.

Paul has been in an open marriage for almost a decade.

She's married to Marcus.

She also has a boyfriend who she loves.

They share a child, a home, and a life that is unconventional but deeply considered.

And for Deeper and Marcus, opening their marriage didn't destroy them.

It made them stronger.

People are endlessly curious about how it works.

They want to know the rules, the boundaries, the jealousy, the logistics, the emotional math of loving more than one person.

So today I ask Deeper the questions people always want to ask, but never feel brave enough to say out loud, or never have the opportunity.

This is one woman's honest account of being a wife, a mother, and a girlfriend all at the same time.

And why for her letting go of monogamy wasn't the end of her marriage.

It was the beginning of a different kind of love story.

Deeper, Paul, welcome to No Filter.

You've written this book, Ask me how it works.

It's the story of you, a woman who has a husband and a boyfriend right.

And a child and a job.

But you are a most unexpected person for me anyway, because when you talk to people who are swingers or who are polyamorous or whatever, they tend in my experience to be kind of a bit racy.

But you are not those things.

You're cute, like unexpectedly cute.

Thank you.

You are of Philippina and Indian heritage, correct, which is.

Of such a conservative culture.

On both sides.

Yeah.

True.

So you grew up in the Philippines.

Yeah, I was born in Manila, so my father was Indian and my mum is Filipina.

I grew up there, went to a Catholic all girls' school for the first seventeen years of my life.

Okay, so Catholic, right, So I'm very conservative in a conservative country.

Yeah.

Fun fact.

You know, the Philippines is one of two remaining countries in the world where divorce is ill ego and the other one is Vatican City.

Not a lot of people getting married there, I can.

Yeah.

So, population eight hundred and sixty years as well, so Maine mostly.

Yeah.

So growing up in the Philippines, you know, it was extremely conservative, extremely extremely religious, and extremely Catholic.

And all of the messages that I grew up with around you know, love and commitment and intimacy, relationships and sex were extremely loaded with shame, you know, in secrecy and this kind of I mean there was so there's so much to unpack from being raised as a Catholic school girl, you know, being told that sex was bad.

If you liked it, we're curious about it, you were also bad.

But then somehow men receiving a totally different message from what I was growing up with.

So yeah, that's how I grew up.

But yet you did always know from when you were how old that you had.

Obviously there was the degree of innocence bestowed and preserved on the behalf of children, as it should be, but even then you had the inkling of what a curiosity about it?

About sex?

It wasn't about sex per se.

It was about how people approached relationships and love.

So in the Philippines, you know, when I was growing up, I don't know how much it's changed.

I left about sixteen or seventeen years ago.

There was no dating.

We didn't date like there was a very formalized kind of form of courtship where you know, a boy or like a man would put his best foot forward and be really clear about I am now courting you, and you are wife's material and the woman's you know, the girl's job was to keep him at arm's length, and so's there.

It was this kind kind of elaborate game where the woman's virtue was always you know, you were somehow a better woman if you managed to put him off or you know, find ways around keeping him, yeah, at arm's length.

And I would just wonder, but what about love?

Like, where is the love in all of this?

If you feel something for somebody, what is this elaborate game about?

And this kind of extended into marriage where you were supposed to be married for life, and you know, loyalty and fidelity was promised to each other, but secretly, you know, it was an open secret that men had affairs and the woman was supposed to put up with it.

In fact, in your family that was the case.

Was it not that your mom, who was Philippina, had married your dad, who was the Indian half of the equation, right, and he had numerous.

Afays well he it wasn't the case that she was expected to put up with it.

I think they both went into it, you know, they were married.

I think in their early twenties.

They both went into marriage thinking, Okay, you know, this is a team effort.

We're doing this as a team.

And I think he kind of fell into the trap of, oh, this is kind of expected of me, you know, I'm successful, I'm young.

Is this something I you know, there are different expectations for men than for women.

But then kind of the twist with their marriage was he was like, oh, well, this is not what it's cut out to be.

You know, I need to get out of this situation.

Whoever, I got on my side, and it was my mom.

So with them, there were no secrets in a way, which was very unusual for a couple of their time, like in the seventies, I think like late seventies, early eighties, coming from both their cultures, but they had this understanding that we're in you know, we're in a team, We're in this together.

It was never really a thing that caused my mom a lot of grief or anger.

She was like, no, you know it out, then I would get him out.

If you couldn't do it himself, then I would get him out of it.

So as a child there was you and your sister.

Were you aware of these tensions within your parents' marriage.

No, because my father died when I was three, so that wasn't really something that I grew up being aware of.

But my mom would tell me stories as I was growing up, and I suppose when I started hearing about these things when I was maybe you know, in my early teens, and she was very open with me about them.

But what radiated the most from her stories was the sense of her and my dad, you know, kind of playing by rules that she knew were different from everyone else's doing.

Yeah, this is my cue society.

You the apple doesn't fall far from the trade.

No, I think not.

I think our relationship, you know, our view towards relationships and love and intimacy is so shaped by what we grew up with, right, yes, yes, by our context, which.

Is so interesting because your husband, the man you love or one of the men you love, was also from the Philippines.

You met at Uni.

So he was your first boyfriend.

He was my second.

I had a high school sweetheart, our second.

But he was very much a product of his upbringing, which was that marriage is a sacred.

Union and you you.

Know, forswear any others.

He was very conservative in his approach.

And so were you initially or did you always have that fluttering of the bird against the cage?

