1. What insight about open relationships do you wish you had when you started?
I came into poly life in a little queer bubble, where being poly was sort of expected, and sort of the norm, and there were pretty intense social expectations around what that should look like. I wish I had known from the beginning that there are lots of ways to do this thing, and as long as you are honoring your relationships, feelings, partner(s), and self, it’s ok if your rules don’t look like other people’s rules, or you have feelings other people aren’t sharing.
2. What has been the hardest thing about opening your relationship, and how have you overcome that?
My current relationship is with someone who was generally monogamous before we got together, and I feel like the two of us have been generous and brave together in making up a set of rules and scripts to follow. Building your relationship from the ground up is scary and challenging, and there have been lots of times when our needs, expectations, feelings, and desires have bumped up against each other, or not fit together in any neatly arranged way. Pulling apart the mess of feelings that can happen when that comes up, and figuring out where everyone’s responsibility begins and ends can feel like playing cats cradle with spiderwebs. I’m still learning how to be gentle with myself and with him when things are hard. Living with ambiguity is wonderful and hard. Probably none of that is helpful concete advice. Times that have been the hardest for me are when I know that my partner is having some bad or uncomfortable feelings about a date I’m going on, or a person I have crushy feels about. I have to spend quite a bit of energy convincing myself that I’m not being cruel or unfair by pursuing those interactions with knowledge that he could feel badly as a result. Not taking total ownership for other people’s feelings is really hard, and can feel like doing harm to someone I love. It feels like a dangerous amount of trust to place on his word that he is in this with me with full knowledge of possible consequences and avid consent, despite the bumps and bad feels that sometimes come up. That trust is precious and rare and I treasure it.
3. What has been the best thing about your open relationship?
I love having crushes. I love flirting and blushing and and feeling sweet on people. Sharing those exciting feelings with my partner is just about the nicest. That crackly energy is good for me, and good for my relationship.
4. Anything else you’d like to add?
I’ve been more and more interested recently in playing with other kinky queers (rather than pursuing more traditional “dates” with all sorts of humans), and this has provided really interesting opportunities to engage with other folks in sexy ways that are quite structured. These sorts of dates have been somewhat simpler to navigate with my partner because of the high level of pre-negotiaion that (for me, anyways) is such a fun part of planning a date or scene with someone. I’m excited about growing more connections with perverts!
