'I asked my husband if we could open our marriage. Here's what happened.'

Deepa Paul, 44, adores her husband Marcus. They've been together for more than 17 years and share a beautiful teenage daughter.

She also loves her boyfriend.

Welcome to the world of open marriages.

For Deepa, letting go of monogamy wasn't the end of her marriage. It was the beginning of a different kind of love story. One filled with trust, excitement and blossoming confidence.

Watch: Deepa Paul on how ads on Craigslist opened her marriage. Post continues below.

One of her first encounters was with a man on Craigslist, Thomas from Berlin.

Deepa had joined her husband on a work trip in Berlin and had the night to herself when she saw the ad.

"I saw this headline that said, 'Very handsome man looking for a woman with a big belly.' Postpartum… I said, Well, I don't have much going on right now, but I certainly have this," she told Mamamia's No Filter podcast.

The ad challenged everything she had been taught about beauty standards.

"What is it about this that someone would find hot?" she thought. "When I've been told my whole life that my big belly is something that I have to hide, I have to starve myself, go to the gym and be super skinny, which I was never and will never be."

Fuelled by curiosity, Deepa decided to meet Thomas.

"The way that he responded to the fact of me showing up and my body really changed the way I saw myself," she said.

"There was a very strict standard of beauty in the Philippines where it's like, skinny, petite, long, straight black hair, very sweet…

"Having never been this kind of woman, I suddenly realised, 'Oh, wait, there is something about this body that I've been taught to hate all my life that is actually beautiful and attractive and desirable and sexy'.

"Here, I was a new mother, suddenly realising that this word could apply to me as well. And that opened so many doors, Pandora's Box, but also just this confidence that I'd never been able to access."

Listen to Deepa's chat with Kate Langbroek on No Filter. Post continues below.

Having grown up in a conservative culture in the Philippines, Deepa wasn't always this adventurous when it came to sex.

While preparing for the couple's move to Amsterdam, Deepa discovered the personal ads section of Craigslist and her world changed.

"It was quite a cornucopia," she said. "People were looking for threesomes, used stockings. And I was a bit like, what is going on here… I've never heard of 90 per cent of this."

The listings in Amsterdam were "even more sizzling".

"I was just mind blown at the kind of variety and openness with which people share these desires," she said

Craiglist personal ads completely widened Deepa's worldview. Image: Instagram/storiesbydeepa.

Deepa and Marcus had been married for about seven years when she decided it was time to spice things up.

"I was like, 'Okay, look, we're here, we're young, we're reasonably hot. We should go and try these things while we still got it.'"

Marcus wasn't quite as enthusiastic at first.

"With his family context and how he'd been raised, and he's like, 'Decent, married people don't do this'," Deepa recalled him saying.

But she couldn't shake the yearning to explore her sexuality.

"I wanted to try them and see, okay, but what is this really like? … Is this part of something that I could consider my sexuality, which I've never had the space to explore?"

Deepa and Marcus with her book. Image: Instagram/storiesbydeepa.

It came at a time when Deepa was navigating new motherhood and the complicating feelings that came with it.

She was swept up in the "wonder and joy" of her daughter's birth.

"But then there was also this kind of other thing in the background that kept nagging at me," Deepa recalled.

She had an ever-growing desire to explore. The more she tried to suppress it, the louder its calls grew.

So when the chance to meet Thomas arose, she took it. There was one thing: Marcus and Deepa had paused their conversation about an open marriage.

"There was a lot of anger on Marcus' side, a lot of guilt and shame on my side."

Eventually, they reached an understanding and decided to start exploring together.

The rules were simple: always safe sex, no more than one date a week, no sleepovers, no bringing anyone home, no sharing intimate sexual details, no friends and no coworkers.

"What is it we want to protect about our marriage?" Deepa recalled them asking. "Our health, our sexual health, obviously, our intimacy with each other."

"(We're) giving each other the freedom to explore with other people. We were also allowed to say, 'You know what? This is really special to me. I want to protect this. I'm not comfortable sharing this with anybody else.'"

Dating again boosted Deepa's confidence. Image: Instagram/storiesbydeepa.