I think what I always had, kid was a curiosity at why.

You know, my parents clearly loved each other, and our family was a very tight knit, close loving one, and I always had this curiosity about why it seemed that within their marriage the rules of love could be different than what I saw outside in the world, you know, as I grew up, became a teenager, started you know, hanging out with my friends and their families and their parents.

It just seeing how marriage was in the conservative Catholic society that I grew up in, and I saw that disconnect, and I thought, Okay, there must be another way.

You know, are there other people, you know, playing by different rules?

What does it mean to actually negotiate love in marriage and commitment, you know, on terms that not everyone may understand.

So with my husband, he grew up in a really, really conservative and you know, very strictly Catholic family.

If I was going to embark on a sexually liberated journey, there's no better city in the world to do that in than Amsterdam, which is where you and Marcus moved to.

And initially I gather from your book that you were kind of driver of that.

Not that I'm saying once again it wasn't an overt motivation, but do you think that there was a hunger for new experiences because this was before you had started to really explore things sexually.

Absolutely.

I mean I've always been a really curious person and I probably of the two of us, the more adventurous one.

So there was definitely a hunger for new experiences, and travel was usually appealing.

It was at the time when I don't know if you remember this kind of in the early you know, in the early odds where travel blogging was exploding.

You know, you were seeing people going on around the world trips funded by these elaborate credit card point systems.

Yeah, and I was I was just a bit like, okay, well, how do we get some of this action?

So, yeah, there's always I've always been somebody who's had a lot of stuff going on, always wants new stuff going on.

And I have a real, you know, kind of adventurous spirit in that way.

Which has been both in certain aspects of blessing and a curse to your husband who's ended up living a life that he never would have imagined for himself.

And some points was really reluctant to follow your laid on things.

When did your sexual exploration start?

That was with the craigs listings.

Right, did you ever have Craigslist in Australia.

Was this a thing, No, it's an American thing, but we're very familiar with all things American in Australia as.

We are here.

Yes.

So when I was moving, when we were moving from Singapore to Amsterdam, I was selling furniture on Craigslist, and you know, I was randomly clicking around the site and I kind of fell into this Internet rabbit hole, which was a Craigslist personal ad, and coming out of this, you know, very conservative culture where nobody talked about sex, suddenly seeing all of these different desires that people had.

I mean it was quite a chronuclopia.

You know, people were looking for threesomes, stockings, and I was a bit like, what is going on here?

What are these things and why do people find them so exciting?

I've never heard of ninety percent of this, So for me, the Craigslist personals were kind of like a self refreshing romance novel, you know how people pick up romance novels and kind of you let your brain explore and whether it's with you know, swashbucking pirates or vampire were wolves.

I mean, there is like this kind of erotic fantasy element, and to me, I found that online, so I would read and just be curious about you know, I would go out into the street and think, oh my gosh, do all these people want these things?

And are you know, are just not talking about them?

And they exist on some corner of the Internet that I've somehow stumbled into.

So we moved to holland sold the furniture successfully.

I'm craigelists moved to Amsterdam, and when I got there, I, you know, I would continue to look and Amsterdam was even more sizzling in terms of what it was offering online.

And I was just honestly mind blown at the kind of variety, of an openness also with which people share these desires.

And then at some point, you know, I brought this up with my husband.

I was like, Okay, look, you know, we're here, we're young, we're reasonably hot.

We should go and try these things while we still got it.

And his response, of course, coming from where he was coming from, with his family context and you know how he'd been raising, He's like, decent people don't do this, Decent married people don't do this, and definitely, you, as a decent married woman, should not even be thinking about this.

So we ran into our first conflict where my desire for adventure in terms of sexual exploration and variety ran into his kind of need for stability and security, and just you know, for him, this was just no.

This is interesting because this was at the point at which you started to explore things covertly, mainly through emails or whatever at the start, and then you had some physical encounters.

But it's unusual for you because one of the disarming things about the book is how open you are and that you really are very much committed to the pursuit of honesty in your relationship with Marcus, and in this instance you weren't and it ended up being disastrous, did it not?

Or could have been?

Yeah, it's really interesting that you picked up on that kit because having come from a situation where the rejection and shame I felt around my husband's reaction to my desires and like this very kind of real, sincere kind of desire to explore these things with him, that shame and rejection drove me to hide and keep secrets.

And if there's anything that drives people to keep secrets, it's shame.

So my commitment to being honest in the book is because I've been on the flip side where shame made me feel like I had to hide something, and the difference between that person who was hiding something about herself and the person now who is open about being you know, having made mistakes and stands by those mistakes as part of my journey is night and day.

And having experienced what it's like to live openly and honestly about myself screw ups and all, just makes me think I would never go back there, like I would never live as this woman who was hiding things about herself that were not necessarily bad.

What do you think was your driver at the time?

What were you wanting?

Was it the affirmation of being desired by somebody else?

Was it a feeling of wanting a foreign touch?

What was it that you wanted?

I, at that point didn't understand, much like your husband Marcus didn't understand what you wanted.

I wanted a variety of experiences and to understand why people find some things exciting and hot.

You know, why do people find threesomes hot?

Why do people find being submissive exciting?

Why do some people find dominating?

You know, men thrilling and powerful, and so of all of the sexual experiences, you know, we can have in the world.

I wanted to try them and see, Okay, but what is this really like?

What is exciting about this?

Is this?

For me?

Is this part of something that I could consider my sexuality, which I've never had this space to explore.

