My open marriage was a disaster

Olivia Fane didn’t mind her husband’s affairs – until he fell in love with someone else

- Olivia Fane

The first rule was the time limit: two weeks maximum. The second was that the affair should take place far from home, preferably abroad.

The third was that each of us had the power of veto: if we felt even the remotest bit uncomfortable, we could say to the other, ‘Stop!’

And kisses didn’t count. Kisses were just for fun.

These were the rules of my open marriage – rules I followed during the eight years I was with my husband, the writer Adam Nicolson.

And rules that ultimately led to our very painful divorce eight years later.

Of course, anyone reading this will scoff, ‘Well, of course, it led to divorce. What did she honestly expect?’ But to the young 20-something me, it wasn’t obvious at all.

How pleased we were with ourselves, Adam and I. How smug.

‘I relished that power, that sense of possibility’

I remember looking around at a railway station, in a lift, in a library, and thinking, gleefully, ‘Any one of these men could be my lover if I wanted.’ I relished that power, that sense of limitless possibility while feeling safe in my belief that my marriage was indestructible.

Only, it didn’t work. Open marriages very seldom do. In the end, my husband fell in love with someone else and left me. And it broke my heart.

I met Adam at Cambridge when I was 18. We made our open contract almost as soon as we started going out together. Both of us enjoyed short-lived flirtations with other people, but nothing serious. Our contract was still firmly in place when we took our vows, at a church wedding in 1982 (the forsaking all others bit we simply parroted on autopilot). I didn’t feel like a fraud: I loved Adam with all my heart and thought we’d be married for life.