What separates an open relationship from a friendship? If you?re having sex with multiple people, what keeps that relationship special, something different from the other relationships you have?
If you have one friend, why would you want a second one? Does having more than one friendship make another friendship less special or unique? That?s how I read this question, and when you phrase it like that, it sounds silly. I love going out to dinner with my boyfriend but just because I like to go out to dinner with a friend of mine doesn?t mean that going out to dinner with my boyfriend is somehow spoiled by that. It?s not interconnected. The real difference? I?ve been with my boyfriend for almost five years now. Each and every moment we have builds upon the rest of the moments, creating a partnership, a relationship, and a loving commitment to one another. We?are friends. We?re best friends. But we?re also individuals. And lovers. And partners. And a million other things. And in our lives we have other friends, and other people that we love and care for. Having those things doesn?t influence how we interact with one another or how we feel for one another. If anything I would say it makes us lucky because we both understand and accept one another and our individual experiences as well as the experiences we have with one another.
We don?t define our togetherness by my vagina and your penis are holding hands and never letting go!?We define our togetherness by the decisions we make every day to be together and to act as partners. It?s our feelings that make our relationship special and unique. It?s how we choose the rules and boundaries for our relationship that makes it unique. It?s how we end the day together, cooking dinner in pajamas, watching television that makes it unique. It?s spending time with one another?s family and going on vacations that makes it unique. It?s the wanting to grow together that makes it unique. It?s the memories we have and will make that makes it unique.
It?s not what we do with our genitals.
It?s also important to note that an open relationship is not defined but it?s ?other people you?ve slept with? qualities. I can only speak about my experiences ? and all open relationships have some different qualities to them. For me, an open relationship is like your typical monogamous relationship, with a more relaxed quality. You acknowledge your emotions and desires for others, even if you don?t act on them. You express your love for people you love ? without fear of judgement or admonishment from your partner. You grow in your relationship by growing yourself, with experiences you have outside of your relationship. You may form other important relationships in your life with people who are close to you. In some open relationships, people have more than one partner. People who are also important in their life, who they may tell their secrets to, or confess their emotions to. An open relationship can be many things, and to assume that it?s based on it?s sexual quality is? too easy. Then again, opening up pandoras box of multiple loves can make open relationships even more difficult to talk about ? for even people who believe that sex can be separated from love may not believe in the ability to have multiple loves.
Shortly put: An open relationship is many things, but what it is not is a subtractor of love or emotion.
What does a week look like in an open relationship??
Most days of the week are pretty typical. Read, write, study, run errands, spend time with my friends. My boyfriend and I typically spend every night together, alternating back and forth from my apartment to his. We also try to cook dinner every night, so most nights end in the kitchen with some movie on in the background. We keep a pretty good eye on the extracurriculars in our relationship and do our best to make sure things are balanced. Each week we?ll spend time with our friends apart from one another, and we?ll have an occasional night out. Right now we go on ?dates? about once every other week. A busy week would be going on more than one date. A slow month would be when we don?t see anyone, which has happened more than once.
The date may range anywhere from getting coffee with someone we think is cute to going out dancing to getting drinks to having a threesome or a kiss. If the both of us aren?t involved (threesome) we communicate fairly well throughout the evening. We have a hard time limit of 12:30AM for returning, a recently created boundary that allows us to chit-chat after the other person returns and hear about their night and how it went. So in any given week we?ll be ?practicing? our open relationship for probably about 4 hours. The rest of the time we?re pretty indistinguishable from any other couple, spare the ability to flirt a little harder.
You?ve mentioned in the past that you can?t get everything from one partner, and an open relationship might help you be happier. What are some things that you don?t get from your primary relationship?
