We’ve been together for 4 years and she always had this problem, that she wanted to “live a little” (be single, flirt with guys, f\*ck around etc.) while she is still young (It bothers her since she never had the chance to do that, because she was constantly in relationships since her teenage years). We’ve been talking about this for some time now and around 2 weeks ago we finally decided to open up our relationship.
At first I was okay with that, but then she told me a few days ago, that she had a guy at her place (they didn’t exactly have sex, but they still did some stuff). This shocked me severely (even though this is exactly what happens in open relationships) and I constantly feel anxious. I cannot get the picture of some other guy doing things with her out of my head (It’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about for the last few days and I cannot even sleep because of it).
Now she is going on an exchange to a foreign country for a few months and maybe she will continue to profit from the open relationship there, while I doubt I will even meet any women during this time (I think it would help me coping if I could have some sexual experiences with random women, but I doubt I will. I don’t even know how would I achieve this).
Also me and my girlfriend have really connected and I can’t even imagine a life without her, or meeting someone else with whom I’d be able to forget her. She also sees me as someone with whom she would marry, live together and someday have kids.
So as I see it, I have these options:
1. I break up with her now, so I wouldn’t suffer from thinking about her and some random people having sex. (This seems kinda rational, but as I’ve said before, I don’t think I will find anyone as good as her. And if we break up I don’t think we’ll ever get back together)
2. I stay with her and hope our relationship closes up soon and I try to cope somehow with the fact that she is having sex with other people (but I fear it will impact my mental health severely and also she might not want to get back together with me).
3. I wait until she gets back from the exchange and maybe even propose a “no contact” until then, as it might help me cope better. Then after she comes back I ask her about how many sexual experiences she’s had and then decide if we should break up or if I can live with it.
4. Tell her I’ve made a mistake about opening our relationship since it’s making me miserable and give her an ultimatum, something like: “We can have an open relationship and you can flirt with other guys and feel single, but you must never have sex or do anything sexual with them.” (This could fail to make her feel she “lived a little” while she was young and if we don’t break up right away, we might break up later in life).
Which of these options do you think is the best? Or do you think there is another option I’m not seeing?
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P.S. I don’t blame my girlfriend for wanting to open up our relationship, I completely understand her. I just doubt this thing will work since she might have tons of sexual experiences and I will probably have none and it just seems kind of unfair to me.
P.P.S. I think I should make this clear once again. I really doubt she will use open relationship to find someone better than me and start a relationship with him, while dumping me. She just wants to have meaningless sex with strangers.
**TL;DR**
Me and my gf opened our relationship and I have trouble coping with her having sex with random people and don’t know what to do about it.
15 comments
Dude, im going to be straight with you, open relationships are something that is made clear before the relationship even begins. If you dont feel it, just dont get to it, and if she insists at it, she is just cheating at you with a silver lining
Dont put this over you, if it makes you miserable get the f out of it, have some god damn self respect, she is just finding justifications to hook up behind your back and make it seem cool and all.
If she is unable to feel “alive” because she is not going at it with multiple men, she is clearly made for the streets and not in a serious relationship
Dude, NEWS FLASH!!!! She is not your girlfriend anymore. Treat her accordingly!
So if you had women throwing themselves at you and your gf didn’t have a sniff from any guys, would you close the relationship because she wasn’t getting sex from others? Or would you continue sleeping with women? Seems like your abit put out that she’s getting attention and your not.
Your gf chose to enter a monogamous relationship with you, she can’t just expect you to be ok with opening it up because she hasn’t slept around enough. If she’s at that stage then something is missing from your relationship because if you are happy and your having great sex why would having sex with someone else be any better? And why would she risk loosing what you have.
She just wants to sleep around and if she meets someone new who she falls for then it’s bye bye you and if she doesn’t then she will have the door mat to fall back on and continue the comfortable option with you.
Time to move onto greener pastures son
Cut them ties. You dont want an open relationship and you do not have the desire for one.
