My boyfriend, Alex, and I have been together for five years. We’ve created a foundation of trust and open communication to where we can tell each other anything without persecution. We both acknowledged that we want to have sex with other people, so we agreed to try it. We thought this would be a fun experience for us to try and explore new things sexually (either together or separately). Actually, it’s a lot more complicated than that.
Normally, with these types of relationships, there are rules and regulations in place to keep one of us from drifting apart and compromising the foundation. We didn’t put too much thought into it, since this was just for fun; all that we really instilled was that we didn’t interact with people whom we had a history with or people who had feelings for us, and we wouldn’t have people over to our apartment. We opened our relationship for two months, and sometimes it was fun, and other times, it was not.
We used Grindr, which is the leading hook-up app for men, to explore and meet new guys. At first, it was exciting because we were doing it together, and we could finally try the fantasies we always wanted to do, like having a threesome and making new friends. As soon as I finished building my profile, I was blown out of the water with messages, nudes, and questions like “looking?”, “Do you host?”, “what’s your d*** size?”. It was overwhelming, to say the least.
I didn’t realize, however, that while I was getting all the attention, my boyfriend was not.
To provide perspective, I’m a top and my boyfriend is a bottom, so if you live in Houston, like me, there’s a huge majority of one more than the other. So where I had a lot of options to choose from because I’m a top, Alex didn’t have much to go off of. For him, they were either not attractive enough, couldn’t host, or were unresponsive. The times that we did get action, which was almost always separate, it was always a case of one of us having a better experience than the other.
I remember the first night I hooked up with someone since opening our relationship. At first it was weird because I was having trouble getting it up, he was so chill and patient, and we ended up having a conversation where we got to know each other more and I couldn’t stop talking about my boyfriend. That’s when I felt more comfortable having sex with him. I’ll spare you the details, but it was a satisfying night. Unfortunately, my boyfriend did not have the same experience; his hook-up never showed up in the first place. He was left with no one, and I was too tired to make up for it.
Later in our open relationship, things started to get complicated.
One thing about my boyfriend and I is that we sometimes have opposite points of view, and that was prevalent in how we viewed hook-ups. I saw them as experiences where you meet someone new, have a nice conversation, have good sex, and then maybe make a friend after the whole endeavor. Whereas Alex saw it as more of a transactional experience, meaning as long as he got what he wanted, then it was worth it. He doesn’t put emotion as a factor in his hook-ups. I was opposed to his way of going about hooking up, but I felt that he was settling for less because of it. In any case, our sex-life was strong, even before we opened up, so we would take breaks from time to time.
In the end, we decided that it wasn’t for us because, as Alex said, “Why would I try looking for d***, when I have a perfect one right in front of me.”
But this experience did give me a new outlook on relationships. I don’t regret being in an open relationship because there was never a need to do it in the first place. They’re not for everybody, but not one relationship is the “right way.” There are plenty of relationships out there, like open relationships or polyamory, that work and it is not up to society on what is right. What matters is their happiness.
Cam's Opinion🐈⬛ 