59 – Will You Marry Me or Would You Rather Share Me?

If I asked you right now, ‘What was the happiest day of your life?

How many of you would say, “Our wedding day”?

And honestly, with the price tag that day usually comes with, that’s the least one can hope for.

May I ask who proposed in your case?

I’d bet that in three out of four stories, it was the man—with a ring and, if his knees still worked, a bend. And she said yes. No big surprise there. Disney and a sprinkle of religion have trained entire generations to believe in the concept of “Once rescued, forever bound.”

It was similar for us. He proposed—after we had already decided to get married. It was a formality, but I still wanted to be asked. If I’m signing up for tax benefits and shared property rights, the least I deserve is a bit of sparkle first.

Three letters—and poof—a free man becomes her man. A free woman becomes his wife. Possession, light version. As if love and freedom were mutually exclusive. And that’s precisely the problem.

We keep saying 'my husband ', 'my wife,' and 'my child.’ It sounds like family album captions—but it’s often just emotional ownership dressed up as affection.

I don’t belong to anyone.

Not to my husband, not to our daughter, not to my lovers. 

I belong only to myself.

I can say that clearly now, but there were years when I’d lost myself completely. Not because the mister ever treated me like property, but because it felt as if everyone else did.

The wife of.

The mother of.

The daughter of.

The colleague of.

Somewhere between those titles, I lost the original version. I think women lose themselves more easily—in expectations, responsibility, to-do lists, Thermomix recipes, and care work.

And men? They rarely get the chance to define themselves outside the classic mold of masculinity. That old belief—that they have to be the rock in the storm—often sits deeper than the hose in a colonoscopy. And just as little do they want to talk about it. What I’ve loved about the mister from the start is that his sense of masculinity has never depended on whether I was wearing heels in the kitchen or wielding a power drill in the garden.

A rare species, I know—and I don’t take him for granted.

But the “strong man” is something we’ve never really seen in open relationships.

Looking back at all the couples we’ve met over the past year, we noticed something striking—statistically unverified, but fascinating nonetheless:

We didn’t meet a single couple where he suggested opening the relationship.

It was always the woman.

Including me.

He asks at sunset, with a ring: Will you marry me?

She asks under fluorescent kitchen light, calendar in hand, Would you be open to sharing me—sexually and emotionally—Tuesday or Friday, between the parent-teacher meeting and the dentist appointment?

I’d love to see a bar chart of men’s initial reactions to the partner-sharing proposals—with every column struggling to stay up: heart rate, panic reflex, flight impulse, and spontaneous Google searches.

Because what he hears is, I want more men. 

But what I meant—and what I only truly understood months later—was I want more me. I want to be myself again—even while being part of an us. 

Looking at the people we've met, I keep noticing the same pattern often women who ask for freedom—and men who ask for commitment. Whether that's coincidence, culture, gender, or simply our particular corner of the Polyverse—I honestly don't know. If you’ve written a dissertation on the subject, please send it my way. I have a personal knowledge gap to fill.

The mister says women simply have more opportunity. I think many women are seen in their roles—but not as people. And men want to avoid emotional risk.

But open relationships don’t work by plan or by calendar.

They’re emotional anarchy.

Improvised theater with a rotating cast, no script, no costumes—where feelings occasionally dance naked.

Maybe the real question was never: “Will you share me?” but: “Can you accept that I need to become more myself again?”

The good news?

Those who dare to love openly get no guarantees. No ownership papers. No happy-ending promise. But they get something better: Love in real time. Connection on equal ground.

And, ideally, a partner who says: You are you—and that’s exactly why I love you.