Three years ago, I met my fiance. He was fresh out of a 15-year relationship and concluded that a single partner was not what either of us needed. Though I cried when he told me this, I could just about envision a committed scenario without monogamy. So that’s what we did.
Like most open couples, we began with dozens of rules: who should call who when, what partners would be OK. But it quickly became clear that these attempts at control were aimed at avoiding jealousy, and that most negative feelings were not jealousy at all: they were my own fears – that he would leave me, or that I wasn’t the epitome of sexuality in his eyes. I grew to understand that though he loves my body, he’s also sometimes attracted to other bodies; that one day he might leave me, and refusing him access to other sexual experiences won’t change that.
-The Long Good Read
