I was born in 1981 making me the first year of the Millennials. I used to fight and argue against this tooth and nail and the Xennials micro-generation exists for this reason. As I watched my peers get married and start families, I listened to my older 40-something, 50-something, and retired parents’ friends talk about their unhappiness, their settling, their extramarital affairs, their escort/prostitute habits, and/or the amount of stagnation they feel in their lives. I realized traditional relationships seem to be an antiquated concept adopted by many, followed by most, and discussed by all.
So I started embracing my Millennial generation and dating younger. Much younger. Too young. By the end of my 20’s, I was dating 40 year olds born in 1970. My last couple relationships have been 90’s babies culminating in born in 1997. For the judgmental record, I graduated high school when she was 18 months old.
The thing about Millennials is their values often embrace gender fluidity and sexual openness as essential to personal freedom and individual expression. Sexuality is a sliding scale, just like gender. This is a novel concept to many but whether your criteria for judgment is genotype, phenotype, traditional identity, role in the household and/or family, placement during sex, emotional needs, or the result of your coin toss that particular day, it’s a spectrum, not hard defined check boxes and categories.
I always joke I can be gay for pay because the act would mean nothing to me. But I also recognize that I if I did, it would forever alter my sexuality in my need to disclose my truths to help achieve real intimacy in my personal relationships. If a guy goes to a gloryhole and sticks his dick through the hole in the wall, does he really care what gender is on the other side servicing him? If you’re freaky enough to do that, you could feign being upset if you identify as hetero and find out it was Brad not Beth on the other side of the wall, but the truth is not knowing didn’t stop you. In fact, it probably excited you. Whether sexual orientation or sexual kinks, sexuality is a sliding scale.
Most of us can’t handle the shame after things like one-night stands and gangbangs, which is why we limit ourselves based on what level of kink can we accept and live with after it’s consented and done. (Me, I draw my line at scatting.) How might people perceive us differently if they knew what we like to do? So we keep secrets and hide our true selves and wonder why we can't orgasm, asphyxiate or need to medicate to become aroused or loose.
All that is done in the dark comes to light, and in bringing things to light we liberate ourselves to express freely and fully what we like and enjoy, which isn't always what we're actually been doing. That powerful corporate attorney you respect and model your career after and invite to family BBQs is on Tinder seeking out doms because he loves to be humiliated as a sissy maid and worship the feet of his strong dom, satisfying his Oedipus complex about his controlling mother. True story btw.
We should aim to be judgment free and let whatever kinks happen in the bedroom, sex dungeon and sex club stay with the consenting adults. But there are always consequences when, for example, we explicitly or implicitly sleep with someone cheating on their relationship or that clear line between ddlg (daddy dom-little girl) role play and actual little girls crosses the line of people getting hurt. You can be a freak with a closet full of kinks and still be honest, open and have a good sense of morality.
So in my last couple of relationships dating much younger Millennials, we tossed around the idea of having an open relationship and/or engaging in some form of polyamory. I developed an open mind about polyamory as I learned about the gay community while visiting Australia. I had also discussed it in my previous relationships with much older women and even turned down threesomes because I wasn’t feeling the way it was being setup. When dating the Brasilian, I had met a woman capable of connecting emotionally and willing to explore each other’s and our combined sexuality in full together with the option of having adventures with others as a couple. I found it cute when she offered a female friend to join us one night but later misread the couple who wanted to swap with us at the luxury hotel cabanas. I was far too into just her anyways but in the end I chose to move to NYC instead of moving to Brasil to start a family with her, because she was 10 years older than me and she needed to have kids in the next 2 years and I wasn't ready for that then.
Polyamory is the ability to love multiple people at the same time. The pressing question is always how deep and real is that love for each person? Isn’t there a primary love? To someone who has loved their one partner for a lifetime, through the good and bad, through sickness and health and cancer, through employment and unemployment and retirement, through kids and grand kids and great-grand kids, and through deaths of friends and family around them, polyamory doesn’t seem like love; it’s caring about a bunch of people but not caring too deeply about any of them. However for some people, that’s the capacity of love and commitment they’re able or they choose to give. That’s absolutely fine if they’re up front and honest about it and don’t seek to mislead their partner(s).
Open relationships on the other hand are a whole different beast. You’ve decided your partner is your primary, but you want to be free to explore the possibilities and opportunities that come along or that you seek out. Ironically, the young millennial women with whom I discussed making our relationship open, all cheated on me. That's exactly what open relationships are meant to prevent, the violation of trust.
Far too often, what is sought under the guise of an open relationship is wanting to "have one’s cake and eat it to". The initiator often wants the freedom to fuck other people and not have to deal with any consequences, guilt or blame as they want to believe their partner has fully accepted them. They present this arrangement as true unconditional love, often leaving out the honesty and openness part of truly unconditional love. The reality of such an arrangement is it works as well as there is equality of additional lovers and options keeping the power dynamic in balance. Once that shifts, it all topples faster than fidelity in a whore house.