So it wasn't really about particular people or being desired.

It was the variety of experiences that are out there.

After this short break, Deeper reveals how a sexual encounter with a man she met on Craig's List changed the way she felt about her postpartum body.

One of your first encounters.

I found this amazing because you just had your daughter, right and the may I've had four children, and postpartum is not a period in your life if you're very sexy.

Yes, exactly.

But you went out and had this amazing encounter with a man who was well.

You also signed the book.

It's very easy for a woman to find men, easier than it is for men to find women.

But you found a man who was so mad for you that it made you rethink yourself in terms of your own desirability.

What was really, you know, mind blowing for me with this encounter that we referenced in the book.

It this with a man named Thomas that I met in Berlin.

My husband was on a business trip and I joined him and I had the one night off, you know, babysitter was found and I kind of had this one night and I went back to Craigslist and I saw this headline that said very handsome man looking for a woman with a big belly.

I mean postparton, right, you know, I still had this exactly.

I said, well, I don't have much going on right now, but I certainly have this.

And I again that curiosity of why would anyone find this sexy?

What is you know, what is it about this that someone would find hot?

When I've been told my whole life that my big belly is something that I have to hide, you know, I have to starve myself, go to the gym and be super skinny, which you know I was never and will never be.

What about this is attractive?

So I went to meet him out of curiosity, and the way that he responded to you know, the fact of me is showing up and my body was really changed the way I saw myself.

You know, there was a very strict standard of beauty in the Philippines, where it's like skinny peteeth, you know, long straight black hair, very sweet, you know, doesn't really laugh loudly or eat too much, not just.

In the Philippines.

On I thought maybe we have just the long black hair.

You know.

It was real, dly, skinny and petite was the thing.

And having never been this kind of woman, I suddenly realized, oh wait, you know, there is something about me, that about this body that I've been taught to hate all my life, that is actually beautiful and attractive and desirable and sexy.

I mean, sexy was a word that I'd never used to apply to myself.

But here I was a new mother suddenly realizing that this word could apply to me as well.

And it wasn't just the domain of skinny, perfect, petique women.

And that opened, you know, so many doors like Pandora's box, Pandora's box, but also just this confidence that I'd never been able to access, you know, growing up.

Where were you at this point with Marcus so when you had the night off in when you were in Berlin, where were you at at that point in regards to the conversation about opening up.

We completely pausitive since I became pregnant and in a way I felt like it was something I was doing, you know, exploring covertly through emails and reading Craig's list.

I felt like it was something I was doing to keep the peace at the same time.

You know, a lot of things can exist at the same time.

Right, this was going on, but also, I mean, the pregnancy was a magical experience for me.

Yeah, it brought us closer in so many ways.

I mean, you've gone through this with your loved one, and just that little world of especially when our daughter was born, just this wonder and this joy what's there?

Like it was present, but then there was also this kind of other thing in the background that kept nagging at me.

Yeah.

So it was a very complicated time, as new motherhood is, but we were I mean I was also discovering what he was like as a father, which was amazing, like a revelation.

So I knew that even if I had this, you know, the conflict for me at the time was, this is the man I love and I want to be with for the rest of my life, and now we have this beautiful family.

What am I going to do about you know, this other thing which is me wanting to explore, which is now growing stronger the more I try to suppress it.

Okay, what am I going to do about that?

What did you do?

Nothing?

It's like the easiest thing to do, right, Like, let you know, do nothing until you can think of something.

Yeah.

So Marcus found out and was absolutely devastated.

Rage I think was the you know, yeah, rage.

That was when you had your five that got temporarily physical.

Is that then?

Well, you know, when he found out about my having met Thomas from Berlin, he was absolutely furious and like you said, devastated and shocked, and he was so you know, Marcus is the gentlest, sort of most caring man I've ever known, and for a moment he was just so outraged and just so hurt.

You know, I thought he reached out me.

I thought he was going to shake me or something.

He landed, you know, a punch in the stomach, and then immediately he was at the look of horror on his face, like horror at himself.

And then at the time, you know, I thought, oh my god, this is my fault.

But looking back now, I think, you know, this was something that should have been addressed.

But we were yeah, I don't know, we were young, new parents and we didn't have the tools to address.

This, so then you went to therapy together.

Yeah.

What he asked for at the time was, you know, to have a look at my why I was doing this, why I had been you know, kind of covidly exploring, and what were the reasons driving my sort of this pattern of you know, keeping things secret and then now having met somebody.

And it was interesting because I didn't choose therapy.

Yes, he said, you know, do the work, find something.

And I went to a bunch of therapists, you know, had my like kind of meetings and consultations with them.

But what I found most interesting actually was a communications coach who did something called non violent communication.

She wasn't a therapist.

She was someone who was going to teach us to identify and express our needs, to listen to each other without judgment, and to find a way to compromise, you know, to reach a compromise where both sets of our needs would be honored.

Wow.

And I was just thinking about this and yeah.

That Sam at that point impossible.

It seemed impossible.

But I was really again this curiosity of Okay, well this sounds amazing, How is this going to happen?

What really drew me to This approach of non violent communication was like it was very non judgmental.

You know.

I wasn't somebody to be fixed or cured.

There was no perpetrate or victim.

We were seen as equals, Marcus and I, my husband and I.

We were seen as equals with equal you know, and both of our needs were valid and should be honored in some creative way.

And so when we reached the point of you know, it took practice.

