Open Relationships: Is that really what you want?

Introduction:

Hello my friend!

I always consider it an honour to share these words with you and today isn't any different.

This discussion is inspired by a brief chat with an acquaintance that sparked my curiosity and I hope that by the end of it you'd have learned a few things just like I did.

In her words:

"I'll let anyone that wants to marry me know that I'll want an open marriage later in our relationship"

An open relationship is one where partners agree that they can each have sexual relations with others outside of their relationship.

Personally, this isn't something that makes sense to me as I feel partners who engage in it do not love and respect each other enough.

However, being open minded and willing to learn I inquired of her the reason for her judgement.

According to her, she has a history of getting bored in her relationships and wanting to getaway. Which of course, she does by ghosting her partner.

At this point I've already figured out her "desire" is infact born out of fear; the fear of repeating a now established pattern. But I wanted to be sure so I asked:

"Does it mean if you don't get bored then there'll be no open marriage?"

"Does it mean it's not out of excitement or curiosity or for your own pleasures?"

She agreed it had less to do with pleasure but more of being an option she's willing to explore to save a failing marriage if she had to.

Discussion:

At the end our conversation, I made the following takeways:

• She was projecting

• She wants to solve a dysfunction by adapting another dysfunction

• She has accepted her patterns as fact

• She was aware of a weakness but unaware of her strength

• She's decided to settle for less than she desires

Let's look into each one in detail:

She was projecting:

Her reason for being open to the idea of an open marriage is that she expects to get bored in the marriage just as she has in relationships.

Here, she's projecting an established dysfuntional pattern on the relationship.

What this does is that it'll cause her to act in ways that'll prove her right. Instead of enjoying the experience, she's just there waiting for the day she eventually gets bored.

She'll also relate any change in feelings as an indicator of getting bored.

She wants to solve a dysfunction by adapting another dysfunction:

To constantly get bored in our relationships is a dysfunction consistent with a lack of depth.

When we connect solely on physical attributes like beauty and sex we're bound to get bored at some point when we've seen enough of the beauty or the sex has lost those sparks.

We can't solve this dysfunction by getting into an open marriage which is another dysfunction itself.

This could even go on to weaken the bond or builds up jealousy, resentment and hostility.

She has accepted the pattern as a fact:

The basis for her projections is that this established pattern will always show up in her relationships.

This mindset opposes responsibility and growth because we can't solve a problem we've already accepted.

She was aware of a weakness but unaware of her strength:

She had noticed a pattern of getting bored and had given in to it. What she didn't realise was that she had the ability to work through it until she breaks the pattern.

She's decided to settle for less than she desires:

When we feel we can't achieve what we want, we settle for less than we deserve.

She wants a stable healthy relationship but instead of working towards it, she's willing to settle for less to "save the relationship"

Both healthy and unhealthy relationships require work and endurance so do it where it's beneficial.

Recommendations:

From our featured story we can see that people are in open relationships, not because they enjoy it but because they're willing to compromise to save a failing marriage.

However, instead of resorting to this, we can improve the quality of our relationship in these ways:

Identify the source of dysfunction:

In our case study the source of dysfunction is the quality of the bond. Here boredom sets in because the strength of the bond is just as surface level as the physical attributes that it's based on.

For some others the cause of dysfunction could be fear of abandonment or curiosity; but whatever it is for you, identity and work on it.

Try out non-sexual ways of bonding:

An open relationship isn't the only way to spice things up between partners. There are other non-sexual ways of bonding such as vacation, games, and shared interests.

Spending time together doing these things, rekindles the light of love.

Understand that a dysfunction can be repaired:

A repeated pattern continues to recur because we've refused to or given up on the thought of changing it.

One of our superpower as humans is our ability to work on and subsequently change what we don't like.

Instead of settling, we can find a willing partner and build something new, beautiful and magical by being willing to put in the work.

Impacts of Open relationship:

An open relationship mostly impacts the relationship negatively. Most times one of the partners cries themselves to sleep because they're deeply hurt by it but continue to play along for fear of being abandoned.

When such a partner gets really bitter about it, they might snap and take out the other person.

Open relationships also show that one or both of the partners don't value the bond they share.

Summary:

Before we go into an open relationship, we need to ask ourselves if it's really what we want and why so.

We need to have difficult conversations with our partner to make them understand the things they lack that we want from another relationship. .

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