Open relationships have rules, just like any relationship, otherwise it’s acting single and one person having control over the other. I believe there are 4 types of open relationships that can actually work out in the wild: • Ground rules – The partners discuss and set ground rules for each other and any violation of these rules is a major transgression of trust and likely leads to separation. Actual ground rules I’ve heard include: always use a condom, no anal, no one that I know, no falling in love, word of it better not come back to me, no sleepovers, I don’t want to know about anything that you do. All the bartering is done beforehand and each partner is free to do as they wish within the limits imposed. This seems to be the most common type of open relationship. • Right of refusal and approval – Any possibility or potential opportunity must be discussed and agreed upon before anything transpires and takes place. Either partner has the final veto authority on who, what, when, how, and for how long. This is always intriguing because it’s a delicate balance of trust and control, acceptance and refusal and requires a lot of healthy negotiation to make work. • Play together – It’s all on the table and open for discussion as one giant adventure, but it has to be done together. Lovers that play together, stay together. Of course sometimes playing together means one is a voyeur or an accomplice in setting the stage but both partners are always involved in some manner each and every time. This always feels like the most fun but things not discussed beforehand that happen in the spur of the moment can stir up a lot of conflict after. • Situational decisions – I call this the grey area of open relationships. Dan Savage calls it monogamish. Maybe things are discussed before they happen. Maybe they aren’t discussed at all. Maybe a free pass is in effect for this weekend or trip or for right now. Maybe one partner doesn’t want to know. Maybe they decide to stop being open in their relationship as they work through a challenge together. Maybe they prefer not to define the terms of their open relationship. Maybe they’ll accept and/or react based on intuition and feel. Maybe one day they want to discuss the extracurriculars and the next day they don’t. Maybe one hour they want to participate and the next hour they don’t. Maybe they’re OK if you bring them back home but not OK if you go to their home. It all depends. This requires a lot of healthy communication to really work over time. I feel like this type likes the idea of an open relationship more than it actually happening.
In my very first article, I touched on the idea that in love we all seek to possess some aspect of the person or our relationship and claim it as wholly ours and ours alone. This my pussy. This my dick. You’re mine. I’m all yours. In monogamy, just as in open relationships, we often need something that is uniquely ours to validate the relationship and build the foundation that no matter what else they do, we’re the one that ultimately matters. This intimacy is essential for any relationship to go the distance, which is why we often equate intimacy to intercourse and require monogamy in our relationships.
This is where open relationships fail because too often what is desired to be uniquely theirs is their freedom to keep their options open or do whatever they want while having the perks of the relationship too. Some people desire free sexual expression but don’t necessarily want to trade their freedom for it, to feel tied to their commitment, to invest emotions or to build intimacy. They become unethical when they don't communicate their desires with honesty and openness and instead mislead and manipulate to get what they want, until their attention shifts and they desire someone and something else.
What then does a relationship really provide? Emotional stability? Financial security? Domestic safety? Like with any relationship, what are the terms of the relationship? As in any relationship, something becomes unique and intimate to the relationship and both partners agree on it, which makes other aspects negotiable. Far less progressive examples of relationship terms and negotiations include bowling night every Friday, soccer every Wednesday, extended family dinner every Sunday, boys/girls night out once a month, family dinner every weeknight at 6 PM, first person home from work cooks, last person home from work pays for takeout, alternating weekends with the kids, child support payments on the 15th of every month, one free pass to cheat each calendar year.
Everyone defines their relationship differently. The terms of each relationship matter only to the people directly involved in the relationship. The idea of polyamory and open relationships when practiced ethically with honesty, openness and managing trust and communication is just defining the sexuality of the relationship as different from monogamy.
Consider a man whose partner works long hours so he needs to be self-reliant and domesticated to build and nurture a stable home life and provide for the family. Consider a woman who likes her sexual freedom and because she doesn’t invest much emotionally, domestically or build intimacy, she wants to be able to fuck whomever else she pleases whenever she wants and any partner has to accept it. Now swap genders for each person and consider how this is a housewife and a player. These are only one-sided relationships if these expectations aren’t communicated and discussed honestly, openly and agreed upon by both partners.
The reality is we all have sexual fantasies, ideas, needs, and desires that might exist outside the realm of what is considered normal or traditional. It’s healthy to talk about and discuss these, even if it’s lustful things like group sex, sex parties, swapping, one-night stands, etc. I think it’s possible to have an amazing relationship where a couple can explore their sexuality together and pursue extracurricular activities with healthy communication, setting respectful boundaries, reinforcing their emotional and intimate bond, being safe, and having fun. Even if thinks get particular kinky or freaky, it’s not necessarily wrong, but it doesn’t mean you have to become hedonistic and pursue every urge you ever have.
Some fantasies, urges, and impulses are better left as such because of the consequences and complications to your personal relationships. Unhealthy people don’t care about others, their emotions or their relationship bonds. They are more narcissistic in their approach that the only way is what they want and will go to any length to justify it, often shutting down all honest and open communication and forcing their partners to accept who/what they are, or else.
If a relationship is about communication, commitment and compromise then so can our sexuality in a relationship. Far too often our relationship sexuality is strict monogamy that you can only have sex with, kiss, flirt with, and look at your partner. Healthy and stable adults don’t fuck everyone we find attractive or has an interest in us, and the sooner we learn that, the healthier our psyche and relationships become regardless of whether we maintain monogamy, open things up to ideas, open things up to experiences, or open things up to other people.
Regardless of your relationship terms, the subculture of unhealthy sexuality and the grey area of sex workers is ready and willing to satisfy everyone's carnal pleasures in every hedonistic way all kept secret to avoid great emotional suffering to the participants and those connected to them. The only way to truly be free in our sexuality is to be completely honest and open with ourselves and the others we involve in our wants and needs, becoming ethical sluts. Whether you choose to think, explore, and/or act on your sexuality and within your relationship(s) is entirely up to you and your partner(s).
Note: I’ve made a note to circle back on these ideas when I finally get around to reading Hardy & Easton’s The Ethical Slut. I hope to explore how my ideas align with that book's lessons used by some to justify their open relationships, some to justify their promiscuity and some to recognize they prefer monogamy and have been settling emotionally for less than what they really want.