There are so many people out there that are looking for a monogamous relationship and the time you spend waiting for her to change your mind IF she does is just not healthy for you.
Don’t do this to yourself. You know what’s going to happen when she goes on exchange.
Consider this relationship over AND don’t try “be cool” with something that absolutely goes against your values again
My BF had his previous relationship open up at his GF’s wishes, it’s over now because he didn’t share those values, stuck it out for a year and the second he found someone to play around with she raged because she didn’t expect or want him to benefit from the relationship being open. If she wants to be free then she isn’t ready for a relationship, let her go and find someone who shares the value of mongamy with you. If the idea of her having mindless sex with stranhers makes you feel this shitty then this isn’t for you. Either close it off now or leave.
I’ll start with the obvious. You agreed to an open relationship, and after a bit she…made use of that. You are entitled to almost every feeling you have about this EXCEPT being shocked: she’s doing exactly what you discussed.
This path that your girlfriend is exploring turns out to be quite uncomfortable for you. That’s more than fair: you don’t know how you’ll feel about something like this until it happens. It happens I was in an open relationship myself…also not by my choosing, although in my case that was the way it started and the default. I didn’t love it either, but there were parts of it that were okay and parts of it that really bothered me.
While both you and your girlfriend don’t have much dating experience, you don’t even sound comfortable with the prospect of it or have much confidence in yourself that way. You say that you’re worried that you’ll never find someone as good as your girlfriend, but — that’s the mindset of someone with almost no dating experience. The world is full of good, dateable people. People start out again after being divorced, widowed and so forth and find love again. I’m not trying to be unromantic and say your girlfriend is not special: rather I think it’s more romantic to know that you could be with someone else but are CHOOSING the one you’re with. I don’t get that sentiment from you; you seem scared by the prospect of not being with your girlfriend, which probably has something to do with her distress at seeing other people.
I could go on for much longer, but I had better not. What should you do?
I suggest being honest with your girlfriend that the open relationship is making you much more uncomfortable than you were expecting and asking her to put a time limit on her explorations. If she really is motivated by wanting some casual dating experience, then she can get that. If she still wants an open relationship after, say, a year, it’s probably not about experience anymore.
The other thing for you both to realize is that while presumably the relationship is open for you in the same way it is for her, that doesn’t make it fair, because (i) it is so much easier for women to have casual dating in a committed romantic relationship than men and (ii) you’re not sure you want to do that anyway. (As for the first point, I am certainly speaking from direct experience. My former girlfriend was always honest with the men she met online about having a committed boyfriend and wanting a ONS only or a few ONS strung together. She would find willing men within minutes, and I can’t remember a single instance of one backing out when they found out about me. For me, the only women I actually met were women in open marriages and although I stayed in touch with one or two, we never actually did something physical.) I think it would be more helpful for your relationship for you two to recognize that opening it up is a big benefit FOR HER and that there should be something else in exchange to make things better for you. The exchange thing doesn’t have to be romantic or sexual: is there something in your life that you’ve wanted to explore but felt held back by being in a relationship?
Anyway, good luck. This is a tough one and might indeed end up ending your relationship…but it also might not. For someone you’ve been dating for so long and are otherwise so happy with, it’s certainly worth trying to make it work.
Just dump her, this hurts to read.
No.1 cut your losses and move on. Now you know that an open relationship isn’t compatible with you so you won’t make that mistake in future
I think considering she has always had a wandering eye you should go with option 1.
Then end the relationship and move on, you are not obligated to stay in any relationship that you are not happy in
Why why why do so many people enter open relationships when they are clearly not comfortable with open relationships. It almost seems like a trend or the cool thing to do now.
Most people are monogamous. Those who are open or polyamorous enthusiastically want to be in that situation, they don’t “tolerate” it.
Please people, stop subjecting yourselves to open relationships that put you through an anxious emotional roller coaster. That’s not the way they’re supposed to be.
Ok so you were weak and agreed to this arrangement and now are whining that it’s sucks. You thing you need to do is grow an actual backbone and speak up next time.