Once the ground rules were laid, Deepa quickly settled into a rhythm, meeting people on Tinder and later in the dance scene. Suddenly in demand, her confidence was sky high.

But Marcus didn't quite have the same timeline.

"For Marcus, he was talking about this kind of pecking order, and where, for sexual interest or flings or whatever, there is a certain pecking order, and Asian men are at the bottom.

"Having grown up in a culture where it was only us, all of us Asians in the dating pool, this was something that we didn't expect. And it did create an imbalance in the beginning."

When Marcus finally went on his first date, Deepa found herself faced with unexpected jealousy.

"His first date shook his world and shook my world," she said.

In her book, Ask Me How It Works: Love In An Open Marriage, she writes: "I was relieved: at last! Maybe this would take the heat off me and he would start enjoying the perks of our agreement. 'She's cute,' I said, inspecting her profile when he held out his phone to me for a look. My eyes fell on her age, beside her name: 22. I felt a stab of something prickly and irrational in my chest. 'A bit young, isn't she?'

"Am I jealous? I asked myself as Marcus's monumental first date drew closer… Age was the one thing a younger woman would always have over me… I would never win. But only if I saw it as a competition. I had to trust that it was not."

Marcus came home from the date with a look on his face that said, "I get it".

"I've had fun with someone else, but it doesn't change the way I feel about you. And at the end of the day, I still want to come home to you and be your man," Deepa recalled him saying.

This level of understanding between the pair sparked a new revelation for Deepa... She wasn't jealous.

"I'm actually excited for him to go out and have this really fun experience and see what that does for him," she found herself thinking.

But with that came: "If I'm not jealous, does this mean I don't love him?"

"We're really taught that jealousy is an inherent component of love. The more jealous we are, it means the greater we love somebody. And I was discovering that this wasn't true," she said.

Almost 10 years on, Marcus and Deepa are as strong as ever — and now she has a boyfriend, Robert, in the mix.

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Before the pandemic, all dates took place after their daughter went to bed. But when lockdown hit and an evening curfew was imposed on Amsterdam, the dating rules changed for the first time: Deepa stayed the night.

"I had to be honest with my daughter and say, 'I'm leaving for Robert's house. Because of the curfew, I'm not going to be able to come back until the following morning'," Deepa said.

"And in her mind, she was already doing sleepovers with her little neighbour friends at the time. And she said, 'Okay, well, you're going to have a sleepover. Have fun' and that was kind of our approach."

Soon, those sleepovers became a regular feature in Deepa's life. Six years on, her Irish photographer boyfriend is still around.

Deepa and Marcus eventually told their daughter about their open relationship. It turns out, she wasn't even phased; two of her classmates had parents in similar situations.

Deepa and Marcus have been open for almost 10 years. Image: Instagram/storiesbydeepa.

Having a husband and a boyfriend is a lifestyle many might think sounds exhausting, but Deepa's response to how she's not tired is simple.

"The men in my life don't need any mothering. They're very self-sustaining," she said.

Competitive jealousy isn't an issue because the men aren't possessive, Deepa added.

"No one's keeping tabs," she said.

"I think I know my husband and my boyfriend pretty well by now."

While a family may be something Robert wants in his future, it's off the table for him and Deepa.

"I want him to have what he wants," she said.

"The ending was kind of baked into the beginning of this relationship, which is very unusual.

"Some relationships don't last forever. Some aren't meant to last forever, but it's still a beautiful experience that you can share and grow from.

"I don't think I'm pushing him out the door, but I do understand that everybody approaches life at their own pace. If he's not feeling like this relationship is not enough, or he hasn't outgrown it, it's not for me to decide; it's something for him to understand and decide when it's his time."

Deepa hopes the next 10 years will bring more of the same love and excitement.

By then, her daughter will be 22, "spreading her wings in the world".

"I'm looking forward to a new phase of life in which parenting is not as intensive, and there's more there's even more space to discover what else lies ahead, more time with Marcus, with just the two of us. So I'm quite optimistic."

Feature image: Instagram/storiesbydeepa.