ONE SIDED OPEN RELATIONSHIP (Advice Needed)

Freenotfree

New member
I’ve always recognized and honored the capacity within myself to care deeply for more than one person at a time, and while I have a tendency to behave primarily in a monogamous way with my partners, I have always been clear from the beginning of any relationship that I believe strongly in personal freedom and do not agree with placing boundaries, restrictions and obligations upon one another.
I was very clear about this with my current partner, who has never been in a relationship without boundaries. We’ve talked from time to time and she has always expressed that while she feels she can respect my freedom as an individual, she still finds it difficult to cope with the idea of my being intimate with another person. Most of her past relationships were very toxic and there was often a lot of cheating going on from both sides.

She and I, however, have always maintained open communication, keeping no secrets from one another. Our relationship feels very strong and intimate. We sometimes have misunderstandings, but are able to resolve them easily without allowing them to escalate. I would say that, all in all, we have a really amazing loving relationship.

About a year and a half into our relationship she found herself developing strong feelings for another man. She divulged all of her feelings to me, and I listened without judgment. She began spending more and more time with him, eventually becoming physically intimate. I remained understanding and supportive the entire time, even offering solace when it didn’t work out in the end. Turns out he was too uncomfortable with the fact that she was already involved with someone (me).

It has been about a month since then, and I now find myself in a situation where I have met someone else who I am beginning to take an interest in. I have only recently met this other woman, and it’s far too early to tell whether our connection is merely platonic or whether it might develop into something romantic. I do find her attractive and I’m open to the possibility of a romantic encounter, but I have no intention of replacing my current partner. I also have no intention of rushing into anything. I have been taking my time to really get to know this other woman, and have been holding off meeting her in person.

Now, I have been upfront with my current partner, telling her everything about this other woman from the very moment I met her. And she has been very good at allowing me the space to talk about it. However, she feels very threatened, as this situation has begun triggering her fears and insecurities. I have done all I can do to assure her that the connection we have is so strong and intimate that no one (other than herself) could ever cause that to diminish. And I have been clear that I don’t wish to replace her, and have no intention of ever leaving her. Nonetheless, her fearful emotions are so overwhelming that she cannot cope with even the possibility that I might become intimate with this other woman.

She has expressed that she does not want me to explore my connection with this other woman. And she has been trying to convince me to compromise my freedom, which makes me feel very uncomfortable. I find that the more she tries to restrict me, the more I feel the desire to express my freedom. I think what bothers me most of all, however, is that she felt free to explore her interest in another man, and now she is trying to inhibit my freedom from doing very much the same thing.

She talks about how the situation triggers past experiences which make her fearful and uncomfortable. And I have expressed how the situation triggers past experiences and feelings of discomfort for me as well. You see, I once compromised my freedom to be in a relationship with someone who insisted we be monogamous. Initially I had expressed that I wasn’t comfortable with that, but I was given the ultimatum of monogamy or nothing at all. I was so infatuated with that woman at the time that I agreed to be monogamous, even though it was against my better judgement. And during the many years we were together I remained exclusive with her. In that time I never met another woman who I felt a strong enough connection with to really want to explore it, but I did often feel trapped and suffocated by my partner’s possessiveness. This caused a great deal of resentment for which the relationship suffered. But what really bothered me was when I found out later on that she had cheated on me. It wasn’t the fact that she had been intimate with another man. It was the fact that she had pressed so hard for me to remain exclusive with her, and that she hadn’t remained exclusive with me. And worse, she had kept it a secret.

So, this is not the first time I have been on the losing end of this kind of double standard. My current partner feels secure enough in our relationship to be intimate with another man, but too insecure about herself to respect my freedom to do the same. I love her so deeply that I don’t want to simply give up on the relationship. In addition, I don’t want to do anything to further upset her. And thirdly, I don’t want to feel restricted, having to compromise my own freedom as an individual. But I don’t see how I can easily resolve all three of these issues. Any advice on this matter is greatly appreciated.
 
I think you could state your boundaries for what you are willing and not willing to do.

  • No, I am not willing to Close. I am not going to dive into it, but I do want to see where this goes with the new lady. I have no intention of leaving you for her. But our current agreement is Open on both sides. I would like to exercise my side of that.
  • Yes, I am willing to reassure you and work with you through your fears as appropriate. Yes, I am willing to see a counselor with you to help us on this.
  • I am also willing to disband, because I am not willing to cheat.
  • What are you willing and not willing to do?
Then let her state what she is and is not willing to do to help solve this. If her only solution to her worries and fears is "you do not date" then you have to decide whether you want to stay here under those conditions or leave with regrets. To me it sounds like "leave with regrets" since you do not want a repeat of the last relationship you had where you Closed not really want Close.