I mean, there was a lot of anger on Marcus's side, a lot of guilt and shame on my side.

And these are kind of filters that help you from you know, that stop you from listening to each other.

It was a lot of work to kind of clear away those filters and learn to listen to each other.

And what was surprising, I think for my husband was realizing that the way he'd reacted to me bringing up my you know, my desire for sexual variety and exploration was part of the reason that I felt the shame that drove me underground.

It's a very very unusual and I think big thing to take responsibility in a situation where you understand you are the victim.

And for me, it was a very big step to look at those needs for variety and adventure and exploration and discovery, to look at them and see, these are not wrong, These are not bad, and I'm not wrong or bad for having them.

And so then as a result of that, you found a way in which you could proceed kind of renewing your commitment to each other, embarking on a new way of being together really which allowed you your freedom.

Yeap, how did that work?

You mean, how did it work in the beginning or when we first set up?

Yeah?

Yeah, because the whole thing is an evolution.

Some might say a gateway, a gateway because at every point, you know, one of the things in ask me how it were, one of the questions is or the things that people would always say to you, is what happens if you fall in love with someone?

And we're going to get to that, but at this point, you're just you and Marcus reach a negotiation where you put some boundaries in place, and what does it mean for you?

How does your weight law?

Lots of questions there.

So let's start with, you know, us embarking on this, and the idea was to explore together, you know, So there were things I wanted to try like you know, going to swingers clubs or going to parties or you know, having threesomes.

And as parents of you know, quite a young child, you know, Marcus said, if you want to explore this, well, you know, I'm all in with you.

Let's do this together.

But you know, we're the parents of a young child.

We can't really go cruising swingers parties or you know, bars or whatever.

So we set up in their accounts, which seemed kind of safe in the beginning because we didn't disclose anything to our friends.

We were just okay, we're going to try this out and if this doesn't work, can close it up again.

The boundaries we set around this exploration were what helped make it feel safe in the beginning.

It wasn't like a free for all do everything you want, you know, all the bets are off.

You know.

We set agreements in place that helped us feel like we were going into this you know, uncharted territory, like slowly, bit by bit.

So the first rule, and you know, the arn't clad rule that we still have today is save sex, which means barriers you know, with other partners and regular STI testing.

At the time, We also agreed, you know, we agreed on like a certain frequency of dates, which was like maximum of once a week.

We agreed that we wouldn't sleep over with anybody because that just felt too intimate to share with anyone at the time.

Right, No friends, I mean it gets messy.

No co workers as well.

I mean, you know, were you eat?

So these were the agreements that we set out for ourselves in the beginning.

And that was ten years ago, kid, I mean we you know, we've experienced the light since then, and yeah.

But deeper, even just to get to that point, to sit down with your husband and navigate those boundaries is unimaginable in many ways.

And why do you think so well just to.

Just to have to address the mechanics which you needed to be able to, you know, embark on this life together.

But for me, that's unimaginable to have a conversation with my husband.

Go, Okay, I promise I'll always use condoms and I'll be safe and I'll be home before our daughter wakes up.

Do you know what I mean?

Like it's really.

Going into the part of a map of human relations.

In the olden days, you know how salahs would have on a map.

They be monsters for the part of the map whe they didn't know what happened.

Yeah, that's you're really sailing off into the part they be monsters, but you're doing it with like such kind of faith.

In each other.

I think we had that in the beginning, even though it was you know, the trust was definitely shaken.

But up toil that point, I think we'd been married seven years.

You know, we we there were a lot of things at stake.

We had our we just had our daughters, We had a young we had a young family to protect, you know.

Going back to your map analogy, I find it really interesting because when you set sail right, you're on this vessel.

You're the captain of your ship.

You you know what's important about your ship.

You know what's valuable and what you want to protect.

You want to protect the crew, you want to protect I don't know your cargo.

So what do you have to do to protect the most important parts of your ship?

And I think that's where the basis of these discussions are.

It's not arbitrarily pointed like oh, you know you have to be home by seven, you know, seven am or twelve midnight or whatever.

What is it we want to protect about our marriage, our health, our sexual health obviously, you know, our intimacy with each other.

What are the parts that are really special?

Oh, I really love waking up next to you.

I don't want to share it.

I'm not ready to share that with anybody else.

So it is really starting from you have things that you love about your marriage gate and we, you know, giving each other the freedom to explore with other people.

We were also allowed to say, you know what, this is really special to me.

I want to protect this.

I'm not comfortable sharing this with anybody else.

That's a boundary and being allowed to express that with each other helped us set the agreement in the beginning, and I saw, Okay, you know this is really important to my husband.

He understood that, oh, this is really important to my wife.

Okay, we're going to agree on something.

I mean, there's so much you can do and explore and experience around these boundaries.

So honoring each other's feelings and what we weren't comfortable with or didn't feel safe at the time, you know, it was just kind of a no brainer.

But it does start from understanding the places, you know, the things about your marriage that's special.

Even if you don't know where the voyage is going to take you, and no one knows where the voyage is taking them, by the way, But at this point it was all it seems like it's great for you.

So you're going out, you settle into kind of a rhythm with Marcus.

I say, it's great for you because you're so in demand and you're going clubbing and you're mating people and you, you know, just having a great time.

Marcus, he's a little bit more slow off than.

Mar Yeah, he's always then he likes to see He's like he's like a big rock.

You know, it takes a lot of momentum for him to start moving.

But once it's moving, it's really moving.

