Open Relationships: Below The Surface

Open relationships are a doozy of a topic to talk about, there’s so many nuances and different arrangements that work for all sorts of people and no one single solution fits all. You add the complexity of the sex-fueled gay community on top of that and you may find your head spinning.

My experience in open relationships has spanned across two different partners and in those I’ve been cheated on, felt like I’d been the happiest I’d ever been in my life, experienced intense jealousy and overwhelming insecurities, and learnt an insurmountable amount about myself. I feel like I’ve been through a lifetime of open relationship ups and downs but in actual fact have probably just scratched the surface.

I want to share my journey through the two types of open relationships I’ve been in: Being open as a way to "save" a dying relationship and starting the relationship as open.

Jealousy & Insecurities in an Open Relationship

When I entered my first big boy open relationship I walked in thinking I knew everything about myself, my emotions and how I would operate seeing my partner going out and sleeping with other people- but boy was I wrong. I had incredibly intense feelings about this man from the get-go, I thought I had found the love of my life. We got together during the Covid lockdown and spent almost every moment together, which in hindsight turned out to be for the worst- we developed a co-dependency on each other.

The one feeling that I could never shake was the jealousy when he would leave to go and sleep with someone else or if he told me he’d slept with people throughout the time we weren’t together. On one hand I was super happy for him and got turned on by the thought of him being pounded into a bed until he was a drooling mess. On the other hand I was constantly wondering how long it would take for him to get home so I could be with him again or why he chose to sleep with them instead of me.

I thought I was going crazy because after all, we’re just supposed to be ok with this right? There’s supposedly something in the gay brain that just says ‘you can handle seeing your partner shagging every other thing but you’.

Well no, that’s not the case at all. Jealousy is a very normal feeling to get around a partner and as I opened up more to my friends about my feelings the more I came to realise that everyone experiences jealousy.

The issue is that it’s not talked about enough and that people, like me, just assume that it doesn’t happen.

What I learnt is that my jealousy came from my own insecurities (and an unhealthy smattering of negative events) during the open relationship. I found it really tricky finding the line between my own insecurities that were flaring up the jealousy for no reason and finding that there was an actual reason behind the feelings.

So I hear you ask, how did I find the line? Well babe, I haven’t. I have spent months trying to figure that out and I still haven’t got there.

I think ultimately what I learnt is that I am able to be in an open relationship- but I need my partner to help me feel secure with them a lot. It can be a lot to ask of a partner but when you’re out there sharing the person you love with other people, I think it’s fair that you need to consistently be reminded that the person you’re with wants all of you, and to be with you.

I’m responsible for my own feelings around jealousy and my own insecurities. It’s my own journey to work on those so that I’m not triggered as hard going into those situations ever again, however it’s also important to note that there were a lot of outside factors that affected this.

Getting cheated on in an Open Relationship

Who would’ve thought it was possible to get cheated on when you’re in an open relationship? Definitely not me! I thought by having no rules and not limiting each other that we would find peace and happiness and have the most secure relationship anyone had ever seen.

I was naive in thinking that an open relationship is purely physical and about sex. I thought your partner went out, got fucked and then came home to (maybe get fucked again) and then cuddle. There is so much more complexity to it than that. On top of the physical gratification you have the mental stimulation, emotions and feelings and your partner getting things from their sexual partners that they may not be able to get from you.

I was emotionally and mentally cheated on by a partner not physically or sexually. We would sleep with someone in threesomes quite often and after a particularly piggy night where a lot of things were involved, my partner had developed intense feelings for this other person. It took him by surprise and had him confused and overwhelmed by the flood of feelings that he had for them.

It got worse and worse over months, to the point where he would be debilitated for days thinking about this man. He would be depressed, anxious and guilty because he had such strong feelings for this other man but claimed to love me. He felt like he was getting things from this person sexually that I wasn’t giving him, but he was never vulnerable enough to explore these sexual needs with me. He would be asking me to do dirty things to him but then not allow the space or time for me to do it.

The friends we spoke to about this told us that it was normal to crush on someone when in an open relationship and that it comes with the territory, which I actually agree with. You’re being so intimate with someone and sharing so much that you can start to develop feelings- it’s what you do with those feelings that counts.

I didn’t know what to do because I thought I loved him so much but could feel myself losing him by the day. We continued spending time with this person, still repeating old habits and patterns in an attempt to use this as exposure therapy, when in fact it just made it all that much harder.

He claimed that he was constantly trying to show his fidelity to me but in the same breath would be waiting foot and hand on this other man. I would set boundaries and he would whine, whimper and get angry until I was forced to cross those boundaries so he could see this other person.

I want to make it very clear here that he did handle this situation in a terrible way and was very immature about a lot of his feelings. He dealt with a lot of situations really badly while I did my best to adapt and deal with my own emotions around it. He would get drunk and tell me that he didn’t want me, that I was hard to love and that he was with me because this other man wouldn’t date him. It was pretty horrible to go through.

As you can tell I don’t have a lot of nice things to say around this subject and I still have to heal a lot of those trauma scars. I knew that I needed a good psychologist and a prescription for anti-anxiety medication to help me get through the worst of it, and I’ve now started the healing process.

Is an open relationship just a bandaid for a failing relationship?

I have been asked this question a lot, and I will strongly say no. An open relationship, when done right for both partners, can be such a beautiful thing that both parties can get so much out of.

The very first open relationship I was in came out of a necessity for sexual pleasure. The person I was dating had a lot of hang ups around sex for various reasons and I had spent over a year trying to engage in sex with them, but found them constantly uninterested. Three months prior to us breaking up I begged for us to open the relationship so that I could get sex elsewhere. He was incredibly hesitant and would constantly try and put rules on it like: “you can’t fuck you can only suck” or “you can kiss boys at the club but nothing else”.

I’m not proud to say it but there were two times I broke those rules and fucked someone. I’m not going to sit here and justify it, if anything I’d apologise to him for it.

At the end of the day we weren’t meant for each other. We were both headed in completely different directions with our lives and had very different sex drives.

In my case I would say that opening the relationship was a bandaid fix for what was already a failing relationship, and it was failing for many different reasons. However it isn’t always the case for everyone.

I don’t want this to be all doom and gloom because I definitely had some of the best sexual experiences thus far being in an open relationship and I also learnt some pretty valuable lessons.

I wouldn’t start a relationship open again but I also wouldn’t want to be completely monogamous. I think I’d want to start sleeping with people together and discuss/negotiate sleeping with people outside of each other in the moment. I also know that in a club I love to make out with people and run to the bathroom for a random rendezvous. The arrangement would be ever evolving but it would be incredibly important to me that we’re both open and honest about what we want and need in situations. It hurts me more not knowing what my partner is thinking than for them to be honest about their feelings.

I also may change my mind if I get into a relationship with someone who is more proficient in securing the both of us in the relationship. The beauty of being gay in an open relationship is that it gives you options.

If you and your partner have ever considered it I would encourage you to give it a try but to do it at your own pace. Fuck what everyone else has to say, both of your feelings are the most important thing in all of this and that’s what you should focus on!