Galagirl
 
Last edited:
Hi Freenotfree,

So, you have a perfect relationship other than this one teensy little issue? It's not so teensy though, is it. Your partner will not give you the same freedom that you gave her.

It would be nice if I could tell you how to convince your partner, but it is really up to your partner whether she'll be convinced or not. I think you're going to have to choose between your partner and freedom, I don't think you can have both.

You could pick a time period (a year?) that you'll wait for your partner to change her mind. But if she doesn't change in that time period, you'll still have to make a decision after that.

You can of course let your partner decide whether to break up while you act against her wishes, but I'm not comfortable recommending that because it's a moral gray area. Polyamory means acting with the consent of all persons concerned.

Regards,
Kevin T.
 
I think you need to be firm, like some of GalaGirl's recommendations, but without being insensitive. Use her experiences with the other guy as a springboard to help her walk through her feelings with her. For instance, when she was with him, did she feel like her love for you diminished? If not, then why assume that you would react any differently? If so, was that coming from core assumptions she held that you do not share? And so on. When that relationship came and went, were the two of you weaker as a couple for it, or had your own relationship actually developed and strengthened as you learnt new things about yourselves and each other? It sounds like you feel it has, but what about her? You need to be able to reassure her that just as her explorations didn't come at the detriment of the pair of you, neither will yours, and that means you need to delve a bit more and find out what that experience was actually like for her.

Rather than tip-toeing around her triggers and fears as a reason the pair of you hold off from this, I would say that the presence of her insecurities is even more reason to do this (gently and kindly, of course). After all, who wants to be restricted by fears and/or low self-worth forever? At least that's what got me through some of the darker and more difficult moments of watching my partner explore others without me. I wasn't just accommodating her wants and desires; I was exploring my own weak points and making myself a stronger person FOR ME. That investment and personal growth will always be with me, whether any of my current relationships remain in my life or not, so to me it was worth finding the courage to work on my discomfort. Does she see the logic of tackling her fears head on, or is she super-avoidant in nature? That's something else to discuss with her.

We are all somewhat afraid of the unknown, but she has actually been to some of these areas herself from the alternate perspective, and consciously drawing her attention to and leveraging that experience can be a useful tool. For me personally, I didn't intuitively get the idea that my partner wouldn't leave me for hotter/better/more loveable until I was dating others myself. Once I was, it was like a light-bulb moment - a 'oh! this person is great! but how great is my partner for supporting me through this!' realisation. The ability to put ourselves in our partner's shoes is essential at times, just as it is also essential that we learn that our feelings about X can differ from how our partner views X, and that in those cases, you take your partners word about what X means. For instance, if I can't have sex with someone without forming a deep emotional bond with them, but my partner explains that she can, I need to be able to take her perspective into account and not my own. At the same time, if my partner is reporting feeling a deep emotional bond with someone else, it can be useful for me to be aware of times in the past where I've experienced something similar and it's not been a problem for our relationship as a whole.

You only find that line by really listening to each other - so if communication is a little patchy between the two of you, now is the time to be working on that. You need to understand her fears as well as she does (caveat: she may not yet understand them fully herself) in order to offer her the reassurance and support she needs. Of course, self-reassurance is ultimately the best, but it can take a while to get there. And even when you do, it's an ongoing process. I still find I need to reassure myself sometimes of the things my partner tells me, and to stop my brain getting carried away in predicting doom. One thing that might be good in your case is to focus more generally on the idea of opening up, without reference to the specific woman you are interested in. It might be a step back in your mind, but you need to lay the foundations. Encourage her, if she's not already, to read up on open relationships herself (the more than two book is my personal fave) so she can come to you with questions. When we started out I had a radically different image in my mind of what my partner wanted from an open relationship model than she did. Once we talked about it away from her specific interests in the specific person she wanted to date at the time, we found more overlaps and compatibilities in what we wanted, many of which weren't directly related to the scary concept of sex-with-others at all (e.g. more personal freedom, desire to not be co-dependent, opportunity to grow as an individual, desire to be more self-reliant, etc.)

Good luck!
 
.....I wasn't just accommodating her wants and desires; I was exploring my own weak points and making myself a stronger person FOR ME. That investment and personal growth will always be with me, whether any of my current relationships remain in my life or not, so to me it was worth finding the courage to work on my discomfort.

Wise words.
 
Back
Top