So yeah, right, people just have you know, I think people just have different paces when it comes to things, right, you know, you have four children, and not everybody is going to hit their kind of milestones at the same age or at the same pace.

It's true, it was important for us to understand that about each other, that he would take to something in a different way.

Coming Up Deeper reflects on how her experience finding partners differed from her husband's and the emotional impact that had on him.

One of your superpowers that you discovered was that you are a hot property in Amsterdam where.

The women are tall, the tallest people in the world, the.

Dutch, absolutely, and there you were a petite Philippaina dark with the belly that had been so adored, and in fact that was you became a really hot commodity.

Whereas Marcus explained to you at one point, it's not the same for him being a Filippino man, so his relationships developed kind of slowly compared to yours.

What was really surprising to me at the time.

You know, I have a friend who was teasing at this kind of early phase.

She said, oh, you're like a fetish jackpot.

And I said, what do you mean?

And she said, look, you're you know, your short, you're curvy, you've got a bomb, you're dark haired, and you know in a land of blonde, you're somebody's wife, you're a mother.

I mean, for some men, this is really a thing.

She was just like, yeah, you're like a you know, a tick box of all the fetish as men could possibly have.

And I was like, oh my gosh, no, I didn't expect this.

And for Marcus, he was talking about this kind of you know, packing order where it's like, you know, for sexual kind of interest or like flings or whatever, there is a certain packing order, and Asian men are at the bottom.

We were, you know, having grown up in a culture where it was only all of us Asians, you know, kind of in the dating pool.

This was something that we didn't expect and it did create an imbalance in the beginning.

In the beginning, yeah.

Yes, but they knew you had a moment which I found really interesting, where they knew you had to confront your own when things started to fire for Marcus.

And you know when he came when he goes on his first date and comes home and you can tell that something's different about him.

Yeah, I think his first day shook his world then took my world as well.

You know, he'd made his first Tinder match.

It was someone from the neighborhood, and when he came home, he just had this kind of look on his face where he was clearly trying to process things, and he just said, I get it now, like I've had fun with someone else, but it doesn't change the way I feel about you.

And at the end of the day, you know, I still want to come home to you and be your man.

It doesn't change the way I see you or I feel about you.

And he said, Okay, I kind of get it now.

And for me, it was kind of confronting.

Why don't I feel jealous about this?

Like?

Am I jealous?

You know?

I'm actually excited for him to go out and have this really fun experience and see what that does for him.

And I remember thinking to myself, if I am not jealous, does this mean I don't love him?

Because we're so oh, you know, we're so thought.

I mean, we really thought that jealousy is adherent component of love.

The more jealous we are, it means the greater we love somebody.

And I was discovering that this wasn't true.

And I know a new Marcus had grown up with the same you know, ideas of shame around his body and sexuality that I'd grown up with in the Philippines, and I wanted this to start, you know, I wanted him to be kind of free from those things and to enjoy his body and to discover things about himself that I didn't necessarily have to be responsible for.

You also, one of the things that you had in place one of the understandings between you was that you would not give each other graphic descriptions of the sexual acts you performed with whoever.

You'd had your diets with.

That's right, So there was an element of I don't know that jealousy is just about anyway.

I don't know.

I asked myself so many questions reading a book.

It's very interesting, okay, But to me, I've found it quite illuminating that you had to put that process in place, because there's a natural understanding that some things need to remain private if they don't include you.

Someone recently, you told me this really interesting distinction between transparency and honesty.

And transparency is all the details unfiltered, and honesty is when you've processed your experience and you've taken the insight from it, and then you share that with somebody when they're ready to hear it.

I think honesty, you know, I wrote this in the book, Honesty doesn't need to be brutal, right.

I think honesty can always be kind and respect.

You know, if Marcus wasn't comfortable hearing about graphic details, then that was something I needed to respect.

And then you had a taste of your own medicine though in that regard, which I must say, I must say in the book, just because he's proven himself to be such a beautiful husband and partner to you as you are to him.

But you really have led him on this life.

He couldn't, I think, even have imagined for himself.

And then at one point when he comes home and he's had an unexpected foursome and he utters this phrase to you where he's trying to describe you go and you're debriefing in the you know, he's in the shower or you're in the shower.

You're talking to each other about what happened, and he's so full of it.

At the time it was very fresh, and he utters the phrase, yes, it was too fresh.

I've discovered this.

It can't be too fresh where he says he describes the woman that one of the women that he was with, and he said she was pure feminine sexual energy and daper.

You lost there, who had.

Been a pioneer in this.

Yeah, you lost it, You lost it.

I mean, human feelings are messy, you know.

I think that, Yeah, that was one of the times when we didn't have this, I mean, one of the sort of agreements that we had just flew out the window and he was fresh, he had just walked in, and all of this was still kind of like, you know, he was still buzzing from it.

And it was at this time when I was like, oh, you know, we had this.

We set out with this idea to kind of process experiences before we share them with each other.

And there's a reason for that.

Yes, yeah, I think it was also I mean there's also context, right, I'm trying to remember, you know, what was I doing at the time was probably yeah, probably with our daughter.

I was in a very different space or something.

It was very unexpected.

There is something to be said for Okay, you know, I'm not ready to hear this right now.

Can we talk about this, you know, this evening after you know, after bed time or with a glass of wine.

Yeah, I don't need to hear about this now.

And I think it's really okay to say these things.

This is not the right time.

