Exclusive | ‘I sleep around, but my husband isn’t allowed to’ — meet the couple in a one-sided open marriage

It’s like having an off-leash dog.

In an effort to stay authentic to who she is while in a loving nine-year marriage, Karla Houston, 34, freely embarks on sexual 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 bisexual and has always practiced polyamory, pointed out. “Those feelings are usually worked through with communication rather than avoidance.”

If anything, the 34-year-old feels that the dynamic of her marriage requires more communication and emotional transparency than many traditional partnerships.

And anyone who reacts in horror to the agreement between Houston and her hubby, she believes, 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 sexuality 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 bisexual 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 people outside poly communities clutch their pearls. 

“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. 

The “manosphere” ideologies of it all don’t help either. 

In “Louis Theroux: Altered States” and later in “Inside the Manosphere,” documentaries, toxic alpha male, red-pill adjacent influencers, who many insecure men idolize, argue that “high-value men” should not be expected to remain monogamous, while their wives should.

“It’s not healthy if one person is being like, ‘Well, I get to have multiple partners, but you’re not allowed to,’” said polyamorous relationship educator Leanne Yau.

“The polyamorous community has a lot of negative feelings about that because in the community, we prioritize freedom and autonomy.”

That hypocrisy is part of why comedian Nikki Glaser, who revealed on a “Call Her Daddy” episode last month that she gets turned on at the thought of boyfriend, Chris Convy, sleeping with other women, despite her staying monogamous, received such flak from listeners.

“[It’s] Because he’s a cheater and she conformed,” quipped a Reddit user.

“Is that why they’ve broken up a hundred times?” a commenter chimed, while someone else judged from afar, writing “May a love like this never find me.”

Part of the disconnect and harsh criticism, experts say, comes from the fact that most people are unfamiliar with the idea of compersion, the feeling of arousal an individual, like Glaser or even Houston’s husband, might experience from their partner experiencing pleasure elsewhere.

On the other hand, while compersion can be a source of connection in a relationship, tolerance can emerge when one partner accepts this one-sided polyamory in the hopes of preserving a relationship with cracks.

“In that case, it is a form of emotional bargaining,” sex therapist Anna Elton told The Post. “The question I always ask is whether the change in openness feels like an expansion of the relationship or a preemptive protection,” she adds. 

Online forums devoted to mono-poly relationships are filled with users describing jealousy, insecurity, and fears of emotional imbalance — particularly among people who opened relationships to avoid losing a partner entirely, a phenomenon often referred to online as “poly under duress.”

Writer Lindy West was one of these people, as she reluctantly agreed to a non-monogamous marriage and has publicly documented the emotional turbulence of it.

When it comes down to it, Elton asks, “Is this arrangement increasing desire and connection, or is it covering up fear and avoidance? A healthy relationship expands both partners. An unhealthy one asks one partner to shrink so the relationship can survive.”