Open marriages with young kids: yet another symptom of the infantile misery of the urban creative class

They are broke, unhappy, and looking for love in all the wrong places. Just wait until AI really hits.

Every so often a friend sends me articles about woke culture — usually from New York magazine — he knows will enrage me.

This time the piece was called “Could Opening Your Marriage Lighten Your Mental Load?” It purported to describe the virtues of “poly parenting” for women:

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?

Hoo boy.

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(Reporting from the front lines of woke insanity.)

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The writer describes “Olivia,” who sleeps with her ex-boyfriend, “Maya,” who has foursomes that include her husband which turn into threesomes that don’t, and “Emily” and “Laura,” new moms who wind up sleeping with — wait for it — each other!

So how does all this polyamory go?

Not well.

Even this article, which presents these situations as sympathetically as possible, answers the question it poses with a resounding no — open marriages do not lighten anyone’s mental load.

Maya’s married boyfriend dumps her when she’s pregnant with her second kid (the article does not say if it’s the boyfriend’s or her husband’s). Laura dumps Emily, and they both feel relieved.

In other words, having extramarital sex while trying to parent an infant or toddler works out about as well as anyone might expect.

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But what’s fascinating is that the women’s husbands barely register in the article. Emily and Laura’s “husbands agreed to let them explore the relationship,” the piece explains.

I say again, hoo boy.

Let’s talk about what’s really going on here.

The article does not describe the finances of these couples in detail, but it makes clear they are not wealthy — and that the women resent their husbands.

These two facts are not unrelated.

These folks don’t have the money to raise children in any reasonable way in New York (or Boston, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, or other ultra-high-tax and high-cost blue cities that they believe are their birthrights). In New York, in particular, the apartments are tiny, and the schools are a nightmare.

Couples that were lucky enough (or, more likely, had family help) to buy an apartment may very slowly be building equity, though home prices in many blue cities have stalled in the last decade. Otherwise, they are simply treading water, spending thousands of dollars a month on rent with little hope of ever buying. But they are stuck, they refuse to leave.

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(What’s worse than having your wife cheating on you? Knowing she disrespects you so much she demands you approve.)

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So these women, fairly or not, feel their husbands have cheated them. They’re the ones who have gained 50 pounds or more in pregnancy, they’re the ones nursing and taking care of the kids and cooking and doing laundry.

But the beta males they have married have not kept their end of the bargain by providing financial stability. The article makes this point of view explicit. The cheating moms “don’t feel guilty about taking time for themselves.”

When Mama ain’t happy, nobody happy.

Yes, they feel entitled to cheat, and their husbands don’t seem to be able to stop them. They trade a cuckold’s horns for peace at home:

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.

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(Help me prove journalism can still support a family!)

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This is, of course, a remarkably juvenile way to live — for both sides.

If your 900-square-foot apartment is not big enough for two kids, get out of the city.

If you can’t make a living as an architect-journalist-copywriter-novelist-DJ-sociologist, get yourself certified as an electrician. Yes, you may be embarrassed you couldn’t do more with your Oberlin degree, but at least you won’t have to sign off on the mother of your two-year-old working the bars in Williamsburg.

And if you are the mother of that two-year-old, stop whining, this is what you signed up for. At least wait until your kid is out of diapers to throw in the towel on your marriage.

Ugh.