I think one of us should have gone, oh wait, this is not the right time, you know, to process all of this stuff.

I'm struck by when I'm reading your book.

I have the same questions that everyone has.

How does it work?

So jealousy being one of them.

Yeah, another one being your daughter.

Right.

So obviously you kept you keep.

Your home as a as your sacred space for the family.

Right.

But it must have always been a subject of discussion of when you were going to broach with your daughter as she got older.

So she's nearly a teenager now.

Oh, she's twelve.

Yeah, she's onto high school next year.

Yeah.

Yeah, how you were going to broach the unusual nature of your circumstances with her, well, what you thought or unusual circumstances.

Yeah, that's interesting that you pointed out, actually, because I don't think we ever really discussed you know, there's going to be a big review, right there was we were We were never thinking about when do we you know, strike a gong and tell her we're in an open marriage, because we went into it, so I guess experimentally, there was no idea, you know, that this was going to last for as long as it has, which is now almost ten years.

You know, at the in the beginning, it was always say, yeah, let's just give it a try, you know, let's see how far we we get.

And this was you know, we opened our marriage, I think just before she started school, maybe she was around four.

So everything that happened, you know, kind of in our private lives and our intimate lives happened after her bedtime.

Dates were after she went to bed, one of our you know, ourn claud agreements.

To these days, we've never been partners home, so all of this was kind of not in her daily life or not part of our family life as she knew it.

And it was only really during COVID when I started becoming close to the man who you know, I know call my boyfriend Hella Robert.

We had a curfew.

I don't know if you had.

Yes, we had curfews in Australia.

Australia the ultimate painal Colony.

Yes, everyone was in prisoned.

Yeah, yeah, I remember reading about the gosh, reading about all of the stuff going on there as well.

But we had a it was you know, the Dutch are very liberal.

They liked their freedom and so the idea of a curfew was was unthinkable for us at the time.

But I think it was like eight pm or something from eight pm to four am, and I would you know, I was about to leave from my date with Robert, and Marcus was like, okay, well you're going to be back at eight.

Then it said that's very enough time to sit down to dinner.

What are you thinking?

And so because I stayed over until the curfew was done, then I had to be honest with my daughter, say, you know, I'm leaving for Robert's house because of the curfew.

I'm not going to be able to come back until, you know, the following morning.

And I said, so I'm going to sleep there.

And in her mind she was already doing sleepovers with like our neighbor, you know, her little neighbor friends at the time, and she said, okay, well you're going to have a sleepover.

We'll have fun.

And that was kind of our approach to always build on what she understood and what was really part of her life, like what was a reality in her life.

Dates that went on after that time were not a part of her life.

Sleepovers she understood, you know, she had a working knowledge of a sleepover is a fun thing you do with a friend.

And so I would come back the next morning and she'd be like, how was your sleepover?

Was it fun?

And I'd be like, yes, it was fun.

But again, you know, like sexual details are not for children, Like I don't know how many monogamous parents share their sex lives with their children.

Yeah, I certainly, you know, it's the scene.

So in a way, it was always something that she knew about.

So she knew about the sleepovers once a week with Robert, which began to became a regular kind of feature of my life.

Yes, because he's your boyfriend.

Ok, yes, he's your boyfriend.

Deeper, Yeah, you have a husband and a boyfriend.

Indeed, yeah, almost six years now.

So you ended up telling your daughter just the concept that explaining the concept that you're in an open marriage, which she was not at all phased by because it turns out there were two kids in her school whose parents also were in open marriages, and they discussed it without going into any detail.

Welcome to Amsterdam.

Yeah yeah, yeah, but that came about through the writing of the book, right that she was curious about the book you were writing.

But what I just need to know how this was he's having a boyfriend and a husband, because also it seems to me like there was a sliding scale of the boundaries that you had.

First there were not going to be any sleepovers, or there was not going to be an emotional entanglement and then you realize that these encounters you were having that were purely sexual, we're not nourishing to you.

And you fell for this guy, Robert.

All right, So Robert's Irish, very charming, right, Robert doesn't have any other girlfriends, now, does he only have you?

Yes?

And you have him and you have Marcus.

That's correct.

How are you not exhausted?

You know?

I've been asked this a million times, and I think it's because the men in my life don't need any mothering.

They're very self sustaining in a way.

Like Robert is really independent, he's super self reliant.

He's an artist, artists.

Yeah, he's a photographer, yes, yes.

And Marcus he takes equally the share of the mental and domestic load.

Like I'm not doing all of the domestic work on both sides in both houses.

I have quite a degree of autonomy.

I you know, in my life, it's very clear to the people that I'm closest to the red love that there is space for me to do my food.

You have space to do your thing.

Everyone is space to do their thing.

So I don't know.

I think it's just because I'm not doing mental, emotional, domestic labor one hundred percent on both sides, and that each of those men can pull their weight.

Yes, but you know, when you a committed to someone romanticly, sexually and spiritually, it's a big It's.

Also nourishing to you.

I get that, but also it's a big expenditure of your energy and you're doing that with two people and at the same time inventing a way, a new way to have relationships.

Really And so.

It's Robert and what's in it for him?

Aside from you obviously, but you know what I mean.

He's a guy who wants to have a family and babies and that's not a possibility with you, as you've said, Yeah.

That's after people.

What's in it for him?

You know, I'm very careful when I write and when I speak, not to speak for the men that I'm in a relationship with.

Yes, what's in it for you?

