This is going to sound very naive, and when I post these questions I often find that they come back to bite me a few weeks or months later, but I was talking to a guy about this just the other day. He was telling me that if a relationship is strong and both people agree, then playing on the side is OK. And some people are saying that here too - it's OK if it's vanilla and not D/s, or it's OK if it's "playing". And I'm not judging, but I have a question about it. This implies that you know that your relationship is deep and real and meaningful and that whatever happens outside it is, by comparison, trivial. But doesn't that mean, by definition, that whoever takes an outside partner is sort of using him or her? They have the deep real meaningful relationship at home, but they're engaging in a sort of weak imitation of it outside. If that's so, it can't be to get the deep real stuff, since they have that, so it's to get, what - gratification? Physical gratification; but worse, some other kind of emotional gratification that they're getting with someone who's not important to them.

This might sound hypocritical, since I was happy to play with someone just recently who I had no intention of forming a relationship with, but in that case I thought we were both unattached. For some reason it feels different to me if both people are on the same footing, so to speak. I don't know - then maybe it would be OK if BOTH people were in primary relationships and just fooling around? There's just something about it I don't like.

The short answer for me is, no, I'm a monogamy gal. And it would make me jealous, as people have said. But it would also make me question my partner's ethics, sort of, and question his feelings for me. If he can use someone else, what protects me from being used also?

On the other hand, I will say that I've sometimes felt that if my husband magically came back to life it would be such a pleasure to share with him some of the things I've learned about myself, and some of the fun activities I've engaged in, but there would have been no way within that relationship to explore and discover these things. Our sex life was fun, but it did get into kind of a rut, and bringing this information home would certainly have changed that. But it's how you get the information - if I'd gone outside the marriage, for sex or play or domination or anything - it would have destroyed both of us.