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I Tried the Three Open Relationship Rules That Always Fail
I tried to put the reins on big emotions, but it was a disaster.
I have to admit: I started messing with the idea of open relationships because I’m indecisive and greedy. I loved having multiple partners, with all their scents and their histories and their interests. I couldn’t get enough of finding new sexual kinks, adventures, and curricula. I could, at my most passionate, put myself on a course to increasingly hedonistic experiments and primal play. When I was just turning thirty, I lobbied for threesomes and voyeurism when my partners admitted they had sexual fantasies that involved other men. I thought it was the ultimate show of confidence — until I didn’t, and some of the choices they made would intimidate me and shrink me into a corner. I wanted to have my cake, eat it, and still sell it at a premium. But all relationships come with trade-offs.
Beyond the need to explore, I’d become crippled by the idea of relationships ending. I believed there was no “cut your losses” caveat for calling it quits. When I had to accept some relationships helped me and my partners more by ending them, it felt like I was championing failure. It was too much for me to own that some people could be damaged by my mercurial, pretentious tendencies. They had to love me forever.
If they didn’t, then maybe they hadn’t loved me at all. And, of course, I’d make them pay back precious time admitting as much.
Relationships were the unbreakable chain to my self-esteem. In this way, I felt turned inside-out and womanly. Among my friends, the masculine expectation was a rap mantra: I don’t chase ’em, I replace ’em.
But I always chased and I hardly replaced, instead adding to a hypothetical catalog of women I thought I could always go back to. This led to a series of almost-monogamous-but-swinging relationships that I’d soon taint by cheating or disappearing. The partners to whom I admitted being unfit to carry monogamy — the ones who stayed — told me that they’d try other models with me if we could stick to ground rules. As a cheater, I was used to swearing into agreements but breaking them as soon as they became even a little inconvenient.