This is an awesome question, but it?s not exactly like that. We both believe that one person cannot be everything all the time. Everyone has their own personality. Their own likes and dislikes. That?s what makes them unique. Just because I may want the ability to satisfy myself in?more ways, doesn?t mean that I wasn?t satisfied. It?s a hard one. I?m happy, but why not be happier? Let?s go for an easy example. My boyfriend really likes electronic music but he?s not a huge fan of indie. He likes to read, but he doesn?t have a huge stack of books by his bed every night like me. I have lots of people in my life that I can talk to about indie music and current popular books because those things satisfy me, and talking about them satisfies me. I definitely share my music tastes and what I?m reading with my boyfriend, but it?s also refreshing to share those experiences with someone who feels similarly to you. On his end, he is more into the tech world. I like technology, but a lot of it is over my head. We?ll share bits and pieces together, but it?s nice for him to have someone else to talk to about that stuff who understands it more from his perspective and who he can talk to about coding and whatnot. You might be saying ?That sounds a lot like a friend.? And you?d be right. Part of the open relationship is allowing more intimate friendships in, and letting ourselves be comfortable with the idea of sharing bits and pieces of ourselves with other people who we can relate to, and being able to do so while still sharing ourselves with each other. It?s also nice to occasionally kiss a woman, since, y?know, my boyfriend is a man. A lot of women get into open relationships so they can experiment with their bisexuality.
What words do you use when explaining an open relationship to someone else?
I still remember some sliver of what it felt like to not know anything about open relationships. It really took me experiencing it for myself to understand. That mentality helps me remember to take it easy when I?m talking to people about my relationship. I try not to use words that come with stereotypes. Most of them do. I have never met an open relationship that was like another open relationship ? they?re all different. Some of the reactions I?ve had when I?ve told my friends I?m in one have been:
- So wait, you?re single?
- Are you guys still doing that thing or are you back together?
- Does this mean you can do whatever you want now?
Using the word poly can be even more dangerous. A lot of people still confuse polyamory and polygamy. The difference being loving more than one person or being open to the idea/concept of having love to share, and having more than one husband/wife ? a practice often bastardized on reality television. I am not a polygamist, and I hardly consider myself a polyamorist, despite many people labeling me as such. ?Oh, you?re in an open relationship? I?m poly too!? While I do believe in multiple loves and the ability to love more than one person (and I do love many people, in many ways) neither boyfriend nor I have been interested in having more than one partner. We?re not interested in having secondary partners. We?re not interested in ?dating? other people. There is a thin line, since we really do enjoy our close intimate friendships we have with people? but for us, there is a difference. But I go back and forth on the word poly and how I feel about it. Sometimes it feels applicable, sometimes it doesn?t.
Most of the time I use ?open relationship? and then take the time to explain the very basics of what our boundaries are. Depending on who I?m talking to this varies. Sometimes open relationship means ?oh, we just make our own rules about what is okay.? Sometimes it means ?yeah, we have threesomes sometimes, its fun.? Sometimes its ?Oh? uh, we?re not actually open right now, its just something we do sometimes.? (Usually only if the person is a real nag.)
Most of the time I don?t explain it at all, and when people find out ?Well, gee, you certainly don?t seem like?one of those people.? And that?s a whole different blog post. Yikes.
What if you met someone that caused drama in your relationship or someone that you or your boyfriend didn?t like? I would be worried that he would like someone that I didn?t like.
The both of us have veto power. In other relationships there may be a don?t ask don?t tell policy or a sense of ?It?s your life, you do what you want in it.? For us, we like making sure that the decisions we make reflect back positively on our relationship as a whole. We like being involved. If he met someone that I really didn?t like, or vice versa, we just wouldn?t go there. Period. If someone was causing drama we would stop seeing them or not get involved to start with. That said, our process of meeting people is pretty intense. I would never meet someone who wasn?t pro-choice, sex-positive, knowledgable or accepting of open relationships (if they aren?t actually in one themselves) and I wouldn?t meet someone who I wouldn?t want to be friends with. I really feel a situation out. I make sure that they are healthy, safe, smart people. So does he. Some people we keep in our life and we develop some sort of friendship with them and continue to see them, sometimes we see someone once, are satisfied from having met them, and we choose not to see them again. It feels fairly natural. Lastly: We both have pretty similar taste in women and men. We?re both looking for the same thing. Both of those things really help us avoid bad experiences.
What, if any, issues have you had in making an open relationship work?
