Friday, November 2, 2007

trevvy article 2

Open relationship is about one thing—SEX.


Sex is good.
And sex with different people concurrently or over the course of a lifetime is awesome. Sex is so good that some people are addicted to it. Sex makes people do crazy things like spending 10 hours on IRC. I love sex just as much as anybody else. But I definitely believe that there is more to life than sex.


I was inspired to write this after reading the comments to the previous one that I have written.


Some people consider sex outside a monagamous relationship to be cheating, but I think it is definitely more than that. You are cheating when you lie and keep secrets from your partner.


I wonder how people define ‘relationship’ nowadays. The 'do's and 'don't's are getting increasing blurry these days.
The traditional concept of a committed relationship has gone through some pronounced changes in the past years.
As our pace of life gets faster and our notions of social acceptability become broader and more tolerant, the concept of a single partner for life beings to sound quaint to some. But if your partner suggested an open relationship -- one in which you were both free to explore other sexual encounters without fear of retribution -- what would you think?


Now I know we live in 2007 and no longer in 1997 which was the year I discovered I was bisexual by the way. And, yes, I understand that people often have sex before getting together. I understand that we live in a modern world.
But does that mean we can have an open relationship and expect it to work? I don’t believe such a relationship lends itself to success. A relationship should be built on openness, honesty and commitment. How committed can you be when your partner is entering into that same type of relationship with other people? Would that increase your faith in him or decrease it?


More than anything else, sex with other people seems to violate the contract of a relationship.and, in turn, monogamy. If you love someone, you don’t have sex with someone else. If you are monogamous, you don’t have sex with someone else. So, bottom line—love, sex, and relationship are all all implicated in monogamy.


Look, I'm old-fashioned! I am proud of it and not hiding it at all. I want the lifetime partner, “THE ONE,” the soul mate. I want the house. I want the dogs. I want the adopted kids. If I had a nice house in Melbourne, I would smile every time I looked out my window.



But I am not an idiot.



I am not waiting for the knight in shining armor to save me so we can ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. I know a relationship takes work. It takes mind numbing, backbreaking work. A relationship is a promise that you won’t go anywhere, and you can’t. No matter what happens, you have to stick around. Well, that’s what it means to me.


Maybe not everyone is as old fashioned as me, and maybe there are many people who don’t want a relationship. But I bet any person in the world who was offered a chance at true love would take it in a heartbeat and never let go. So why have some people given up on the possibility of being with one person forever, or at least at a time? Do we really believe monogamy is dead? Or impossible? Or is there something else going on here?


You know what I really think about people who are in ‘open’ relationships? That it’s just easier to have an ‘open door’ policy because you just assume that your partner will cheat. Better instead to just allow him that freedom than to set yourself up for the inevitable pain of unfaithfulness. Or, conversely, that it’s easier to excuse your own unfaithfulness if you go into the relationship with the understanding that you are still ‘free’ to pursue other interests.

I just feel, and it’s a gut feeling that there’s something larger going on beneath the surface. It’s just a hunch, but I really think that it is not monogamy that people do not believe in. People who are into open relationships will tell you that they do not believe in having sex with one person and that same person forever. But I think its bull shit. I think they don’t really believe in love, and I think they force themselves to deal with the thought of the person they love having sex with other people because they think that’s the only way to really hold onto their love.

I think what motivates people is often fear of loss or getting hurt, so they dumb down their relationships in order to protect themselves against pain. But people who do all they can to avoid pain, and I am often guilty of that myself, never truly get all the great feelings because they are constantly worried about the bad feelings. Pain and loss exist to make happiness and love feel even better.


What it seems to come down to for people in these types of relationships is an unwillingness to try and make it work in a one-on-one, monogamous relationship. And again, if you feel that way, then why the hell get involved at all?


How does an open relationship honor love and commitment to each other? If your life is dotted with random sexual partners while building a solid relationship, then what is your relationship really about? Is it precious? Is it fulfilling? Is it beautiful? Is it real?


What makes a relationship something that people want to hold onto? What makes it special? Intimacy with your partner? Shared goals? Sex? I think the thing that makes a relationship special is that you are with the person you love. It’s special because it is two people doing something together that they are not doing with anyone else. That’s what a true relationship or love or whatever is all about.


Why would you want to preserve something that isn’t special and beautiful anyway?



Maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe because I am a sensitive new age bottom, and have a hard time separating sex from emotion (love), I can’t possibly see the awesomeness of open relationships. And certainly, I want people to do what they want to do.


I would never judge others for being non-monogamous, I just won’t date them.

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