Michael admits he was no saint. He deeply loved his wife, Renee, who he’d been with for 20 years and shared three children with – but he was attracted to other women.
“I always told her that I always look at other women, I can't help it...” Michael tells Insight host Jenny Brockie.
He concedes that he cheated on Renee throughout their marriage, at one point while she was pregnant with their third child.
But Michael wasn’t alone in his affairs. Renee also found herself attracted to other men, although it took her a long time to admit this, and she also cheated on Michael.
“It's just something forbidden in society that you know, if you've got an amazing person that looks after you and your family that how dare you look at another man, you know?” Renee says.
Michael and Renee earlier on in their relationship. Photo: Supplied Source: Supplied
With their marriage at breaking point, the couple decided to do something drastic to save it – seeing other people.
“It's allowing each other total freedom to be the free spirits that we are and we believe that we have got a lot of love to give,” Renee says.
“We take a bit of a spiritual perspective on our open relationship so we're more into like I believe that love is unconditional with anybody in my life that I connect with.”
The pair now both see sexual partners alone. Rather than looking for casual one-night stands, the couple says they are seeking long term sexual partners that they can connect with on a deeper level and see regularly.
Both Michael and Renee say their relationship is now stronger than ever. The two are confident neither of them will fall for somebody else and put their marriage in jeopardy.
“A lot of relationships that break down they shut the door on their past. So there's no way we'd want to shut down the past of you know, bringing up of our children.”
To keep their open relationship successful they claim talking is the key.
“We talk all the time,” Renee says.
“Those two hours that you're talking you're talking to each other. Most monogamous couples that we know either put on the TV or one's sitting in bed on their iPad. To us we see that as self-development.”