When you fall in love with someone the experience of being loved, being seen, being held, being understood.

So somehow he must be getting that and is getting that from me for the past six years.

Yes, I know thought, Yes I understand that.

But what I mean is because he has this goal of what he wants in his life broadly, which is he wants to have he loves your family with Marcus, he wants that for himself at some point.

And because that's not an option for you, it's interesting to go into a relationship or to be a part of a relationship in which you know, at some point the gate's going to come down.

And I know you're not obviously one for thinking about, you know, for crossing the bridge before you come to it, but that will be hard because you're in love with him.

You love him, I do, I do, and I want him to have what he wants.

And again, I think this goes back to something that you know, I brought up earlier.

Everybody approaches things at a different pace, right, like I've always you know, the ending is kind of bagd what's kind of into the beginning of this relationship, which is very unusual.

Yes, you know, some relationships don't last forever, some aren't meant to last forever.

But it's still a beautiful experience that you can share and grow from.

So you know, I was.

Fully thinking, oh yeah, at the end of you know, at the end of Lockdown, the dating apps will be flourishing again and he'll you know, he'll be back to dating and you know, being his charming, irish self with bars and chatting up women, and I'm you know, it just didn't happen, and life can really surprise you that way.

I don't think I'm pushing him out the door, but I do understand that everybody approaches life at their own pace.

Like if he's not, you know, feeling like this, this relationship is not enough, or he hasn't outgrown it, or I don't know, it's not for me to decide it's.

Yeah, it's something for him to understand and decide when it's his time.

He's gone out on dates, he's had flings and you know, but.

How did you feel.

Did you feel any territorialness when he was saying out the page?

Yeah, this was interesting for me because I felt differently from when I, you know, when when Marcus first started dating, when when Robert went out with a couple of people.

I was quite surprised at how not possessive, But somehow the jealousy was there because the idea of being replaced was really real then, like something that I wasn't really you know, that I wasn't really thinking about in my relationship with Marcus, it was it's clear to both of us that we're not dating to audition replacements.

But with Robert, the implication is always there that you know, somebody that you go on a date with, you could fall in love with at any time, and you could decide, you know, okay, this is this is the person I'm going to start a family with, this is my person.

And what's really interesting is that that kind of inherent you know, that knowledge that this might be the end.

It created this kind of insecurity, which I feel is like the root of jealousy is not feeling secure.

But we talked about it, and we talked about his experience, you know, going on a daily with one of the few times in someone, and we really got to take a look at what it meant for me that I felt insecure in the relationship because he could always you know, he could always leave at any time.

And actually, jealousy can point to me a need that's not being met, which is at the point was to feel more secure in the relationship.

So one thing about being non monogamous, I guess it makes you think, how will this need be fulfilled by something other than sexual exclusivity, and what it was at the time for Robert and me, was him showing me how much he appreciated our relationship.

And what I brought into is life like that reassurance of you know, you're really valuable.

And if I did fall in love with someone, it wouldn't you know, you wouldn't be someone I could discard overnight and we'd work through it.

And you know, like I've always known it's going to happen.

I know, but knowing knowing something doesn't necessarily soften the inevitability of it when it will happen, if it should happen, I.

Agree, But I mean I can do hard things.

You know, well, you.

Can do hard things.

You also you also do a lot of talking.

Like your relationships, there's so much to navigate that.

I'm also struck by the fact that you and Marcus nearly every issue and obviously because it's the subject of your book, but nearly every issue within your relationship aside from when you first got together, has arisen because of the open marriage.

That's not entirely true, Kate.

I focus on that, Okay.

I'm happy to hear.

Yeah, because I mean, we fight about who, you know, who stacks the dishwasher, and I mean, this is really kind of thanks all married couple stuff, But I do, but I do focus on the issues that arose within an open marriage because that's the focus of the book.

Yes, right, Like okay, yeah, you're you're not picking up a book called ask me how it works love in an open marriage to find out how we resolve the issue about the.

Dishwasher housework, right, Okay?

Deeper, So you had these concurrent loves differing but loves.

So when you get to say, when I think of in a relationship in times of good and in times of bad, that's when you turn to your significant person.

So when you have good news, who do you tell first?

Do you tell Marcus?

Or do you tell er whoever is in the room with me at the moment?

Or like it's you know, if Marcus is over like cooking dinner in the kitchen and I receive good news while I'm sitting here at the dining table, first child goes to whoever's in the room with.

Me, right, okay?

And is that ever an issue for them?

Do you know what I mean?

Aside from any sexual notions of exclusivity or whatever, you know, that emotional thing that oh, you told Robert before you told me.

Or bus never.

I mean because that I think, No, they're not that kind of there's no possessiveness in that way, because that would entail quite a level of micro management.

Would you say, like to know who finds out what first?

All the time?

I mean we've had a lot of yeah, yeah, really great news, you know exploding with the book recently, right if I learned the great interview like this or a new piece of you know, publicity comes out or something really great has happened.

I mean, no one's keeping tabs, no one's keeping an Excel sheet on who hears things first?

Well deep, and we think they're not.

But in relationships, people are often keeping a ledger that we're unaware of.

Okay, yeah, you spend more time to analyzing your relationships than most people do, so you'd be I think.

I know my husband and i'm boys had pretty well right now.

Also, what space is there in your life for your girlfriends, who I know play a significant role, How do they fit into the tapestry of your life both time wise and emotionally and being aware of your situation which you're so open about.

