A woman in a mono-poly marriage, where only the husband is faithful while the wife is allowed to have multiple partners, has spoken about their unconventional relationship.
Karla Houston, 34, who has been married for nine years, freely embarks on s£xual escapades, while her husband remains monogamous.
The one-sided open relationship, more formally known as a mono-poly relationship, is an unconventional dynamic that works for the California couple.
“My husband is monogamous and I’m polyamorous, and we’ve had to build a dynamic that honors that difference,” she told The Post.
“I personally resonate a lot with relationship anarchy, so for me, it’s less about ranking relationships and more about allowing people the autonomy to define relationships in ways that feel authentic and consensual for them.”
The married couple became mono-poly in 2022 after many “honest conversations, self-reflection, and learning what felt authentic for both of us, rather than trying to force ourselves into a traditional mold that no longer fully reflected our reality.”
Of course, jealousy can “absolutely come up because we’re human,” Houston, who is bis£xual and has always practiced polyamory, pointed out.
“Those feelings are usually worked through with communication rather than avoidance.”
The 34-year-old believes that the dynamic of her marriage requires more communication and emotional transparency than many traditional partnerships.
Karla Houston believes that when people react in horror to the agreement between her and her hubby, it reveals a broader discomfort around gender roles in relationships and control.
“There’s often a double standard in society where men having multiple partners is normalized or even celebrated in some spaces, while women who openly explore their s£xuality or non-monogamy are judged much more harshly,” she explained.
“My husband is not controlling me, and I’m not hiding who I am to preserve a traditional image of marriage. We’ve built relationships based on choice, trust, and honesty rather than rigid gender roles,” Houston said.
Houston says ignorant outsiders often don’t understand “that mono-poly dynamics are not automatically dysfunctional, selfish, or less committed than traditional relationships. People often assume my husband must secretly be unhappy or that I’m incapable of commitment because I’m bis£xual and polyamorous, but neither is true.”
Although the concept of mono-poly relationships is nothing new, and it exists under the umbrella of consensual non-monogamy, experts point out that the asymmetry is what makes shocks people outside poly communities.
“There is an archaic double-standard where women are expected to adhere strictly to the rules of monogamy, lest they face punishment and social shame, while men get to bend the rules with much more freedom,” Ruby Rare, an intimacy director for the polyamorous dating app Feeld, told The Post.