Why Are Open Relationships Romantic?

I didn’t hear the term “open relationship” until my early 20s. I come from a fairly sheltered millennial existence – at my school, Katy Perry’s song “I Kissed a Girl” It was considered annoying – I saw the concept of open relationships as scandalous and, to be honest, a bit dirty. Most importantly, it seemed completely far from something I would do, let alone an idea that I might someday consider romantically.

My idea of ​​romance consisted largely of the pop culture I absorbed and stories about the all-consuming relationships in my mother’s past. Loving someone meant that was exactly how you were supposed to feel Sinead O’Connor He did that when he sang “Nothing Compares 2 U”, otherwise you weren’t really in love. You loved one person so much that you never wanted anyone else even for a moment, and any look meant that your love was contaminated.

The idea of ​​“romance equals fidelity” and “fidelity equals monogamy” was so deeply ingrained that I had yet to consider a different perspective. I still firmly believe that romance equals loyalty, but at some point I started to question my definition of loyalty, or at least realized it could mean different things.

By my mid-20s, my naive notion that romance meant not being attracted to anyone else while in a relationship had long gone out the window. Over the years, I’ve had to admit that I’m not immune to the charms of people who aren’t my boyfriends. And what I learned at this point was that I was easily influenced by other people, while my loving feelings for him remained essentially unchanged.

I was sure of it but I translate it as feeling like I can do it to behave Focusing on these impulses and not destroying the love we shared (and, moreover, feeling that it strengthened our relationship) was still a long way off.

My partner and I met just before I turned 20 and decided to have an open relationship when I was 28. At various points during these eight monogamous years, each of us had expressed curiosity about sleeping with other people. But this was usually a temporary “joke” when sober – or more seriously, only to be shamefully swept under the rug the next morning after too much alcohol. The conversation moved toward the possibility of an open relationship a few times, but even though I was now familiar with the concept and thought it was less scandalous than my younger, more innocent self, it still seemed distant and unrealistic. it wasn’t one real The possibility is more like how you would debate what to do with hypothetical lottery winnings or the alternative life you might have as an Olympic gymnast.

We talked seriously about this when the pandemic hit. The combination of being given time to stop and think about what we really wanted from life and being forced to look at our own mortality was the push we needed to make our lofty dreams a reality. As soon as we were allowed to leave the house, I downloaded a dating app for the first time in my life.

The first time I slept with someone who wasn’t my partner, I felt weird. Even though I technically had his permission, I couldn’t shake the unshakable, deep-rooted feeling of injustice and guilt inside me, as if I had betrayed him. But when I saw him again, I realized that my feelings for him were exactly the same as the first time when I realized that I still liked other people and it didn’t change anything. More than this We It was exactly the same. My guilt dissipated. It was a strange feeling; I felt like a child who was told that the boogeyman would come for them if they didn’t behave, only to find out that the monster never existed.

As I continued to explore my attraction to other people, not just in my head but in reality, something even funnier happened; Not only have my feelings for my partner remained fundamentally loving and stable—far from the destruction I was always promised and that I had learned to fear if I strayed from monogamy—they have actually grown stronger.

Much of the definition of “fidelity” I formulated meant sacrificing things for my partner. If you were loyal to someone, it meant you loved them enough to sacrifice sex, experiences, and connections with other people. It meant that you weighed what you had with that person and chose them over anyone else. One of the problems with this for me was that we met at such a young age and hadn’t experienced enough other possibilities to make an informed choice. I knew I loved it, but I didn’t know what else was out there. As I immersed myself in dating other people, gathering and understanding more information about myself, others, and him, I was able to more clearly define what it was that I loved about him. “Choosing” my partner has become a more active and therefore, in my opinion, more romantic decision.