My best friend is going to write about her in the book you do.

Yeah, we all of almost all of my close girlfriends are also moms, and I think when you you know, when you're a mom, the time you can devote to friendships has limitations.

So we're on what's App quite a lot of the time, Like there's group chats, there's you know, I think between me and my best friend or WhatsApp.

History is like another book on its own.

So we're very in touch with each other, and then we see each other I don't know about maybe once a week or once every other week.

There's seasons when life is heavy for one of us and we know that, you know, someone can't really be present, but we stay in touch.

Quite a lot of my friends now as it stands now, are also in you know, non monogamous relationships or have decided to be non monogamous.

So it's a very supportive.

It's a very very supportive and understanding community of girlfriends.

Was there anyone that was not able to accept your choices?

Do you think you've lost anyone along the way.

No, I don't think that.

I have probably my friends from back home in the Philippines, but then I've lived away from home for so long.

Yeah, close to sixteen years now.

Yeah, for so long, so you know you're you're also not part of every like wedding, baptist and birthday house party that's going on.

So that's been kind of a natural ebb from my life, you know.

But now, I mean, when you know news about the book started coming out, yeah, they were all very curious about it.

You know.

I now have a group of friends from back home who are all reading the book and they're like, oh, book club.

You know, when we're all done, it's all, you know, get together on Facebook, Messenger or FaceTime or whatever and have a book club and discuss your life right now, how you've been Yeah, I don't think I've lost anyone along the way.

So it kind of the support I've received around being open about our open marriage has kind of told me like, oh, it's really like the people who really matter to me and who really care for me, and who I really care about, you know, are still kind of all around me.

I am dapa.

Where do you imagine yourself to pay in titaneous time?

Oh my gosh, fifty three, I hope I'll still be curious about life, wanting to have new experiences.

Married to Marcus Robert will be in my life in some form or fashion.

My daughter will be twenty two and spreading her wings in the world.

I'm looking forward to a new phase of life in which parenting is not as intensive and there's more There's even more space now too, you know them, now to discover what else you know lies ahead, more time with Marcus, with just the two of us.

Quite optimistic, but I think you got that I'm an optimist from reading my book.

Yes, you're definitely, you're definitely an optimist.

And you know what, that's a very seductive energy.

All right, I'll keep that in mind.

I don't know how you do it deeper, but you make it sound normal.

I feel like it's so strange, and your book is, i think I said at the start, oddly sort of wholesome for something so unexpected.

Well, I think most people are surprised when they think open marriages.

You know, they think it's all about the sex.

This is going to be super racey.

But this is part of my life in which I'm also a mother.

You know, I'm a daughter, I'm a wife, I'm a writer.

Like there's a lot of sex steper, there's a lot of sex there's a lot of sex.

There's a lot of sex, absolutely, but there's also parts in which I as a young, you know, insecure Catholic schoolgirl who didn't know what to do with the things she was curious about and wanted.

There was also, you know, a lonely new mother who was finding out what it was like to be isolated within a marriage.

You know.

There is also an immigrant who's making a new life, you know, in a new culture.

There's also a woman who's dating again at thirty five I think I started dating.

I mean, you'll have listeners who are you know, maybe divorced or starting over at the age of forty three, forty five, fifty and now they're facing this, Oh my gosh, what do I do with this dating landscape?

So there's also that maybe this is what makes the book surprisingly relatable and like normal and wholesome, as you said, because all of the sex, all of the raziness is situated in the life of a woman who's also all these other things and somehow making it all.

You know, and you're doing it as well with you have your podcast.

You are giving so much love to your husband and your four children.

I mean, when I think of four children.

I feel really tired, you know, so I could also ask you, I mean, how are you not tired?

But maybe we all are and and we're doing it because somehow it gives us something that's fulfilling and rewarding, and the self awareness is worth it for me to get to these really sweet spots.

And there are more of them than I can write in a book.

You know, there's still there's still going on, Like I hop off the story you know, in the book at a certain point when I turned forty and since then, I mean there's only been more of these moments, and there's just and these moments of it all works, you know, are all really worth all of the They're worth the work of making them work.

Well, that's a MOLTI for life, isn't it?

For self renewing process?

Right?

It's not always going to be.

It's not going to work.

You know, we're not going to hit like equilibrium one day and that it's all going to be like that our life.

Yeah, it's like going to this, something else will come up.

Yeah, it's not a destination.

I wish I'm like, oh, it's it's a cheap process.

Deeper, Paul, I wish you every luck in your life and your laves.

Thank you so much, Keith.

This has been a wonderful conversation.

So that was Deeper, Paul.

Most of us will never choose the path Deeper and Marcus have taken.

But what I found so interesting is that they made their own rules.

They decided what their relationship would look like following the one that they were handed.

Deepest story isn't trying to convert anyone or convince us that monogamy is outdated.

It simply shows that relationships don't all have to look the same, and that people can live in whatever way makes them feel most alive, most honest, and most connected.

And for her, this is the shape her love story, her life story takes Deeper's book, Ask me how it works is out now.

If this conversation made you think differently about marriage, desire, or the quiet compromises we all make, please share the episode with someone who'd love it.

I'm kateline Brook and this is No Filter.

The executive producer of No Filter is Nama Brown.

The senior producer is Pre Player.

Audio production is by Tina Mattalov, and video editing is by Josh Green.

This episode was recorded at session in progress Studios.

Thank you for listening.

Mumma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land waters that this podcast is recorded on