Whether you’re having an Open relationship, Polyamorous, Monogamous or choose not to title yourself, we all have a different form of love that not only one person can give us. What I’ve come to notice is that when I even bring up “Open Relationship or Polyamory” most people think I want to have sex with other people while still being with another person. This is not the case. That may come up, but that is not why I choose having an open relationship over being monogamous. We will get in to that area a little later. Lets start at the top.
Yes, having that one person to only have their eyes on you is an amazing feeling, but how freeing it that? Do you feel like you have freedom being in an exclusive relationship? What if you begin to change your beliefs about a certain area of your life and this person isn’t willing to grow with you in that area? You still love them and can grow in other areas, but since they aren’t fulfilling the needs where you are growing in, you may feel held back and desire to adventure out elsewhere. You begin to sneak behind your partners back, meet new people, go out for drinks. You open up to this person about an area you value in your life and they also value this same thing, but your exclusive partner doesn’t. Then What?
You decide to keep it on the “low” and pretend to your partner that everything is great with your relationship while still going behind their back. Which, dun dun dun, could end up with the term monogamous relationships call “Cheating.” The funnel of lies may begin to pour in, and you can either have that weighing heavy on your consciences the rest of your relationship or share with your partner that you cheated on them. Now, together you can either talk about this and you promise not to do it again or depending on your partner, he/she may get really angry and break up with you and may not ever talk to you again. That seems very heavy. Not saying Open relationships are easy at all, one thing I can tell you though is that you are free to do as you please. Unless you both make rules together of course!
Open Relationships come with questions and honest communication. Clarity in all aspects, put everything on the table, leaving nothing unsaid regarding what you both want. Through my experience with having an open relationship a lot comes up mentally and emotionally for the both of us. We ask questions to get to the core of a feeling, when something we dont like occurs.
Why we feel a certain way?
What made us think that way?
What we can do to move past the emotions we are going through?
Jealousy is going to come up whether you are in a monogamous relationship or an open relationship, lets just get that out of the way right now. We are human beings and we have emotions and it is okay to feel these feelings. But to blame your partner for making you feel these feelings is complete projection on your end, because you didn’t get what you want!
Here’s a quote I heard from a friend talking about polyamory “Do you really love this person for being them, or do you love them because they do what you want?” -Mustafa Shakir
This quote got me thinking about so much because if you love them for doing what you want, you dont really love them, you love them because they are fulfilling your needs. What about their needs though, what if you fulfill them in one area, but not another? This is in no way saying that you are not good enough for someone, this is just saying we have many different sides to us and not everyone opens up those sides.
I know from my experience, different people open up a different side of me in every relationship in my life. When I close off my energy to only one person, I am then closing myself off to myself. We all are part of the huge puzzle and each of us have our own individual puzzle piece of love. You meet a new form of love inside of everyone you encounter, and it opens you up to exploring who you really are and what you actually want. When you really love a person, you allow them to be free and do as they please, while knowing there is still a deep connection between you two. You dont hold each other back from doing what you/they choose to do. You let them be open to being their own person and experiencing their own life.
This is where my first statement about how when I bring up being open to people, most think I want to have sex with multiple people, which definitely isn’t the case. There’s only certain people I can connect with on a sexual level and I actually feel like can bring me to another existence through sex. If I don’t feel it, it wont happen. I thought at a certain point being open meant having tons of sex too, But what makes people think being open means having sex?
Yes, there are tons of Open Relationships that involve you sleeping with other people and being open in that way. The type of open I am talking about though, is Open Communication. Having an Open Relationship with Open Communication is one of the realest forms of a friendship/relationship in my opinion. Your openness to be up front and tell the microscopic truth about the thought that you had or the feelings that are arising, is what keeps you from creating stories inside of your head.
Maybe there is someone else you are interested in getting to know more. Bring up the conversation, so it doesn’t linger in the air. When you let it linger, there comes a point when people begin to feel like something is off, they may not know what it is, they just feel it. That is what I call unsaid thoughts and not being open and honest with one another. Whether you feel like its going to hurt the other person or not, it hurts more when they find out that you didn’t tell them. Having an open relationship can show you where you need to expand and mature more. It shows you where you still have issues around not getting what you want. Then you can reflect on those aspects of yourself, grow from it and move on.
This is not about telling your partner they cant do a certain thing. That is control. Or “If you loved me, you wouldn’t do this” That is manipulation. This is about confronting yourself and acknowledging “Wow, I am getting jealous, bothered or upset about this situation, What is it inside of me that makes me feel this way.” Everything that you go through has nothing to do with the other person. They never make you feel any type of way. It is always You, who makes yourself feel this way. They just triggered something inside of you that brought that emotion up.
Through open relationships, I not only found my trigger points, but I found parts of myself that needed healing. It's a very freeing feeling, to be able to openly speak about what you are going through with another person, and to be able to look at yourself in a self reflective way. You are no longer in a box of “I can only be with this person, because I am closed off” you are now in a free world of You can do what you want. You also must remember though that the other person can do what they want as well. This is where communication on both ends is extremely important.
The bottom line is, whether you are monogamous or in an open relationship, they both bring up shit. The only way to move out of the shit is to openly communicate about it. The things I have found with monogamy is, you blame the other person for not giving you what you want. What I have found with open relationships is, you begin to be so open with your partner, that you notice things about yourself you never saw before. When you see these things inside yourself it brings up a lot because now instead of pointing the finger at the other person, You are bringing the finger back in and looking at yourself and saying, “This is where I can grow and learn to love myself more.” You open your heart to seeing yourself and instead of trying to change another person you start to work on yourself by looking within and accepting you for you.
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