5 Misconceptions About Open Relationships

I know where this is going. Image from Shutterstock.

#NSFW language ahead!

My partner and I are nearing our eleventh anniversary. It impresses people across all sexualities to hear this. “Goals,” say my straight friends. “That’s an eternity for the Gays,” say other Gays. It works because he and I still like each other. We want to see each other’s dreams come true. We aren’t that different from most couples. The most unconventional aspect is that for eight of those eleven years, he and I have had an open relationship. 

Responses vary from supportive to judgmental to no reaction. The best reply I’ve heard followed a long pause. “Well, I guess it’s none of my business.” It’s revealing of a couple’s sexuality when they react poorly, straight or gay. Otherwise assumptions are largely the same, and they include:

1) “People in open relationships are OK to cheat.”

This is one my partner and I hear a lot. “So, you guys can just cheat on each other and it’s fine?”

No! We honor our boundaries the same way monogamous couples do. However, instead of the prescribed formula, we went DIY. For instance, hooking up with other guys is fine, but we never place it above each other. Never during personal tragedies and triumphs, birthdays or holidays*, pretty much any occasion where hooking up is inappropriate. If he falls asleep early and I match with a guy online, I don’t just get up and leave. The decent thing to do is, I wake him and tell him where I’m headed. I’ll even text him the address just so he has it. 

“Okay,” he’ll usually say, all starry-eyed and cute. “Have a good time.”

Fucking other people is cheating only if you and your partner agree it is. There are no rules in an open relationship except those you accept or create for yourselves. Boundaries still matter. Rules are rules. They are what you make them, and there are still consequences for breaking them.

2) “Opening your relationship means you’re not attracted to your partner anymore.”

That’s just not true—for me, at least. I actually can’t wait for my guy to daddy out. 

A tough pill for many couples is that attraction changes. You’ve likely heard by now that being in a relationship is to attend a thousand births of the person your partner’s becoming. Conversely, you attend a thousand funerals for the people they once were. That’s why the Wise Ones in our lives teach us to communicate. How else will you know where the other one is in their respective elations and griefs about being in love with you? “I like your new look” can be just as loving as “I miss you in that old t-shirt of yours.” 

I think this assumption is related to another, meaner one, that my partner and I no longer fuck. What a narrow-minded view of sex. The guys we share, ones we tag-team, the sex we have toward the end of the night after he’s taken load after load—that doesn’t count? Intimacy looks different everywhere you turn.

What really matters in your sex life is intensity. 

3) “An open relationship makes you a cuck.”

On a related note, I’ve been asked if watching another guy fuck my partner makes me (feel like) a cuck.

Again, no. True cuckolding is an age-old kink, different from the image circulating online, which depends on toxic masculinity’s alpha-beta rivalry for its potency.  Shame toys with one’s self-image, playing against confidence and public standing. In cuckolding, shame is the toy. Public expectations invert in the private sphere; humiliation becomes stimulation. 

It goes back to the rules you accept or create, not just with your partner but yourself. Does watching me fuck another guy make my partner a cuck? No, because it’s not the power dynamic we agreed to, and there’s no shame in each other finding consensual pleasure. 

4) “Open relationships are for hippies and gays.”

While it’s true that open relationships are popular among gay men, not all participate. They’re not exclusive to gay men, either. “Open relationship” is an umbrella term for consensual unions of all shapes and sizes. Couples, throuples and more; cis- and transgender partners; hardcore swingers as well as spouses who see it as a birthday present. When two or more people in love agree to share their sexualities with others, it’s an open relationship. The details are up to them.

Discomfort is the sign you need to talk about it. Image from Shutterstock.

I find they are gaining popularity among bisexual people in hetero-facing relationships. An open relationship gives the bisexual partner(s) a path to activating and exploring a part of themselves. It takes security in oneself and an acute awareness of power dynamics to understand that their partner’s sexuality exists independent of the relationship. It also takes love and patience to keep your partner involved in your sexual self-exploration.  

And no, Straight Guys, just because your girl is bisexual does not automatically mean she’s down for a threesome. Be respectful.

And Straight Girls: just because your guy is bi does not mean he’s “secretly” gay. Be respectful.

5) “Opening up is like flipping a switch.”

Open relationships are something you cultivate. It took my partner and I approximately three years to accomplish our current balance. When we first opened up, we started with threesomes. It’s a common route and the safest approach to the practice of non-monogamy. In fact it’s so common, there’s a meme about it: “We saw you across the bar and we really dig your vibe.” Asking someone into bed with you both might be something you fumble in the beginning, but that’s how you learn. The more comfortable we got, the easier it became to discuss what turned us on, together and individually. 

All jokes aside, I adore Faith Hill. She and Tim McGraw are such a power couple!

The next step we took was going to a bathhouse together. Bathhouses are important staples in the gay community, a point I made here. In this case, it offered a space where my partner and I could seek men that suited our individual tastes. Whenever one of us needed the other, he was never far away. Then we started going to the bathhouses on our own. We downloaded the apps when we moved to San Francisco, and soon we were hooking up with guys 1-on-1. 

In that time we caught and dealt with STIs, feelings for other guys, habits that threatened our end. What holds us together is a willingness to speak through discomfort and a mutual appreciation for the people we’ve been, who we are, who we are becoming. I know why I still care for this soul after all this time, why I still find him attractive. What I love about him never changes. 

* Unless that’s the point, i.e. birthday orgy, NYE sex party, etc.