‘What if he finds someone better?': the agony and the ecstasy of an open relationship
My mother will kill me for writing this article. She doesn’t get why my partner and I would want to have sex with other people; why, God why, would we want to question a structure as sacred and, let’s face it, successful as monogamy? As she said, when I first mentioned I’d been on a date with someone who wasn’t my long-term partner, “Well, what if he finds someone better than you?” Brutal. Mothers really know how to find your deepest insecurity before wringing it – and you – out like a dishcloth.
She wasn’t wrong, though. What if he does find someone better than me? That was, admittedly, the first question I had when my partner and I decided to sleep with other people a year ago. Not only that, we decided it would be fine if we went on dates with other people, too: one, two, 10 – as long as we kept, as every pop psychologist whose bestseller I’ve never read will tell you, communication streams open.
The first date with someone else was mine. It was with an incredibly hot guy who I’d met at a fashion party, because I’m glamorous like that. He flirted so hard it was essentially impossible to say no. My partner and I discussed it: “Let’s just see what happens.”
Naturally I was nervous. The guy was hot. I was sweaty. It was the first date I’d been on in way over half a decade. What on earth do you talk about? I messaged a friend who is a very chic dater: “Just ask him his most problematic opinion… Honestly, it’s the best opener.” I wore black, because I always wear black, and I unbuttoned my shirt one lower than usual. I kissed my partner and my dog, Celine Dion, goodbye. And off I went.
The date was fun, the sex was wild – not better or worse, but invigorating in its difference. Kissing was, bizarrely, harder than anything else because a kiss with a stranger these days feels more intimate, and until then that intimacy had been reserved only for my partner.
When I arrived home that night after sleeping with the first person who wasn’t my boyfriend in seven years, I felt, simply, glad to climb into bed next to him. But also, perhaps, like I was beginning to undo three decades of conditioning towards monogamy. A monogamy which, until then, I’d held on to so tightly it was as likely to suffocate me, or my partner, as the worrisome potential of finding someone better.
See, the thing about our monogamous relationship was that the desire we had for others never went away. It was simply annexed in our brain, right there next to Catholicism and the bad exes. That’s not to say it was repressed. I don’t know a single person in a monogamous relationship who doesn’t flirt, have crushes, perhaps overstep the mark in someone’s DMs. A lot of people cheat, too. It’s been this way for aeons and it will be this way for aeons to come (or until the next pesky mass extinction event hits). And annexing this desire is perfectly fine, but when you simply ask the question, “But why?”, finding a solid answer becomes difficult.
The day after I’d consummated our open relationship, we packed a bag and drove to the countryside for a friend’s baby’s christening. The atmosphere in the car as we drove out of London was one of deep, icy tension. We could not seem to find the right song to narrate the moment, for the whole 90-minute trip, until I burst and said: “OK, we fucked!”
We decided there and then, on the A419 on the way to celebrate the choices of some dear friends who had done what they were supposed to do and moved to the countryside to raise their perfect child, that this open thing was a terrible idea. Read More...