Most of the ?negative? emotions we have could be associated with envy. ?I wish I was there right now experiencing that? is a good example of that. We?ve dealt with that by keeping in touch with texting while we?re out, and by making sure we have a end time set. As noted above, the end time is 12:30AM. That means you?re back home by 12:30AM to talk about how the night went. Text messages are usually things like ?Just got here? or ?They?re great!? or ?I?m so excited, this is going really well, I?ll probably be back in about an hour.? The envy is a pretty predictable human reaction, and we get through it just dandy. There is nothing like being back together at the end of the night and hearing about what a great time everyone had ? something that is called ?compersion? ? or happiness from your partner being happy.
Another tough one can be making sure that the third party knows what to expect. We?ve had some tough times making sure everyone understands that we?re not necessarily looking for boyfriends/girlfriends, or that our time is not readily available whenever someone wants to spend time with us. We often plan in advance, and keep busy with other things going on in our lives.
How would I broach the subject about an open relationship with someone? I?m in a wonderful relationship, but I wish I had met her later in my life. Aside from wanting to know how to broach the subject, I?m curious why everyone isn?t in an open relationship??
Let?s start with the last bit. In my last relationship I hit this point where I realized that despite my relationship being perfectly lovely, I did not want him to be the only person I ever slept with. The last person I would ever kiss. I didn?t want that to be it for me. I was way too young. I hadn?t experienced anything else in my life. As common place as these ideas seemed to me, I had to also accept that some people truly only want to be with one person for their entire life. And if you have the idea that something will make you happy, when you get it? it probably will. A lot of people do want to be monogamous. Either because they aren?t familiar with what an open relationship could entail, or they just don?t care. They are satisfied with what they?ve got, and they don?t want to experiment with more. It?s a mentality that I personally grew away from and have a harder time relating to these days, but it?s perfectly okay, and a lot of people are fulfilled by it. That said, a lot of people slip into monogamous relationships because that?s what they?re supposed to do. This can lead to unhappy relationships, settling, infidelity, and an overwhelming lack of experimentation ? sometimes resulting in not actually being able to explore what you like/dislike. Since not every one person provides the same experiences, after all. I?ve met a lot of people since I started writing about this who are surprised by what an open relationship can be, and think it?s might be right for them. The tough part is breaking through a lot of the stereotypes, getting your partner on board if thats something they are curious about as well, and then walking off the beaten path of ?should? to do what you want to do.
How do you broach the subject? ?I love you but I want to see other people? is how it feels, but that?s probably not the best thing to say. It can be pretty standard to think ?If you really loved me, you wouldn?t need anything else.? I think that?s why it?s a good idea to start simple. With concepts. The idea of a threesome, a fantasy of watching your partner with someone else, expressing jealous feelings and battling them together, talking about your potential futures together, or experiences you?ve had in the past. You can also be straightforward and say ?I?ve been really curious about the idea of having an open relationship. This is how I would like it to look.? Never leave it at ?open relationship? because as mentioned above, everyone has a different view of what that means. If you say ?I want an open relationship? your partner could hear that as ?I want to have sex with whoever I want and still be with you.? That might not be the case for you, so it?s important to really sit down and explain where you?re coming from, what you?re looking for, and ways in which you two can experiment with it safely to see if it?s something that works in your relationship. It can be scary. Do it together.
If your partner is not interested in an open relationship, that?s a different story. You can continue to read literature together about it, if they?re open to that. But many people won?t be. And sometimes that?s the dividing point where you have to ask yourself if you want to continue to be monogamous, or if you want to take everything you?ve gained from your relationship and move on to something new. There are ways to spice up monogamous relationships that don?t involve inviting in third parties. But nothing can replace the experiences you have from someone completely new, who brings completely new things to the table. It all depends on what sort of experiences you are personally looking for and how the two of you can reach out and find those experiences.
Thanks for submitting your questions. If you have any more questions, please submit them by clicking ?ASK? at the top. This was my mega-post, but I will be happy to answer any other questions?individually?on my blog if there are some?stragglers. ?
Source: http://suggestivetongue.com/2012/08/27/open-relationship-questions-answered/
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